Recently received

A Thinking Man's Bully by Michael Adelberg (The Permanent Press hc, 1 December 2011, $26.00).
Matt Duffy is in crisis. His son, Jack, is a high school bully who attempts suicide after Matt snuffs out a fast-moving teen romance. Outwardly, Matt is fine, but inside he is filled with guilt and resentment. Matt reluctantly agrees to see a psychiatrist who pushes him to explore his fractious parenting and his own bullying past. The end result is a collection of Matt’s most important, outrageous, macabre, and indelible memories.

The Dressmaker by Kate Alcott (Doubleday hc, 21 February 2012, $25.95).
Tess, an aspiring seamstress, thinks she's had an incredibly lucky break when she is hired by famous designer Lady Lucile Duff Gordon to be a personal maid on the Titanic's doomed voyage. Once on board, Tess catches the eye of two men, one a roughly-hewn but kind sailor and the other an enigmatic Chicago millionaire. But on the fourth night, disaster strikes.

The Fine Art of Murder (Murder She Wrote) by Jessica Fletcher & Donald Bain (Obsidian hc, 4 October 2011, $23.95).
While on vacation in Italy, Jessica joins a tour that takes her to where lesser-known Italian masterworks are displayed-and where a pair of young Italian gunmen steal a painting off a church wall, killing an off-duty policeman in the process.
Agreeing to help identify the crooks at a later date should they be caught, Jessica returns to Cabot Cove and puts the shocking experience behind her. But months later, both art and death land on her doorstep when the son of an old friend appears to beg her for help in solving his mother's murder.

The Chocolate Castle Clue (Chocoholic #11) by JoAnna Carl (NAL hc, 4 October 2011, $22.95).
Lee McKinney Woodyard discovers a dusty trophy inside TenHuis Chocolade that belongs to her aunt Nettie and her old high school singing group, the Pier-O-Ettes. It's a trophy that brings back terrible memories of an unsolved murder years ago.
Before Lee takes aim at the past, someone is murdered in the here and now. Lee needs to keep her eyes on the prize, hoping the trophy is a clue to finding the killer-before she's a target herself.

Skeleton Letters (Scrapbooking #9) by Laura Childs (Berkley Prime Crime hc, 4 October 2011, $25.95).
Is nothing sacred? The last thing Carmela Bertrand and her friend Ava expected to bear witness to in St. Tristan's Church was a crime. But now a beloved member of their scrapbooking circle lies lifeless next to a smashed statue of St. Sebastien-and a mysterious hooded figure has absconded with an antique crucifix.
As Carmela and Ava are drawn deeper into New Orleans' French Quarter in search of the missing crucifix, they may need the help of more than a few patron saints, because this is one killer they don't want to cross...

The Twoweeks by Larry Duberstein (The Permanent Press hc, 1 November 2011, $28.00).
Cal and Lara are happily married, though (problematically) not to one another. And though they came of age in the sexual wilderness of the 1960's, neither is seeking to expand any sexual horizons now, 10 years later.
Nevertheless, they find themselves in what each presumes to be an altogether trite situation--committed to monogamy and fidelity, yet so powerfully drawn together that their "Fall" seems inevitable.
The way out proposed by Lara, a "Twoweeks" carved out of their normal, predictable lives, is intended of course to take two weeks and be done with.

Wishes and Stitches (Cypress Hollow #3) by Rachael Herron (William Morrow tp, 11 October 2011, $13.99).It has always been Naomi Fontaine’s dream to practice small-town medicine—an ambition that brought her to Cypress Hollow, the charming, tight-knit community her late friend, knitting guru Eliza Carpenter, loved so well. But no matter how hard she tries, Naomi can’t seem to fit in here. Then rugged Rig Keller moves in to take over half of Naomi’s medical practice, and instantly charms everyone in town . . . including Naomi.


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