Thursday Thirteen #21

These are all books coming out in November (in hardcover). As far as I can remember, all but three of these authors are new to me: Madelyn Alt, Umberto Eco, and Diana Gabaldon. The rest are now on the ever growing list of authors to be read.

1) In Charm's Way by Madelyn Alt

2) Rock Bottom by Sarah Andrews

3) A Dark and Lonely Place by Edna Buchanan

4) The Ionian Sanction by Gary Corby

5) The Templar Magician by P.C. Doherty
6) The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco
7) A Burial at Sea by Charles Finch
8) The Scottish Prisoner by Diana Gabaldon
9) Deed of Murder by Cora Harrison
10) The betrayal of Trust by Susan Hill
11) The Boy in the Suitcase by Lene Kaaberbol
12) The Impossible Dead by ian Rankin
13) Praetorian by Simon Scarrow

Thursday Thirteen #20 Mystery's History

If you've ever wondered about how the detective novel came to be so popular, this list should give you a good place to start.

1) The Book of Daniel and Oedipus Rex both have the main characters questioning witnesses to solve a mystery.
2) In The Three Apples, one of the tales in One Thousand and One Nights, the Caliph’s vizier was charged with finding the killer of a young woman found in a chest, and told to do so within three days or his life was forfeit.
3) Voltaire’s Zadig (1748) an early example of detective fiction.
4) Detective fiction in the English speaking world is considered to have begun with Edgar Allen Poe’s Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841).
5) Charles Dickens’ Bleak House has a mystery as one of its subplots.
6) Wilkie Collins (Charles Dickens’ protégé) is credited with both the “first great mystery novel”, The Lady in White (1860), but also the work considered by both T.S. Eliot and Dorothy L. Sayers to be the best detective story written, The Moonstone (1868).
7) In 1887, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created the master detective, Sherlock Holmes.
8) The 1920s and 30s are considered the golden age of detective fiction, and included the works of Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayres, Ngaio Marsh, and Margery Allingham.
9) During this same period, Rex Stout and Ellery Queen were publishing in America.
10) In 1894, British author Arthur Morrison created the first modern private detective, Martin Hewitt.
11) American authors who produced novels about private eyes included Dashiell Hammett, Jonathan Lattimer, and Erle Stanley Gardner.
12) The late 1930s brought a new private eye, in Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe.
13) The late 1970s and 1980s brought women into the private eye novel with the works of Marcia Muller, Sara Paretsky, and Sue Grafton.

Some of this information was found on Wikipedia, some of it I had read or heard previously, and some can also be found on Stop Your Killing Me.

History's Mysteries - #2

On this list of history's mysteries, the author has used a writer from that particular time period as the protagonist of their mysteries.

Susan Wittig Albert
• Beatrix Potter: author and illustrator in the Lake District in 1900s England

Stephanie Barron
• Jane Austen: the famous author in England

Joanna Challis
• Daphne du Maurier: young aspiring author in 1920s Cornwall, England

Lillian De La Torre
• Dr. Sam. Johnson: the real-life 18th-century lexicographer and sage, in London, England

Mary Devlin
• Geoffrey Chaucer: poet and detective in the late 1300s, in England

Simon Hawke
• Will Shakespeare: young writer, and Tuck Smythe, an aspiring actor, the Elizabethan era’s answer to Holmes and Watson, in London, England

Peter J. Heck
• Mark Twain: 19th century American author, and Wentworth Cabot, his secretary, in the USA

Peter King
•Jack London: the author in the 1890s (before his famous novels) in San Francisco, California

Anna Maclean
• Louisa May Alcott: amateur sleuth before becoming a famous author, in pre-Civil War Boston, Massachusetts

William J. Palmer
• Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens: 19th century writers in London, England

Laura Joh Rowland
• Charlotte Brontë: the author, in mid-1880s England

Harold Schechter
• Edgar Allan Poe: in the 1830s-1840s, in Baltimore, Maryland, New York City, and Massachusetts

Nicola Upson
• Josephine Tey: the mystery writer in 1930s Britain

If you are interested in mysteries set in a certain era, or would like to see more mysteries with writers as the protagonist, check out Stop You're Killing Me.

HISTORY'S MYSTERIES

September 1 marked the 72nd anniversary of the invasion of Poland, and the beginning of World War II. In honor of that event, this is a list of books set during or after that time.

Mignon F. Ballard
• Miss Dimple Kilpatrick: a longtime first-grade teacher during World War II, in Elderberry, Georgia

James R. Benn
• Billy Boyle: Boston cop from a family of Boston cops, on the staff of distant relative, General Eisenhower, during WWII

Tony Broadbent
• Jethro: cat burglar recruited by MI5, in post-WWII London, England

Jim Christy
•Gene Castle: private investigator in late 1930s to 1945 Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Curt Colbert
•Jake Rossiter: private investigator, and Miss Jenkins, a “Gal Friday” in post-World War II Seattle, Washington

R. Cameron Cooke
•Jack Tremain: navy lieutenant commander on submarines in the South Pacific during World War II

Brian Cooper
• John Spencer Lubbock: retired World War II DCI, in Great Britain

Alan Furst
• Jean Casson: film producer caught up in the Resistance during WWII, in German-occupied Paris, France

Tom Gabbay
• Jack Teller: in World War II and later as a CIA agent

Sarah Gainham
• Julia Homburg: leading actress with the Burg Theater in the late 1930s-1940s, in Vienna, Austria

John Gardner
• Suzie Montford: Woman Police Constable in London, England during WWII

Kathryn Miller Haines
• Rosie Winter: an actress during WWII, in Manhattan, New York City

J. Robert Janes
• Jean-Louis St. Cyr, officer in the French Sûreté Nationale, and Herman Kohler, a Gestapo agent, based in 1940s Paris, France

M.T. Jefferson (H. Paul Jeffers)
• Kate Fallon: young woman during World War Two in a small town in Pennsylvania, in the Homefront mysteries

Philip Kerr
• Bernie Gunther: German private eye who hates the Nazis, in Berlin, Germany, 1936-47

Kate Kingsbury
• Lady Elizabeth Hartleigh Compton, in Sitting Marsh, England during WWII, in the Manor House mysteries

Ken Kuhlken
• Tom Hickey: private investigator, in California and Nevada, and the next generation, Clifford Hickey

John Lawton
• Frederick Troy: police sergeant and later Chief Inspector, from the late 1940s to the 1960s, in London, England

This is only a partial list, for more mysteries about WWII, please go to: Stop You're Killing Me

Thursday Thirteen #19- The (Post) Hurricane Edition

I actually had this ready before the hurricane, but was so busy with prepping the library, that I never had the chance to post it. Hopefully everyone has their power back, and didn't have to much damage done to their homes or their cars.

1) Under Pressure by Kathy Brandt

2) The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
3) Riding the Storm by Sidney Croft
4) Hurricane Punch by Tim Dorsey
5) Hurricane Bay by Heather Graham

6) Death Rides an Ill Wind by Kate Grilley

7) Forest Gump by Winston Groom

8)Hurricane by Karen Harper
9) Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

10) Hurricane by Jewel Parker Rhodes

11) The Perfect Storm by Sebatian Junger

12)Isaac's Storm by Erik Larson

13)Storm Chaser by Jim Reed

Thursday Thirteen #18

13 Books Coming Soon (and already on my to be read list)

1) Darkness Unbound

by Keri Arthur

2)In Bed with a Highlander

by Maya Banks
3) Cryoburn

by Lois McMaster Bujold
4)Never Enough

by Lauren Dane

5)Spider's Revenge
by Jennifer Estep

6) One Grave at a Time
by Jeaniene Frost

7) Supernatural

by Larissa Ione, Alexandra Ivy, Jacquelyn Frank, and G.A. Aiken

8) The Pirate King

by Laurie R. King

9) Succubus Revealed

by Richelle Mead

10) Flash and Bones

by Kathy Reichs

11) New York to Dallas

by J.D. Robb

12) Archangel's Blade

by Nalini Singh

13) A Bitter Truth

by Charles Todd

Bonus) Envy

by J.R. Ward

Thursday Thirteen #17

13 Summer Reads

A small sampling of books coming out this summer- a little of everything in the way of beach reads. All of these books are on my list of books to read this summer.

1) Lara Adrian- Deeper than Midnight

2) Gail Carriger- Heartless3) The Hunger Games- Suzanne Collins
4)Never Cry Wolf- Cynthia Eden
5) Elizabeth Gilbert- Eat Pray Love
6) Unlikely Friendships- Jennifer S. Holland
7) Alexander McCall Smith- The No. 1 Ladie's Detective Agency8) Kate Morton- The Forgotten Garden
9) Felix J. Palma- The Map of Time
10) Victoria Thompson- Murder on Sisters' Row
11) Carrie Vaughn- Kitty's Big Trouble
12) J.R. Ward- The Rebel
13) Markus Zusak- The Book Thief