Toxic

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Carola Dunn

Eleanor Trewynn is a recently retired widow who has moved to the small village of Port Mabyn in Cornwall. Neither frail nor retiring, after a lifetime of traveling the world, she’s ready for an uneventful life with her dog and friends in this quiet town. Unfortunately, excitement seems to happen around her. Her friend and neighbor, artist Nick Gresham, returns from a trip only to find several of his paintings slashed, reportedly by rival local artist Geoffrey Clarke. When Nick goes to have it out with him, with Eleanor in tow, they find Clarke’s body in his studio, fatally stabbed in the back. Accused of the crime, Nick ends up in jail, while Detective Inspector Scumble and DSMegan Pencarrow, Eleanor’s niece, investigate. But Eleanor isn’t leaving anything to chance—she starts doing a little investigating of her own, and soon learns that Nick is far from the only one with a compelling motive for murder.

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C.S. Forester

The Pursued is set against the quiet London suburbs of the 1930s and the daily life of a seemingly happy married couple. The prose is fast, pared-down and psychologically loaded, creating its own brand of English noir. Opening with a mysterious death, the plot reveals the inner workings of Marjorie and Ted's marriage, flecked with domestic abuse and sexual sado-masochism. Its thriller elements are blended with radical gender politics through this channel of disgruntled domesticity. A reader coming new to C S Forester might be forgiven for thinking this writer a woman. The domestic drudgery of Marjorie's everyday life is imagined in minute detail – the washing, cooking, shopping, the children, and the husband's tyrannical demands. The fulminating passions, the quiet rage, and the burning desire for violent revenge belongs largely to the disenfranchised female characters. Marjorie looks at her spinster friends – the newly independent, career-minded women of the 1930s – with a fear that she overcomes. Her mother, seemingly mild and meek, seethes with the sly, unquenchable vengeance of Clytemnestra.

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Jennifer Lee Carrell

There is a deadly serial killer is on the loose, modelling his murders on Shakespeare's plays. Why is he killing and how can he be stopped ...

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Kate Kingsbury

An all-new Yuletide mystery featuring the incomparable staff of the Pennyfoot Hotel— from “a descendant of Agatha Christie.”(The Statesman Journal) (OR)A merry hustle-and-bustle always heralds the holidays at the Pennyfoot. Even as she prepares for the holiday meal, Cecily Sinclair Baxter is also helping her friend Madeline plan her wedding. And this year, Cecily has a cracking surprise for her guests—Christmas crackers. Once the crackers pop, one lucky guest will discover a beautiful pearl brooch...But when two crackers go astray, things turn less than jolly. A mysterious fire has broken out in an upstairs room, killing the mood—and two guests. And at the bottom of it all: one of the missing Christmas crackers. Cecily’s dead-set on solving this mystery before another deadly present turns up...