Readers > New Books > Fiction, December 2008
Fiction, December 2008
General Fiction |Mysteries |Horror/Science Fiction/Fantasy
General Fiction
- Ashworth, Heidi
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A dashing rogue and a fiery heroine spar in Ashworth's charming Regency-era romance debut.
- Auchincloss, Louis
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Drawing on his career as an attorney, Auchincloss brings to life a stratum of society that few have seen. Last of the Old Guard is both a revealing history of a high profile law firm and an intimate portrait of a poignant friendship between two men.
- Buckley, Geri
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On the morning of her birthday, Vonda Thayer awakes from her American Dream to realize she's living a domestic nightmare. The sun's going down on this desperate housewife, and dawn's breaking on a new, improved version of her old self.
- Chase, Ella March
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Queen Elizabeth I was known as the virgin queen but many believe she may have given birth to an illegitimate child. That longstanding rumor is the subject of this intriguing novel.
- Davis, Charles
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Shady doesn't exist anymore. Neither does Benjamin Purdue. In a single day he lost his family, his love, his freedom and even his name for reasons he's never known. Now after spending 21 years in prison for crimes he didn't commit, the young man he used to be is dead. And the man he's become is no one he — or anyone else — would ever want to know.
- Lewis, Simon
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In this fast-paced thriller, Inspector Jian, a tough Chinese cop who arrives in England to search for his missing daughter, soon finds himself fighting for his life against a vicious gang of human traffickers.
- Merullo, Roland
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From the hot, roiling streets and glittering beaches of Miami to the crumbling and faded elegance of Old Havana, Fidel's Last Days is an explosive journey to the heart of a nation longing for change.
- Oppegaard, David
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The Despair has plagued the earth for five years. Most of the world’s population has inexplicably died by its own hand, and the few survivors struggle to remain alive. A mysterious, shadowy group called the Collectors has emerged, inevitably appearing to remove the bodies of the dead. But in the crumbling state of Florida, a man named Norman takes an unprecedented stand against the Collectors, propelling him on a journey across North America. It’s rumored a scientist in Seattle is working on a cure for the Despair, but in a world ruled by death, it won’t be easy to get there.
- Sundaresan, Indu
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Seattle author Indu Sundaresan presents a candid and stunning collection of stories about contemporary Indians and the cutting edge issues surrounding them — where ancient tradition and modernity can often clash.
- Swerling, Beverly
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The saga of the Turner and Devrey families continues in this captivating historical epic set in New York City during the years before the Civil War — an era of corrupt Tammany Hall politicians, evangelical preachers, millionaire entrepreneurs, opium smokers and immigrants. This is the fourth volume in Swerling's engrossing series.
- Yenne, William (Bill)
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Unflinching, realistic and timely, Into the Fire is a riveting novel of what's happening in Afghanistan now as the men and women of the National Guard become soldiers, casualties and heroes.
Mysteries
- Barbieri, Maggie
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College English professor Alison Bergeron and NYPD Detective Bobby Crawford team up, in more ways than one, to solve a murder in the third book of this popular series.
- Beaton, M. C.
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Beaton's best-selling trilogy continues as Hamish Macbeth, Scotland's most laconic and low-tech policeman, investigates the death of a woman with seemingly unearthly powers.
- Brogan, Jan
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Reporter Hallie Ahern is trawling online chat rooms in search of a story for her newspaper's website when an anonymous source sends her a short video clip, a teaser. Featuring two girls striking provocative poses, the clip promises more to come. As Hallie follows up on the lead, she discovers that men are buying the girls webcams and lavishing them with gifts to make sure they use them. But those gifts are only a taste of the perils to come. The paper's new owners love the idea of an exposé that warns parents of the dangers of the Internet, but when girls start dying, and when Hallie's boyfriend — a prosecutor with the Attorney General’s office — ends up on another side of the story altogether, the situation goes from dark to lethal.
- Ferris, Monica
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When one of part-time sleuth Betsy Devonshire's regulars unwittingly becomes involved in a deadly delivery of exotic antiquities, Betsy fears something is seriously warped.
- Graves, Sarah
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Graves hammers home another suspenseful sleuthing-and-spackling installment in the beloved series that features plenty of slapstick, farce and home repair tips amid the mayhem.
- Griffin, H Terrell
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Matt Royal never has to look far for excitement. Excitement — and sometimes trouble — has a way of finding him first. But for this fun-loving lawyer turned beach bum, things are about to get serious. When his ex-wife asks for help in tracking down her stepdaughter, last seen in Matt's hometown of Longboat Key, Matt agrees to do a little searching. But what looks like the case of one missing girl turns out to be something much bigger — and much more dangerous.
- Maleeny, Tim
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A former U.S. Senator vanishes days after his son goes missing. When they’re both found dead on a golf course, body parts missing, in Mexico, the Senator’s estranged daughter Rebecca resolves to discover what happened. Private investigator Cape Weathers doesn’t really want the case. He can’t stand politicians and doesn’t know the terrain. But when it looks like the daughter may become the next victim, Cape crosses the border looking for answers.
- Moore, Laurie
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A month after solving two high profile murders, Cézanne Martin takes a leave of absence from the Fort Worth Police Department to get her law office up and running. But bad things happen in threes: her fiancé disappears; her wayward father dies; and she barely escapes a grisly death at the hands of an escaped murderess.
- Pearce, Michael
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Barcelona, 1912 — a city still recovering from the incidents of "Tragic Week" when Catalonian conscripts bound for the unpopular war in Spanish Morocco rebelled at the city's dockside against the royalist forces. In the fighting, many were killed, and afterward, even more imprisoned, including an Englishman, who was later found dead in his cell. The dead man had been a prominent businessman in Gibraltar, so what was he doing in Barcelona? And how did he really meet his end — murdered, in a prison cell? The case cries out for investigation — and by someone independent of the Spanish authorities. So Scotland Yard dispatches Seymour of the Special Branch.
- Randisi, Robert J.
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It's 1961, and Las Vegas is still the place to be. Eddie Gianelli, pit boss at the Sands Casino, now considers the Rat Pack his friends. His friend Frank Sinatra wants him to help Sammy — all Eddie has to do is pay a blackmailer to keep quiet. But at the rendezvous, Eddie finds a dead body greeting him instead.
- South, Sheri
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Agatha Christie meets Jane Austen in this light historical mystery set in England's elegant Regency period. Eager to escape London following the scandal of her husband's death, beautiful Lady Fieldhurst accepts an invitation to spend the summer in rural Yorkshire at the home of Sir Gerald and Lady Hollingshead. She soon discovers, however, that country life is not the panacea she imagined.
Horror/Science Fiction/Fantasy
- Blaylock, James P.
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Calvin Bryson has hidden himself away from the world, losing himself in his work and his collection of rare and quirky books. When he visits his family in a tiny town in California, he discovers the town's strange secrets and a mysterious group dedicated to preserving and protecting holy relics.
- Carwyn, Giles
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You must teach a lost child how to love. With his dying words, the Opal Emperor leaves Brophy, the Heir of Autumn, with an impossible choice: betray his heart by seducing the enchantress Arefaine Morgeon, or watch her ruthless ambitions destroy the world.
- Duncan, Hal
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A hitman, a hooker, a homosexual kid and a hobo suicide make the ultimate prison break — escape from Hell itself! But when news of their attempted escape gets out, the souls of the damned are transformed into a rioting mob, and all Hell truly does break loose.
- Gilman, Felix
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In a magical landscape where time is meaningless, reality precarious and countless selves work toward countless possible futures, one man must seek a city's truth — and rediscover his own. Imprisoned with a prophetic half human, half beast, the lost man learns his name: Arjun. Slowly the terrible memories emerge, and at last he remembers where — and when — he has been.
- Hamilton, Peter F.
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The war of the Possessed has proved that souls are real, eternally suffering in the Beyond, desperate to escape. As the war rages on, Adamists and Edenists become allies, a 20th century crime lord masterminds a conquering army, a seductress lures children to their doom, and a satanist's path of horror heads toward Earth. But amid the devastation, some of the Possessed battle their own kind to save lives. Not all of the damned are evil — and heroes, too, are returning from the Beyond.
- Hanover, M.
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Jayné Heller thinks of herself as a realist, until she discovers reality isn't quite what she thought it was. When her uncle Eric is murdered, Jayné travels to Denver to settle his estate, only to learn that it's all hers — and more vast than she ever imagined. Along with properties across the world and an inexhaustible fortune, Eric left her a legacy of a different kind: his unfinished business with a cabal of wizards known as the Invisible College.
- Martin, George R. R.
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In 1946, an alien virus that rewrites human DNA was accidentally unleashed in the skies over New York City. It killed 90 percent of those it infected, but one percent gained superpowers. The latest book in the Wild Cards series is the tale of the history of the world since then — and the heroes among the one percent.
- Phoenix, Adrian
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Shadowy government forces have pledged to eliminate all loose ends from Project Bad Seed — and Heather and Dante are at the top of the list. Elsewhere, the Fallen gather in Gehenna, intent on finding their long-awaited savior, the True Blood nightkind whom Lucien DeNoir would die to protect. And a damaged and desperate adversary, with powers as strange and perilous as Dante's own, plots to use Dante as a pawn in a violent scheme for revenge.
- Resnick, Michael D. (Mike)
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The Kikuyu tribe of East Africa attempted to create a Utopia on the terraformed planetoid Kirinyaga, which was named for the mountain where their god lives. Things went wrong. Now, a century later, the Maasai tribe has studied Kirinyaga's history, has analyzed their mistakes, and is ready to create a Maasai Utopia on the planetoid Kilimanjaro, named for the mountain where their god lives.
- Resnick, Michael D.
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The date is 1968 of the Galactic Era, almost three thousand years from now. The Republic, dominated by the human race, is in the midst of an all out war with the Teroni Federation. Captain Wilson Cole now commands Starship:Mercury and a fleet of almost fifty ships, the single greatest military force on the Inner Frontier. Then an incident occurs that changes everything, and Cole declares war on the Republic. Outnumbered and always outgunned, his fleet is no match for the Republic's millions of military vessels, even after he forges alliances with the warlords he previously hunted down. It's a hopeless cause — but that's just what Wilson Cole and the Teddy R. are best at.
- Simmons, Dan
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Muse of Fire takes place in a remote future age in which the human enterprise has all but ground to a halt. Earth, drained of its oceans and populated largely by the dead, is little more than a distant memory. The scattered human remnants occupy the lowest rung of a Gnostic hierarchy that dominates both their secular and spiritual lives. Against this backdrop, Simmons introduces the Earth's Men, a wandering troupe of players dedicated to presenting the works of Shakespeare to every accessible corner of the settled universe.
- Turtledove, Harry
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England has driven the French from Atlantis, giving King George leave to tighten his control over the colonies. As leader of the revolutionaries, Victor Radcliff will make the English pay for every piece of land they dare to occupy, and will stop at nothing to preserve the liberty of his people.
