Mystery & Suspense

What the Dead Know by Laura Lippman - A driver who flees a car accident on a Maryland highway breathes new life into a 30-year-old mystery—the disappearance of the young Bethany sisters at a shopping mall—after she later tells the police she's one of the missing girls. (February 2008)

Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino - Apartment Serial Murders case, which involved the brutal killings of two Tokyo prostitutes, has gripped the country, leading to the arrest of a Chinese immigrant, Zhang Zhe-zhong, for the crimes. Strangely, Zhang freely admits to murdering the first victim, Yuriko Hirata, but denies the near-identical slaying 10 months later of Kazue Sato. (February 2008)

The Song is You by Megan Abbott Fans of James Ellroy nostalgic for his gritty, cynical take on postwar Hollywood in such noir classics as L.A. Confidential and The Black Dahlia should enjoy Edgar-finalist Abbott's second novel. (February 2008)

Damage Control by Robert Dugoni - Dana Hill is accustomed to stress: she's a successful attorney at a prestigious Seattle law firm, the mother of a young daughter, and the wife of a busy, self-involved man. But her carefully-balanced world is rent asunder when she is diagnosed with breast cancer, her twin brother is beaten to death and she discovers that her husband is having an affair. (February 2008)

The Book of Air and Shadows by Michael Gruber -Moving between twenty-first-century America and seventeenth-century England, this is a modern thriller that brilliantly re-creates William Shakespeare's life at the turn of the seventeenth century and combines an ingenious and intricately layered plot with a devastating portrait of a contemporary man on the brink of self-discovery . . . or self-destruction. (February 2008)

Christine Falls by Benjamin Black (alias for John Banville!): Debut crime novel from the Booker-winning author. A Dublin pathologist follows the corpse of a mysterious woman into the heart of a conspiracy among the city’s high Catholic society. (January 2008)

Storm Runners by T. Jefferson Parker - Bestseller Parker's 14th California crime novel opens with an unforgettable sentence: "Stromsoe was in high school when he met the boy who would someday murder his wife and son." (January 2008)

Mistresss of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin - A chilling, mesmerizing novel that combines the best of modern forensic thrillers with the detail and drama of historical fiction. (January 2008)

Fieldwork by Mischa Berlinski - A daring, spellbinding tale of anthropologists, missionaries, demon possession, sexual taboos, murder, and an obsessed young reporter named Mischa Berlinski. (January 2008)

The Dead Father's Club by Matt Haig - Reanimates themes of Hamlet with an 11-year-old British protaganist who is commissioned to avenge his father's murder. (December 2007)

Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra - Draws the reader deep into the life of Inspector Sartaj Singh—and into the criminal underworld of Ganesh Gaitonde, the most wanted gangster in India. (December 2007 )

The Meaning of Night by Michael Cox - "After killing the red-haired man, I took myself off to Quinn's for an oyster supper." So begins the extraordinary story of Edward Glyver—booklover, scholar, and murderer. (October 2007)

The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall - Eric Sanderson wakes up one day with no idea who or where he is. A note instructs him to call a Dr. Randle, who informs him that he is undergoing yet another episode of memory loss and that for the last two years—since the tragic death of his great love, Clio, while vacationing in Greece—he’s been suffering from an acute disassociative disorder. But there may be more to the story, or it may be a different story altogether. (September 2007)

When One Man Dies by Dave White - "I've killed three men in my life. One the police know about, two that I've kept to myself." New Jersey ex-cop Jackson Donne is about to use profits from his PI business to fund a bachelor's degree when his closest friend, Korean War vet Gerry Figuroa, is killed in a hit-and-run. (September 2007)

Cloud of Unknowing by Thomas H. Cook - Cook explores the power of blood and family mythology. (September 2007)

Death of a Writer by Michael Collins - Once brilliant writer Robert Pendleton attempts suicide, but a graduate student intervenes. While convalescencing, a semi-autobiographical manuscript is found hidden in his basement, at its core a gruesome child-murder. (September 2007)

One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson - A brilliant new thriller from the author of 2005's breakout favorite, Case Histories, again featuring the irresistibly reluctant detective Jackson Brodie. (September 2007)

The Zero by Jess Walter -From the opening pages of The Zero – when hero cop Brian Remy wakes up to find he's shot himself in the head–novelist Jess Walter takes us on a harrowing tour of a city and a country shuddering through the aftershocks of a devastating terrorist attack. (August 2007)

The Night Gardener by George Pelecanos - In 1985, the body of a 14-year-old girl turns up in a Washington, D.C., park, the latest in a series of murders by a killer the media dub "The Night Gardener." (August 2007)

The Poe Shadow by Matthew Pearl - The strange circumstances surrounding the death of Edgar Allan Poe, intriguing to fans and scholars alike, provide the basis for this literary historical mystery. (July 2007)

A Field of Darkness by Cornelia Read - Every page is a pleasure in this mystery debut featuring barb-wielding, ex-debutante Madeline Dare. A newspaper reporter trapped among the white trash of Syracuse, New York, she becomes enmeshed in the 20-year-old unsolved murder of two young hippies. (July 2007)

Eye of Vengeance by Jonathon King -Nick Mullins, who covers the crime beat for the South Florida Daily News, is still shattered two years later by the deaths of his wife and one of his twin daughters in an auto accident with a drunk driver. Obsessed with revenge, Mullins spends his off hours stalking the driver, who's just been released from prison after serving only 18 months. (June 2007)

The Betrayed by David Hosp - When her sister is found brutally murdered, Sydney Chapin is drawn back into the vortex of her wealthy family. (June 2007)

Talk Talk by T.C. Boyle - Boyle offers readers the closest thing to a thriller he has ever written, a tightly scripted page turner about the trials of Dana Halter, a thirty-three-year-old deaf woman whose identity has been stolen. Featuring a woman in the lead role (a Boyle first), Talk Talk is both a suspenseful chase across America and a moving story about language, love, and identity from one of America’s most versatile and entertaining novelists. (June 2007)

The Pale Blue Eye by Louis Bayard - An intense and gripping novel set during Edgar Allan Poe's brief time as a West Point cadet. (June 2007)

The Observations by Jane Harris - Set in Scotland, 1863; An extraordinary historical novel about a peculiar friendship between the mistress of a Scottish estate and her irresistibly appealing housemaid. (June 2007)

Mourners by Bill Pronzini - “Nameless” had seen enough death in his years; spending his time watching someone drive to several funerals a day, funerals for people he didn’t know, was more than he could take.Then the bits and pieces began to fall into place: The funerals James Troxell was attending were all for women who had died violently. Was he responsible? One woman thought so and her insistence was becoming a problem. (May 2007)

Lost by Michael Robotham - Det. Insp. Vincent Ruiz (a supporting character in Robotham's debut, Suspect) is hauled out of the Thames with a bullet wound in his leg and no memory of a shooting, let alone how he wound up in the water. Keebal, a nasty cop from internal affairs, hounds Ruiz from the start, and everyone seems to know something Ruiz doesn't. When psychologist Joe O'Loughlin (the protagonist of Suspect) shows Ruiz a picture of young Mickey Carlyle he figures there must be some connection between her case and his shooting. (May 2007)

Blood Mask by Lauren Kelly - Joyce Carol Oates's gripping third suspense novel under her Kelly pseudonym explores twisted love. (May 2007)

The Ghost Orchid by Carol Goodman - Set an an isolated Victorian mansion in upstate New York, Ellis Brooks is a debut novelist accepted to Bosco, an artist's retreat primarily because her first novel is to be a fictional account of the mansion's mysterious past and the murders took place in 1893. (April 2007)

Eye Contact by Cammie McGovern - Two children vanish in the woods behind their elementary school. Hours later, nine-year-old Adam is found alive, the sole witness to his playmate’s murder. But because Adam has autism, he is a silent witness. Only his mother, Cara, can help decode his behavior for the police. As the suspense ratchets, Eye Contact becomes a heart-stopping exploration of the bond between a mother and a very special child. (March 2007)

Two Little Girls in Blue by Mary Higgins Clark - In delving into the well-documented but still unexplained phenomenon of twin telepathy, Mary Higgins Clark tells a spellbinding tale that takes us deep into the minds of her characters while lifting us to the heights of suspense. (March 2007)

Night of the Jaguar by Michel Gruber - This highly entertaining supernatural thriller completes the trilogy that began with Tropic of Night and Valley of Bones. (March 2007)

Slipping into Darkness by Peter Blauner - It has been two decades since Detective Francis X. Loughlin solved his first big case, the brutal murder of a woman doctor. The young man convicted of the killing, Julian Vega, is back on the streets now. Not long after his release, another murder takes place, one so similar to that long-ago case that Julian is the first suspect in Detective Loughlin's sights. However, the DNA evidence that is now a routine part of policework points in an impossible direction. If the evidence is correct, Loughlin has to rethink decades of certainty. (February 2007)

The Jury Master by Robert Dugoni - A runaway conspiracy becomes all about the man who's trying to unravel it. (January 2007)

The Two Minute Rule by Robert Crais - Ask anyone on the wrong side of the law about the two-minute rule and they'll tell you that's as long as you can hope for at a robbery before the cops show up. Break the two-minute rule and it's a lifetime in jail. But not everyone plays by the rules... (January 2007)

The Female of the Species by Joyce Carol Oates - As evidenced in this collection of nine stories, Oates's imagination is still fertile, feverish and macabre. These females are killers, either by their own hands or through manipulation. To be sure, they have provocation: abandonment, betrayal, abuse, the loss of reason to passion or obsession. (January 2007)

The People's Act of Love by James Meek - In the outer reaches of a country recently torn apart by civil war lives a small Christian sect and its enigmatic leader, Balashov. Anna Petrovna, a beautiful, restless photographer, is raising her young son by herself amid this brutal landscape. Stationed nearby is a company of Czech soldiers, desperate to get home but on the losing side of the recent conflict. Each soldier lives in a fragile co-existence and a troubling uncertainty prevails. Into this isolated community trudges Samarin, an escapee from Russia's northernmost prison camp. (December 2006)

Gentlemen and Players by Joanne Harris - A mystery, of sorts, by the author of Chocolat. (December 2006)

Purity of Blood by Arturo Perez-Reverte - 2nd book in the Captain Alatriste series. (November 2006)

Sunstroke by Jesse Kellerman - Debut novel by the daughter of the two well-known Kellerman's and from first reviews it looks like talent breeds true. Gloria Mendez—a 36-year-old secretary at a Los Angeles novelty item import business—is in love with her boss, Carl Perreira, though he has never reciprocated her romantic interest. When he never returns from his annual vacation in Mexico and later is reported dead from a fiery crash, Gloria heads south to retrieve his body and finds herself in a dangerous adventure. (November 2006)