Customer Picks
May/June 2009
Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan
“In the twenty-fifth century, humankind has spread throughout the galaxy, monitored by the watchful eye of the U.N. While divisions in race, religion, and class still exist, advances in technology have redefined life itself. Now, assuming one can afford the expensive procedure, a person's consciousness can be stored in a cortical stack at the base of the brain and easily downloaded into a new body (or "sleeve") making death nothing more than a minor blip on a screen.
Ex-U.N. envoy Takeshi Kovacs has been killed before, but his last death was particularly painful. Dispatched one hundred eighty light-years from home, re-sleeved into a body in Bay City (formerly San Francisco, now with a rusted, dilapidated Golden Gate Bridge), Kovacs is thrown into the dark heart of a shady, far-reaching conspiracy that is vicious even by the standards of a society that treats "existence" as something that can be bought and sold. For Kovacs, the shell that blew a hole in his chest was only the beginning. . . .”
Recommended by Gopa Sethuraman
$14.95
Busman’s Honeymoon by Dorothy L. Sayers
“Murder is hardly the best way for Lord Peter and his bride, the famous mystery writer Harriet Vane, to start their honeymoon. It all begins when the former owner of their newly acquired estate is found quite nastily dead in the cellar. And what Lord Peter had hoped would be a very private and romantic stay in the country soon turns into a most baffling case, what with the misspelled "notise" to the milkman and the intriguing condition of the dead man -- not a spot of blood on his smashed skull and not a pence less than six hundred pounds in his pocket.”
Recommended by Laura Taylor
$7.99
Show of Evil by William Diehl
“It begins with a shocking, unsolved murder. In a small town in southern Illinois, the butchered body of Linda Balfour -- with a cryptic code printed in blood on the back of her head -- forges a gruesome link to the brutal murder of Bishop Rushman, the beloved Chicago clergyman who had been dismembered years before by the angelic-looking altar boy, Aaron Stampler. The same Aaron Stampler whom defense attorney Martin Vail saved from the electric chair....
Now Vail is Chicago's chief prosecutor, facing the nightmare of his life. If Stampler has been locked away in a high-security institution for the past ten years, how could he have killed Linda Balfour? Then another altar boy turns up dead with a similar inscription in blood on the back of his head. If Aaron Stampler isn't committing these killings, who is? Martin Vail's career -- maybe even his life -- hangs on the answer....”
Recommended by Roy Carroll
$7.99
Sandman #2: The Doll’s House by Neil Gaiman
“In ‘The Doll’s House’, Rose Walker finds more than she bargained for---long lost relatives, a serial killers’ convention and, ultimately, her true identity. The Master of Dreams attempts to unravel the mystery, unaware that the hand of another, far closer to home, is pulling the strings.”
Recommended by Pam Kinney
$19.99
