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SUMMER HEAT SPARKS RISE IN CRIME (NOVELS)*
 June and July have been scorchers! And August appears to be more of the same. Hot. Humid. Steamy. We're here to help you keep cool. Come on into the library where it's air conditioned. Take home a book on murder, mayhem, mystery or madness and chill with something on ice.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Book 1 by Stieg Larsson
Download and read a free e-book on your portable e-reader or laptop. An international publishing sensation, Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo combines murder mystery, family saga, love story, and financial intrigue into one satisfyingly complex and entertainingly atmospheric novel.
Harriet Vanger, a scion of one of Sweden's wealthiest families disappeared over forty years ago. All these years later, her aged uncle continues to seek the truth. He hires Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist recently trapped by a libel conviction, to investigate. He is aided by the pierced and tattooed punk prodigy Lisbeth Salander. Together they tap into a vein of unfathomable iniquity and astonishing corruption.
Download or place hold for the e-book: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Place hold for the Book: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
The Girl Who Played with Fire
Book 2 by Stieg Larsson
Download and read a free e-book on your portable e-reader or laptop. Mikael Blomkvist, crusading journalist and publisher of the magazine Millennium, has decided to run a story that will expose an extensive sex trafficking operation between Eastern Europe and Sweden, implicating well-known and highly placed members of Swedish society, business, and government.
But he has no idea just how explosive the story will be until, on the eve of publication, the two investigating reporters are murdered. And even more shocking for Blomkvist: the fingerprints found on the murder weapon belong to Lisbeth Salander--the troubled, wise-beyond-her-years genius hacker who came to his aid in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and who now becomes the focus and fierce heart of The Girl Who Played with Fire.
As Blomkvist, alone in his belief in Salander's innocence, plunges into an investigation of the slayings, Salander herself is drawn into a murderous hunt in which she is the prey, and which compels her to revisit her dark past in an effort to settle with it once and for all.
Download or place hold for the e-book: The Girl Who Played with Fire
Place hold for the Book: The Girl Who Played with Fire
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
Book 3 by Stieg Larsson
Download and read a free e-book on your portable e-reader or laptop. The stunning third and final novel in Stieg Larsson's internationally best-selling trilogy
Lisbeth Salander--the heart of Larsson's two previous novels--lies in critical condition, a bullet wound to her head, in the intensive care unit of a Swedish city hospital. She's fighting for her life in more ways than one: if and when she recovers, she'll be taken back to Stockholm to stand trial for three murders. With the help of her friend, journalist Mikael Blomkvist, she will not only have to prove her innocence, but also identify and denounce those in authority who have allowed the vulnerable, like herself, to suffer abuse and violence. And, on her own, she will plot revenge--against the man who tried to kill her, and the corrupt government institutions that very nearly destroyed her life.
Once upon a time, she was a victim. Now Salander is fighting back.
Download or place hold for e-book: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
Place hold for the Book: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
Thrones, Dominations by Dorothy L. Sayers/J.Paton
After Sayers married off Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane in Busman's Honeymoon (1937), she devoted herself to translating Dante's Divine Comedy. A few short stories later appeared, noting the arrival of three Wimsey sons, and there was a rumor that suggested Sayers had another Wimsey novel in the works.
Forty plus years after Sayers's death, that book has been triumphantly completed by British novelist Walsh (a 1994 Booker Prize finalist for Knowledge of Angels), following the original outline. If it is true that Sayers wrote the beginning, Walsh has done her predecessor a great service. Typical of Sayers's novels, the solution derives from coincidences. But readers have always turned to her mysteries for other reasons, such as the way Peter and Harriet settle the tumult four months of marriage has visited upon them. Harriet uncomfortably accepts her position as Lady Peter, with money and servants, while maintaining her independent identity as a mystery writer. Sayers fans will relish the cooperative sleuthing of Peter, Harriet and the self-effacing Bunter as Walsh deftly captures and subtley updates the spirit of the series, endowing the iconic characters with additional depth and complexity. Publishers Weekly
Place hold for the Book: Thrones, Dominations
Focus on Agatha Christie - Mystery Fiction
Are you an Agatha fan? You're not alone! We have a selection of Agatha mysteries on display in the library this month. And for those of you who'd like to do a little internet sleuthing we're including websites and databases for more Aggie info! Check 'em out.
See all the books by Agatha Christie in the Tappan Library.
www.agathachristie.com U.S. website for this British mystery writer. Features background about how Christie wrote, the influence of travel and archeology, descriptions of her famous fictional detectives (such as Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot), and material about Christie's works on stage, screen, and radio. Contains a blog and calendar of Christie events. Includes a list of suggested reading orders by character, "to avoid spoilers." Contains some commercial content.
www.britishmuseum.org Companion to an exhibit, "Agatha Christie and Archaeology: Mystery in Mesopotamia," which "presented a fascinating look at the secret life of one of the world's most popular writers. Agatha Christie (1890-1976) originally became interested in archaeology on a visit to the site of Ur (in modern Iraq) in 1928. It was at Ur that she met her future husband, the archaeologist Max Mallowan." Includes annotated photos and images of archaeological items.
www.mysteryreaders.org MRI claims to be "the largest mystery fan/reader organization in the world, open to all readers, fans, critics, editors, publishers, and writers." The Web site has directories of mystery reading groups, periodicals, and bookstores. There are also archived selections from their quarterly print publication, Mystery Readers Journal, a few author interviews, and a list of the winners (from 1987 onward) of MRI's Macavity Award for mystery short stories, novels, and nonfiction.
The Nobodies Album by Carolyn Parkhurst
Carolyn Parkhurst's multilayered new mystery, The Nobodies Album, is set in a different California netherworld: the contemporary music scene in San Francisco, with its ghostly echoes of Haight-Ashbury hippie hedonism. Our heroine, Octavia Frost, is a best-selling novelist who hasn't spoken to her rock star son, Milo, in years. While delivering her latest manuscript to her publisher in New York, Octavia finds herself in Times Square staring up at an electronic news crawl announcing that Milo has just been arrested for the murder of his live-in girlfriend. Aren't mothers always the last to know?
The great pleasure of reading The Nobodies Album arises out of keeping track of the constantly shifting relationships among a small group of paranoid people quarantined from the rest of society by their fame. Chief among the paranoid crew are Roland Nysmith, a David Bowie-like deity once known for wearing fish scale costumes onstage. Parkhurst, who clearly revels in language (Milo's band is called "Pareidolia"), gets maximum mileage out of her cast of novelists and rock star poets. npr.org
Place hold for the Book: The Nobodies Album
Road Dogs by Elmore Leonard
Leonard launches three characters from previous novels on a collision course in this seemingly effortless performance. After prison buddy Cundo Rey (last seen in LaBrava) drops a bundle on a shark attorney, celebrity bank robber Jack Foley (from Out of Sight) gets his 30-year prison sentence reduced to 30 months. Jack's quickly back in the world, living large in one of Cundo's two multimillion-dollar houses in Venice, Calif., juggling a fast seduction with fortune-teller (from Riding the Rap) Dawn Navarro (who is now Cundo's lady) and the untoward attention of rogue FBI agent Lou Adams, who's waiting for Foley to rob another bank. While Dawn tries to enlist Foley in a scheme to steal Cundo's off-the-books fortune, Cundo surprises them with an early release. Betrayal simmers while Foley considers going semi-straight-with the help of a widowed starlet-Dawn hatches a plan that could get her rich and rid her of all her problems, and Cundo's associates and neighborhood toughs get sucked into the fray. Leonard's singular way with words is reason enough to read it. Reed Business Information.
Place hold for the Book: Road Dogs
Twilight at the World of Tomorrow by James Mauro
Twilight at the World of Tomorrow: Genius, Madness, Murder, and the 1939 World's Fair on the Brink of War
Former Cosmopolitan executive editor Mauro tries to underscore the irony of the 1939–1940 New York World's Fair, with its theme of world unity, opening on the brink of world war. But Mauro has multiple narratives, moving erratically between the evolution of the fair, with its slogan “Building the World of Tomorrow”; war brewing in Europe; and Germany gobbling up territory (Hitler refused the invitation to have a pavilion at the fair). As, one by one, European nations closed their pavilions, due to the war, the fair's theme rang increasingly hollow. During the fair's run, Einstein famously wrote to President Roosevelt expressing concern over Germany's stockpiling of uranium, giving rise to the Manhattan Project. To this unwieldy narrative Mauro adds the story of two NYPD bomb squad detectives killed when a bomb detonated on the fairgrounds on July 4, 1940. Aiming for another Devil in the White City, Mauro fails to pull all his threads together coherently, falling short of the mark. Photos. bn.com
Place hold for the Book: Twilight at the World of Tomorrow
The Man From Beijing by Henning Mankell
No roundup of recent standout mysteries would be complete without Henning Mankell's masterpiece of moral complexity, The Man From Beijing. Mankell's latest tale roams from a remote Swedish village turned necropolis to the American West of the 19th century, where Chinese indentured servants hacked through mountains to clear the way for the Transcontinental Railroad. In between are stops in modern-day Beijing and London, as well as Zimbabwe and Mozambique. The thread connecting these disparate narratives is red, drenched in the blood of historical crimes and baroque retribution.
Mankell's novel opens in the isolated village of Hesjovallen, where 19 people — and their dogs! — are found hacked to death. In a weird twist of circumstance, the most resolute investigator into the massacre turns out to be a middle-aged woman named Birgitta Roslin, a district judge on leave from her job for health reasons. Her curiosity almost cures Birgitta's health problems — permanently. Mankell, like Stieg Larsson, appreciates the secrets and the sin lurking beneath all that pristine Swedish snow. npr.org
Place hold for the Book: The Man From Beijing
Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
Fresh from their improbable victory in the annual Hunger Games, Katniss and Peeta get to enjoy the spoils only briefly before they must partake in a Capitol-sponsored victory tour. But trouble is brewing-President Snow tells Katniss directly he won't stand for being outsmarted, and she overhears rumbles of uprisings in Panem's districts. Before long it's time for the next round of games, and because it's the 75th anniversary of the competition, something out of the ordinary is in order. If this second installment spends too much time recapping events from book one, it doesn't disappoint when it segues into the pulse-pounding action readers have come to expect. Characters from the previous volume reappear to good effect: Katniss's stylist, Cinna, proves he's about more than fashion; Haymitch becomes more dimensional. But the star remains Katniss, whose bravery, honesty and wry cynicism carry the narrative. (About her staff of beauticians she quips: "They never get up before noon unless there's some sort of national emergency, like my leg hair.") Collins has also created an exquisitely tense romantic triangle for her heroine. Forget Edward and Jacob: by book's end (and it's a cliffhanger), readers will be picking sides-Peeta or Gale? Reed Business Information.
Place hold for the Book: Catching Fire
Hell Gate by Linda Fairstein
As a former attorney in the Manhattan DA's office, Linda Fairstein is superbly attuned to the sinister vibes of famous, as well as forgotten, New York City locales. Her 12 crime novels featuring Manhattan sex crimes prosecutor Alexandra Cooper have been set in such atmospheric haunts as the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Temple of Dendur, an abandoned hospital on Roosevelt Island, and tunnels beneath the New York Public Library. Her latest novel, Hell Gate, is indebted in mood to the unpredictable whirlpool by the same name in New York's East River.
When the novel opens, Cooper and her stalwart police-detective ally (and subliminal love object) Mike Chapman have been called to investigate a freighter that has foundered on a sandbar off Rockaway Beach in Queens ("The Irish Riviera," the working-class Chapman informs the upper-crust Cooper). It turns out the freighter was carrying Ukrainian women being trafficked into this country for prostitution. As Cooper and Chapman close in on kingpins of the operation, their investigations take them into the dusty byways of New York's past. (Who knew that Alexander Hamilton's mansion, Hamilton Grange, still stood in Harlem?) As with all of Fairstein's novels, Hell Gate is both an entertaining suspense story and an eerie noir valentine to New York City. npr.org
Place hold for the Book: Hell Gate
Place hold for the Large Print Version of the Book: Hell Gate
Place hold for the Book on CD of: Hell Gate
Spotlight on Ann Rule - True Crime Writer
Ann has been a full-time true crime writer since 1969. Over the past 30 years, she has published 20 books and 1400 articles on criminal cases. Ann has a BA from the University of Washington in Creative Writing. She also took courses in crime scene investigation, police administration, crime scene photography and arrest, search and seizure, organized crime, arson, bomb search, DNA, National Medical Examiners' Conference, and County Police Basic Homicide School. She is a certified instructor on subjects such as: Serial Murder, Sadistic Sociopaths, Women Who Kill, and High Profile Offenders. She was on the U.S. Justice Department Task Force that set up VI-CAP, the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program now in place at FBI Headquarters in Quantico, a computer tracking system to help identify and trap serial killers.
When Ann spent her summer vacations with her grandparents in Stanton, Michigan, she helped her grandmother prepare meals for the prisoners in the jail. She used to wonder why such friendly, normal-appearing, men were locked behind bars, and why the sweet woman in the cell upstairs--who taught Ann to crochet--was about to go on trial for murder. That was the beginning of her lifelong curiosity about the "Whys" behind criminal behavior. Her books all explore the reasons behind the front-page cases she covers.
Ann's books deal with three areas: the victims' stories; the detectives and prosecutors and how they solve their cases with old fashioned police work and modern forensic science, and the killers’ lives. She tries to go back to the killers' early childhood, and even back into their family histories to find some of the genesis of their behavior. She spends many months researching her books, beginning with the trial and with many subsequent visits to the locale where the crimes occurred. Once she has finished her research, she returns to her office to write her books.
26 of Ann's 28 books have been New York Times' bestsellers list, with Every Breath You Take and Last Dance, Last Chance both on the list at the same time. Four books have been made into TV movies, and five more are in the works.
excerpted from Ann's website www.annrules.com
Smoke, mirrors, and murder: and other true cases
by Ann Rule
True crime bestseller Rule looks at marriages gone bad in her latest volume of "crime files." Stories include "The Minister's Wife," about a woman convicted of shooting her husband in 2006, and "The Painter's Wife," an amazing tale of two strangers kidnapped by a hardened criminal. The bulk of the book is taken up by "The Deputy's Wife," the sad tale of a once-promising young police officer, Bill Jensen, who eventually took out a contract on his own family. It's a good yarn, full of horrifying twists and turns. Publishers Weekly
Place hold for the Book: Smoke, mirrors, and murder
Too late to say goodbye
Too late to say goodbye a true story of murder and betrayal by Ann Rule.
Jenn Corbin, a lovely, slim, brown-eyed blonde, appeared to have it all: two dear little boys, a posh home in one of the upscale suburbs of Atlanta, expensive cars, a plush houseboat, and a husband -- Dr. Bart Corbin, a successful dentist -- who was tall, handsome, and brilliant. But gradually their seemingly idyllic life together began to crumble. There was talk of seeing a marriage counselor. Bart was distraught; Jenn seemed disenchanted. She needed to reach out to someone she could confide in -- beyond her mother and her sisters. Then, just a few weeks before Christmas 2004, Jenn was found dead with a bullet in her head, a revolver beside her. From the position of the body her death appeared to be a suicide. But Gwinnett County detective Marcus Head was not totally convinced, nor was Jenn's family, who could not believe she would take her own life. And how was this death related to another apparent suicide fourteen years earlier -- that of Dorothy "Dolly" Hearn, a spectacularly beautiful dental student? A star athlete and homecoming queen in high school, Dolly later dated Bart Corbin in dental school. Was there a connection, or was the answer to be found in a secret -- even dangerous -- relationship Jenn Corbin was having outside her marriage? For Too Late to Say Goodbye, Ann Rule has interviewed virtually everyone in any way related to the story -- the victims' families, police investigators, prosecutors, and sources from Georgia to Australia -- to uncover the truth behind the headlines of these two sensational deaths. What emerges is an incredible tale of jealous rage; of stunning circumstantial and physical evidence that runs from the steamy to the macabre to almost-unheard-of forensic techniques; and of a tragic irony -- a fateful discovery that motivated the killing. The definitive unraveling of one of the strangest murder investigations of our time.
Place hold for the Book: Too late to say goodbye
Finding Chandra: a true Washington murder mystery
by Scott Higham & Sari Horowitz
The 2001 disappearance of Washington, D.C., intern Chandra Levy, and the discovery of her remains a year later in a remote area of D.C.'s Rock Creek Park, made headlines, especially when her affair with Congressman Gary Condit became known. Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters Higham and Horwitz expand on their 13-part Washington Post investigation that in 2008 identified Levy's likely killer, delivering a meticulous study of the case and the media circus surrounding it. The police immediately focused on Condit in Levy's disappearance. Though the California Democrat eventually admitted to the liaison, he denied involvement in her death. Higham and Horwitz draw attention to the critical mistakes of law enforcement and the media's dogged pursuit of Condit despite the lack of evidence linking him to Levy's murder. In their Post reporting, the authors pointed instead to Salvadoran immigrant Ingmar Guandique, already convicted of two similar assaults on women committed in the same park around the time Levy disappeared. Guandique is now facing trial on first-degree murder charges; he has pleaded not guilty. Higham and Horwitz's compelling story brings hope that justice may finally come for Levy. Photos. Reed Business Information.
Place hold for the Book: Finding Chandra: a true Washington murder mystery
Devil in the white city
The devil in the white city: murder, magic, and madness at the fair that changed America by Erik Larson
Bringing Chicago circa 1893 to vivid life, Erik Larson's spellbinding bestseller intertwines the true tale of two men--the brilliant architect behind the legendary 1893 World's Fair, striving to secure America's place in the world; and the cunning serial killer who used the fair to lure his victims to their death. Combining meticulous research with nail-biting storytelling, Erik Larson has crafted a narrative with all the wonder of newly discovered history and the thrills of the best fiction.
The 1893 Columbian Exposition was Chicago's chance to outshine New York City in the race for greatness. But hidden amid the crowds and glamour of the World's Fair lurked a handsome, wealthy doctor who just also happened to be a gifted serial killer. Dr. Herman Mudgett's ability to finagle, con, and pervert situations for his own demonic ends is described in nail-biting detail.
Place hold for the Book: Devil in the white city
The Whisperers by John Connolly
Ancient artifacts and the second Iraqi War provide the backdrop for Connolly's outstanding ninth novel featuring PI Charlie Parker (after The Lovers). When the former NYPD homicide detective looks into the suicide of an Iraq war veteran, he discovers that several members of the soldier's unit have also killed themselves and that they may have been involved in smuggling looted treasures into the U.S. Parker begins to fear that the returning soldiers have brought back more than their own personal demons. As he races to find an antique golden box before it falls into the wrong hands, Parker discovers that he's being shadowed by the enigmatic Collector, a repulsive killer whose nature is as problematic as that of Parker himself. Connolly displays a real knack for fusing the detective and horror genres, providing a rational chain of evidence and deduction for the plot while simultaneously creating a real atmosphere of numinous dread that reminds us that mystery can refer to more than a mundane tale of crime and human justice.
Place hold for the Book: The Whisperers
FOR FUN! To help you stay cool...
The book of ice creams & sorbets / Jacki Passmore ; photography by Philip Wymant
This is a straightforward collection of recipes reflecting the new sophistication of many ice cream lovers. Passmore covers the gamut of styles, from yolk-rich French vanilla and other custard-based ice creams to the fluffier styles she refers to as parfaits, and on to fruit sorbets, gelati, granita and even a nod to yogurt. There's also a selection of sauces, cups, meringues and other preparations to accompany the frozen dessert and instructions on how to freeze the dishes with and without a mechanical churner. Passmore exhibits a subtle British inflection, as shown by the toffee and gooseberry flavors she recommends as well as what sounds like a Cadbury barfruit-and-nut chocolate bombeas a substitute for Christmas pudding. The author's other recommendations for those not content with chocolate or vanilla: peach, peanut butter, Indian kulfi and piquant sorbets like honeydew and ginger or port and lemon. (
Place hold for the Book: The book of ice creams & sorbets
* Title swiped from Maureen Corrigan
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