Random House New Releases - Mystery - Between November 27, 2008 and December 27, 2009.

Drawing Dead by Grant McCrea

2009-12-08T00:30:00-05:00

Drawing Dead
Written by Grant McCrea

Lawyer Rick Redman decides it is time to make a career change. Murder can do that to a guy. A beautiful woman offering a substantial cash retainer makes it seem like a good idea too. But when he loses the cash in a poker game and he ends up in Nevada, he has no choice but to try to recoup the lost money at the World Series of Poker. And when his brother-in-law turns up dead, it becomes clear the stakes are higher than he expected.

Drawing Dead by Grant McCrea

2009-12-08T00:30:00-05:00

Drawing Dead
Written by Grant McCrea

Talking About Detective Fiction by P. D. James

2009-12-01T00:30:00-05:00

Talking About Detective Fiction
Written by P. D. James

In a perfect marriage of author and subject, P. D. James—one of the most widely admired writers of detective fiction at work today—gives us a personal, lively, illuminating exploration of the human appetite for mystery and mayhem, and of those writers who have satisfied it.

P. D. James examines the genre from top to bottom, beginning with the mysteries at the hearts of such novels as Charles Dickens’s Bleak House and Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White, and bringing us into the present with such writers as Colin Dexter and Henning Mankell. Along the way she writes about Arthur Conan Doyle, Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie (“arch-breaker of rules”), Josephine Tey, Dashiell Hammett, and Peter Lovesey, among many others. She traces their lives into and out of their fiction, clarifies their individual styles, and gives us indelible portraits of the characters they’ve created, from Sherlock Holmes to Sara Paretsky’s sexually liberated female investigator, V. I. Warshawski. She compares British and American Golden Age mystery writing. She discusses detective fiction as social history, the stylistic components of the genre, her own process of writing, how critics have reacted over the years, and what she sees as a renewal of detective fiction—and of the detective hero—in recent years.

There is perhaps no one who could write about this enduring genre of storytelling with equal authority and flair: it is essential reading for every lover of detective fiction.

From the Hardcover edition.

Talking About Detective Fiction by P. D. James

2009-12-01T00:30:00-05:00

Talking About Detective Fiction
Written by P. D. James

Bryant & May on the Loose by Christopher Fowler

2009-11-24T00:30:00-05:00

Bryant & May on the Loose A Peculiar Crimes Unit Novel
Written by Christopher Fowler

The Peculiar Crimes Unit is no more. After years of defying the odds and infuriating their embarrassed superiors, detectives Arthur Bryant and John May have at last crossed the line. This is the twenty-first century and not even their eccentric genius or phenomenal success rate solving London’s most unusual crimes can save them. While Bryant takes to his bed, his bathrobe, and his esoteric books, the rest of the team take to the streets looking for new careers—leading one of them to stumble upon a gruesome murder.

It isn’t so much the discovery of the headless corpse that’s potentially so politically explosive as where it’s found. Still it takes the bizarre sightings of a great horned creature—half man, half stag—carrying off young women to convince Bryant that this is a case worth getting dressed and leaving the house to solve. The Home Office has reluctantly authorized the PCU to reunite for one last encore performance—in a rented office with no computer network, no legal authority, and a broken toilet. They’ve got until the end of the week to solve a murder with unlikely links to gangland crime, Slavic mythology, the 2012 London Olympics, and the sort of corruption only obscene amounts of money and power can buy.

It’s the kind of case that Bryant and May live to solve—and it could be just the case that kills them.

From the Hardcover edition.

Bryant & May on the Loose by Christopher Fowler

2009-11-24T00:30:00-05:00

Bryant & May on the Loose A Peculiar Crimes Unit Mystery
Written by Christopher Fowler

A Face at the Window by Sarah Graves

2009-11-24T00:30:00-05:00

A Face at the Window A Home Repair Is Homicide Mystery
Written by Sarah Graves

It starts with a phone call that reopens a painful chapter in Jake Tiptree’s past. After years of delay, the man who murdered Jake’s mother is finally scheduled to stand trial—until he vanishes into thin air. Maybe the only thing worse about Ozzie Campbell’s disappearing is that Jake has a terrible foreboding of just where he’ll turn up next. With her family away, Jake had hoped to savor a few days of unaccustomed solitude. Now, without warning, her cozy, well-loved home in Eastport, Maine, seems more like a death trap ready to snap shut. Suddenly Jake feels that her house—and her life—has far too many windows. And in any one of them she might see the face of her killer.

Lethal Legacy by Linda Fairstein

2009-11-24T00:30:00-05:00

Lethal Legacy
Written by Linda Fairstein

When Assistant District Attorney Alex Cooper is summoned to Tina Barr’s apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, she finds a neighbor convinced that the young woman was assaulted. But the terrified victim, a conservator of rare books and maps, refuses to cooperate with investigators. Then another woman is found murdered in that same apartment with an extremely valuable book, believed to have been stolen. As Alex pursues the murderer, she is drawn into the strange and privileged world of the Hunt family, major benefactors of the New York Public Library and passionate rare book collectors who may be willing to kill for their treasures.

Copy and paste the URL below into your browser to download a free pdf of Linda Fairstein's new novel, Hell Gate, available in hardcover March 2010:
http://knopfdoubleday.com/marketing/Hell_Gate_Chapter_1.pdf

Santa Clawed by Rita Mae Brown

2009-11-24T00:30:00-05:00

Santa Clawed A Novel
Written by Rita Mae Brown

As Harry well knows, there’s hardly a place on earth cozier than Crozet, Virginia, at Christmastime. Snowflakes, carolers, it’s all picture-perfect until Harry and her husband, Fair, find the tree they’ve chosen grimly decorated with a corpse. The tree farm is run by the Brothers of Love, a semimonastic organization whose members live atop the scenic Blue Ridge Mountains. Now, as the season grows merrier, a murderer is growing bolder. One by one, prominent men of Crozet are being crossed off Christmas shopping lists and added to the morgue. And if Harry and her four-legged helpers aren’t very good–and very careful–this Christmas will be her last.

Creature Discomforts by Susan Conant

2009-11-18T00:30:00-05:00

Creature Discomforts
Written by Susan Conant

A hike in the woods has memorable consequences for dog writer Holly Winter in this latest of Susan Conant's Dog Lover's Mysteries.

When Holly Winter awakens, battered and bruised, clinging to a boulder on the side of a cliff, she doesn't even recognize her own beloved malamutes, Rowdy and Kimi, much less remember their names--or her own. She does, however, realize they're her dogs, and that she is--to put it mildly--a "dog person." And she vaguely remembers hearing a sinister voice from above.

Putting clues together, she discovers that she is in Acadia National Park, on Mount Desert Island, Maine, and that she's the guest of one Gabrielle Beamon, a most attractive and charming woman, whom Holly doesn't recognize at all. When it is discovered that there was another fall, this one fatal, at approximately the same time and close to the same place as Holly's, she begins to fear for her own safety. In fact, she has all she can do to figure out what's going on without giving away her own loss of memory.

You'll be licking your chops with glee as the dog fanciers in Conant's eclectic and eccentric group of characters once more prove themselves smarter and more resourceful in every way than their more anthropocentric counterparts.

From the Hardcover edition.

Mortal Stakes by Robert B. Parker

2009-11-18T00:30:00-05:00

Mortal Stakes
Written by Robert B. Parker

Dying for Chocolate by Diane Mott Davidson

2009-11-11T00:30:00-05:00

Dying for Chocolate
Written by Diane Mott Davidson

Early Autumn by Robert B. Parker

2009-11-11T00:30:00-05:00

Early Autumn
Written by Robert B. Parker

A bitter divorce is only the beginning. First the father hires thugs to kidnap his son. Then the mother hires Spenser to get the boy back. But as soon as Spenser senses the lay of the land, he decides to do some kidnapping of his own.

With a contract out on his life, he heads for the Maine woods, determined to give a puny 15 year old a crash course in survival and to beat his dangerous opponents at their own brutal game.

From the Paperback edition.

The End of the Road by Lee Adams

2009-11-10T00:30:00-05:00

The End of the Road A Maxie and Stretch Mystery
Written by Sue Henry
Read by Lee Adams

Maxie McNabb and her miniature dachshund, Stretch, are just back from their latest adventure when a murder shatters the quiet in their hometown of Homer, Alaska. Now it's up to Maxie to find the killer - a search that leads her to a place called 'the end of the road.'

Chopping Spree by Diane Mott Davidson

2009-11-04T00:30:00-05:00

Chopping Spree
Written by Diane Mott Davidson

The Grilling Season by Diane Mott Davidson

2009-11-04T00:30:00-05:00

The Grilling Season
Written by Diane Mott Davidson

The Last Suppers by Diane Mott Davidson

2009-11-04T00:30:00-05:00

The Last Suppers
Written by Diane Mott Davidson

Prime Cut by Diane Mott Davidson

2009-11-04T00:30:00-05:00

Prime Cut
Written by Diane Mott Davidson

A caterer's nightmare...

Caterer Goldy Schulz is convinced things couldn't get worse. An unscrupulous rival is driving her out of business. An incompetent contractor has left her precious kitchen in shambles. And she has just agreed to cater a fashion shoot at a nineteenth-century mountain cabin with her mentor and old friend, French chef André Hibbard.

A dash of cold-blooded murder...

Together Goldy and André struggle in a hopelessly outdated kitchen to cater to a vacuous crowd of beautiful people whose personal dramas climax when a camera is pitched through a window...into the buffet. Then Goldy's contractor is found hanging in the house of one of her best friends. A second murder follows and Goldy must somehow solve a mystery and prepare for a society soirée that could make--or break--her career.

A recipe for disaster...

It's a mystery that involves the dead contractor's unwholesome past, a food saboteur, the theft of four historical cookbooks, and an overzealous D.A. who has suspended Goldy's detective husband, Tom, from the force. What Goldy discovers is the perfect recipe for murder. And she may be dessert!

From the Paperback edition.

The Sibyl in Her Grave by Sarah Caudwell

2009-11-04T00:30:00-05:00

The Sibyl in Her Grave
Written by Sarah Caudwell

Julia Larwood's Aunt Regina needs help. She and two friends pooled their modest resources and invested in equities. Now the tax man demands his due, but they've already spent the money. How can they dig themselves out of the tax hole? Even more to the point: Can the sin of capital gains trigger corporeal loss?

That's one for the sibyl, psychic counselor Isabella del Comino, who has offended Aunt Regina and her friends by moving into the rectory, plowing under a cherished garden, and establishing an aviary of ravens. When Isabella is found dead, all clues point to death by fiscal misadventure.

So Julia calls in an old friend and Oxford fellow, Professor Hilary Tamar, to follow a money trail that connects Aunt Regina to what appears to be capital fraud — and capital crime. The two women couldn't have a better champion than the erudite Hilary, as once again Sarah Caudwell sweeps us into the scene of the crime, leaving us to ponder the greatest mystery of all: Hilary, him — or her — self.

From the Paperback edition.

Sticks & Scones by Diane Mott Davidson

2009-11-04T00:30:00-05:00

Sticks & Scones
Written by Diane Mott Davidson

Celebrated for her unique blend of first-class suspense and five-star fare, Diane Mott Davidson has won scores of fans and earned a place on major bestseller lists across the country. Now she dishes up another dangerously tasty treat of murder and mystery.

For Colorado caterer Goldy Schulz, accepting a series of bookings at Hyde Castle is like a dream come true. It’s not every day that she gets to cook authentic Elizabethan fare--especially at a real castle that was brought over from England and reassembled stone by stone in Aspen Meadow. Goldy is determined that everything will go right--which is why, she figures later, everything went terribly wrong. It begins when a shotgun blast shatters her window. Then Goldy discovers a body lying in a nearby creek. And when shots ring out for the second time that day, someone Goldy loves is in the line of fire. Suddenly the last thing Goldy wants to think about is Shakespeare’s Steak Pie, 911 Chocolate Emergency Cookies, or Damson-in-Distress Plum Tart. Could one of her husband Tom’s police investigations have triggered a murder? Or was her violent, recently paroled ex responsible? With death peering around every corner, Goldy needs to cook up some crime-solving solutions--before the only dish that’s left on her menu is murder.

From the Paperback edition.

Random House New Releases - Mystery - Between November 27, 2008 and December 27, 2009.

Drawing Dead by Grant McCrea

Drawing Dead Written by Grant McCrea

Drawing Dead by Grant McCrea

Drawing Dead Written by Grant McCrea

Talking About Detective Fiction by P. D. James

Talking About Detective Fiction Written by P. D. James

Talking About Detective Fiction by P. D. James

Talking About Detective Fiction Written by P. D. James

Bryant & May on the Loose by Christopher Fowler

Bryant & May on the Loose A Peculiar Crimes Unit NovelWritten by Christopher Fowler

Bryant & May on the Loose by Christopher Fowler

Bryant & May on the Loose A Peculiar Crimes Unit MysteryWritten by Christopher Fowler

A Face at the Window by Sarah Graves

A Face at the Window A Home Repair Is Homicide MysteryWritten by Sarah Graves

Lethal Legacy by Linda Fairstein

Lethal Legacy Written by Linda Fairstein

Santa Clawed by Rita Mae Brown

Santa Clawed A NovelWritten by Rita Mae Brown

Creature Discomforts by Susan Conant

Creature Discomforts Written by Susan Conant

Mortal Stakes by Robert B. Parker

Mortal Stakes Written by Robert B. Parker

Dying for Chocolate by Diane Mott Davidson

Dying for Chocolate Written by Diane Mott Davidson

Early Autumn by Robert B. Parker

Early Autumn Written by Robert B. Parker

The End of the Road by Lee Adams

The End of the Road A Maxie and Stretch MysteryWritten by Sue Henry Read by Lee Adams

Chopping Spree by Diane Mott Davidson

Chopping Spree Written by Diane Mott Davidson

The Grilling Season by Diane Mott Davidson

The Grilling Season Written by Diane Mott Davidson

The Last Suppers by Diane Mott Davidson

The Last Suppers Written by Diane Mott Davidson

Prime Cut by Diane Mott Davidson

Prime Cut Written by Diane Mott Davidson

The Sibyl in Her Grave by Sarah Caudwell

The Sibyl in Her Grave Written by Sarah Caudwell

Sticks & Scones by Diane Mott Davidson

Sticks & Scones Written by Diane Mott Davidson

Drawing Dead
Written by Grant McCrea

Drawing Dead
Written by Grant McCrea

Talking About Detective Fiction
Written by P. D. James

Talking About Detective Fiction
Written by P. D. James

Bryant & May on the Loose A Peculiar Crimes Unit Novel
Written by Christopher Fowler

Bryant & May on the Loose A Peculiar Crimes Unit Mystery
Written by Christopher Fowler

A Face at the Window A Home Repair Is Homicide Mystery
Written by Sarah Graves

Lethal Legacy
Written by Linda Fairstein

Santa Clawed A Novel
Written by Rita Mae Brown

Creature Discomforts
Written by Susan Conant

Mortal Stakes
Written by Robert B. Parker

Dying for Chocolate
Written by Diane Mott Davidson

Early Autumn
Written by Robert B. Parker

The End of the Road A Maxie and Stretch Mystery
Written by Sue Henry
Read by Lee Adams

Chopping Spree
Written by Diane Mott Davidson

The Grilling Season
Written by Diane Mott Davidson

The Last Suppers
Written by Diane Mott Davidson

Prime Cut
Written by Diane Mott Davidson

The Sibyl in Her Grave
Written by Sarah Caudwell

Sticks & Scones
Written by Diane Mott Davidson