Featured Author: Laura Lippman

Staff Picks for April

Andrew's Picks

The Real Cool Killers by Chester Himes

Many people had reasons for killing Galen, a big Greek with too much money and too great a liking for young black girls. But there are complications -- like Sonny, high on hash, found standing over the body with a gun in his hand that fires only blanks; a street gang called the Moslems; a disappearing suspect; and the fact that Coffin Ed's daughter is up to her pretty little neck in the whole explosive business.

$10.00

Mucho Mojo by Joe R. Lansdale

In the hellish July heat, Hap Collins and Leonard Pine clean out the house of Leonard's just dead Uncle Chester. But as they clear away the filth, they uncover a dirty secret. Beneath the rotting floorboards, Hap and Leonard unearth a small skeleton, wrapped in porno magazines. Thinking white, Hap wants to call the cops. Leonard, versed in the unwritten codes of the black neighborhood, persuades Hap otherwise. Together they're about to clear Chester's name sans outside reinforcement-as they dig up the deepest, ugliest truth of all under the blister of an East Texas sun.

$5.99

Cross Dressing by Bill Fitzhugh

When his do-gooder Catholic priest of a twin brother, Michael, comes home with a Third World bug, conspicuously consumptive ad-exec Dan Steele sends him to the hospital -- on his own insurance company's dime. But no good deed goes unpunished… Michael's disease turns fatal, and suddenly Dan is facing prison for fraud. And then there's that enraged copywriter whose brilliant idea he stole. Ever the marketer, Dan devises an ingenious escape: masquerade as his brother, the Father.

Now a man of the cloth, Dan must play it close to the vestment, for the world of organized religion is even more wily than his own. It's also more cutthroat, for a dangerous figure from Michael's past is on his cassock tails too. And then there's the tempting Sister Peg, a nun with whom Dan would love to get biblical. It'll take nothing short of a miracle to get the counterfeit cleric out of this sinfully funny jam…

$7.50

Double Whammy by Carl Hiaasen

R.J. Decker, star tenant of the local trailer park and neophyte private eye, is fishing for a killer. Thanks to a sportsman's scam that's anything but sportsmanlike, there's a body floating in Coon Bog, Florida -- and a lot that's rotten in the murky waters of big-stakes, largemouth bass tournaments. Here Decker will team up with a half-blind, half-mad hermit with an appetite for roadkill; dare to kiss his ex-wife while she's in bed with her new husband; and face deadly tv evangelists, dangerously seductive woment, and a pistol-toting redneck with a pit bull on his arm. And here his own life becomes part of the stakes. For while the "double whammy" is the lure, first prize is the most ingenious murder.

$7.50

Tishomingo Blues by Elmore Leonard

Dennis Lenahan is a daredevil and the girls love him. Things are going along okay with his gig at the Tishomingo Lodge and Casino in Tunica, Mississippi, "the casino capital of the South," until the day he looks down from the high-dive platform and witnesses a mob hit-dixie style. The killer looks up and says, "let's see you dive." Suddenly, being a daredevil has lost its kick.

Turns out there was a second witness, Robert Taylor from Detroit, who carries a picture of his great-grandaddy's lynching along with a gun in a briefcase and listens to Marvin Pontiac while cruising the backroads of Mississippi in his black Jaguar. Robert works for a man from up north who has come to play Ulysses S. Grant in a Civil War battle reenactment, but like Dennis, Robert has a death-defying act of his own: he's sleeping with his boss's wife. He also has a secret agenda for taking on the Cornbread Cosa Nostra and wants Dennis in on it.

To complicate matters are the women-some dressed in hoop skirts and all of them with plans of their own. Vernice lures Dennis with the whitest thighs he's ever seen. Diane comes to do a story on him and wants to take him to Memphis. And still another comes along to give Dennis the surprise of his life. But it's the scams Robert Taylor plays, drawing Dennis into his game, that move the action through all kinds of unexpected twists and turns. Before he knows it, Dennis has agreed to join Robert in the battle reenactment, which leads to a showdown between the bad guys and the really bad guys.

$25.95 -
prior to 25% new hardcover discount

Annie's Picks

Living Dead in Dallas by Charlaine Harris

Cocktail waitress Sookie Stackhouse is on a streak of bad luck. First, her coworker is murdered and no one seems to care. Then she's face-to-face with a beastly creature that gives her a painful and poisonous lashing. Enter the vampires, who graciously suck the poison from her veins (like they didn't enjoy it).

Point is, they saved her life. So when one of the bloodsuckers asks for a favor, she complies. And soon, Sookie's in Dallas using her telepathic skills to search for a missing vampire.

$6.50

Blood Price by Tanya Huff

It began with blood and death amid the streets of late-night Toronto. Vicky Nelson, formerly of Toronto's homicide detail, now a private investigator, witnessed the first attack by the force of dark magic that would soon wreak its reign of terror on the unsuspecting city. And as death followed unspeakable death, Vicki became more and more deeply enmeshed in an investigation which would see her renewing her stormy relationship with her former police partner, Mike Celluci, even as she teamed up with writer Henry Fitzroy in a desperate attempt to track down the source of the seemingly unstoppable attacks. For Fitzroy, the illegitimate son of Henry VIII, had knowledge of realms beyond the mortal acquired over the centuries during which he'd mastered his own insatiable needs -- the life-from-death cravings as a vampire.

$5.99

Tales of the Slayer: Volume 1 by multiple authors

Into every generation, a Slayer is born. One girl in all the world, to find the vampires where they gather, and to stop the spread of their evil and the swell of their numbers. In our time, that girl is Buffy Summers. But Buffy is merely one Slayer in an eternal continuum of warriors for the Powers That Be.

$9.00

Sword-sworn by Jennifer Roberson

As Tiger and Del fight for survival among enemies who were once friends, Tiger's long-dormant power begins to assert itself. He falls victim to visions he cannot dismiss, dreams of a dead woman luring him into the crystal sands of the Punja, the South's most treacherous desert. "Find me," she bids him, "and take up the sword."

Initially, Tiger rebels, refusing the siren song of his dreams. But at last, helpless to deny the compulsion in his own blood, Tiger must accept his magic and his fate. Yet can he avoid paying the terrible price that they threaten to extract?

$24.95 -
new release, 25% off

Kushiel's Chosen by Jacqueline Carey

Phedre no Delauney is a young woman who was born with a scarlet mote in her left eye and sold into indentured servitude as a child. Her bond was purchased by Anafiel Delauney, a nobleman with a very special mission - and the first to recognize her for who and what she is: one pricked by Kushiel's Dart, chosen to forever experience pain and pleasure as one.

The hands of the gods weigh heavily on Phedre's brow, and they are not yet done with their charge - for while the young queen who sits upon the throne is well loved by the people, there are those who believe that other heads should wear the crown. And those who escaped the wrath of the mighty are not yet done with their schemes for power and revenge. To protect and serve, Phedre will once again leave her beloved homeland.

$27.95 -
new release, 25% off

Lelia's Picks

The Stone Monkey by Jeffery Deaver

With The Stone Monkey, New York Times bestselling author Jeffery Deaver revives his most beloved characters, Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs, and takes them to another level. The book abounds with Deaver's famous trademarks: deadlines every few hours, wholly unexpected plot twists, his breakneck pacing, and characters who are heartbreakingly real.

Recruited to help the FBI and the Immigration and Naturalization Service perform the nearly impossible, Lincoln Rhyme and his partner Amelia Sachs manage to track down a cargo ship headed for New York City carrying illegal Chinese immigrants, as well as the notorious human smuggler and killer known as Youling, the "Ghost."

But when the Ghost's capture goes disastrously wrong, Lincoln and Amelia find themselves in a race against time -- to stop the Ghost before he can track down and murder two surviving families who have escaped from the ship and vanished deep into the labyrinthine world of New York City's Chinese community.

$25.00 -
prior to 25% new hardcover discount

Revenge of the Wrought-Iron Flamingos by Donna Andrews

What won Donna Andrews such praise and so many first-novel prizes for her Murder with Peacocks is her wit, her honest approach and in large part, her leading character -- lovely, put-upon Meg Langslow. In that book and in Murder with Puffins as well, it is Meg on whose sturdy shoulders fall all sorts of hair-tearing responsibilities, and the gallantry with which she confronts them has every reader rooting for her. In this new book, Andrews really hits her stride, and lives up to the promise of the first two. We find Meg at the celebration of the British surrender at Yorktown -- selling her crafts (even wrought-iron flamingos), looking for (and dodging) a killer, and trying to keep in the good graces of her impossible future mother-in-law who has appointed Meg head of the anachronism police, sworn to sniff out and report such modernist sins as consulting a wristwatch.

$23.95

The Watch by Dennis Danvers

In 1921 Russia, a mysterious visitor from the far future appears at the deathbed of Peter Alexeivich Kropotkin, and offers him and extraordinary opportunity: the chance to be reborn. But as the former prince-turned-anarchist begins a new life in 1999 America, he finds his new home a difficult Eden.

It's not enough he must adjust to a strange new world with plastic and capitalism triumphant. He must also decide what to do when other refugees -- both past and present -- gather round him, longing for freedom and justice.

Poignant, provocative, and inspiring, The Watch breaks bold new ground and again proves Dennis Danvers to be one of the most skilled literary artists of our time.

$24.95 -
prior to 25% new hardcover discount

Down Home Murder by Toni L. P. Kelner

In this first exciting mystery in the popular series, Laura Fleming heads home to Byerly, North Carolina, after her grandfather suffers a fatal fall from a ladder, and soon discovers that his "accident" was really murder.

$5.99 -
signed copies available

Everything's Eventual by Stephen King

Writing about encounters with the dead, about near death, or about the plain dread of mundane life, King is in top form in this collection of dark tales--his first in nine years. Includes three never-before-printed stories and four pieces previously published in The New Yorker.

$28.00 -
prior to 25% new hardcover discount