There are two Dr. Temperance Brennan's. Both are forensic an­thro­pol­o­gists. One is the heroine of Kathy Reichs' novels, who, like Reichs herself, is a professor in North Carolina and works with the Montreal police. The other is the star of the TV show, Bones, is brilliant but devoid of social skills, works with the FBI in Washington DC, and has a state-of-the-art lab and a crack team of geeks.

A war has erupted between biker gangs in Montreal. Old bones have been found in the ground, including the skull of a teenaged girl, whose other …continue.

DI John Rebus in­ves­ti­gates the murder of an illegal immigrant, who had ties to asylum seekers in Edinburgh. DS Siobhan Clarke looks into the dis­ap­pear­ance of a teenaged girl; soon, the rapist of the girl's sister is murdered.

Rebus and Siobhan struggle with the uglier side of life in Edinburgh, notably, racism, latter-day slavery, and the increasing numbers of asylum seekers. As usual, their personal lives are in a mess: Rebus drinks too much; Siobhan falls asleep with a tub of ice cream.

As in other Rebus books, the two in­ves­ti­ga­tions …continue.

Bay Tanner is a young widow and aspiring private in­ves­ti­ga­tor from wealthy South Carolina stock. When a hitherto unknown shirt-tail cousin (fifth half cousin, specif­i­cal­ly) bursts into Bay's life, she brings havoc in her train.

As one of the characters says, the plot sounds like a made-for-TV movie. Still, Bay is a feisty heroine and the background is not one that has been mined deeply.

Thomas Shield is a school­mas­ter in Regency England who becomes entangled in the affairs of the Frant and Carswell families, as tutor to the Frant boy and his friend Edgar Allan. Old Mr. Carswell is a domestic tyrant and the former business partner of Mr. Frant. Frant swindles his own bank and is found murdered; the beautiful Mrs. Frant becomes indebted to Carswell.

Shield slowly, almost un­wit­ting­ly untangles what really happened while he is drawn to both Mrs. Frant and Carswell's il­le­git­i­mate daughter. Edgar Allan, who will one day …continue.

Rozan weaves together two stories here, past and present.

Seven children, four boys and three girls, grow up together on Staten Island in the 1960s and 70s. In early adulthood, one of the young men ac­ci­den­tal­ly kills another, then is killed in prison. A third boy, Jimmy McCaffrey, becomes estranged from the others and moves to Manhattan where he rises in the Fire Department.

Jimmy dies in the Twin Towers on 9/11, doing what he did best: saving people. A month later, a washed-up newspaper reporter writes a story in­sin­u­at­ing that …continue.

Sequel to Dark Fire. The hunch­backed lawyer Matthew Shardlake has been sent to York by Archbishop Cranmer to meet the Royal Progress, where Henry VIII is to accept formal surrender from those who had earlier rebelled. Shardlake is to hear petitions on the king's behalf, but really he is there to ensure that a high-ranking con­spir­a­tor is brought safely back to the Tower of London. He stumbles upon a cache of secret papers, which leads to a series of attempts upon his life.

Shardlake, once an ardent support of the reform of the …continue.

A new series from the author of Garnethill. 1981: Paddy Meehan is an 18-year-old Catholic, living at home in working-class Glasgow. She works as a copy boy at a newspaper and aspires to be a journalist. In what seems to be an open-and-shut case, a three-year-old boy is murdered by two unnamed ten-year-olds. One of them is her fiancé's cousin. She blurts that out in shock; the newspaper publishes it, causing her tight-knit community to shun her.

Paddy is forced to do a lot of growing up, while she in­ves­ti­gates who …continue.

Two days into his in­ves­ti­ga­tion of a missing teenage girl, PI Nick Petrov has a seizure that wipes out his recent memories. As he tries to rediscover what it was he was doing, he comes to realize that this case is somehow connected to his most famous case, ten years before.

The brain-damaged detective struggling through a once-easy in­ves­ti­ga­tion made for an in­ter­est­ing story. The plot moves briskly, but by the end has devolved into total im­prob­a­bil­i­ty with gaping holes.

Consider my creduli­ty—and char­i­ty—s­trained.

Later in the series of Cooper-Fry books than Dancing with the Virgins. Detective Constable Ben Cooper's working re­la­tion­ship with Det. Sgt. Diane Fry has improved somewhat, with Fry now according Cooper a modicum of wary respect.

They find themselves separately in­ves­ti­gat­ing two crimes in the remote Derbyshire village of Withens: the dis­ap­pear­ance of a teenage girl two years ago and the recent murder of a young man. At the heart of local matters are the extended Oxley fam­i­ly—­sus­pi­cious, clannish, and looked down upon—and Ben must find out what they …continue.

Twenty years ago, David Marion, then a near-illiterate teenager, was sent to prison for life for the murder of two grown men. Hugh Freyl, a rich, blind lawyer, spots something ex­tra­or­di­nary in him, and spends years educating him behind bars, then securing his release. Now, Freyl has been brutally murdered and David tracks down the killer.

Brady weaves together two stories, Hugh's narrative of the last twenty years and David's in­ves­ti­ga­tion, dove­tail­ing them neatly. David is intense and paranoid, al­ter­nate­ly charming and terrifying those he comes in contact with.

The book is …continue.