Customer Picks

April 2004

Black Dog by Stephen Booth

"When the body of smart and sexy 15-year-old Laura Vernon is found in Northern England's Peak District, Detective Constable Ben Cooper investigates. Uneasily teamed with ambitious newcomer Detective Constable Diane Fry, Cooper tests a town's family ties, friendships, and loyalties--and finds in order to understand the present they must unearth the past.'
Recommended by Tony Powell

$6.99

Posted to Death by Dean James

"He's Poirot without a pulse. Holmes without a heartbeat. England has found itself a new sleuth to call its own, but Simon Kirby-Jones is not only a vampire, he's an American to boot. He's pulled up stakes in the States to settle in the quaint English village of Snupperton Mumsley, where his southern charm will be put to work uncovering the deadly secrets of his neighbors.

Luckily for Simon, a dandy new drug has made bloodsucking and sun damage passe. Which makes it possible for him to work himself into the daily life of Snupperton Mumsley. While attending a meeting of SMADS (the Snupperton Mumsley Amateur Dramatic Society), a fierce contretemps brews between Lady Prunella Blitherington, the pompous matriarch of the village's "first family, " and Abigail Winterton, the mean-spirited postmistress, over which play to perform. A day later, Abigail is found strangled; her play -- detailing the sordid lives of the residents of a small English village -- nowhere to be found.

With his preternatural senses tuned for trouble, Simon makes his rounds among the village regulars, including Lady Blitherington's snooty son Giles; Trevor Chase, a charming bookseller with a dark secret; and Colonel Athelstan Clitheroe, who could easily have been plucked from the pages of an Agatha Christie novel. No one is above suspicion as Simon gathers enough dishy gossip to bring a blush to his unearthly pallor, while looking for the play and the person who brought the curtain down in on its author's life."
Recommended by Allison Herndon

$5.99

Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris

"Sookie Stackhouse is a cocktail waitress in small-town Louisiana, but she keeps to herself and doesn't date much because of her "disability" to read minds. When she meets Bill, Sookie can't hear a word he's thinking. He's the type of guy she's waited for all of her life, but he has a disability, too--he's a vampire with a bad reputation. When one of Sookie's coworkers is killed, she fears she's next."
Recommended by Sarah Colacino

$5.99

The Deed of Paksenarrion by Elizabeth Moon

"Paksenarrion, a simple sheepfarmer's daughter, yearns for a life of adventure and glory, such as was known to heroes in songs and story. At age seventeen she runs away from home to join a mercenary company and begins her epic life . . . Book One: Paks is trained as a mercenary, blooded, and introduced to the life of a soldier . . . and to the followers of Gird, the soldier's god. Book Two: Paks leaves the Duke's company to follow the path of Gird alone--and on her lonely quests encounters the other sentient races of her world. Book Three: Paks the warrior must learn to live with Paks the human. She undertakes a holy quest for a lost elven prince that brings the gods' wrath down on her and tests her very limits."
Recommended by Jamie Bergman

$18.00

An Unpardonable Crime by Andrew Taylor

"Thomas Shield is a young schoolmaster in Stoke Newington, just outside of London, whose charges include 10-year-old Edgar Allan Poe (as a child, the poet spent five years in England) and a pampered banker's son. The school's routine is disrupted when Shield runs across an eccentric character who displays an unhealthy interest in the two boys. His intervention brings Shield into closer contact with the banker's family and two desirable women. Uncomfortably occupying an uncertain position between master and servant, Shield juggles his instincts for self-preservation with his passions, a task made much harder when the severely mutilated corpse of the banker is discovered shortly after his business collapses. While the murder appears to give Shield a clear path to court the attractive widow, he is unable to ignore clues suggesting that the body is actually someone else's."
Recommended by Susan Astin

$24.95 prior to 25% new hardcover discount