2007

Louise Perry. Still Life

 

2006

Colin Cotterill. Thirty-Three Teeth

The reluctant national coroner of Laos, Dr. Siri Paiboun, is no respecter of persons or Party; at the age of seventy-two he can afford to be independent. With the assistance of his helpers, Mr. Geung, a mentally challenged lab technician and Nurse Dtui, whose nickname means "Fatty", he continues to elucidate the causes of mysterious deaths and defy the incumbent Communist government bureaucracy.

2005

Jeffrey Lindsay. Darkly Dreaming Dexter

Dexter Morgan isn't exactly the kind of man you'd bring home to Mom. Though he's playful and has a wonderfully ironic sense of humor, Dexter's one character flaw (his proclivity for murder) can be off-putting. But at heart Dexter is the perfect gentleman, supportive of his sister, Deb, a Miami cop, and interested only in doing away with people who really deserve his special visit. Despite the fact that he can't stand the sight of blood, he works as a blood-spatter analyst for the Miami police department, a job that allows him to keep tabs on the latest crimes and keep an eye open for his next quarry.

2004

Jasper Fforde. Lost in a Good Book

Literary detective heroine Thursday Next returns in this follow-up to the acclaimed The Eyre Affair. To rescue the love of her life, Thursday must retrieve a supposedly vanquished enemy from the pages of Poe's The Raven. Soon, Thursday finds herself the target of a series of potentially lethal coincidences.

2003

Julia Spencer-Fleming. In the Bleak Midwinter

It's a cold, snowy December in the upstate New York town of Millers Kill. When a newborn baby is abandoned and a young mother is brutally murdered, newly-ordained Clare Fergusson has to pick her way through the secrets and silence that shadow the town like the ever-present Adirondack mountains.

2002

Dennis Lehane. Mystic River

When Jimmy Marcus's daughter is found dead, his childhood friend Sean Devine is assigned the case. Sean's personal life begins to unravel as his investigation takes him back into a world of violence and pain he thought he'd left behind. His quest also leads him on a collision course with Marcus--a man with his own dark past--and David Boyle, a man who hides monstrous secrets beneath a bland facade.

2001

Val McDermid. A Place of Execution

Winter 1963: two children have disappeared off the streets of Manchester.  In December, another child goes missing. For the young George Bennett, a newly promoted inspector, it is the beginning of his most difficult and harrowing case. Decades later, Journalist Catherine Heathcote is forced to reinvestigate the past when Bennett pulls the plug on a book about the case. The results of her investigation turn the world upside down.

2000

Robert Crais. L.A. Requiem

At the core of L.A. Requiem is Joe Pike, a former cop with a past as dark and foreboding as his demeanor. His only stable relationship is with his partner of twelve years, Elvis Cole, a talented and quick-witted PI with skeletons in his own past.

1999

Dennis Lehane. Gone, Baby, Gone

Boston P.I.s Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro have been hired to find a six-year-old girl who vanished from her home without a trace--a full year before. Despite enormous public attention, extensive news coverage, and dogged police work, the investigation has gone nowhere. But it's a case rife with sinister circumstances--a strangely indifferent mother, a pedophile couple, a bizarre subculture of homeless parents, and a shadowy police unit with a covert agenda and no qualms about enforcing it.

1998

Janet Evanovich. Three to Get Deadly

Stephanie Plum, bounty hunter, is given the task of tracking down Mo Bedemier, one of the Burg's most beloved figures, who unfortunately got caught carrying concealed.

1997

Michael Connelly. The Poet

Jack is a reporter for the Rocky Mountain News. When his twin brother Sean, a homicide detective, kills himself, Jack begins to research cop suicides for a series of articles he plans to write. It's his way of dealing with the grief. As he delves into the phenomenon, however, a disturbing pattern emerges and he soon suspects a serial killer is at work--a devious cop killer who's left a trail of "suicide" notes drawn from the poems of Edgar Allan Poe.

1996

Michael Connelly. The Last Coyote

In the fourth Harry Bosch novel, Harry investigates his own past. He was 12 when his mother, a prostitute was murdered, with no one ever accused of the crime. The smell of a cover up is unmistakable.

1995

Janet Evanovich. One for the Money

Out of work, Stephanie blackmails her bail bondsman cousin into giving her a try as an apprehension agent. However, the chemistry between Stephanie and her first assignment--Joe Morelli, an old flame from her past--threatens to complicate her manhunt, while an obsessive stalker threatens to complicate her life.

1994

Peter Hoeg. Smilla's Sense of Snow

Smilla Jaspersen, an expert on snow, finds that even the police don't want her investigating the "accidental" death of her neighbor.

1993

John Dunning. Booked to Die

Convinced that elusive psychopath Jackie Newton is responsible for a rare book dealer's murder, homicide detective Cliff Janeway loses his badge in a act of off-duty justice and infiltrates the rare book underworld.

1992

Carl Hiaasen. Native Tongue

A series of bizarre events convinces muck-raking reporter Joe Winder there's a hot story behind the "Amazing Kingdom of Thrills" theme park.