After her Aunt Penelope dies, historical researcher Penny Nichols is astonished to learn that not only is she a bona fide heiress-but she's also been invited to put her research skills to work. This time, the history she's researching happens to be her very own. What she discovers about Aunt Penelope-a pair of wills, double lives, secret histories, and a family tree of vultures-is about to sweep Penny and a long-lost relative across France, over the hills of Italy, and throughout half of Europe on the adventure of several lifetimes.
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Seven years ago, Stoney Calhoun woke up in a VA hospital with no memories. He still remembers nothing from before then, except that he has a few unexplained skills--a gift for angling, an ability to read French--and recently it's been made clear to him that it would be best if he never does. Working as a guide on Casco Bay, Stoney is out with a client on an early morning fly fishing expedition when they find the charred remains of a recent corpse on a small, uninhabited island. A couple of days later, Calhoun's client turns up in the driveway of Stoney's cabin in the woods--shot dead in the front seat of his SUV. In the midst of a couple of inexplicable murders, both of which clearly have something to do with Stoney, past or present, it's up to him find out the truth...or risk becoming the next victim.From Publishers WeeklyThe pleasures of the outdoors lift the second Stoney Calhoun novel (after 2004's Bitch Creek) from Tapply, best known for his many mysteries about Boston lawyer Brady Coyne (Out Cold, etc.). Stoney, who lost his memory when he was struck by lightning years earlier, knows how to tie a gray ghost—a fly used for salmon—as well as other skills useful to his new life as half-owner of a bait shop in Portland, Maine. Occasionally, hints about his past arrive like muscle twinges—survival skills of the sort learned in law enforcement, reinforced by infrequent visits from "a grayish, nondescript guy from some government agency who'd been sent to keep an eye on him." But Stoney is mostly on his own as he struggles to find out why a burned corpse turns up on a small island, and why the fishing client who was with him when they discovered the body is also killed. Readers will look forward to learning more about Tapply's new character, who with any luck will be around as long as Brady Coyne. (Mar.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From BooklistSeven years ago Stony Calhoun emerged from a VA hospital with the memory of his previous life ostensibly obliterated by a direct lightning strike. He has curious attributes of unknown origin, including proficiency in hand-to-hand combat and knowledge of criminal investigation. Settled into a nondescript but contented life as a partner in a fishing-guide business on the coast of Maine, Stony believes his synaptic gap is a good thing. Then he and a client discover the charred remains of an anonymous body on an uninhabited island, and later, the client is murdered on the porch of Stony's isolated cabin. The local sheriff, who used Stony's investigatory skills in Bitch Creek (2004), enlists his reluctant cooperation again. Nothing is as it appears as Stony's role morphs from witness to suspect to investigator to target. Tapply, best known to mystery fans as the author of the delightful Brady Coyne series, presents a complex plot with wonderful characters while teasing readers with small hints about his protagonist's murky past. Here's hoping this series will take hold the way the Coyne novels did decades ago. Wes LukowskyCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Views: 54
A love story unfolds during the dramatic journey of the determined Cheyenne people from Indian Territory back to their Montana homeland and the mighty Powder River The northern Cheyenne still call the Powder River country their sacred home. But now, held captive far to the south in so-called Indian Territory, the remnants of this once-mighty nation are growing feeble and dying. To survive, they must battle their way across fifteen hundred miles to their ancestral home, fending off pursuit by thousands of well-armed soldiers. Among the outnumbered band are Adam Smith Maclean, born both white and Cheyenne, and his wife, Elaine, a New Englander determined to stand by Adam and his desperate, daring Cheyenne family. Together they embark on the arduous trek through the hostile heart of the white man's West toward the welcoming banks of the Powder River. Views: 54
On a rust-bucket cargo ship bound from Liverpool to the United States in 1848, an Irish stowaway named Devlin steals a suspicious package after witnessing it changing hands between two sea captains. All he finds is a seemingly worthless pile of papers marked “David Copperfield, Final Four Numbers, by Charles Dickens.” Devlin is determined to see if he can somehow turn events to his advantage by paying a call on Dickens’s American publisher. A year later, a newly admitted patient to a Baltimore hospital, a disreputable writer who goes by the name of Edgar Allan Poe, is clearly raving mad, which makes it easy to dismiss his claims to have information about the murder of an innocent woman. Meanwhile, the eminent English novelist Charles Dickens has embarked on a tour of America, where his views are not received as he would have wished. Dickens’s growing discomfort reaches new heights of... Views: 54
