The Baroness’ Choices of New Books Publishing This Week
2024, Week 15’s New Books
My choices for this week include Cozy Historical Mystery, Historical Thriller, Cozy Culinary Mystery, MG, Cozy Animal Mystery, and Traditional Mystery.
It’s the second week of April. How are we all doing? Does anyone have any plants popping up? We added a few new plants to the front yard, and Jen is still deciding what to do in the back. If we were in Montana, we wouldn’t even be thinking about flowers yet. However, in Texas, spring is here. I do love seeing the flowers bloom, though, as they are so pretty.
Jen is the only one who has a book review out of this crop of books.
Here are my choices for New Books Publishing Week 15 of 2024!
A Body at the Dance Hall by Marty Wingate
London Ladies’ Murder Club #3
Publication Date: April 8, 2024
Genre: Cozy Historical Mystery
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1922. Amateur sleuth Mabel Canning is surrounded by the bright lights of London as she chaperones a young American woman to a dance. But when someone is murdered, a deadly tango begins…
Meet plucky woman-about-town Mabel Canning, leader of the London Ladies’ murder club and trusted assistant to gentlewomen. When she is tasked with accompanying Roxy, a fun-loving heiress, on a glamorous night out, Mabel can’t wait to sip champagne and practice the foxtrot. But just as Roxy sashays out of sight, a mysterious man warns Mabel that the feisty young redhead is in danger. And someone is dead before the music stops…
Roxy was the last person to see the victim alive, and she stumbles into Mabel’s arms with her daffodil-yellow dress splashed with blood. Determined to protect her ward, Mabel gathers her dashing beau Winstone and her pals from the murder club. Together they trace the weapon back to the ballroom, but when its twin goes missing, it is clear time is running out to prevent another murder on the dance floor…
The police conclude the killer is in Roxy’s family, but Mabel finds herself spinning between a motley troupe of suspects. Mr Bryars, the anxious ballroom manager, is constantly tripping over himself to hide his secrets. But would he kill to protect his reputation? And young Ned Kettle may have looked dashing while waltzing around with Roxy, but he was once a notorious thief. Is the sticky-fingered rogue also a dab hand at murder?
Just as Mabel and her murder club friends quickstep closer to the truth, Roxy is kidnapped, and Mabel comes cheek to cheek with the killer. Can she save poor Roxy and herself? Or has she danced her last dance?
A delightfully witty and utterly addictive whodunnit absolutely bursting with 1920s sparkle, from USA Today bestselling author Marty Wingate. Perfect for fans of Agatha Christie, Richard Osman, Verity Bright and T.E. Kinsey.
A Killing on the Hill by Robert Dugoni
Publication Date: April 9, 2024
Genre: Historical Thriller
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A gripping new thriller from New York Times bestselling author Robert Dugoni.
The Great Depression. High-level corruption. And a murder that’s about to become Seattle’s hottest mystery. It’s the kind of story that can make a reporter’s career. If he lives to write about it.
Seattle, 1933. The city is in the grips of the Great Depression, Prohibition, and vice. Cutting his teeth on a small-time beat, hungry and ambitious young reporter William “Shoe” Shumacher gets a tip that could change his career. There’s been a murder at a social club on Profanity Hill―an underworld magnet for vice crimes only a privileged few can afford. The story is going to be front-page news, and Shoe is the first reporter on the scene.
The victim, Frankie Ray, is a former prizefighter. His accused killer? Club owner and mobster George Miller, who claims he pulled the trigger in self-defense. Soon the whole town’s talking, and Shoe’s first homicide is fast becoming the Trial of the Century. The more Shoe digs, the more he’s convinced nothing is as it seems. Not with a tangle of conflicting stories, an unlikely motive, and witnesses like Ray’s girlfriend, a glamour girl whose pretty lips are sealed. For now.
In a city steeped in Old West debauchery, Shoe’s following every lead to a very dangerous place―one that could bring him glory and fame or end his life.
Brie Careful What You Wish For by Linda Reilly
Grilled Cheese Mystery #4
Publication Date: April 9, 2024
Genre: Cozy Culinary Mystery
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When a mean and quarrelsome woman is found murdered in her own home, most of the residents of Balsam Dell can only say feta late than never . . .
With the summer heat sizzling, grilled cheese restaurant owner Carly Hale is thrilled to have Ross Baxter delivering her sandwiches to local seniors. She’s never met a more polite or hardworking young man, and she brushes it off when one of her more difficult customers complains about him. But then Ross returns to the woman’s home to make another delivery—and finds her dead body. The police and half the town immediately suspect he killed her, so Carly steps in to investigate, determined to prove them wrong.
Carly soon learns that the victim had an estranged stepson and stepdaughter, both of whom needed her money to get their lives back on track. Worse still, in her younger days the dead woman had a reputation for preying on other women’s husbands, leaving broken marriages in her wake—and a list of suspects a mile long. But Ross’s fingerprints were found on the murder weapon, leaving Carly hungry for any clue she can find. Until she comes face-to-face with the killer, and realizes this time she may have bitten off more than she can chew . . .
Includes melt-in-your-mouth sandwich recipes!
Isabel in Bloom by Mae Respicio
Publication Date: April 9, 2024
Genre: Middle Grade
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A girl discovers a connection between her home in the Philippines and her new home in the U.S. through a special garden in this middle grade novel that celebrates nourishment and growth.
Twelve-year-old Isabel is the new kid in her San Francisco middle school. It’s the first time in many years that she’ll be living with her mother again. Mama’s job in the US allowed Isabel and her grandparents to live more comfortably in the Philippines, but now Isabel doesn’t really know her own mother anymore.
Making new friends in a new city, a new country, is hard, but joining the gardening and cooking club at school means Isabel will begin to find her way, and maybe she too, will begin to bloom.
In this beautifully rendered novel-in-verse, Mae Respicio explores how growth can take many forms, offering both the challenges and joy of new beginnings.
The Poison Pen by Paige Shelton
Scottish Bookshop Mystery #9
Publication Date: April 9, 2024
Genre: Cozy Animal Mystery
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The Poison Pen, the ninth installment in the Scottish Bookshop series by Paige Shelton, set in a specialty bookstore in Edinburgh called The Cracked Spine.
Edinburgh is mourning recent the death of Queen Elizabeth II when Bookseller Delaney Nichols’s boss comes to her with a most unusual assignment. An old friend of his, living in an estate in the village of Roslin, has found what could be a priceless relic on her property, and Delaney is tasked with investigating. Could Jolie possibly have an item of breathtaking Scottish historical significance in her possession? But when Delaney arrives at Jolie’s estate, she is greeted by a legal team with a vested interest in the property. Jolie manages to remove the interlopers, but as they’re examining the priceless item, they hear a scream, and meet a much less welcome discovery: a body.
As Delaney digs deeper, she discovers Jolie’s own fascinating history. Jolie’s mother had long claimed that her daughter was the rightful heir to the throne, not Elizabeth II, because of an affair she claimed to have with King Edward VIII. The only evidence, however, is in the form of a purported journal that one of Edward’s secretaries kept. The puzzles become more confusing when a connection is uncovered between this far-fetched story and the murdered man. Delaney will have to read between the lines to put together the pieces…or become history herself.
Bewitched, Bothered, and Beheaded by Heather Haven
Alvarez Family Murder Mysteries #10
Publication Date: April 10, 2024
Genre: Traditional Mystery
HEADS-UP! TWISTY PLOTTING, SLY WIT,
AND OVER-THE TOP HUMOR AHEAD!In this wacky and hilarious whodunit, private eye Lee Alvarez slips into the role of magician’s assistant for a fundraiser and finds herself dead center in a beyond-grisly murder.
Despite meticulous planning and rehearsal, the magician’s guillotine trick goes as wrong as it possibly can when Lee pulls the cord and shimmies to divert attention from the horrifying fall of the blade. With her back to the guillotine, she’s the last to know of the real-life beheading.
But the first to know she’s the number one suspect. In a humiliating turn of events, she’s summarily arrested and booked for the murder.
An easy situation to lose your own head in, but with three days before her arraignment, the entire Alvarez family investigative firm swings into action to save their star.
Luckily for the reader, the unfortunate events are just beginning. The wealthy magician’s beneficiaries immediately begin coming to various sticky ends, including shootings, drownings, kidnappings, and oncoming SUVs. It seems he’s left a chunk of his fortune to a tontine, to be divided among his two ex-wives, current cheating wife, twin nephews, and devoted butler—with the last survivor enjoying the whole income.
Someone evidently can’t keep a cool head on their shoulders.
Fans of PI stories, cozy mysteries, and women sleuths will lose their own heads over Lee Alvarez and her adorable (and vexing) family of investigators! Lee’s sharp and funny like her fellow female protagonists Kinsey Millhone (Sue Grafton) and Stephanie Plum (Janet Evanovich), but she cleans up better – say, Nora to her dapper husband’s Nick. And the rest of the large, loving, interfering, and resourceful Alvarez family will delight lovers of Lisa Lutz’s family series, The Spellman Files.
Well, that’s it for the New Books Releasing Week 15 of 2024
Drop a comment if you like one of the books above or if you have one to recommend.
Thank you for stopping by,
Happy Reading!
Baroness’ Book Trove is an Amazon, Books A Million, and Barnes and Noble affiliate, meaning that if you click on a link that takes you to one of those retailers and purchase something, this blog gets a tiny percentage back. Mainly, this helps with the cost of the website and a few giveaways.
Karen, you have made my day if not my week. Thank you so much for bringing my latest book to your readers’ attention.