Mystery
While exploring the attic in her cottage near the small English village of Finch, Lori Shepherd makes an extraordinary discovery: a gleaming gold and garnet bracelet that had once belonged to Aunt Dimity. When Lori shows the garnet bracelet to Aunt Dimity, it awakens poignant memories of a doomed romance in Aunt Dimity's youth in London after the War. Regretfully, Aunt Dimity asks Lori to do what she could not: return the bracelet to her unsuccessful suitor--setting Lori off on an adventure through London--and through history--to put a piece of Aunt Dimity's past to rest. In the meantime, a new family has moved to Finch. The villagers are thrilled because their new neighbors are avid metal detectorists. Metal detectors soon become all the rage in Finch and the villagers unearth a lot of rubbish (some of it quite embarrassing) before one of them stumbles upon a trinket that could hold the key to the origin of Aunt Dimity's bracelet. Is the bracelet a priceless and protected national treasure? Was Aunt Dimity's lovesick suitor a common thief? If so, how will Lori break the news to Aunt Dimity? And what will she do with the bracelet? As Lori searches for answers, she discovers an unexpected link between the buried treasure in the village and the treasure buried in Aunt Dimity's heart. Watch out for Nancy Atherton's latest, Aunt Dimity and the King's Ransom, coming in July 2018 from Viking!
Sandy: Auntie Poldi kills me. I picked this book because so many of you are mad for the European woman turns sleuth “detective” series, plus it reminded me of a Peter Mayle caper (A Year in Provence, etc.). Each one of her books is more beloved then the one before - and who can resist Poldi’s verve and full-steam-ahead joie de vivre? While she solves a murder in her new hometown of Sicily, she supports her writer’s-block nephew and, sexy at 60, forges a madcap life of her own. Full of quirky characters, “scorching days and velvety nights,” this is escapism at its funnest.
When Isolde Oberreiter decides at age 60 to move from Munich to Sicily “to drink herself comfortably to death with a sea view,” her decision makes a crazy kind of sense. Winters in Munich are not for the faint of heart. Her ex-husband, Peppe, now deceased, was from Catania, and his three sisters, Luisa, Teresa, and Caterina, welcome her to join them there. But Isolde, known to her family as Poldi, always flies to her own compass. Instead of Catania, she buys a villa in tiny Torre Archirafi, down the street from the Bar-Gelateria Cocuzza . Because even intrepid Poldi can’t manage a villa on her own, she recruits Valentino Candela, a young local (and dashing) jack-of-all-trades, to help with the restoration. Valentino is a great worker until he disappears. Suspecting foul play, Poldi invades Femminamorta, a local estate Valentino mentioned just before vanishing. Valérie Raisi di Belfiore, the estate’s young owner, takes to Poldi, inviting her to dinner with her elderly cousin, Domenico Pastorella di Belfiore, owner of a still larger estate. Charmed as she is by Sicilian high society, Poldi isn’t getting any closer to finding Valentino. And she isn’t finding people with whom she really clicks—that is, until she crosses paths with police detective Vito Montana. Poldi is an irresistible newcomer with a mature voice and a vision of who she is and who she never will be, not afraid to take chances, and willing to fail. She's grateful to the universe for what it offers and accepting when it doesn't provide more. A drama queen who isn't fooled by her own production, she knows the value of living deeply.
Giordano’s wit and his formidable heroine's wisdom combine to make this debut a smash.
NOMINEE--EDGAR AWARDS BEST ORIGINAL PAPERBACK
Best Crime Novels of the Year, New York Times
Reading the West Award Nominee
Starred review from Publishers Weekly
Starred review from Kirkus Reviews
Starred review from Booklist
Most Anticipated Crime Books of 2019, CrimeReads
The new novel from award-winning author Lisa Sandlin catches up with the almost-murdered secretary Delpha Wade (The Do-Right, 2015, set in 1973) as she's released from a hospital in order to be tucked into the back seat of a police cruiser. Her boss, P. I. Tom Phelan, sets out to spring her. He needs her back in his investigation business, where he'll soon be chasing a skulking grand larcenist and plotting how to keep a ganjapreneur out of the grabby hands of a brand new agency, the D.E.A. Delpha digs through old records and knocks on strange doors to unravel the dangerous case of two brothers with beaucoup aliases--verifying that sometimes truth is not true, but murder is always murder.
Now a series on BritBox. Chef Sigisbert "Bear" Valets has just opened his own restaurant, La Fontaine, in Aix-en-Provence. It's an immediate success--glowing reviews and a loyal clientele, including our favorite investigative duo, Verlaque and Bonnet. But when he decides to extend his restaurant's seating into a historic courtyard, some very powerful neighbors are against him. The local historical society wants the courtyard, which witnessed a seventeenth-century hanging and two World War II-era murders, to remain untouched. Valets charges on, even after a skeleton is found buried next to the courtyard's ancient fountain. But when Valets begins receiving threatening letters, he becomes convinced that his life is in danger. And then the fountain inexplicably stops running. By disturbing the garden, has Bear triggered an age-old curse? And can newlyweds Verlaque and Bonnet solve the mystery before someone else ends up dead? Set against the blossoming backdrop of the south of France, M. L. Longworth's latest is sure to thrill fans of Donna Leon and Andrea Camilleri. "Beguiling . . . Longworth evokes the pleasures of France in delicious detail--great wine, delicious meals, and fine company." --Publishers Weekly
Four years after she set sail from England, leaving everything she most loved behind, Maisie Dobbs at last returns, only to find herself in a dangerous place . . .
In Jacqueline Winspear's powerful story of political intrigue and personal tragedy, a brutal murder in the British garrison town of Gibraltar leads Maisie into a web of lies, deceit, and peril.
Spring 1937. In the four years since she left England, Maisie Dobbs has experienced love, contentment, stability--and the deepest tragedy a woman can endure. Now, all she wants is the peace she believes she might find by returning to India. But her sojourn in the hills of Darjeeling is cut short when her stepmother summons her home to England; her aging father Frankie Dobbs is not getting any younger.
But on a ship bound for England, Maisie realizes she isn't ready to return. Against the wishes of the captain who warns her, "You will be alone in a most dangerous place," she disembarks in Gibraltar. Though she is on her own, Maisie is far from alone: the British garrison town is teeming with refugees fleeing a brutal civil war across the border in Spain.
Yet the danger is very real. Days after Maisie's arrival, a photographer and member of Gibraltar's Sephardic Jewish community, Sebastian Babayoff, is murdered, and Maisie becomes entangled in the case, drawing the attention of the British Secret Service. Under the suspicious eye of a British agent, Maisie is pulled deeper into political intrigue on "the Rock"--arguably Britain's most important strategic territory--and renews an uneasy acquaintance in the process. At a crossroads between her past and her future, Maisie must choose a direction, knowing that England is, for her, an equally dangerous place, but in quite a different way.
