Louise Penny is back with the 11th in her highly successful Chief Inspector Gamache series. Penny tells a marvelous tale set in Three Pines, a fictional village in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, where there are more serious crimes than residents. This latest is the second novel since Gamache retired from the Surete du Quebec and he has lost none of his charm or ability to catch a killer.
Speaking in Bones by Kathy Reichs
Kathy Reichs is back with another Dr. Temperance Brennan forensic anthropologist mystery. Her last novel Bones Never Lie ended on a great personal note for two of her main characters and we’ll have to wait a little longer to see where that leads. In this latest in the Bones series Dr. Brennan investigates what looks to be a typical missing person case, only to find herself digging up bones possibly left by a serial killer, a cult, or perhaps something not entirely of this world.
For every case that Temperence Brennan has solved, there remain numerous bodies that remain unidentified in her lab. Information on some of these cold cases is available online, where amateur detectives sometimes take a stab at solving cases. When Tempe gets a call from Hazel “Lucky” Strike, a web sleuth who believes she’s successfully connected a body in Tempe’s lab to a missing eighteen-year-old girl, Tempe writes it off as another false alarm. Tempe has little patience for chasing false leads. But when the bones in the lab match the missing girl’s medical records, Tempe re-opens the case, returning to the spot where her remains were originally found.–Publisher
I tell anyone who asks (and some that don’t) that if they enjoy thrillers and haven’t been introduced to Linwood Barclay then they must absolutely read his novels. His books have all been stand alones and that makes it easy to pick up any one of them and enjoy. However, this is about to change with the release of Broken Promise, the first in a thriller trilogy.Then he comes across a family secret of epic proportions. A year after a devastating miscarriage, David’s cousin Marla has continued to struggle. But when David’s mother asks him to check on her, he’s horrified to discover that she’s been secretly raising a child who is not her own–a baby she claims was a gift from an “angel” left on her porch.—Publisher
I rarely think about how many letters are in the alphabet but X by Sue Grafton reminds me that there are only 2 more left and for that I am deeply sad. I have been a fan of Grafton’s since the early 1980s when I first met her abrasive, single, street smart P.I. Kinsey Millhone. Her stories still take place in the eighties and that is both confusing for some and refreshing for others who remember life without cell phones and the internet. Kinsey and I have been her through many ups and downs including exploding residences, broken relationships and suspects that would have sent an ordinary P.I. running in the other direction. Here’s a sample of what X has in store for Kinsey and her readers.
Like many fans of Stieg Larsson’s Millenium Trilogy I did a double take when I first heard about this latest Lisbeth Salander novel. After Larsson’s death in 2004 there was a huge public battle over his estate between Eva Gabrielsson, Larsson’s long-term partner and Erland and Joakim Larsson of the Stieg Larsson Estate. Rumours swirled of a possible fourth manuscript on Larsson’s computer, secret plans to publish this book under Larsson’s name, and of course financial battles between Gabrielsson and the estate. Now the estate has given David Lagercrantz permission to continue the Millenium series. Erland and Joakim Larsson of the Stieg Larsson Estate have said that “by letting Lagercrantz write his own ‘Millennium’ novel we keep alive the characters and the universe Larsson created”. Fans of Larsson’s work will get to decide if he’s truly kept that universe alive.

