June Publications

In Letha Albright's appealing sophomore effort, Daredevil's Apprentice, spunky Cherokee County reporter Viv Powers returns to unearth the secrets behind a murder committed by her best friend, Lucie Dreadfulwater. But when Lucie herself is killed, Viv's smalltown life turns upside down, as secrets and old scores get revealed and more bodies start to dot the windswept Oklahoma landscape. (Memento Mori [www.avocetpress.com], $12.95 paper 255p ISBN 0-9705049-4-2)

When Vera Sloan finds no evidence of the plane crash she's told has killed her detective husband, Sam, she embarks on her own investigation even as she tries to come to terms with his death. A mysterious computer disk leads her to a deadly Russian mobster, and Vera, strengthened by her faith in God, steels herself to battle forces much stronger than herself and to find her husband, dead or alive, in Robert L. Wise's The Dead Detective: A Sam and Vera Sloan Mystery. (Thomas Nelson, $13.99 paper 320p ISBN 0-7852-6696-8)

Building a better mousetrap may bring the world to your door, but building a better automobile engine is grounds for murder in A Deadly Change of Power by Gina Cresse (A Deadly Change of Heart). After just-married Devonie Lace realizes that someone is trying to kill Ronnie Oakhurst because Ronnie holds the key to technology that would make fuel obsolete, Devonie decides to investigate, and soon finds her own life in danger. (Avalon [www.avalonbooks.com], $19.95 185p ISBN 0-8034-9538-2)

Ellie McKenzie is newly certified as a real estate agent and newly settled back into her old hometown—but selling houses proves a messy business when she discovers a dead body in the first one she tries to show. Hank Sawyer was a big-time contractor and a proposed discount store's biggest champion, and Ellie must determine whether his death relates to the land deal or if there were more personal reasons for his murder in Kathleen Delaney's Dying for a Change. (AmErica [www.publishamerica.com], $19.95 182p ISBN 1-59129-216-6)

Mercy killing meets serial killing in Memphis doctor Oakley Jordan's debut, Death's Parallel, starring another Memphis doctor, Ben Pritchitt. Against his family's wishes, Pritchitt is helping his terminally ill patients die on their own terms, and it's getting him into trouble: the DA, who's his daughter's boss, is after Pritchitt's license, and an abortion-obsessed serial killer is convinced that he and Pritchitt share the bond of death. (Rainbow, P.O. Box 430 Highland City, Fla., 33846], $16.95 paper 406p ISBN 1-56825-078-9)

Richard Kurtz enjoys the fine life of a successful surgeon (he's got a great apartment in a ritzy zip code and the affections of a beautiful woman), but he misses Sharon Lee, the girl who got away—and who's just been strangled after her shift at the hospital. Desperate to find out what happened to the ob-gyn, Kurtz—whose name and profession bear some resemblance to his creator, Dr. Robert I. Katz (Edward Maret)—gets drawn into the escalating mystery in Surgical Risk. (Willowgate [www.willowgatepress.com] $12.95 paper 236p ISBN 1-930008-05-8)

Over the last nine years, 74 patients at the New York Metropolitan Medical Center have contracted HIV during their stay; though art director Bennett James helms a PR campaign designed to improve the hospital's image, he knows the situation is grave. Someone at the facility is deliberately injecting the patients with infected blood, and as Bennett digs further into the mystery, he finds more and more suspects in David E. Feldman's complexly plotted, highly populated medical whodunit, Bad Blood: A Long Island Mystery. (1st Books Library [2595 Vernal Pike, Bloomington, Ind. 47404-2782], $14.50 paper 256p ISBN 1-4033-0292-8)

After restless Roberta (aka Bert) Lenehan comes to Portsmouth Island, N.C., to volunteer for the National Parks Service, she finds the body of a woman in the island's marsh; a previous park caretaker had met a different mysterious end. In B.J. Mountford's Sea-born Women, Bert tries to uncover the truth—does the island hide a deadly treasure-hunter? Is a long-dead pirate guarding his grave? How does the legend of the Sea-born Woman relate to the crimes?—as bad weather threatens and romance with a younger man blossoms. (John F. Blair [1406 Plaza Drive, Winston-Salem, N.C., 27103], $14.95 paper 284p ISBN 0-89587-265-X)

Language arts teacher Margo Brown, who tracked down the killer of one of her students in Why Johnny Died, finds herself drawn into amateur sleuthing again in Marlis Day's Death of a Hoosier Schoolmaster, this time because she discovers an old gun buried in her garden. Believing it was used to kill the titular fellow some five decades earlier, Margo and her pal Roxie set out to find the truth behind the unsolved murder—but it quickly becomes clear that the case has present-day significance. (Sterling House [www.sterlinghousepublisher.com], $11.95 paper 190p ISBN 1-56315-288-6)

An inexplicable quadruple murder, a duplicitous presidential adviser and a mysterious and deadly cult called the Bound bear mysterious connections to each other in lawyer Brian Lutterman's debut mystery, Bound to Die. Widow Tori McMillan wanders jungles, mountains and the nation's capital as she tries to find her best friend and a group of missing children, as well as to determine what actually happened to her husband. (Salvo [www.salvopress.com] , $16.95 paper 241p ISBN 1-930486-33-2)

In The Parent Killer, first-time novelist Ashley Blake tells a story—"a lie," he says, "based on true events"—of child abuse that leads to murder. Three battered and neglected elementary school kids meet in a supportive secret club; when a disturbed young man named Mason Xavier hears about their plight, he vows to avenge them as a way of coping with his own history of abuse in this bloody suspenser. (RA Publishing [www.ra-publishing.com], $26.95 301p ISBN 0-9706983-2-1)

For fans of the original British detective (or, if you prefer, "the first pop icon of the modern age") comes Sherlock Holmes on Screen: The Complete Film and TV History. Alan Barnes (Quentin Tarantino A to Z), who formerly edited Doctor Who Magazine and is now on staff at Judge Dredd Magazine, summarizes all the great sleuth's celluloid moments, breaking movies down into "the mystery," "the investigation" and "the solution," and offering cast lists and other facts, as well as a bit of astute criticism. (Reynolds & Hearn [Trafalgar Square, dist.], $24.95 192p ISBN 1-903111-04-8)