The Hidden Staircase Mystery Books recently updated its list of May 2013 hardcover mysteries as well as shelved new May 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 May.
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Title: Arctic Floor
Author: Mark Aitken
Series Character: Gerry Galen
Formats: Trade Paperback and ebook
What we know about the character: Gerry Gallen is a retired US Marine.
His first case: Gerry Gallen is searching for peace after years serving as a captain in the U.S. Marines special forces. But when Gallen agrees to lead a team or former soldiers looking after the personal security of an eccentric oil billionaire, he finds himself catapulted onto a rollercoaster of violence and double-crossing, where private intelligence operators and clandestine hit teams are commonplace.
Powerful U.S. and Russian interests are vying for the Arctic's valuable oil fields and it seems they'll stop at nothing to secure control of them, even if it means global catastrophe. Gallen and his men are faced with a choice between personal safety and saving the world. They can either walk away or go to the Arctic Floor.
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Title: Storm Front
Author: Richard Castle
Series Character: Derrick Storm
Formats: Hardcover and ebook
What we know about the character: Derrick Storm is the lead character in a series of mysteries written by Richard Castle and introduced on the ABC crime drama Castle.
(Editor's note: This is a tough call here. Strictly speaking, this is Derrick Storm's first appearance in a "real" book. On the show, Castle has written many bestsellers featuring the character … but none of them are "real" in the sense they've actually been published. Indeed, he reportedly killed off the character to concentrate on his "Nikki Heat" mysteries. It should also be noted that Derrick Storm has appeared in two graphic novels. So calling this his "first" case is, to be sure, a bit of a stretch.)
His first case: From Tokyo, to London, to Johannesburg, high-level bankers are being gruesomely tortured and murdered. The killer, caught in a fleeting glimpse on a surveillance camera, has been described as a psychopath with an eye patch. And that means Gregor Volkov, Derrick Storm's old nemesis, has returned. Desperate to figure out who Volkov is working for and why, the CIA calls on the one man who can match Volkov's strength and cunning — Derrick Storm.
With the help of a beautiful and mysterious foreign agent — with whom Storm is becoming romantically and professionally entangled — he discovers that Volkov's treachery has embroiled a wealthy hedge-fund manager and a U.S. senator. In a heated race against time, Storm chases Volkov's shadow from Paris, to the lair of a computer genius in Iowa, to the streets of Manhattan, then through a bullet-riddled car chase on the New Jersey Turnpike. In the process, Storm uncovers a plot that could destroy the global economy — unleashing untold chaos — which only he can stop.
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Title: Death and the Courtesan
Author: Pamela Christie
Series Character: Arabella Beaumont
Formats: Trade Paperback and ebook
What we know about the character: Arabella Beaumont is a highly paid woman of pleasure in this historical series set in Regency London.
Her first case: Since the age of sixteen, Arabella Beaumont has been happily employed as a highly paid woman of pleasure. True, respectable ladies of the town would never deign to call at Lustings, her delightful home. Then again, Arabella has no desire to make dreary small talk and sip tea when she could be enjoying the company of amusing, intelligent, and extremely generous gentlemen.
But while Arabella's admirers are legion, she also has enemies. A paper knife stolen during one of her salons was discovered near the body of a former rival. Arabella was entertaining her wealthy benefactor on the night of the murder, but the engaged duke can't provide the alibi she desperately needs. It falls to Arabella and her resourceful sister, Belinda, to clear her good — or at least innocent — name. Utilizing all the talents in her arsenal, the irrepressible Miss Beaumont will endeavor to catch the real culprit, before the hangman catches up to her …
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Title: Requiem Mass
Author: Elizabeth Corley
Series Character: Andrew Fenwick
Formats: Hardcover and ebook
What we know about the character: DCI Andrew Fenwick is a police officer in Sussex.
(Editor's note: This is the first book in the series to feature the character. However, it is the second to be published in the US with the second in the series being the first published by Minotaur Books in 2001.)
His first case: When Deborah Fearnside, a young wife and mother, goes missing, police interest is minimal. She would hardly be the first woman to abandon a tired marriage. Four weeks later it is DCI Andrew Fenwick, back from compassionate leave, who notices the set of coincidences that should have transformed a routine missing person's case into a suspected abduction. But by then it is too late for Debbie.
Twenty years ago, a young woman fell tragically to her death. The only people with her were four schoolfriends. One — or maybe all of them — is responsible. Now there's someone intent on letting them have their just deserts.
Fenwick is soon caught in a desperate race against time to find the murderer before he completes his brutal vendetta. As the death toll mounts, Fenwick stares failure in the face — unless he can draw the predator out of the shadows and into an unconventional and highly dangerous trap with the ultimate bait.
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Title: You Cannoli Die Once
Author: Shelley Costa
Series Character: Eve Angelotta
Formats: Mass Market Paperback and ebook
What we know about the character: Eve Angelotta is the head chef at her family-owned Italian restaurant outside Philadelphia.
Her first case: When Chef Eve Angelotta arrives to start cooking the special of the day, she doesn't expect to find a dead body on the floor. The victim, killed with Eve's favorite marble mortar, turns out to be her grandmother's boyfriend.
When Grandma Maria Pia's alibi falls apart and she's arrested for the murder, it's up to Eve and her cousins to find the real killer. With the help of handsome lawyer Joe Beck, they discover that Maria Pia's boyfriend wasn't everything he seemed. And now that murder is on the menu, they have to find the killer before he dishes up another victim!
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Title: Yesterday's Echo
Author: Matt Coyle
Series Character: Rick Cahill
Formats: Hardcover and ebook
What we know about the character: Rick Cahill is a former Santa Barbara cop, now living in La Jolla (California).
His first case: Rick Cahill was never convicted of his wife's murder, but he was never exonerated either. Not by the police. Not by the media. Not even by himself. Eight years later, police suspicion and his own guilt remain over his responsibility in his wife's death.
When he meets Melody Malana, a beautiful yet secretive TV reporter, he sees a chance to love again. When she is arrested for murder and asks Rick for help, the former cop says no, but the rest of him says yes and he grasps at a chance for redemption.
But Rick's attempt to help turns terribly wrong, and he becomes a suspect in the murder and the target of a police manhunt. On the run, Rick encounters desperate people who'll kill to keep their pasts buried. Before Rick can save himself and bring down a murderer, he must confront the truth about his own past and untangle his feeling for a woman he can never fully trust.
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Title: Grains of Truth
Author: Lydia Crichton
Series Character: Julia Grant
Formats: Trade Paperback and ebook
What we know about the character: Julia Grant is an antiwar activist, working undercover for the US Government.
Her first case: While sitting alone along San Francisco's fabled waterfront, pacifist Julia Grant is startled by the greeting of a well-dressed stranger. Instantly her world is forever changed: Not only does he know her name, he knows where she's been. From the quagmire of the Middle East conflict, an operative planted within the Muslim Brotherhood has led U.S. Intelligence to suspect a new terrorist plot.
Enabled by The Patriot Act, federal agents exploit Julia's ill-fated relationship with a married Egyptologist to manipulate her into undertaking a "simple" mission to Cairo. Her misgivings about serving a government she fears are quickly justified when her contacts along the Nile are killed. As her involvement in clandestine affairs grows ever deeper, so does her confusion about the direction her life should take … if she survives this increasingly perilous "simple mission".
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Title: Hour of the Red God
Author: Richard Crompton
Series Character: Detective Mollel
Formats: Hardcover and ebook
What we know about the character: Detective Mollel is a police officer in Nairobi, Kenya.
His first case: Nairobi, 2007. In Africa's sprawling megacity, a small elite holds power over an impoverished, restless majority. Corruption, exploitation, and ethnic rivalry are part of everyday life. Amid claims of vote rigging and fraud, the presidential elections could be the spark that sets this city ablaze.
With chaos looming, few care about one dead prostitute. But Detective Mollel does. For Mollel is a former Maasai warrior, and the dead girl was a Maasai, too.
As he ventures from slums to skyscrapers, from suburbs to sewers, Mollel begins to realize that there is more at stake than just this murder. But even as he is forced to confront his turbulent past, he begins to doubt his warrior's instincts.
Can Mollel manage to find the killer and solve the case before the Red God consumes all?
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Title: Animal, Vegetable, Murder
Author: Judy Dailey
Series Character: Sunny Day Burnett, Urban Farm
Format: Hardcover
What we know about the character: Sunny Day Burnett is a widow living in a suburban gated community of Seattle, her home surrounded with organic gardens.
Her first case: Gathering eggs for breakfast Sunny discovers a neighbor face down and dead in a patch of Swiss chard. Worse yet the murdered man is clutching a photograph of Sunny s recently deceased husband wearing little more than a pink feather boa and red stilettos. Stunned Sunny hides the picture and her husband s appalling fashion sense from the police but she can t hide herself from a killer more voracious than a gray garden slug. Soon long-buried secrets are popping up like dandelions. Sunny must resolve her past if she wants a future. But time is running out and the day of harvest is near.
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Title: Cold Killing
Author: Luke Delaney
Series Character: Sean Corrigan
Formats: Trade Paperback and ebook
What we know about the character: Detective Inspector Sean Corrigan is with the South London Murder Investigation Team.
His first case: Detective Inspector Sean Corrigan finds the body of a brutally murdered young man in his own South London flat. Corrigan takes the case and soon finds himself embroiled in a deadly cat-and-mouse game with a ruthless and clever serial killer who changes his modus operandi each time he kills, leaving no useable forensic evidence behind …
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Title: Cuts Through Bone
Author: Alaric Hunt
Series Character: Rachel Vasquez and Clayton Guthrie
Formats: Hardcover and ebook
Winner of the 2012 PWA Best First Private Eye Novel Competition.
What we know about the character: Rachel Vasquez is an assistant to New York City private investigator Clayton Guthrie.
Her first case: At first, Rachel Vasquez found her new job working for private detective Clayton Guthrie promising. He got her a gun and a license and took her to target practice. But lately she's just been doing surveillance, and it's not her idea of an exciting time. She is contemplating quitting when Guthrie lands an intriguing case that will take all their wits and guts to solve.
Camille Bowman, a beautiful blond Columbia student and Manhattan heiress, is found dead, shot by a gun that belonged to her fiancé Greg Olsen, an Afghan war veteran. Guthrie is hired to prove Olsen's innocence, and fortunately he thinks Olsen smells clean. The detectives return to the scene of the crime where they see a vagrant who claims he heard the shots and picked the girl's wallet. Tiring of their questions, the vagrant flees, and Vasquez and Guthrie must track a man who's an expert at disappearing while also butting heads with the NYPD, cracking doors at Columbia University, and crawling through the city's subterranean tunnels.
To complicate matters, the murder could be part of a spree of killings being called the Barbiedoll murders, in which women are killed for no apparent reason and with no suspect in sight. The NYPD would like to pin them all on Olsen, and his life will depend on Guthrie and Vasquez catching the real culprit. In a race against time, the detectives gather clues that culminate in a bloody chase of one very determined and surprising killer.
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Title: Deadly Inheritance
Author: Janet Laurence
Series Character: Ursula Grandison
Formats: Trade Paperback and ebook
What we know about the character: Ursula Grandison is an amateur sleuth.
Her first case: American Ursula Grandison accompanies Belle Seldon to visit her sister, Helen, Countess of Mountstanton, commissioned by their father, multi-millionaire Chauncey Seldon, to discover what is wrong with Helen's marriage and what has happened to her dowry. At decaying stately Mountstanton House, Ursula finds the Earl is a cold fish, the Dowager Countess of Mountstanton the mother-in-law from hell, and Helen has not forgiven her for stealing her great love.
Ursula discovers the drowned body of Polly, the nursemaid, thought to have deserted the household. Neither the Earl's brother, Colonel Charles Stanhope, nor Ursula believes Polly's death wsa an accident. Investigating against the Earl's wishes, they uncover a tangle of deception reaching into the past that threatens the reputation of the house of Mountstanton. After another death, Ursula fights to reveal the truth, to save Belle from dreadful scandal, and to fulfil Mr Seldon's commission, with a final shocking denoument.
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Title: The Geneva Option
Author: Adam LeBor
Series Character: Yael Azoulay
Formats: Trade Paperback and ebook
What we know about the character: Yael Azoulay is a young member of the United Nations staff.
Her first case: Yael Azoulay does the United Nations' dirty work. Sent by the UN's Secretary General to eastern Congo to negotiate with Jean-Pierre Hakizimani, a Hutu warlord wanted for genocide, she offers a deal: surrender to the UN tribunal, in exchange for a short sentence and a return to politics.
The plan is to bring stability to the region so the West can exploit the region's mineral wealth. But Yael soon realizes that the UN is prepared to turn a blind eye to mass murder.
Yael finds herself on the run, hunted by the world's intelligence and law enforcement agencies — and haunted by her past — ultimately learning that salvation means not just saving other's lives but confronting her own inner demons.
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Title: Heard it Through the Grapevine
Author: Liz Lipperman
Series Character: Lainey Garcia, Dead Sister
Formats: Trade Paperback and ebook
What we know about the character: Sisters Tessa and Lainey Garcia weren't on speaking terms. But now that Tessa's dead, her wisecracking ghost is making up for lost time.
Her first case: Lainey Garcia left Texas nine years ago after her sister Tessa married the only man Lainey ever loved. So when Tessa's house explodes, the last thing anyone expects is for her to appear to Lainey … as a ghost.
Formerly a part owner of the biggest vineyard in the region, Tessa's got the goods on every fake, floozy, and two-faced liar in town. But Tessa doesn't know who killed her, and she asks the remaining Garcia girls to uncover the truth. Setting out to fulfill their sassy sibling's wish from beyond the grave, the sisters discover a mile-wide list of suspects who wanted Tessa dead. Learning the hard way that killers don't like snoops, Lainey fears she'll be the next Garcia sent to the big vineyard in the sky.
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Title: Wounded Prey
Author: Sean Lynch
Series Character: Bob Farrell and Kevin Kearns
Formats: Trade Paperback and ebook
What we know about the character: Bob Farrell is a retired San Francisco Police Inspector. Kevin Kearns is a rookie cop.
Their first case: A young girl is snatched in broad daylight from outside her school and later found brutally murdered and hanging from a tree.
When recently retired San Francisco Police Inspector, Bob Farrell, sees this on the news, he realises his worst nightmare has just come true. The same brutal killer a government agency stopped him from putting away twenty years before is once more on the loose.
As the killer wreaks a trail of blood and destruction across North America, Bob Farrell sets out to track him down.
But Farrell's not playing by the rules any more than the killer is, and soon the FBI have both of them in their sights …
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Title: A Tine to Live, A Tine to Die
Author: Edith Maxwell
Series Character: Cameron Flaherty, Local Foods
Formats: Hardcover and ebook
What we know about the character: Cameron Flaherty grows and sells organic produce in Massachusetts.
Her first case: It's harvest time in Westbury, Massachusetts, and novice farmer Cameron Flaherty hopes to make a killing selling organic produce. A colorful Locavore Club belongs to Cam's farm-share program. But when a killer strikes on her property, her first foray into the world of organic farming yields a bumper crop of locally sourced murder.
Her customer and eager volunteer, Brazilian Lucinda DaSilva, heads up the Locavore Club, and has vowed to eat only locally grown food for a year. Cam's Great-Uncle Albert, who gave her the farm, is an old-timer with modern sensibilities. Jake Ericsson, the Swedish chef and owner of the upscale The Market restaurant, flirts with Cam but then mysteriously withdraws his attentions.
Traditional farmer Bev Montgomery isn't happy with some of her customers migrating to Cam's organic produce and is devastated when her son is killed on Cam's farm. Girl Scout Ellie Kosloski, working on her Locavore badge, not only aids Cam with the harvest but also helps them both escape a nearly fatal encounter. And then there's the local militia group with its decidedly nonlocal agenda.
To clear her name, Cam has to dig up secrets buried deep beneath the soil of Produce Plus Plus Farm. And when the police don't make progress in the case, she has to catch a murderer whose motto seems to be, "Eat Local. Kill Local."
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Title: Kneading to Die
Author: Liz Mugavero
Series Character: Kristan Connor, Pawsitively Organic Gourmet Pet Food
Formats: Mass Market Paperback and ebook
What we know about the character: Kristan "Stan" Connor is a former corporate PR maven cooking up gourmet pet food and treats in the wake of her recent job loss.
Her first case: Maybe the best thing that ever happened to Kristan "Stan" Connor was losing her high-stress public relations job. Now there's plenty of time to spend in her sleepy new Connecticut town working on her dream: baking healthy, organic pet treats!
Before long the neighborhood dogs are escaping their yards to show up at Stan's doorstep, begging for the kinds of special homemade treats her Maine coon cat Nutty loves so much. And Stan's pet-loving neighbors are thrilled with the new organic options available to their furry family members. But not everyone loves Stan and her newfangled organic ways …
It seems Carole Morganwick, the town vet, is from the old school of pet care. But when Stan swallows her pride and brings a very unwilling Nutty in for a checkup, she not only finds Carole dead under a pile of kibble … but also that she's in the dog house as the prime suspect! Finding the real killer and clearing her name will require some seriously surreptitious sniffing around … and hopefully, curiosity won't kill this innocent cat!
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Title: Foal Play
Author: Kathryn O'Sullivan
Series Character: Colleen McCabe
Formats: Hardcover and ebook
Winner of the 2010 Malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery Novel Competition.
What we know about the character: Colleen McCabe is the fire chief on North Carolina's Outer Banks.
Her first case: Colleen McCabe is enjoying an uneventful summer in North Carolina's Outer Banks supervising her firefighters, making rounds with her Border collie, Sparky, and keeping an eye on the wild horses escaped from the local sanctuary. But when a dead body washes up on shore, she knows trouble has arrived in Corolla.
Colleen is ready to start work on the investigation, but much to her irritation, her best friend, Sheriff Bill Dorman, makes it clear he doesn't want her butting her nose in or poking around. The stubborn Colleen, however, is not so easily deterred. When a man with a gun is spotted lurking around the lighthouse and her former school teacher's house explodes, she adds arson and a second suspicious death to her informal investigation. Colleen soon finds herself juggling her job, amorous advances from the town's developer, and intrusions from the local press, all while keeping information from Bill. Her secret sleuthing quickly comes to an end, however, when a bigger threat enters the picture.
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Title: Gluten for Punishment
Author: Nancy J. Parra
Series Character: Toni Ryder, Baker's Treat
Formats: Mass Market Paperback and ebook
What we know about the character: Toni Ryder is a gluten-free baker in Oiltop, Kansas.
Her first case: Even though Toni is used to going against the grain by preparing allergy-safe, gluten-free products for her online bakery, Baker's Treat, opening a storefront in the middle of wheat country Kansas might be biting off more than she can chew. The town is already skeptical of her flour-free ways, but when a local wheat farmer is murdered outside her patisserie, skepticism turns into outright suspicion.
With the help of her eccentric grandmother, her handsome lawyer, and the sexy new widower in town, Toni is determined to find the real criminal before bad publicity and increasingly personal acts of vandalism shut her down. But when another suspect winds up dead, Toni realizes that this half-baked killer isn't just trying to get her to close shop — he's trying to make sure that she's made her last gluten-free cookie … forever.
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Title: Isolated
Author: Trevor Scott
Series Character: Keenan Fitzpatrick
Formats: Trade Paperback and ebook
What we know about the character: Keenan Fitzpatrick is a former Reno, Nevada sheriff.
His first case: When Keenan Fitzpatrick wins a free moose hunting trip to Newfoundland, Canada, he is happy to get away from his current job as a casino security officer. Shortly after arriving at the isolated hunting lodge forty miles from the nearest road, a man is shot to death. The other guests and guides immediately recruit Fitz to solve the murder.
But without any technology to run background on all of the characters at the lodge, Fitz must rely only on his personal skills to uncover the killer. With six days before anyone from the outside world will learn anything is wrong at the lodge, Fitz must stop the killer before everyone is murdered.
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For a list of more hardcover mysteries scheduled for publication during May, 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 May 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.
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