Working stiff

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Sally Andrew

"A bright new talent makes her fiction debut with this first novel in a delicious crime series set in rural South Africa: a flavorful blend of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency and Goldy Schulz, full of humor, romance, and recipes, and featuring a charming cast of characters. Tannie Maria ("tannie" meaning auntie, the respectful Afrikaans address for a woman older than you) is a middle-aged widow who likes to cook and eat. She shares her culinary love through her work as a recipe columnist for the local paper, until the Gazette decides its readers are hungrier for advice on matters of the heart than for lunch and dinner ideas. Tannie Maria doesn't like the change but soon discovers she has a knack and a passion for helping people. Of course, a recipe is always part of the remedy she offers. Assisting other people with their problems, Tannie Maria is eventually forced to face her own issues, especially when the troubles of those she helps touch on the pain of her own past like a woman who contacts her desperate to escape her abusive husband. When the woman is murdered, Tannie Maria becomes dangerously entwined in the investigation, despite the best efforts of a handsome detective named Kannemeyer, who is determined to keep her safe. Suddenly, this practical, down-to-earth woman is involved in something much more sinister than perfecting her chocolate cake recipe . . ." -- ONIX annotation.

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P.D. Martin

"Just as Aussie FBI profiler Sophie Anderson is settling into her job in the L.A. bureau, she's pulled into a case that's different from anything she's ever seen--the victim has had his throat ripped out. But what weapon could have caused such devastating injuries? And who is the John Doe? Sophie and her team are dealing with a skilled killer, someone who leaves virtually no forensic evidence. When the team links the body to an Asian criminal organization, things get even more mysterious. The victim has been missing for fifteen years, so where has he been and why has he returned? More important, who wanted him dead? As L.A.'s underworld rears its ugly head, Sophie will have to draw on her experience and her developing psychic skills to find a brilliant killer who's carved a trail of death in organized crime across the U.S. He leaves only one thing behind him--horrifying murder scenes."--Page 4 of cover.

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Maurizio de Giovanni

This is Naples as you've never seen it before. A chaotic, shadowy city full of ominous echoes and dark alleyways where each inhabitant seems too absorbed by his or her own problems to give a damn about anybody else. And that is exactly what makes it possible for a cold, methodical killer to commit his atrocious crimes largely undisturbed, to merge with the crowd as if he were invisible. The newspapers call him "The Crocodile" because, like a crocodile, when he devours his own children, he cries. And like a crocodile he is a perfect killing machine: he waits and watches until his prey is within range, and then he strikes. Three young people with very diverse backgrounds have been found murdered in three different neighborhoods, each shot with a single bullet, execution style. While his colleagues see little or no connection, Inspector Giuseppe Lojacono, smells a rat. He is driven by his instincts and his own troubled recent history. He has just been transferred to Naples from Sicily where a Mafioso-turned-informant accused him of leaking sensitive information to the mob. Once an esteemed member of the mobile unit of the Agrigento police force, Lojacono has lost everything, first and foremost the love of his wife and daughter. But now he's been given a second chance and a shot at clearing his name. A young magistrate, the beautiful Laura Piras, wants him in Naples. She's heard of his preternatural skills and his incredible powers of observation and she thinks a man like him is needed in Naples. So it is that Inspector Lojacono is charged with finding the link between the three dead bodies. At the root of these murders, he will discover, is a pain that still burns, a sense of guilt than cannot be purged, and one all-consuming love.

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John Keyse-Walker

"As a Special Constable, Teddy Creque is the only police presence on the remote, sun-drenched island of Anegada, nestled in the heart of the British Virgin Islands. In all his years on the job, Teddy has never considered the possibility that he might have to address an actual crime on his peaceful island. That is, until he receives a hysterical call about a dead man on the beach. Indeed, Teddy is shocked to discover Paul Kelliher, a biologist who traveled to the island every summer for research, lying dead on the sands of the island's most remote beach, killed by a single shot to the head. And when the BVI's "real police" task Teddy with informing Kelliher's nearest kin of his death, Teddy makes an even more surprising discovery: there's no record that Paul Kelliher ever existed. Suddenly Teddy's routine life is thrown into tumult as he tries to track a killer--against his boss's wishes--while balancing his complicated family life, three other jobs, and the colorful characters populating the island around him. Written with a wry, witty narrative voice and a plot full of twists and turns, John Keyse-Walker's Minotaur Books/Mystery Writers of America First Crime Novel Award-winning debut is a pure delight"--