Fall for a New Book or eBook!

Summer is officially over, the leaves will begin turning color, and Jack Frost is lurking around the corner, so time to load up the bookshelves and e-reader for the months ahead. Here are some new and recent releases to consider:

In author S. Furlong-Bolliger's new short mystery, DEAD GIVEAWAY (Untreed Reads, May 2011) http://bit.ly/iPoKhs, Julie returns from her father's funeral and finds not much has changed in her hometown—including her evil stepmother, Rose.
Suspicious of the circumstances surrounding her father's death, Julie embarks on her own investigation and is soon entangled in a mystery with a million dollars at stake and a cast of characters befitting of her hometown's name—Lake Loon.

Agatha Award nominee Kaye George offers a tasty morsel with a dash of humor in her latest Imogene Duckworthy mystery, CHOKE (Mainly Murder Press May 2011, print and eBook) http://kayegeorge.com/.
In CHOKE, 22-year-old Imogene Duckworthy is waiting tables at Huey's Hash in tiny Saltlick, TX, itching to jump out of her rut and become a detective. When Uncle Huey is found murdered in the diner, a half-frozen package of mesquite-smoked sausage stuffed down his throat, Immy gets her chance. Immy's mother, Hortense is hauled in for the crime.
Unclear of the exact duties of a PI, Immy starts a fire in the bathroom wastebasket to bust Mother out of jail. On the run from the law with her mother and her toddler daughter, Nancy Drew Duckworthy, Immy wonders, now what?
(She also has a story in the FISH TALES anthology below.)

The water's fine as members of the Sisters in Crime "Guppies" Writing Group find out when they jump into mystery with FISH TALES: THE GUPPY ANTHOLOGY, edited by Ramona DeFelice Long (Wildside Press, March 2011) http://www.facebook.com/pages/Fish-Tales-The-Guppy-Anthology/209484139068835?sk=wall
The water-themed collection of 22 tales offering "thrills, chills and gills," features locked room puzzles, police procedurals, cozy characters and hardboiled detectives. Introduction by Chris Roerden.
Stories include:
"Thicker Than Blood," Leslie Budewitz; "The Secret of the Red Mullet," Nancy Adams; "Accidents Happen," James Montgomery Jackson; "Identity Crisis," Diane Vallere;
"Sleeping with the Fish," KB Inglee; "Feeding Frenzy," Patricia Winton; "SASE," Karen Pullen; "New Age Old Story, " Sarah E. Glenn; "The Shadow of the River," Gigi Pandian; "The Turkey Hill Affair," Warren Bull; "Something Fishy," Peggy Ehrhart; "The Truck Contest," Kaye George; "Amazing Grace," Betsy Bitner; "A Murder Runs Through It," Annette Dashofy;
"Dead-Eye Gravy," Krista Davis; "The Professor's Books," Gloria Alden; "Koi Palace," Heidi Saunders; "Something Fishy This Way Comes," Deborah J. Benoit;  "Palace on the Lake," Daryl Wood Gerber; "Fatal Fish Flop," Beth Groundwater;"The Frain Legacy," Darlene Ryan; "The Critique Group," Patricia Gulley.

Author Teel James Glenn offers readers the chance to step back in time via his pulp fiction styled novella, SHADOWS OF NEW YORK (Books for a Buck March 2011, eBook and print). http://www.booksforabuck.com/sfpages/sf_11/shadows-of-new-york.html
In the 1930s, the world stands at the brink of war, Japan is intent on its conquest of China, and criminal masterminds are using the confusion to carve out their own empires. Into this world strides Dr. Shadows.
His plane shot down over Korea by the Japanese, Dr. Shadows is rescued by Korean monks who nurse him back to health with an herbal treatment  that turns his skin an ashen gray, and gives him speed and agility unmatched by others. After years of healing and martial arts training, Dr. Shadows is back in New York where he's established the Shadows Foundation for Justice. Through this organization—and with the help of sidekicks Slugger Harris, monk and martial artist Dr. Hoon and perky Lee Han Ku (Hank)—he'll attempt to right wrongs, solve crimes, and defeat crimelords whose greed is spurring the world toward war.

Mystery Times Ten

It's never too soon for Christmas, or to least to read about it, as in Triple Agatha Award nominated short story writer Barb Goffman's latest "Truth and Consequences" in the YA anthology, MYSTERY TIMES TEN (Buddhapuss Inc. June 2011.) http://www.barbgoffman.com/ - http://www.buddhapussink.com/Buddhapuss_Ink_Store.html.
Christmas is coming, but not fast enough for 14-year-old Cara who begins searching for her Christmas presents, encounters a mystery within her family, and ultimately, unlocks a secret that turns her life upside down.

Selling your house can be murder in THE WIDOW'S WALK LEAGUE, the fourth book in author Nancy Lynn Jarvis's Regan McHenry Real Estate Mysteries series (Good Read Mysteries June 2011) http://www.goodreadmysteries.com
Santa Cruz husbands are being murdered. The local news media is buzzing because a dark-clad figure witnesses describe as Death had been seen lurking nearby each time a murder is committed.
When new widows start hiring real estate agent Regan McHenry to sell their houses, she discovers all the murdered men have something in common: their wives belong to a walking group called The Widow’s Walk League. No wonder Regan is worried when the group’s leader starts paying special attention to her husband, Tom.

Inner city hotel/lounge owner Big Bull Benson, who first appeared in author Percy Spurlark Parker's novel GOOD GIRLS DON'T GET MURDERED, returns in a brand-new eBook novella, AN UNREFUSABLE REQUEST (Untreed Reads) http://tinyurl.com/4xbcmph
Mob boss Troy Calini doesn't exactly have the best reputation in Chicago, but when his own daughter suspects him of killing her boyfriend, Calini is determined to prove to her that his hands are clean. And when he asks Benson to do the proving, Bull feels it's wise not to refuse.
Although Bull and Calini haven't always seen eye-to-eye, Calini is convinced that Benson can use his skills and connections to find out who really committed the crime. It isn't long before Benson realizes that this isn't just a typical carjacking (as the police suspect) or even a mob hit. Instead, the case will take him to suburbia where he soon discovers that every family hides a dark secret. And, sometimes, those secrets can be deadly.

In Jeanne Matthews' BET YOUR BONES, second in the Dinah Pelerin Mystery series, (Poisoned Pen Press, June 2011), http:/www.jeannematthews.com, wedded bliss may not be in the picture, not even in paradise.
A wedding on the lip of a Hawaiian volcano sounds risky to Dinah Pelerin, the bride's best friend and maid of honor. The bride, Claude Ann Kemper, has bet her heart that she's found the right man at last. The groom has gone all in on a real estate deal he believes will set him and his new wife up for life. But a group of Native Hawaiians claims that the sacred bones of an ancestral king are buried on the land the groom plans to sell, and one of them has vowed to do whatever it takes to stop him.

In his collection of linked short stories, PINK TARANTULA, A NOVEL IN 9 EPISODES (Perfect Crime Books), author Tim Wohlforth offers an extended look into the lives and various cases handled by his popular PI team. http://www.perfectcrimebooks.com/
Read more about the book at http://nigelpbird.blogspot.com/2011/06/dancing-with-myself-tim-wohlforth.html
Not your typical California PI's, Crip, aka wheelchair-bound Tom Bateman, and his sometime sidekick, pierced, green-haired Henrietta solve crimes, (when she's not committing them, that is.) She brings in cases that reek of trouble (and home-grown weed), but in these nine, closely related episodes, the unconventional duo grow while struggling to bridge chasms of bitterness and mistrust.