Split Image, by Robert Parker

Petrov Ognowski is dead. A bullet bounced around inside his skull for about six hours before “Suit” Simpson, a patrol officer in the small Massachusetts town of Paradise, found the body. Petrov worked for Reggie Galen, one of two crime bosses who call Paradise home. The other, Knocko Moynihan, lives across the street from Galen. Suit’s boss, chief of police Jesse Stone, finally has occasion to find out why two onetime rivals choose to be neighbors. (Seems they married twin sisters, Rebecca and Roberta, known as the Bang Bang Twins in high school.) Reggie and Knocko are shocked about Petrov’s fate but give Jesse no help with the case. In the meantime, Jesse, still hurting from the latest breakup with his ex-wife, is helping old friend, private detective Sunny Randall, track down a teenager who has moved in with a New Age commune. The three nonconverging plotlines are linked by one theme: the search for love—the two mobsters with their Bang Bang twins; the teenager, denied affection from her rigidly aristocratic parents, with her commune cohorts; and Jesse and Sunny with each other. And the crimes? The commune is more creepy than comfy, and the Bang Bang Twins may have set in motion a series of events that will lead to violence.

Saving Cee Cee Honeycutt, by Beth Hoffman

Momma always told CeeCee (short for Cecelia Rose) that “being in the North isn’t living—it’s absolute hell.” Of course, having to live with Momma—Camille Sugarbaker Honeycutt, that is, Vidalia Onion Queen, 1951—doesn’t make it any more heavenly, especially when Momma starts standing in the front yard blowing kisses to passersby. You know this is going to end badly, and so it does, when the erstwhile onion queen is run over by a speeding Happy Cow Ice Cream Truck. Before you can say “sweet magnolia blossoms,” 12-year-old CeeCee is sent off to Savannah to live with her elderly great aunt, Tallulah Caldwell, and her wise African American housekeeper and cook, Oletta. It being 1967, you know there will be one dark episode of racial hatred, but it’s quickly—and conveniently—resolved offstage, leaving all the characters free to continue being relentlessly eccentric, upbeat, sweet as molasses, and living, as CeeCee puts it with a straight face, “in a breezy, flower-scented fairy tale . . . a strange, perfumed world that . . . seemed to be run entirely by women.”

The Pallbearers, by Steven J. Cannell

Walter “Pop” Dix was the director of Huntington House, an orphanage and halfway house for children in between foster homes. He was a surrogate father to hundreds of troubled kids, among them Shane Scully of the LAPD. Dix was also a surfer, and among the few fond memories Scully has of his childhood are the early-morning surf sessions with Dix at Huntington Beach. Scully had lost touch with his mentor, though, until word arrives that Dix has committed suicide. In his papers, Dix names Scully, along with five other former residents of the home, as his preferred pallbearers. The six concur that Dix would never have committed suicide, and Scully reluctantly agrees to look into the already-closed investigation. The case drags Scully and his ragtag team into the brutal world of professional mixed martial arts fighting and into an elaborate embezzlement scheme involving Huntington House and several other child-care facilities.

Caught, by Harlan Coban

17-year-old Haley McWaid is a good girl, the pride of her suburban New Jersey family, captain of the lacrosse team, headed off to college next year with all the hopes and dreams her doting parents can pin on her. Which is why, when her mother wakes one morning to find that Haley never came home the night before, and three months quickly pass without word from the girl, the community assumes the worst. Wendy Tynes is a reporter on a mission, to identify and bring down sexual predators via elaborate—and nationally televised—sting operations. Working with local police on her news program Caught in the Act, Wendy and her team have publicly shamed dozens of men by the time she encounters her latest target. Dan Mercer is a social worker known as a friend to troubled teens, but his story soon becomes more complicated than Wendy could have imagined. In a novel that challenges as much as it thrills, filled with the astonishing tension and unseen suburban machinations that have become Coben’s trademark, Caught tells the story of a missing girl, the community stunned by her loss, the predator who may have taken her, and the reporter who suddenly realizes she can’t trust her own instincts about this story—or the motives of the people around her.

Fantasy In Death, by J.D. Robb

Lt. Eve Dallas, a top homicide cop for the New York Police Department, faces one of the more challenging cases of her career in bestseller Robb’s exciting 31st in death novel (after Kindred in Death). When someone cuts off the head of Bart Minnock, the genius founder of the computer gaming company U-Play, apparently while he was role-playing against an imaginary opponent in a prototype of a fantasy adventure that could rock the industry, Eve investigates. Security logs show no one entered Minnock’s building around the time of his murder, presenting a futuristic variation on the classic locked-room mystery. Aided by her husband, Roarke, who was a potential business rival of the victim, Dallas focuses on who would benefit from Minnock’s death. Robb is the pseudonym of romantic suspense author Nora Roberts.

The Girl Who Chased The Moon, by Sarah Addison Allen

Allen’s latest book takes the familiar setup of a young protagonist returning to the small town where her elusive mother was raised, and subverts it by sprinkling just enough magic into the narrative to keep things lively but short of saccharine. Seventeen-year-old Emily Benedict, intent on learning more about her mother, Dulcie, moves in with her grandfather, but is disappointed to find that her grandfather doesn’t want to talk much about Dulcie. She soon discovers, though, that many still hold a grudge against Dulcie for the way she treated an old sweetheart before dumping him and disappearing. Luckily, Dulcie’s high school adversary, Julia Winterson, back in town to pay down her deceased father’s debt, takes a shine to Emily. She’s working another quest as well: baking cakes every day with the hope that they’ll somehow attract the daughter she gave up for adoption years ago. There are love interests, big family secrets, and magical happenings (color-changing wallpaper, mysterious lights) aplenty as Allen charts the spiraling inter-generational stories, bringing everything together in an unexpected way.

Hell Gate, by Linda Fairstein

What do a boatload of illegal immigrants, a congressman, and the body of young woman who has been stabbed in the chest have in common? Not quite what you think. And that’s part of the beauty of Fairstein’s latest, which takes a fairly routine bunch of crime-fiction elements and twists them into something unexpected. As usual, readers get a taste of the city along with its political wrangling as Fairstein invests her plot with dollops of her beloved Big Apple’s architecture and history. This time it’s a trio of Federalist mansions, including Gracie Mansion (the official mayoral residence) that take center stage, with their background judiciously but intriguingly limned as each one plays into the story. Providing legal expertise is prosecutor Alexandra Cooper, who works hard to maintain the integrity of her office while maneuvering around New York’s most powerful politicos. On hand, as usual, is her sidekick-partner, the smart, argumentative cop Mike Chapman, whose teasing keeps the counselor on her toes and occasionally off balance.

The First Rule, by Robert Crais

When garment importer Frank Meyer and his family are executed in their Los Angeles home at the start of Crais’s adrenaline-fueled thriller, LAPD detectives soon connect Meyer to Joe Pike, who knew each other from their days as military contractors. Pike is convinced that Meyer, who left soldiering to start a family, wasn’t dirty, even though his murder is the seventh in a series of violent robberies where the victims were all professional criminals. Determined to clear his friend’s name, Pike discovers that Frank’s nanny and her family have ties to Eastern European organized crime. With the help of PI partner Elvis Cole, Pike engages in a dangerous—and not always legal—game of cat and mouse with some of the city’s most dangerous crooks. Pike emerges as an enigmatically appealing hero, whose lethal skills never overshadow his unflappable sense of morality.

Angelology, by Danielle Trussoni

Through the door opened by The DaVinci Code comes Trussoni’s entry in the religious-society suspense subgenre, its textured prose as seamless as the never-ending stream of prayers offered up by St. Rose Convent’s Sisters of Perpetual Adoration. In that institution, celebrated for its angelic texts, lives Sister Evangeline, who prays, tends to library matters, and has become “a creature of obedience and duty” since her father brought her there when she was 12, two years after her mother’s death. The scholar Verlaine seeks concrete evidence linking the convent to Abigail Rockefeller, and before you can say, “I found this letter,” the multilayered process of Evangeline’s transformation has begun. The story takes flight in eminently readable fashion, effortlessly folding in technical information about things angelic and the religious life. It’s hard not to enjoy the secrets unearthed and appreciate what wings are to the angels who secretly walk among us—“a symbol of their blood, their breeding, . . . their position in the community. Displaying them properly brought power and prestige

The Honor Of Spies, by W.E.B. Griffin

This is an excellent addition to the Honor Bound series, written in the marvelous, action-packed Griffin style. Griffin packs in a wonderful combination of WWII, Argentine and American history. Cletus Frade continuous to support both the American and Argentinian causes, and the heroic saga continues, with Juan Peron continuing to emerge as a less than desirable leader of Argentina. The bad guys and good guys battle it out in Argentina, while Eva (Evita) Duarte starts to exercise her influence on Juan Peron. Another great Griffin story with heroes and villains on all sides.

Hush, by Kate White

Newly divorced 44-year-old marketing consultant Lake Warren finds her latest job devising a marketing plan for a Manhattan fertility clinic rewarding until her ex-husband, Jack, sues for full custody of their two young children. While her lawyer warns her not even to date so Jack won’t have leverage against her, Lake gives in to a one-night stand with the clinic’s flirtatious Dr. Keaton. After falling asleep on his penthouse terrace, Lake wakes to find Keaton murdered. Worried that the police will accuse her of the murder, Lake begins her own investigation until she learns that someone is stalking her. A subplot about the clinic’s questionable practices adds to the tension, but doesn’t detract from the main plot with its myriad twists.

The Postmistress, by Sarah Blake

Weaving together the stories of three very different women loosely tied to each other, debut novelist Blake takes readers back and forth between small town America and war-torn Europe in 1940. Single, 40-year-old postmistress Iris James and young newlywed Emma Trask are both new arrivals to Franklin, Mass., on Cape Cod. While Iris and Emma go about their daily lives, they follow American reporter Frankie Bard on the radio as she delivers powerful and personal accounts from the London Blitz and elsewhere in Europe. While Trask waits for the return of her husband—a volunteer doctor stationed in England—James comes across a letter with valuable information that she chooses to hide. Blake captures two different worlds—a naïve nation in denial and, across the ocean, a continent wracked with terror—with a deft sense of character and plot, and a perfect willingness to take on big, complex questions, such as the merits of truth and truth-telling in wartime.

Wild Ride, by Jennifer Crusie

Mary Alice Brannigan doesn’t believe in the supernatural. Nor does she expect to find that Dreamland, the decaying amusement park she’s been hired to restore, is a prison for the five Untouchables, the most powerful demons in the history of the world. Plus, there’s a guy she’s falling hard for, and there’s something about him that’s not quite right.
Rocky romances and demented demons aren’t the only problems in Dreamland: Mab’s also coping with a crooked politician, a supernatural raven, a secret government agency, an inexperienced sorceress, an unsettling inheritance, and some mind-boggling reve- lations from her past. As her personal demons wreck her newfound relationship and real demons wreck the park, Mab faces down immortal evil and discovers what everybody who’s ever been to an amusement park knows: The end of the ride is always the wildest.

Shattered, by Karen Robards

While growing up on a prestigious horse farm, Lisa Grant took her exalted position in life for granted, growing close to her mother after her parents divorced. So she doesn’t hesitate to leave her law practice in Boston to take care of her mother, who is suffering from ALS and impending financial ruin. Lisa is lucky to get a job as a research assistant for District Attorney Scott Buchanan, her former lowly neighbor who made good. As a teen, Lisa tortured Scott with sexual innuendos, while he did odd jobs for her mother, and now it is Scott’s turn to lord it over Lisa. Sexual tension crackles between the two, but when Lisa is late for court, Scott orders her to work on cold-case files. On her first foray, she finds a picture of a missing family, and the mother looks just like her. Suddenly, her life becomes harrowing. With no one else to turn to, she confides in Scott, who, surprisingly, agrees to help, knowing that Lisa won’t like what they discover. Robards proves once again to be a master of romantic suspense, creating likable characters and an intriguing, well-paced, and nail-biting plot.

The Things That Keep Us Here, by Carla Buckley

Research veterinarian Peter Brooks discovers a large flock of pintail ducks floating dead in the Ohio lake he has been monitoring. The ducks show symptoms of avian flu – but there should not be such a massive die-off. When he takes them back to his research lab, he soon finds out that they are dead of a mutated flu virus – called H5N1 – for which humans have no immunity and for which there is no vaccine. It quickly spreads, killing 50 of every 100 people it infects. The family quickly finds itself trapped in their house, afraid to go out, afraid to allow neighbors in, without power, and running out of food and water. Ms. Buckley has done a superb job with this book! Her science is accurate. It is explained sufficiently through the story for the reader to understand. Her story is extremely well written, so the writing itself does not interfere with the buildup of adrenaline that I expect every reader will feel. This could be real!

Pretty Dead, by Francesca Block

Charlotte Emerson is tall and beautiful, and lives by herself in a gorgeous mansion. She’s also a vampire. Before she turned, she was a bright young woman with an idyllic life. Then her beloved twin died, and his death so devastated her that she had to find a way to dull the pain. Thus, she became a vampire, a decision that has haunted her for nearly 100 years. Now she is faced with another tragic loss: that of her best friend, Emily, to an apparent suicide. Lost and lonelier than before, she seeks comfort and solace in Emily’s boyfriend, Jared. At first, he is bitter and angry with her, but she opens up to him, telling him about her past, and they eventually fall in love. But there is one secret that she keeps from him: she suspects that she may, somehow, be turning into a human again. When Charlotte’s maker, William, returns to taunt her, Charlotte is forced to face a horrific mistake from her past that may cost her everything. In Pretty Dead, Block takes what has up to now been the norm among vampire novels for teens and attempts to turn it on its head. This is a startlingly original work that drives a stake deep into the heart of typical vampire stories, revealing the deep loneliness and utter lack of romance in eternal life.
(young adult)

The Survivors Club, by Ben Sherwood

Sherwood, a writer for the L.A. Times, travels worldwide to gain insight from people who have survived a slew of near fatal phenomena ranging from a mountain lion attack to a Holocaust concentration camp, and interviewing an array of experts to understand the psychology, genetics and jumble of other little things that determines whether we live or die. Readers curious about their own survivor profile can take an Internet test, which is explained in the books later pages. Sherwoods assertion that survival is a way of perceiving the world around you is enlightening, as are some of the facts he uncovers.