The Inky Whisk

After 15 outings Paris PI Aimée Leduc gets an origin story.

It is 1989 and Aimée is not a confident crime solver, but a harried, heartbroken medical student. She is overwhelmed by the rigors of school, the cutthroat tactics of her classmates (often at her expense), and she is about to be unceremoniously dumped by her posh boyfriend (at least according to his mean-girl sister.) So it isn’t surprising that when her father leaves her in charge of his detective agency while he travels to newly-unified Berlin on a mysterious errand, Aimée looks for something to distract her.

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published May 3, 2016
Putnam

This utterly current debut about a group of over-educated, underpaid, and heavily-indebted executive assistants accidentally becoming champions of over-educated, underpaid, and heavily-indebted executive assistants everywhere is a great book to stash in your beach bag then pass on to a friend.

Tina Fontana is assistant to the head of a huge media conglomerate. She makes his reservations, takes lunch orders and minutes for meetings, slices limes for his scandalously expensive tequila. She is loyal, hardworking, discreet, and living paycheck to paycheck. When an accounting error would allow her to pay off her remaining student loan debt the temptation is great.

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April was absolute madness. Between my state Library association conference and, well, life, I got nothing written for The Inky Whisk. I was, however, reading. A lot. So I will start catching up on some recent favorites this month – Mystery May! (at least according to the ALA’s Booklist magazine, and I have no reason to quarrel with them!)

published April 26, 2016
Del Rey

This is classified science fiction but there is a big – gigantic, even – mystery at the heart of “Sleeping Giants.” This intriguing debut opens with 11-year-old Rose investigating a glow in the woods near her home. Next thing she knows, the earth disappears beneath her feet and she lands in the palm of a giant metal hand, buried deep underground.

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published March 15, 2015
Viking Press

Chevalier’s absorbing new book traces US pioneer migration from east coast to west through the fictional Goodenough family. With one family’s struggle to tame a barely habitable patch of land, and a son’s journey to find his place in a still new and expanding country she strips the romanticism out of pioneer life, without making the world totally bleak or lacking in kindness.  And of course, there are the apples and their ability to be uprooted, to thrive in unlikely places, to be grafted and strengthened, and to evoke memories.

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published March 1, 2016
Severn House

Nickson’s newest Victorian procedural opens in late 1891 with DI Tom Harper mulling his latest case – the gruesome discovery of a dead infant, mailed to a post office. Some things have changed since we last met Harper – the hearing in his right ear is significantly worse, and a source of constant worry for him. He also has a new partner, the recently promoted Detective Constable Ash.

Harper’s previous partner, Sergeant Billy Reed took a position with the Leeds Fire Brigade after an ethical disagreement in their last case (Two Bronze Pennies, 2014) led to a falling out.

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published March 1, 2016
Simon & Schuster

Have you ever considered the lengths you would need to go to disappear and become someone new? Lutz has apparently given it a lot of consideration and it turns out it is no easy task.

“The Passenger” opens with Tanya Pitts deciding to go on the run when she finds her husband dead in their home after a fall down the stairs. Why run when it was an accident?

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