You “MAY” enjoy these new fiction titles!

A Calamity of Souls by David Baldacci

Set in the tumultuous year of 1968 in southern Virginia, a racially-charged murder case sets a duo of white and Black lawyers against a deeply unfair system as they work to defend their wrongfully-accused Black defendants When two wealthy white landowners are found dead, the whole country immediately thinks it must be Jerome Washington, the hired help, who killed them. He was standing over the bodies when the police responded to an anonymous call and the only one on the property at the time of death. As far as the state is concerned, it’s an open and shut case. Jack Lee, born and raised in Freeman County, knows that every man deserves a solid defense and agrees to be Jerome’s lawyer, against everyone’s better judgement. But as the facts of the case unfold, it becomes more and more obvious to Jack that this trial isn’t about uncovering the truth and is instead a racially charged set up. And the whole town is calling for Jerome to receive the death penalty. Jack is soon ensnared in a system that’s doing everything it can to prevent him from saving Jerome’s life, and even he thinks all is lost. Then Desiree DuBose, a lawyer from up North with a social justice agenda, comes to town and quickly joins as co-council, blasting the case all over the news to gain support. But the citizens of Freeman County don’t want to wait for the final verdict and Jack and Desiree find themselves in the crosshairs. Jack will need to stop at nothing to prove that Jerome is innocent even at the risk of his own life… and his family’s.

Feline Fatale by Rita Mae Brown

Mary Minor “Harry” Harristeen investigates a murder in Albermarle County, Virginia with assistance from her beloved pets, including cats Mrs. Murphy and Pewter and dogs Pirate and Tucker.

It Had to Be You by Mary Higgins Clark

Years after their parents’ murder, identical twin brothers, determined to clear one name at the expense of the other, ask Laura Moran and her Under Suspicion crew to solve this brutal crime and as they get close to the truth, they find the danger from the past finding its way into the present.

Pay Dirt by Sara Paretsky

V .I. Warshawski is famous for her cool under fire, her intelligence, her humor, her unflinching courage, and her love of good coffee. But even the strongest people sometimes need a break to recharge, so her friends send her to Kansas for a weekend of college basketball where Angela, one of her protégées, is playing. And that’s where trouble finds V.I. Sabrina, one of Angela’s roommates, disappears and V.I. agrees to try to find her. Finding a missing person in a city where she knows few people and doesn’t have her trusted contacts is hard, but not as hard as the brutally negative reaction to the detective from some of the locals. When V.I. finds Sabrina close to death in a remote house, she lands herself in the FBI’s crosshairs and faces a violent online backlash. The men running the county’s opioid distribution are also not happy. Discovering a dead body in the same house a few days later, V.I. is pitched headlong into a local land-use battle with roots going back to the Civil War. She finds that today’s combatants are just as willing as opponents in the 1860s to kill to settle their differences. V.I.’s survival depends on keeping one step ahead of players in a game she never intended to play, before the clock runs down.

The #1 Lawyer by James Patterson

Stafford Lee Penney is a small-town lawyer with a big-time reputation for winning every case he tries. In his sharp suits and polished Oxford shoes, Penney is Biloxi, Mississippi’s #1 Lawyer and top local celebrity. Just as Penney notches his latest courtroom victory, his wife is scandalously killed. He spirals into a legal and personal losing streak, damaging his reputation and ruining his career. That’s when Penney makes a bold decision. He stops trading on his power-lawyer identity and creates a new one: lawyer lifeguard. Moonlighting at the beach, showing up to court in flip-flops, mentoring a law student, the new Penney is at first unrecognizable. It’s said that a lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client. But when Penney is accused of murder, the #1 Lawyer will find a way to triumph.

A Grave Robbery by Deanna Raybourn

Lord Rosemorran has purchased a wax figure of a beautiful reclining woman and asks Stoker to incorporate a clockwork mechanism to give the Rosemorran Collection its own Sleeping Beauty in the style of Madame Tussaud’s. But when Stoker goes to cut the mannequin open to insert the mechanism, he makes a gruesome discovery: this is no wax figure. The mannequin is the beautifully preserved body of a young woman who was once very much alive. But who would do such a dreadful thing, and why? Sleuthing out the answer to this question sets Veronica and Stoker on their wildest adventure yet. From the underground laboratories of scientists experimenting with electricity to resurrect the dead in the vein of Frankenstein to the traveling show where Stoker once toured as an attraction, the gaslit atmosphere of London in October is the perfect setting for this investigation into the unknown. Through it all, the intrepid pair is always one step behind the latest villain–a man who has killed once and will stop at nothing to recover the body of the woman he loved. Will they unmask him in time to save his next victim? Or will they become the latest figures to be immortalized in his collection of horrors?