fiction / mystery & detective / women sleuths

Clare Cassidy gets involved with a murder case when her closest friends get murdered with the only evidence being a line from her favorite book. Not knowing who to trust, she turns to her closest confident, her diary. But when she notices writing that isn't hers, Clare is certain that her favorite book has come to life.

Cassie Dewell, a new detective in Grimstad, the oil capital of North Dakota, realizes that she may be in over her head when a gang war heats up, the temperature drops to 30 below, and twelve year old Kyle Westergaard, who witnessed a car accident and took a mysterious bundle from the scene, keeps showing up where he doesn't belong.

"A ... murder mystery set at Oxford University in the 1980s. After Oxford's most popular classmate is found dead, new students Ursula Flowerbutton and Nancy Feingold believe she has been murdered and work to solve the mystery"--Provided by publisher.

"Mary DiNunzio wants to represent her old friend Simon Pensiera, a sales rep who was wrongly fired by his company, but her partner Bennie Rosato represents the parent company. When she confronts Mary, explaining this is a conflict of interest, an epic battle of wills and legal strategy between the two ensues--ripping the law firm apart, forcing everyone to take sides and turning friend against friend."--Provided by publisher.

"Cassandra Bowden is no stranger to hungover mornings. She's a binge drinker, her job with the airline making it easy to find adventure, and the occasional blackouts seem to be inevitable. She lives with them, and the accompanying self-loathing. When she awakes in a Dubai hotel room, she tries to piece the previous night back together, counting the minutes until she has to catch her crew shuttle to the airport. She quietly slides out of bed, careful not to aggravate her already pounding head, and looks at the man she spent the night with. She sees his dark hair. His utter stillness. And blood, a slick, still wet pool on the crisp white sheets. Afraid to call the police - she's a single woman alone in a hotel room far from home - Cassie begins to lie. She lies as she joins the other flight attendants and pilots in the van. She lies on the way to Paris as she works the first class cabin. She lies to the FBI agents in New York who meet her at the gate. Soon it's too late to come clean-or face the truth about what really happened back in Dubai. Could she have killed him? If not, who did? Set amid the captivating world of those whose lives unfold at forty thousand feet, The Flight Attendant unveils a spellbinding story of memory, of the giddy pleasures of alcohol and the devastating consequences of addiction, and of murder far from home"--Provided by publisher.

"Andrea knows everything about her mother, Laura. She knows she's spent her whole life in the small beachside town of Belle Isle; she knows she's never wanted anything more than to live a quiet life as a pillar of the community; she knows she's never kept a secret in her life. Because we all know our mothers, don't we? But all that changes when a trip to the mall explodes into violence and Andrea suddenly sees a completely different side to Laura. Because it turns out that before Laura was Laura, she was someone completely different. For nearly thirty years she's been hiding from her previous identity, lying low in the hope that no one would ever find her. But now she's been exposed, and nothing will ever be the same again. The police want answers and Laura's innocence is on the line, but she won't speak to anyone, including her own daughter. Andrea is on a desperate journey following the breadcrumb trail of her mother's past. And if she can't uncover the secrets hidden there, there may be no future for either one of them"--Provided by publisher.

Jim "Zig" Zigarowski puts his life on the line when he and Nola Brown--who is suppsedly dead already--try to reveal the conspiracy in the highest levels of power.

"The darkest and most disturbing case report from the files of Kinsey Millhone, Y is for Yesterday begins in 1979, when four teenage boys from an elite private school sexually assault afourteen-year-old classmate--and film the attack. Not long after, the tape goes missing and the suspected thief, a fellow classmate, is murdered. In the investigation that follows, one boy turns state's evidence and two of his peers are convicted. But the ringleader escapes without a trace. Now, it's 1989 and one of the perpetrators, Fritz McCabe, has been released from prison. Moody, unrepentant, and angry, he is a virtual prisoner of his ever-watchful parents--until a copy of the missing tape arrives with a ransom demand. That's when the McCabes call Kinsey Millhone for help. As she is drawn into their family drama, she keepsa watchful eye on Fritz. But he's not the only one being haunted by the past. A vicious sociopath with a grudge against Millhone may be leaving traces of himself for her tofind"--Provided by publisher.

"Ashford, Vermont, might look like your typical sleepy New England college town, but to the shadowy residents who live among the remains of its abandoned mills and factories, it's known as "Burntown." Eva Sandeski, known as "Necco" on the street, has been a part of this underworld for years, ever since the night her father Miles drowned in a flood that left her and her mother Lily homeless. A respected professor, Miles was also an inventor of fantastic machines, including one so secret that the plans were said to have been stolen from Thomas Edison's workshop. According to Lily, it's this machine that got Miles murdered. Necco has always written off this claim as the fevered imaginings of a woman consumed by grief. But when Lily dies under mysterious circumstances, and Necco's boyfriend is murdered, she's convinced her mother was telling the truth. Now, on the run from the man called "Snake Eyes," Necco must rely on other Burntown outsiders to survive. There are the "fire eaters," mystical women living off the grid in a campsite on the river's edge, practicing a kind of soothsaying inspired by powerful herbs called "the devil's snuff"; there's Theo, a high school senior who is scrambling to repay the money she owes a dangerous man; and then there's Pru, the cafeteria lady with a secret life. As the lives of these misfits intersect, and as the killer from the Sandeski family's past draws ever closer, a story of edge-of-your-seat suspense begins to unfurl with classic Jennifer McMahon twists and surprises"--.

"From the small towns of Appalachia they came, the young men who joined the fight for liberty in World War II. Now they are elderly, and some of them--like Harmon Strayer, father of prosecutor Bell Elkins's former law school classmate--suffer from Alzheimer's. When Harmon dies in an Alzheimer's care facility from what appear to be natural causes, Bell confronts a mystery that brims with questions about memory, grief and the lethal cost of burying the past. During a winter of record snow and cold, Bell and the people of Acker's Gap, West Virginia, face isolation and hardship--and the threat from a killer who preys upon the old and the sick and the helpless"--Provided by publisher.