Reviewed By Liz

ISBN 0425219836
Berkley Prime Crime – Paperback

TACKED TO DEATH – Horse Lover’s Mysteries, Book 3 – A new tack shop and a gala polo match are reasons to celebrate for horse trainer Michaela Bancroft—until equestrian Sterling Tabor is found clubbed to death with a polo mallet. Worse yet, suspicion falls on Michaela…

The weapon belongs to Michaela, her prints are all over it, and rumors of her alleged affair with the victim aren’t helping. With her boyfriend Detective Jude Davis out of town, Michaela doesn’t stand a chance of proving her innocence and clearing her name unless she delves into Tabor’s mysterious life—and death—on her own. But in unearthing a real suspect and a motive, she discovers a deadly past. And Tabor’s shady friends are more than willing to throw Michaela off the track—for good.

Michele writes full time and lives in San Diego with her very supportive husband, two sons and daughter.

Check out Michele’s web site at www.michelescott.com.

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New book releases are a feature provided for our readers by reviewedbyliz, but are not written by us. Where available, the descriptions of the books are those provided by the publisher.

ISBN 1590584910
Poisoned Pen Press – Hardcover

DESERT CUT – A Lena Jones Mystery – While scouting locations for a film documentary on Arizona’s Apache Wars, private investigator Lena Jones and Oscar-winning director Warren Quinn discover the mutilated body of a young girl.

The gruesome manner of the child’s death evokes memories of Lena’s own rough childhood. Despite clashing with the local law, Lena investigate’s the child’s death and discovers a small town with a big secret.

Los Perdidos is not the Eden it first appears. Founded by the descendants of pioneers who fought Geronimo, it now holds a significant population of documented and undocumented foreign-born residents who live and work at the local chemical plant. Lena senses a sinister force at work in the town — but where?

The still vivid memory of Geronimo’s war mixes with the modern immigration war, and the hard life on the Arizona/Mexico border contrasts with Hollywood’s slick production meetings, and the cruelty of an ancient practice is tempered by a growing underground railroad fighting to save its young victims.

As a journalist and literary critic for more than 20 years, Betty — a resident of Scottsdale, Arizona, where her detective Lena Jones also lives — has interviewed U. S. presidents, Nobel prize-winners, astronauts who’ve walked on the moon, polygamy runaways, the homeless, and the hopeless.

Now retired from journalism to write full time, she also contributes the Small Press column for Mystery Scene magazine and teaches creative writing at Phoenix College.
In her writing, Betty makes liberal use of her own varied background. She earned her way through art school by working as a folk singer but eventually gave up singing to concentrate on her art career. At various times she has picked cotton, raised chickens which laid blue eggs (Speckled Hamburgs), worked in a zoo, been a go-go dancer and horse breeder, taught Sunday School, founded a literary magazine, helped rebuild a long-abandoned 120-year-old farm house, and back-packed the Highlands of Scotland alone.

Check out Betty’s web site at www.bettywebb-mystery.com.

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New book releases are a feature provided for our readers by reviewedbyliz, but are not written by us. Where available, the descriptions of the books are those provided by the publisher.

ISBN 1590584856
Poisoned Pen Press – Hardcover

SHADES OF BLUE – A Evan Horne mystery – After several months of successful work in London and Amsterdam with American expatriate Fletcher Paige, Evan Horne returns to the states and settles in the San Francisco Bay Area. There he reunites with his girlfriend, FBI agent, Andie Lawrence. And Evan quickly makes inroads into the Bay Area jazz scene. Life is good until a phone call from a Los Angeles attorney turns his life upside down. Evan’s old friend and former mentor, pianist Calvin Hughes, has died, and named Evan as his sole beneficiary. Evan is shocked to learn that Hughes has left him his small Hollywood house, money, and all his possessions. But when Evan begins to play through some hand-written sheet music, he recognizes one as a song from the landmark Miles Davis recording Birth of the Cool, and another from Kind of Blue, arguably one of the most important recordings in modern jazz. Was Calvin Hughes the uncredited composer of one or both of these tunes, or was it simply Hughes’s transcriptions from the recordings? In addition, Evans finds a cryptic note, and a photo taken almost 40 years earlier—a young Cal with his hand on a baby carriage. Both are taped to the bottom of a dresser drawer. A friend of Cal’s Lisa Gaines will continue to take care of Milton and rent from Evan. Evan is soon on a whirl-wind journey across the country to find answers from his family and to confront his mother. What was her relationship with Calvin Hughes? And just how did Jazz come into the equation?

Bill Moody was born in Webb City, Missouri and grew up in Santa Monica, California. A professional jazz drummer, Bill has played and/or recorded with Jr. Mance, Maynard Ferguson, Jon Hendricks, Annie Ross, and Lou Rawls. He lived in Las Vegas for many years as a musician on the Las Vegas Strip, hosted a weekly radio show at KUNV-FM, and taught in the UNLV English Department. He now lives in northern California, where he teaches creative writing at Sonoma State University, and continues to be active in the Bay Area jazz scene with the Terry Henry Trio and Dick Conte’s trio and quartet. He is the author of five previous Evan Horne novels: Looking for Chet Baker, Bird Lives!, Sound of the Trumpet, Death of a Tenor Man, and Solo Hand.

Check out Bill’s web site at www.billmoodyjazz.com.

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New book releases are a feature provided for our readers by reviewedbyliz, but are not written by us. Where available, the descriptions of the books are those provided by the publisher.

ISBN 0736921419
Harvest House Publishers – Trade Paperback

WHITE SOUL is a stand alone crime novel that is set in Miami and features undercover DEA agent, Ron Ortega. Ortega penetrates a lethal Cuban-American crime syndicate that is lead by ruthless and Charismatic leader Ricardo Estevez, who will stop at nothing to expand his power and reach.

Brandt Dodson is former employee of the FBI and the author of The Colton Parker Mystery series as well as the recently released, stand alone novel WHITE SOUL. He lives in southern Indiana with his wife and two sons and is at work on his next novel, DANIEL’S DEN, a suspense novel, due for release on early January 2009.

Check out Brandt’s web site at www.brandtdodson.com.

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New book releases are a feature provided for our readers by reviewedbyliz, but are not written by us. Where available, the descriptions of the books are those provided by the author or their publisher.

ISBN 1569474753

Soho Crime – Paperback
March 2008

MURDER ON THE ILE SAINT-LOUIS is an Aimée Leduc book. This time out, we see a softer side of Aimée, as she is prompted by a phone call from a frantic woman to come down to the courtyard of her building. Not knowing what to expect, Aimée slips on her kitten heels and grabs her gun. Instead of trouble, she finds a tiny baby girl wrapped in a denim jacket. Okay, for Aimée, that is trouble. Uncertain what else to do, Aimée enlists all of her friends to help her care for the baby until the mother returns for her.

Of course, Aimée doesn’t sit idly by and wait for this to happen. Instead, she tries to find out how the mysterious caller knows her, how she came to select the unlikely Aimée as the child’s protector, and to determine what is keeping the mother from returning to claim her infant. Along the way there is a healthy dose of Parisian history, a few more dead bodies, and some lovely couture frocks acquired at bargain basement prices.

Of the Aimée Leduc books I have read, MURDER ON THE ILE SAINT-LOUIS is my favorite. It has the same wonderful descriptions of the architecture and the historical stories that I enjoy so much, but it has a kinder, gentler Aimée, too. In this book, she must make the safety of the baby her primary concern and she tones down her often reckless and thoughtless behavior. A more considerate main character involves me more in the story because she is easier for me to relate to.

Favorite character? René, Aimée’s business partner and emergency baby sitter. In this book, his unfulfilled wishes are there for all to see as he cares for the baby. Did I guess it? Some of it. Will I read another? Yes.

Mystery Book Reviews by Liz at http://reviewedbyliz.com ©2008

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Welcome to Sample Chapter Sunday!

Sample Chapter Sunday is the cure for the boring Sunday afternoons when you have no new reading material. You can swing by here and find links to sample chapters of mysteries by favorite authors and authors you haven’t read before.

Any mystery author is welcome to put a link to their online sample chapter by leaving a comment on this post. Hopefully, they will also give us their name, title of the book, and a brief description or synopsis to pique our interest. Tell your friends to come read and your favorite authors to come show off their sample chapters!

To see the access the sample chapters that the authors have posted links to, click on the COMMENTS link below (if you are an author, this is also the place you add a comment and post your book description and sample chapter links).

ISBN 0-74144359-7
Infinity Publishing – Paperback

JUST NORTH OF LUCK – A Logan Hunter Mystery – The ABCs have never been so twisted! Just North of Luck is the second installment of the Logan Hunter Mystery series. Logan is assigned to the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina where a serial killer is targeting school personnel.

Susan Whitfield has lived in North Carolina her entire life. She grew up in the small town of Atkinson, married at age nineteen, and now lives in Dudley with her husband, Doyle, and near her two sons, Heath and Graham. As a former teacher and principal, Whitfield completed three degrees from East Carolina University. Just North of Luck evolved from her first mystery novel, Genesis Beach The sequel follows the career of SBI Agent Logan Hunter, also a North Carolina native. Whitfield is currently working on Hell Swamp, the third novel in the series, which is set along Black River.

Check out Susan’s web site at www.swhitfield.com.

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New book releases are a feature provided for our readers by reviewedbyliz, but are not written by us. Where available, the descriptions of the books are those provided by the publisher.

ISBN 0312347820
St. Martin’s Minotaur – Hardcover

THE BLACK DOVE – A Holmes on the Range Mystery – In the summer of 1893, Gustav “Old Red” Amlingmeyer and his brother Otto (a.k.a. “Big Red”) find themselves down and out in San Francisco. Though cowpokes by training, the brothers are devotees of the late, great Sherlock Holmes and his trademark method of “deducifying.” But when they set out to land jobs as professional detectives, they land themselves in hot water, instead.

First their friend Dr. Chan mysteriously takes a potshot at them, fatally wounding Big Red’s new hat. Then a secretive young woman from their past pops up and convinces them that Chan’s in trouble — and they’re just the men to get him out of it. Unfortunately, they’re too late: By the time they track Chan down again, he’s dead. The police call it a suicide. Old Red calls that a lie. When he and his brother set out to prove it, they put themselves on a collision course with shady S.F.P.D. cops, brutal Barbary Coast hoodlums and the deadly Chinatown tongs.

Before long, all sides are in a race to uncover the secret that could rock the city. And their only clue to what’s actually going on is the enigmatic, exotic and extremely difficult to find “Black Dove.”

Though he considers himself a Midwesterner at heart, Hockensmith currently lives in California’s Bay Area. He says he’s adjusted to life on the West Coast, but confesses that he still misses thunderstorms, snow and Long John Silver’s Seafood Shoppes. He shares his home with the perfect wife, the perfect daughter, the perfect son and a slightly imperfect cat.

Check out Steve’s web site at www.stevehockensmith.com.

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New book releases are a feature provided for our readers by reviewedbyliz, but are not written by us. Where available, the descriptions of the books are those provided by the publisher.

ISBN 0312354428
St. Martin’s Minotaur – Hardcover

HUSH MY MOUTH – A Southern Fried Mystery – A spring day brings attorney Avery Andrews a new case. Fran French comes from Atlanta looking for her friend Neanna, who’s more like a sister to her. Neanna went to Dacus looking for information on the unsolved murder of her aunt Wenda, and now she’s missing.

Twenty years earlier, Wenda’s body was found posed on a memorial bench in the cemetery, her packed luggage at her feet, as if ready for a journey. When Neanna is found in her car, dead from a shot to the head, the police want to call it suicide. Fran insists it’s impossible that Neanna killed herself and urges Avery to help her prove it.

While Avery is sifting through Neanna’s and Wenda’s confused past and present, her office mate Melvin Bertram is befriended by a trio of ghost hunters who arrive in search of ectoplasm from the long-dead. The trio, christened “the ghosters” by Avery, hope to talk Melvin into investing in their TV pilot, oblivious to the fact that someone is baiting them with increasingly ridiculous ghost sightings. In no time at all, the ghosters are having altercations with the resident biker gang and with Avery’s private investigator. Let no one say life in Camden County is uninteresting.

In this latest in Cathy Pickens’s Southern Fried Mystery series, Avery explores the nature of family—the ones we’re born into and the ones we find—and learns about the haunting power of the past in the process. Hush My Mouth offers an original blend of humor and mystery, peppered with quirky characters and boasting a decidedly Southern flavor..

Cathy Pickens, an attorney who specialized in complex civil litigation, teaches law and ethics in the McColl School of Business, Queens University of Charlotte. Cathy grew up in South Carolina, where her family has lived for generations.

Check out Cathy’s web site at www.cathypickens.com.

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New book releases are a feature provided for our readers by reviewedbyliz, but are not written by us. Where available, the descriptions of the books are those provided by the publisher.

The Vagabond Virgins,

ISBN 1590584619
Poisoned Pen Press – Hardcover

THE VAGABOND VIRGINS – A Hickey Family Mystery – set in 1979 A Holy Virgin who appears in Mexico is dedicated to the overthrow of the corrupt and tyrannical PRI. And a woman who claims to be the Virgin’s sister brings San Diego private investigator Alvaro Hickey a chance to help reform the country of his birth.

Check out Ken’s web site at www.kenkuhlken.net.

Available at Amazon

New book releases are a feature provided for our readers by reviewedbyliz, but are not written by us. Where available, the descriptions of the books are those provided by the publisher.