Ominous

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Jenny White

Rich in sensuous detail, this first novel brilliantly captures the political and social upheavals of the waning Ottoman Empire. The naked body of a young Englishwoman washes up in Istanbul wearing a pendant inscribed with the seal of the deposed sultan. The death resembles the murder by strangulation of another English governess, a crime that was never solved. Kamil Pasha, a magistrate in the new secular courts, sets out to find the killer, but his dispassionate belief in science and modernity is shaken by betrayal and widening danger. In a lush, mystical voice, a young Muslim woman, Jaanan, recounts her own relationships with one of the dead women and her suspected killer. Were these political murders involving the palace or crimes of personal passion? An absorbing tale that transports the reader to nineteenth-century Turkey, this novel is also a lyrical meditation on the contradictory desires of the human soul.

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Mary Jane Clark

Teenage girls are disappearing from this town where an idyllic beach community is terrorized, and where one reporter must get to the truth to protect her family. Trying to mix business with pleasure, KEY News correspondent Diane Mayfield has brought her children and her sister to the New Jersey shore town of Ocean Grove to investigate a story on "girls who cry wolf" for the season premiere of Hourglass, television's highly rated news magazine. Diane lands an exclusive interview with a troubled young woman whose tale of being abducted and held against her will for three terrifying days had been disbelieved by the authorities. No sooner does Diane finish taping the interview, though, than a second victim disappears. The small community, already in the grip of a record heat wave, is now wracked by fear and terror, no one knows who could be next. With only the first victim as eyewitness, Diane and the police turn to her for clues. But it may be too late to save Diane and her loved ones from the mortal danger that lurks in Ocean Grove.

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Julie Parsons

For ten years, newly retired policeman Michael McLoughlin has been haunted by the case of a young woman who was brutally murdered, and by the love he felt for Margaret, the victim 's mother. A favour for a friend leads him to another woman who has lost a child ... her daughter Marina has been found drowned. An accident, suicide ... or murder?" "Margaret, too, has been tormented by her daughter Mary's death and the subsequent death of Mary's killer. She can find no peace. Anywhere. Finally she returns to Dublin to face her demons. A chance encounter with a young girl in a graveyard leads her back to a man she never thought she'd see again and to a mother with a grief to match her own.

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David Hosp

Rising from his disadvantaged youth, lawyer Scott Finn works for the defense of a high-profile client after the murder of a former flame, a case involving his own credibility and a determined police lieutenant.