Recent arrivals

A Deal to Die For (Good Buy Girls #2) by Josie Belle (Berkley Prime Crime mass market, 31 December 2012).

Letting no good deal go undone, the Good Buy Girls are ready to pounce on the St. Stanley flea market, where wealthy Vera Madison is selling off her vintage clothing. The widow’s wardrobe is just what Maggie Gerber needs to give her second-hand shop, My Sister’s Closet, the edge over vindictive rival Summer Phillips, who’s opened her own second-hand shop across the street.

But when Vera is found dead, it turns out that she collected enemies like Dior gowns—and had more than a few skeletons in her walk-in closet. Now it’s up to Maggie and the Good Buy Girls to sort through the racks of suspects for the killer and get back to the business of bargains…



Murder Hooks a Mermaid ((Haunted Souvenir Shop #2) by Christy Fifield (Berkley Prime Crime mass market, 31 December 2012).

Inheriting her great-uncle Louis’s bayside souvenir shop should have been a breeze for Glory. Instead it’s been one headache after another—with a lot of them generated by Bluebeard, a parrot with a mouth like a sailor and a personality a lot like her late great-uncle. But Glory’s troubles pale in comparison to those of her best friend Karen, whose ex may still have the personalized key chain to her heart, but whose brother-in-law is about to get locked up.

 

A diver has been found with a gaff hook in his chest, and Karen turns to Glory to help get her brother-in-law off the hook for his murder. But casting the net for the real killer won’t be easy. Glory and Bluebeard are about to find out that the secrets in Keyhole Bay run deeper than anyone ever imagined…

 

 

Murder for the Halibut (Clueless Cook #3) by Liz Lipperman (Berkley Prime Crime mass market, 31 December 2012).

Tempted by the offer of a free Caribbean cruise, Jordan accepts a spot as a judge in a week-long big-time cooking competition aboard the Carnation Queen. She just better hope no one finds out that her famous palate is far from refined.

But there are bigger fish to fry when arrogant chef Stefano Mancini falls face first into his signature halibut dish during the first event. While evidence suggests that the handsome Italian chef’s death was an accident, Jordan thinks otherwise. But she’ll have to keep her wits about her—and the sea sickness pills handy—if she’s going to solve this one…  



Panic Button (Button Box #3) by Kylie Logan (Berkley Prime Crime mass market, 31 December 2012).

Josie is approached at her shop to appraise a very rare item—a complete charm string. In Victorian times, girls strung buttons on long strings to make the charms. Once the string reached 1,000 buttons—no two alike—the legend was that the owner would meet her beloved.

But the owner of this charm string is not looking for love—she’s desperate to donate the piece to a museum and be rid of it. She believes the string is far from charmed—it’s cursed. When Josie finds the woman strangled with the charm string, she doesn’t know whether the curse is real…but the killer certainly is.



A Function of Murder (Professor Sophie Knowles #3) by Ada Madison (Berkley Prime Crime mass market, 31 December 2012).

At the math department’s graduation party, Sophie hears heated arguments coming from the graduates about Mayor Graves, the commencement speaker. Not the mayor’s biggest fan, Sophie is happy to escape the drama with an after-hours campus stroll accompanied by her helicopter-piloting boyfriend, Bruce Granville. However, their date is interrupted by the mayor himself—with a knife in his back.

As it turns out, the knife is actually a Henley College letter opener—something that is gifted to every member of the graduating class. Sophie is led to a complicated puzzle of scandal and corruption, and it seems that Mayor Graves is at the apex of it all. When Sophie finds out that the mayor was seeking her help on the day he was murdered, she must use her top-notch logic to crack the puzzle and catch the killer running free on campus…