The Hidden Staircase Mystery Books recently updated its list of July 2013 hardcover mysteries as well as shelved new July paperbacks on The Mystery Bookshelf.
In this series of monthly posts, which we call Firsts on the 1st, we're introducing readers to new series characters who will make their mysterious American debut in print during July.
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Title: Sugar Pop Moon
Author: John Florio
Series Character: Jersey Leo
Formats: Trade Paperback and ebook
What we know about the character: Jersey Leo is an albino of mixed race. Known as "Snowball" on the street, he makes a living as the bartender at a mob-run speakeasy in Prohibition-era Hell's Kitchen.
His first case: Being neither black nor white, Jersey Leo has no group to call his own. His own mother abandoned him as a baby. And his father — a former boxing champ with his own secrets — disapproves of Jersey's work at a dive owned by one of New York's most notorious gangsters. So when he inadvertently purchases counterfeit moonshine ("sugar pop moon") with his boss's money — a potentially fatal mistake — he must go undercover to track down the bootlegger who took him in.
The clues lead to Philadelphia, where he runs into a cleaver-swinging madman out for his femurs and a cold-blooded gangster holed up on a Christmas-tree farm. Now with a price on his head in two cities, Jersey seeks help from the only man he can trust, his father. As the two delve into the origins of the mysterious sugar pop moon, stunning secrets about Jersey's past come to light. To ensure his future, Jersey must face his past, even if it means that life will never return to normal.
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Title: Final Sentence
Author: Daryl Wood Gerber
Series Character: Jenna Hart, Cookbook Nook
Formats: Mass Market Paperback and ebook
What we know about the character: Jenna Hart is an avid reader, admitted foodie, and owner of a cookbook store and café in picturesque Crystal Cove, California.
Her first case: Jenna Hart is up to her neck in trouble when she finds her college roommate, celebrity chef Desiree Divine, buried on the beach, and a fellow shop owner accuses her of murder.
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Title: Yarn to Go
Author: Betty Hechtman
Series Character: Casey Feldstein, Yarn Retreat
Formats: Mass Market Paperback and ebook
What we know about the character: Dessert chef Casey Feldstein doesn't know a knitting needle from a crochet hook. But after her aunt dies unexpectedly, Casey is left to run her yarn retreat business.
Her first case: When Casey finds out that her late aunt's business, Yarn2Go, has one more yarn retreat scheduled, she decides to go ahead and host the event, despite her complete lack of experience as a knitter. At least the retreat is on the beautiful Monterey Peninsula.
But the idyllic setting is soured when a retreat regular is found murdered in her hotel room. Feeling a sense of responsibility, Casey begins to weave the clues together and detects a pattern which may shed light on her aunt's suspicious death. Despite the danger, the last thing Casey plans to do is retreat. She'll catch this killer … or dye trying.
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Title: First Frost
Author: James Henry
Series Character: Jack Frost Prequel
Formats: Hardcover and ebook
What we know about the character: Strictly speaking, this isn't the first appearance of this character. Detective Inspector William Edward "Jack" Frost is a police detective created by R. D. Wingfield, appearing in six books published between 1984 and 2008. This prequel series features a younger Jack Frost.
His first case: Detective Sergeant Jack Frost is dealing with the disappearance of his mentor. When a twelve-year-old girl goes missing from a department store changing room, Frost is put in charge of the case.
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Title: Faith on the Rocks
Author: Liesa Malik
Series Character: Daisy Arthur
Formats: Hardcover and ebook
What we know about the character: Daisy Arthur is a retired and widowed special education teacher.
Her first case: When widow and retired special education teacher Daisy Arthur takes up romance writing with a quirky group of aspiring authors she finds herself tangled in merry mayhem that suddenly turns quite deadly. Then instead of pursuing her romantic interests she must go in search of a killer or risk becoming the group s next victim.
Enter Gabe Caerphilly father of one of her old students and a single police lieutenant with Littleton Colorado s finest. Daisy sees Gabe as having definite Mr. Right potential. Unfortunately Gabe sees her as a prime murder suspect. What s a woman to do?
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Title: The Man From Berlin
Author: Luke McCallin
Series Character: Gregor Reinhardt
Formats: Trade Paperback and ebook
What we know about the character: Captain Gregor Reinhardt is a military intelligence officer. The series is set during World War II.
His first case: In war-torn Yugoslavia, a beautiful young filmmaker and photographer — a veritable hero to her people — and a German officer have been brutally murdered.
Assigned to the case is Captain Gregor Reinhardt. Already haunted by his wartime actions and the mistakes he's made off the battlefield, he soon finds that his investigation may be more than just a murder — and that the late Yugoslavian heroine may have been much more brilliant — and treacherous — than anyone knew.
Maneuvering his way through a minefield of political, military, and personal agendas and vendettas, Reinhardt knows that someone is leaving a trail of dead bodies to cover their tracks. But those bloody tracks may lead Reinhardt to a secret hidden within the ranks of the powerful that they will do anything to keep.
And his search for the truth may kill him before he ever finds it.
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Title: Woof at the Door
Author: Laura Morrigan
Series Character: Grace Wilde, Call of the Wilde
Formats: Mass Market Paperback and ebook
What we know about the character: Grace Wilde is an animal behaviorist, who is able to psychically communicate with furry and feathered critters.
Her first case: Grace Wilde's job is anything but normal. When she's not helping out at the zoo by comforting agitated lemurs, she's listening to the woes of annoyed house pets. Grace's life gets even more complicated, though, when the cops summon her to a crime scene to help deal with the murder victim's terrified Doberman.
The pooch turns out to be the only one who saw what happened the night of the shooting — and only Grace can get the information out of him. The problem is, how will Grace tell the distractingly gorgeous Sergeant Kai Duncan that it's the dog who's giving her the intel without spilling her big secret or sounding crazy? Left on her own, Grace will have to follow the pup's lead to track down the killer. But she'll have to be careful — or curiosity may end up killing the cat whisperer.
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Title: Death of a Robber Baron
Author: Charles O'Brien
Series Character: Pamela Thompson, Gilded Age
Formats: Trade Paperback and ebook
What we know about the character: Pamela Thompson is a private investigator in late 1890s New England.
Her first case: Novice PI Pamela Thompson is hired by Lydia Jennings to investigate mismanagement at her palatial "cottage" Broadmore Hall, in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts. Pamela discovers the butler living a double life at Lydia's expense. Soon Pamela has to deal with a mare's nest of family problems, mostly generated by Lydia's husband, Henry Jennings, the ruthless and unfaithful Copper King, whose sole purpose in life is to become the richest man in America.
The climax comes at Broadmoar during Henry's 4th July party - a grandiose event that he personally orchestrates. The next morning, his body is found in his study. Pamela's boss, the lawyer Jeremiah Prescott, joins her for the investigation. Now they have to figure out, from among the many suspects, who killed Henry Jennings …
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Title: The Terrorist Next Door
Author: Sheldon Siegel
Series Character: David Gold
Formats: Hardcover and ebook
What we know about the character: David Gold is a homicide detective in Chicago.
His first case: Meet David Gold. He's a third generation native of hardscrabble South Chicago. He's also one of Chicago's most decorated homicide detectives.
Meet Gold's new partner, Detective A.C. Battle. He's a native of Mississippi whose family moved to Chicago to escape the Jim Crow South. He grew up in the Robert Taylor Homes, the penal colony of high rises across the Dan Ryan Expressway from Mayor Daley's house and Comiskey Park.
More than a decade after 9/11, someone is setting off fire bombs in Chicago using untraceable cell phones. An unknown group takes credit for the bombings and demands the release of Hassan Al-Shahid, a University of Chicago graduate student whose plan to set off a bomb at the Art Institute was thwarted at the last minute by Gold and his long-time partner, Paul Liszewski. Their heroic efforts had cost Liszewski his life and put Gold in the hospital.
Shocked and grieving, Gold rallies to receive a Medal of Valor on the steps of that same Art Institute. During the ceremony, a car bomb explodes across the street and moment later Gold receives a text: "It isn't over."
The FBI and Homeland Security believe the new bomber is a "lone wolf" — a freelancer who operates off the grid. That makes him even more dangerous. More car bombs are detonated at the Wrigley Field El station, Millennium Park, the Museum of Science and Industry, O'Hare Airport, the Hyde Park train station, and the upscale Rush Street area near North Michigan Avenue. The bomber has shut down a major US city. Just to free Al-Shahid?
Gold and Battle hunt him across Chicago's colorful neighborhoods: from the high rises of the Magnificent Mile to century-old churches where mass is still celebrated in Polish to the ivy-covered buildings at the University of Chicago to crumbling old synagogues and gritty seafood shacks next to the ghostly expanses of vacant land where the steel mills once stood.
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Title: Lawless & The Devil of Euston Square
Author: William Sutton
Series Character: Campbell Lawless
Formats: Mass Market Paperback and ebook
What we know about the character: Campbell Lawless, aka "The Watchman", is a Metropolitan policeman in 1860s London.
His first case: London 1859-62. A time of great exhibitions, foreign conquests and underground trains. But the era of Victorian marvels is also the time of the Great Stink. With cholera and depravity never far from the headlines, it's not only the sewers that smell bad.
Novice detective Campbell Lawless stumbles onto the trail of Berwick Skelton, an elusive revolutionary, seemingly determined to bring London to its knees through a series of devilish acts of terrorism.
But cast into a lethal, intoxicating world of music hall hoofers, industrial sabotage and royal scandal, will Lawless survive long enough to capture this underworld nemesis, before he unleashes his final vengeance on a society he wants wiped from the face of the Earth?
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Title: Hard Road
Author: J. B. Turner
Series Character: Martha Meyerstein and Jon Reznick
Formats: Trade Paperback and ebook
What we know about the characters: Martha Meyerstein is the FBI Assistant Director, and Jon Reznick is a covert assassin.
Their first case: Since his wife died in the Twin Towers, Jon Reznick has cared about nothing except his eleven-year-old daughter.
But when he's ordered by his handler to kill a man in an exclusive Washington DC hotel, he discovers his intended victim is really a government scientist working on a secretive military project.
Reznick is quickly ensnared in an extraordinary web of murder, extortion and double-crosses — and then his daughter's safety is threatened as well.
But Jon isn't just up against the shadowy group who want the scientist eliminated. FBI chief Martha Meyerstein wants Reznick captured as well.
And soon both Reznick and Meyerstein find themselves in the middle of a terrifying plot by a foreign government to launch a bio-terrorism strike against the United States.
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For a list of more hardcover mysteries scheduled for publication during July, please visit our New Mysteries home page. If you're interested in new paperbacks, visit The Mystery Bookshelf, where you can discover a library of new mysteries, also updated with July 2013 releases. See also our regularly updated eBook site for new mysteries, suspense novels and thrillers, MysterEbooks.com.
Please also visit the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books where we are committed to providing readers and collectors of mystery books with the best and most current information about their favorite authors, titles, and series.
