A tourist discovers a body in a suit of armor on display at an English country estate. Suspicion centers on the owning family whose archetypical members are superbly portrayed by Robin Bailey. His takeoff on the two aged aunts is just delicious. Distinction is made, as it is in British society, between the aristocrats and ordinary folk like Detective Sloan, a continuing Aird sleuth. One senses that both writer and reader are having fun with this one. Bailey has read other of Aird's "cosy" mysteries, but has died, so this is the end. Views: 32
Santa Catarina, a convent near Venice, is home to over one hundred women in 1567. But with powerful forces for change raging outside the convent, and with the world of the women within threatened by a new arrival, passions, hysteria, and conflict will come to threaten their very survival.
By the second half of the sixteenth century, the price of wedding dowries had risen so sharply within Catholic Europe that most noble families could not afford to marry off more than one daughter. The remaining young women were dispatched—for a much lesser price—to convents. Historians estimate that in the great towns and city-states of Italy up to half of all noblewomen became nuns. Not all of them went willingly… This story takes place in the northern Italian city of Ferrara in 1570, in the convent of Santa Caterina. Views: 32
In book two in the Daniel Swann series, former British agent Daniel Swann is living in semi-retirement in Hong Kong when he receives a call for help from his old friend Thai drug lord Sami Somsak. Sami's stepbrother and his family have been murdered, and Sami's brainchild, the $6-billion Intella Island project, Singapore's largest offshore construction, is in jeopardy. When Swann attempts to retrieve vital evidence hidden in Fort Siloso, a bloody gun battle erupts on Sentosa island, and staid, quiet Singapore becomes a raging battlefield. Chinese Triads, a ruthless Colombian drug cartel and a shipping container holding $2 billion dollars converge on Singapore as Swann and his associates battle to save the Intella Island project and seek their revenge on Singapore's unscrupulous Thomas Lu—the man they call The Undertaker. Views: 32
From School Library JournalYANCEY, Rick. The Curse of the Wendigo. Bk. 2. 423p. (Monstrumologist Series). S & S. 2010. Tr $17.99. ISBN 978-1-4169-8450-4; ebook $9.99. ISBN 978-1-4169-8973-8. LC number unavailable. ~Gr 9 Up–Will Henry, assistant to monstrumologist Pellinore Warthrop, finds a woman at his doorstep who seeks Warthrop's help in recovering her missing husband. He vanished while in search of a mythical creature known as the Wendigo, a vampirelike monster whose hunger for human flesh is insatiable. Will Henry and Warthrop travel to Canada to find Jack Fiddler, a Native shaman who was the last person to see Chanler alive. While he puts forward a supernatural scenario for Chanler's disappearance, Warthrop is convinced that there is a rational scientific explanation for everything, even when faced with seemingly incontrovertible evidence to the contrary. His stubborn commitment to the rational is challenged by his own mentor, Dr. von Helrung, who is about to propose that the Monstrumology Society accept mythological monsters as real. Refusing to accept what Chanler has become, Warthrop ends up endangering not only himself and Will but also the only woman he has ever loved. The style is reminiscent of older classic horror novels, such as Bram Stoker's Dracula, mixed with the storytelling sensibilities of Dickens. The ever-present, explicitly detailed, over-the-top, disgusting gore, however, is very much a product of modern times. The Curse of the Wendigo is certain to be popular with fans of The Monstrumologist (S & S, 2009), and the horror genre in general, but the disturbing, cynical tone makes the most appropriate audience for this book uncertain.–Tim Wadham, St. Louis County Library, MO. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. FromStarred Review Examples of literary horror don’t come much finer than The Monstrumologist (2009), and Yancey’s second volume sustains that high bar with lush prose, devilish characterizations, and more honest emotion than any book involving copious de-facings (yes, you read that right) ought to have. The new case: lepto luranis, aka the Wendigo, a vampiric creature whose mythic origins have monstrumologists divided. If they accept the existence of mystic shape-shifters, is not their “science” balderdash? Dr. Pellinore Warthrop has no interest until his former true love appears and begs him to find her husband—once Warthrop’s best friend—who has gone missing in search of the creature. Yes, female characters have arrived to the series and smashingly so, none better than Lilly, the talkative 13-year-old scientist who gives Warthrop’s faithful assistant, Will, his first kiss. The Monstrumologist was more propulsive, but the worthy trade-off here is the introduction of an alternate, monster-plagued 1888 New York, complete with irresistible historical cameos. So far, Yancey has written both books in the Monstrumologist series as if they were the last, going for broke and playing for keeps, no matter who or what ends up on the chopping block. This is Warthrop’s The Hound of the Baskervilles; if we hold our breath, maybe part 3 will come faster. Grades 9-12. --Daniel Kraus
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SUMMARY:
Class is in, but Evangeline Hollis is struggling to get through the requisite training to be a full-fledged Mark. When her class goes on a field trip to an abandoned military base, passing the course isn’t just a matter of pride…it’s a matter of life and death. There’s a demon hidden among them, killing off Eve’s classmates one by one. As the body count mounts, a ragtag team of cable TV ghost hunters unwittingly stumbles into the carnage. Now keeping the Mark system secret competes with the need to keep the “paranormal researchers” alive. With Cain on assignment and Abel on an investigation, Eve must fly solo on her hunt to stop a killer before he strikes again. Views: 32
A collection of classic reprints and four original stories featuring Sherlock Holmes In bringing to a close the adventures of my friend Sherlock Holmes, I am perforce reminded that he never, save on the occasion which, as you will now hear, brought his singular career to an end, consented to act in any mystery which was concerned with persons who made a livelihood by their pen. "I am not particular about the people I mix among for business purposes," he would say, "but at literary characters I draw the line." We were in our rooms in Baker Street one evening. I was (I remember) by the centre table writing out "The Adventure of the Man Without a Cork Leg" (which had so puzzled the Royal Society and all the other scientific bodies of Europe), and Holmes was amusing himself with a little revolver practice. It was his custom of a summer evening to fire round my head, just shaving my face, until he had made a photograph of me on the opposite wall, and it... Views: 32
Covert government operative Danielle Laidlaw leads an expedition into the deepest reaches of the Amazon in search of a legendary Mayan city. Assisted by a renowned university professor and protected by a mercenary named Hawker, her team journeys into the tangled rain forest — unaware that they are replacements for a group that vanished weeks before, and that the treasure they are seeking is no mere artifact but a breakthrough discovery that could transform the world. Shadowed by a ruthless billionaire, threatened by a violent indigenous tribe, and stalked by an unseen enemy that leaves battered corpses in its wake, the group desperately seeks the connection between the deadly reality of the Mayan legend, the nomadic tribe that haunts them, and the chilling secret buried beneath the ancient ruins. Views: 32
Joe Gunther, a Brattleboro, Vermont, cop, is the head of the new Vermont
Bureau of Investigation (VBI), a joint task force charged with
statewide responsibility for major crimes. In The Marble Mask, the VBI's
first case takes the force north to Stowe, where a 50-year-old corpse
has turned up in a crevasse on Mt. Mansfield. Some of the more
interesting minor characters in author Archer Mayor's long-running
series about the amiable elder sleuth make return appearances here as
Joe's teammates--like one-armed Willy, a former wife-beater who's now
playing footsie with Sammie Martens, one of Joe's favorite colleagues.
When the frozen stiff turns out to be a (formerly) big-time Canadian
crime boss named Jean Deschamps, who disappeared after World War II, Joe
and his gang cross the border to work with the Mounties, the Sûreté,
and the local cops in Sherbrooke, where Deschamps's son Marcel is
involved in a turf war with the Hell's Angels and a rival gang of thugs.
Old secrets and intrigues come to light while an intricate plan to
frame a dying man for a crime half a century old forms an interesting
puzzle that's not fully revealed until the last couple of pages. Views: 32
