Mrs Jeffries stands corrected

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Joshilyn Jackson

Laurel Gray Hawthorne needs to make things pretty, whether she's helping her mother make sure the literal family skeleton stays in the closet or turning scraps of fabric into nationally acclaimed art quilts. Her estranged sister Thalia, an impoverished Actress with a capital A, is her polar opposite, priding herself on exposing the lurid truth lurking behind middle class niceties. While Laurel's life seems neatly on track--a passionate marriage, a treasured daughter, and a lovely home in suburban Victorianna--everything she holds dear is suddenly thrown into question the night she is visited by the ghost of a her 13-year old neighbor Molly Dufresne. The ghost leads Laurel to the real Molly floating lifelessly in the Hawthorne's backyard pool. Molly's death is inexplicable--an unseemly mystery Laurel knows no one in her whitewashed neighborhood is up to solving. Only her wayward, unpredictable sister is right for the task, but calling in a favor from Thalia is like walking straight into a frying pan protected only by Crisco. Enlisting Thalia's help, Laurel sets out on a life-altering journey that triggers startling revelations about her family's guarded past, the true state of her marriage, and the girl who stopped swimming.Richer and more rewarding than any story Joshilyn Jackson has yet written, yet still packed with Jackson's trademarked outrageous characters, sparkling dialogue, and defiantly twisting plotting, THE GIRL WHO STOPPED SWIMMING is destined both to delight Jackson's loyal fans and capture a whole new audience.

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Cynthia Peale

Amateur sleuths Caroline and Addington Ames venture to "the other side"--the world of restless and vengeful spirits--to solve some very real flesh-and-blood crimes in Victorian Boston in the third volume of Cynthia Peale's acclaimed Beacon Hill mystery series. When Caroline Ames makes the daring decision to visit a medium, she keeps it a secret from her older brother, Addington. Ever the rationalist, Addington has made his disapproval of Boston society's recent infatuation with spiritualists quite clear. Fervently hoping to contact their mother, Caroline has asked Dr. McKenzie, the Ameses' boarder and dear friend, to accompany her to a seance held by Mrs. Sidgwick, reputed to be the best medium in Boston. Mrs. Sidgwick's powers prove to be quite amazing: Although she is unable to reach Mrs. Ames, she miraculously fulfills the expectations of others attending the seance. Among them is Theophilus Clay, a well-known and much-beloved philanthropist who receives a message from his late wife--and is immediately struck dead right in Mrs. Sidgwick's parlor. The police quickly determine that Clay's death was not the result of a heart attack brought on by excitement, but cold-blooded murder. At the request of an old friend of his father's, Addington agrees to help clear Mrs. Sidgwick's name. Despite his certainty that all mediums are charlatans, Addington is badly shaken when Mrs. Sidgwick receives the ominous message "Ames next" and Caroline is pushed in the path of a horse and narrowly escapes death. Addington's conversation with William James at Harvard does little to reassure him. In James's learned opinion, "Even if there were no other medium in the world who had her powers, she alone proves that such powers exist. I put it this way: If you seek to prove that all crows are not black, you need only one white crow. And Mrs. Sidgwick is my white crow." But Addington needs more solid proof before he is willing to accept that Mrs. Sidgwick's connections to Clay's murder and Caroline's near-fatal accident defy rational explanation.Like the previous books in the Beacon Hill series, The White Crow perfectly captures the atmosphere of Victorian Boston and uncovers the dark secrets harbored by some of its respectable citizens. Cynthia Peale's many fans are in for a double treat in this volume: Interwoven in the intriguing tale of murder and deception is the delightful story of the love that blossoms between Caroline and Dr. McKenzie.From the Hardcover edition.

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Anne Perry

Few authors have written more mesmerizingly about Victorian London than Anne Perry. Readers enter her world with exquisite anticipation, and experience a rich variety of characters and class: aristocrats living in luxury, flower sellers on street corners, ladies of the evening seeking customers on gaslit streets, gentlemen in hansom cabs en route to erotic diversions unknown in their Mayfair mansions. Now Perry gives her myriad fans the book they've been waiting for--the novel in which William Monk breaks through the wall of amnesia and discovers at last who he once was.DEATH OF A STRANGERFor the prostitutes of Leather Lane, nurse Hester Monk's clinic is a lifeline, providing medicine, food, and a modicum of peace--especially welcome since lately their ailments have escalated from bruises and fevers to broken bones and knife wounds. At the moment, however, the mysterious death of railway magnate Nolan Baltimore in a sleazy neighborhood brothel overshadows all else. Whether he fell or was pushed, the shocking question in everyone's mind is: What was such a pillar of respectability doing in a seedy place of sin? Meanwhile, brilliant private investigator William Monk acquires a new client, a mysterious beauty who asks him to ascertain beyond a shadow of a doubt whether or not her fiance, an executive in Nolan Baltimore's thriving railway firm, has become enmeshed in fraudulent practices that could ruin him.As Hester ventures into violent streets to learn who is responsible for the brutal abuse of her patients, Monk embarks upon a journey into the English countryside, where the last rails are being laid for a new line. But the sight of tracks stretching into the distance revives memories once stripped from his consciousness by amnesia--as a past almost impossible to bear returns, eerily paralleling a fresh tragedy that has already begun its inexorable unfolding.From the Hardcover edition.

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Harri Nykänen

There are two Jewish cops in all of Helsinki. One of them, Ariel Kafka, a lieutenant in the Violent Crime Unit, identifies himself as a policeman first, then a Finn, and lastly a Jew. He's willing to risk his career to get an answer. Murky circumstances surround his investigation of a Jewish businessman's murder. Neo-Nazi violence, intergenerational intrigue, shady loans-- predictable lines of investigation lead to unpredictable culprits. But a second killing strikes closer to home, and the Finnish Security Police come knocking. The tentacles of Israeli politics and Mossad reach surprisingly far, once again wrapping Kafka in their sticky embrace.