January New Popular Books
The following new books have been added this month to the Popular Reading Collection located next to the circulation desk.   These books and any other titles currently checked out can be placed on hold.
See a staff member at the circulation desk for assistance.

 

Metro Girl, by Janet Evanovich
Murder at Union Station, by Margaret Truman
I Am Charlotte Simmons, by Tom Wolfe
London Bridges, by James Patterson
Black Wind, by Clive Cussler
Falling Awake, by Jayne Ann Krentz
Night Fall, by Nelson DeMille
Rumpole & the Penge Bungalow Murders, by John Mortimer
Skeleton Man, by Tony Hillerman
Twisted, by Jonathan Kellerman
Loop Group, by Larry McMurtry


 

This Month's Great Escapes
by Bill McCleary

Murder List, by Julie Garwood

Regan Hamilton Madison, single and sexy, helps run the Hamilton hotel chain with her three brothers.  She lives in the Hamilton hotel in Chicago and is in charge of the chain’s charitable foundation.  Her two best friends talk Regan into going to a seminar conducted by a quack self-help guru who preys on wealthy widows.  They want to expose the guru and try to prove he is responsible for the death of one of their friends.  At the seminar, the participants are told to make up a murder list of people they would like to see dead.  Regan is horrified at the exercise but she goes along and composes a list.  After the seminar, she is attacked on the way to her car but manages to escape.  However, during the struggle with her assailant she lost her murder list.  Soon after, the people on her list start ending up dead.  Someone has a serious grudge against her. Detective Alec Buchanan, single and sexy, is detailed to protect her.  He has given his two weeks notice to quit and plans to join the FBI so his boss, who dislikes him, has assigned him to Regan. While Buchanan is investigating the murders, Regan is faxed another murder list—with just her name on it.  This novel was ok but not great.  I couldn’t decide if it was trying to be a romance novel or a suspense novel.  It ended up lacking in both areas.


Seven Dials, by Anne Perry

Thomas Pitt, formerly a policeman, is now working as an investigator for Special Branch, a government agency that handles secret matters or those that may cause problems for the government.  Thomas is dispatched to the home of Ayesha Zakhari, an Egyptian woman, who has been found in her garden with the murdered body of a former lover, a junior British diplomat named Edwin Lovat, whom she knew in Egypt.  Also on hand is a senior cabinet minister, Saville Ryerson, who is Ayesha’s current lover.  Looks like a little bit of a sticky wicket for Thomas.  Ayesha is arrested for the murder and Ryerson as an accomplice but Thomas’s boss, Victor Narraway, is not certain that the case is cut and dried and he sends Thomas to Egypt to find out more information about Ayesha and Lovat.  For Thomas it will be an exotic adventure to a country he has never been to before—and he will learn of a horrible event that happened there.  Meanwhile, Charlotte, Thomas’s wife, and Gracie, their maid, are trying to discover what happened to the brother of a friend of Gracie’s.  He has been working as a valet to Stephen Garrett, a troubled military veteran, and both of them have disappeared.  Their search will also lead them to an Egyptian connection.   Seven Dials, with the solution to the mystery withheld until the very end, is a nice addition to this long-running series. 


The Sunday Philosophy Club, by Alexander McCall Smith

This is the first book in a brand new series by the author of the No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency novels.  I must confess that I haven’t read any of those books but I definitely plan to after finishing this novel.  The main character in this new series is Isabel Dalhousie.  Isabel is in her early forties, single, wealthy, and she lives in Edinburgh, Scotland.  She lives in a large house that is run by her very opinionated housekeeper, Grace.  Besides Grace, Isabel’s closest confidante is her niece, Cat, who runs a delicatessen and seems to always be involved with the wrong man, according to Isabel.  Isabel is the editor of a philosophical journal, the Review of Applied Ethics, and she is a member of the Sunday Philosophy Club, which never seems to meet.  The novel begins with Isabel witnessing the death of a young man, Mark Fraser, who fatally falls from the high balcony of a concert hall as the crowd is leaving after a performance.  Isabel and a friend are the only witnesses to the fall and both leave shaken.  In the next few days Isabel can’t get Mark’s death off her mind.  She thinks the eventual death inquiry will rule Mark’s death an accident but Isabel decides to do some investigating on her own, feeling that as she witnessed his death she somehow has an obligation to him.  As she noses around, with the help of her friends, she begins to believe that his death was no accident.  This novel is a terrific kickoff to this new, delightful series.  The Edinburgh setting is interesting and Isabel is a total joy—you’ll love getting to know her.  There is a mystery to be solved but also liberally sprinkled throughout the book are these wonderful ethical questions and dilemmas that Isabel ponders as she considers both her actions and articles for her journal.  I can’t wait for the next installment.


The Prince of Beverly Hills, by Stuart Woods

When we first meet our ‘prince’, one Rick Barron, (Barron?  Baron?  Hmm…) he is a police detective who has recently been demoted to lowly uniformed patrol in the Beverly Hills of 1939.   While on duty late at night, he witnesses a powerful Mercedes roadster smash into a Ford Model A that had run a stop sign.  The driver of the Ford is killed but the other driver has only sustained minor injuries.  Rick recognizes the Mercedes driver as a famous movie star, Clete Barrow, and he is clearly inebriated.  Thinking fast, Rick calls Clete’s studio, Centurion Pictures, before he reports the accident.  Following the studio’s instructions, he manages to get Clete away from the accident and to the studio’s private doctor, who falsifies Clete’s blood test for alcohol.  The studio head is very grateful that Rick got Clete—and the studio—out of a sticky situation and he offers Rick a job as head of Centurion’s security.   With his career as a policeman going nowhere, Rick eagerly accepts and enters the glamorous world of pre-war Hollywood.  Before he knows it, he’s playing tennis with Greta Garbo and hobnobbing with Clark Gable, Carole Lombard, and David Niven.  His first assignment is to keep an eye on Clete, the studio’s biggest star.  Clete, a heavy drinker, is in the middle of shooting the studio’s most ambitious picture yet and it’s Rick’s job to get him to the set on time—and sober.  Rick’s predecessor at Centurion killed himself and his wife—or did he?  When Rick discovers evidence of foul play in the deaths, he’ll be thrown into the Hollywood underworld of Bugsy Siegel, and a far more deadly and dangerous assignment than babysitting Clete.  The recent novels of Mr. Woods have been continuations of several series he has going and they’ve all been enjoyable.  However, it was a nice surprise to have his latest book be a complete departure with all new characters—and a terrific return to an earlier and always interesting era.  You’ll have a great time following Rick around as he becomes the Prince of Beverly Hills. 


  
 

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Revised Dec. 30, 2004

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