Lilian Jackson Braun has defined the cat caper with her Cat Who … series, and the 28th installment, The Cat Who Dropped A Bombshell sees Koko and Yum Yum, James “Call me Qwill” Qwilleran’s famous Siamese feline duo back to solve another mystery. While the small town of Pickax is preparing sesquicentennial celebrations, Koko has developed a habit for dropping himself off balconies and occasionally landing in strange places, one such fall ending up on a strange young man visiting his relatives in town. As it turns out, the young man is the greedy nephew of wealthy Nathan and Doris Ledfield, and stands to inherit their entire vast fortune. Needless to say, when the couple fall deathly ill, all while a hurricane threatens to pummel Pickax and cut the festivities short, Qwill and his furry companions are on the case.

In The Quiet Game author Greg Iles introduced us to lawyer hero Penn Cage, and now Turning Angel has us revisiting Cage, along with his best friend Drew Elliot, a highly respected doctor who had once saved Cage’s life on a hiking trip when they were boys. Being two of the most prominent members of their small town of Natchez, Drew and Penn are happy to sit on the board of their alma mater, St. Stephen’s Prep, but when the naked body of Kate Townsend, a student at the school, washes up along the banks of the Mississippi, the small community is devastated to learn that their esteemed doctor had a passionate affair with the girl and may have been involved in her murder.

Drew asks Penn to defend him, despite not exactly acting like an innocent man. Combined with a black prosecuter with a personal grudge of his own and an investigation that seems content to pin the blame on Elliott, it is up to Penn to get to the heart of the matter, starting with St. Stephen’s Prep. What he discovers when he returns to his old school is shocking, an insular world that is not as it appears, where jocks are steroid-crazed, girls are desperate for attention, and jaded teens are on the precipice of nihilism. When Penn finally arrives at the truth behind Kate Townsend’s death, his quiet little town will be forever changed.

Wealthy Pamela Webbon and Irene Stenson are best friends until one night during the summer after high school, after being dropped off at her home by Pamela, Irene walks into her kitchen to find her parents dead in what is later ruled as a murder-suicide. Irene flees her northern Californian town, but when, seventeen years later, Pamela sends her a cryptic email asking her for help, Irene is inevitably drawn back in. However, enlightenment is far from reach when she returns only to find her former best friend dead from a supposed drug overdose, and plenty of covered-up secrets involving Pamela’s father, a powerful senator campaigning for presidency who may or may not have been responsible for Irene’s parents’ deaths. There’s also ex-Marine turned lodge-owner Luke Danner who helps Irene investigate the mystery surrounding Pamela’s death and who may just prove to be something more. This well-paced page-turner is full of surprises to keep readers guessing until its thrilling conclusion.

Griffin. first winning acclaim among fans and critics alike with his first installment in his Presidential Agent series, is back with his latest novel The Hostage. Charlie Castillo, who works with the Department of Homeland Security, is becoming the man the President turns to more and more when investigations need to be conducted discretely. The latest crisis to land in Castillo’s lap is the kidnapping of an American diplomat’s wife in Argentina, who watched her husband get killed before her eyes and is being threatened with a similar fate for her children if she doesn’t give away the location of her brother,, a UN diplomat involved in a Iraqi food-for-oil scandal that touches more than a few higher-ups in government.

Sue Grafton is back with her latest alphabetical detective series starring reader favorite Kinsey Millhone, they wry, intelligent, self-deprecating private investigator. In S is for Silence, Grafton breaks with her first-person narrative tradition in favor of telling the story through vignettes from different characters about a Fourth of July event 34 years ago in which a neglectful mother, Violet Sullivan, disappears. Fast foward three and a half decades to the present where Violet’s daughter Daisy, only seven at the time of the event, hires Kinsey to solve the case of her mother’s disappearance. As Kinsey delves deeper into the case, she discovers that Violet had fooled around with almost every man in town, thus resulting in a number of scandals, secrets, and suspects. The investigation builds up suspense through Grafton’s different narrative technique into a stunny climax that will leave fans talking until the next book.

Read a fan’s review of the novel here.

In On the Run, Grace Archer is a single mom and talented horse handler. Her former employer? The CIA. She leads a tranquil life under protective custody, that is until Marvot, a Middle Easter magnate, wants her to train his horses to lead him to a buried treasure hidden in the Moroccan desert. After the owner of the horse farms Grace is hiding at is killed by Marvot, ex-CIA commando Jake Kilmer (the father of her daughter) is the only man she can trust, despite the fact she blames him for her father’s death and the end of her former career. Author Iris Johansen weaves a an action-packed story filled with suspense and mystery that never lets up.

85-year-old P.D. James is back with her latest installment in the Alex Dalgliesh series, The Lighthouse. When a notable novelist, Nathan Oliver, is murdered on the elite resort Combe Island off the Cornish coast, Scotland Yard dispatches Dalgliesh, just settled into his new romance with Emma, and his team consisting of Inspector Kate Miskin and Sargeant Francis Benton-Smith, to solve the case. The commander checks alibis and motives in his trademark unobtrusive manner, eventually solving the case through deduction, as is the formula in James’ previous novels. But what makes James’ novels stunning are her characters, from Dalgliesh and his attempts to balance his new romantic interest with his police duties, to the tension between Kate and Francis, to the individual personal lives of the other suspects.

Prolific James Patterson is back with his latest Alex Cross installment, Mary, Mary. Alex Cross, PD detective turned FBI agent, is enjoying a much-need vacation with his family when he’s suddenly called in by the LAPD to consult on a high-profile murder case. Famous actress Antonia Schifman, her chauffeur, and a well-known female movie producer have been murdered. Antonia’s face has been cut up so badly as to be nearly unrecognizable. A woman named “Mary Smith” is taking responsibility for the murders in a series of e-mails to an L.A. Times gossip columnist. However, as Cross is soon to learn, he can’t be certain of anything, not the patterns or motives of the killer, not even of Mary’s gender. As the number of A-list victims begins to grow and the pressure mounts for the LAPD and FBI to catch the killer from both the public and Hollywood, Cross also has to juggle a custody battle for his youngest son. Patterson weaves a suspense-filled thriller that leads to an ultimate, unexpected, and exciting climax. One of Patterson’s most sophisticated novels to date.

Martini has built a fan-favorite character in Paul Madriani, a San Diego defense attorney with a habit of taking on almost impossible cases. This time it’s Army Sargeant Emiliano Ruiz, a soldier who served in Panama and the first Gulf War and had been freelancing as a security guard when his boss, Madelyn Chapman who owns a computer software company that sells a controversial security program to the U.S. Government, is murdered with two gunshots to the back of the head (referred to in ballistics as a “double tap,” something only an excellent marksman can carry out). He’s being accused of the crime, but when Madriani begins investigating the incident, he discovers a seven-year gap in Ruiz’s resume. Was Ruiz doing dirty work for the Special Ops? Madriani has to find out, and more importantly, he has to save the sympathetic Ruiz from a lifetime stint in prison — or worse.

Karin Slaughter serves up another thrilling tale in Faithless where Georgia medical examiner Sara Linton and her ex-husband Jeffrey discover a young girl buried out in the woods, dead despite a breathing pipe installed in the coffin that extended to the surface. The victim, identified as Abigail Bennett, was a member of the Holy Grown soybean farming collective, but no one bats an eye upon hearing news of her murder. Suspicion is cast on the collective’s farmhands, most of whom are ex-felons on work release, but when another murder turns up in the same fashion, Sara and Jeffrey soon draw the investigation to the parishioners of the Church for the Greater Good led by their shady minister, where all sorts of dark truths come to light centering around abortion and domestic abuse.

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