The Hidden Staircase Mystery Books recently updated its list of May 2010 hardcover mysteries as well shelved new May paperbacks on The Mystery Bookshelf.
In this series monthly posts, which we call Firsts on the 1st, we're introducing readers to new series characters who will make their mysterious debut during May.
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Title: Wanna Get Lucky?
Author: Deborah Coonts
Series Character: Lucky O'Toole
Format: Hardcover
What we know about the character: Lucky O'Toole is the head of customer relations for the Babylon, a resort on the Las Vegas strip.
Her first case: A young woman plunges from a Las Vegas sightseeing helicopter, landing in the Pirate’s lagoon in front of the Treasure Island Hotel in the middle of the 8:30 Pirate Show. Almost everyone writes her off as another Vegas victim.
But Lucky O’Toole smells a rat. As head of Customer Relations at the newest, most opulent mega-casino and resort on the Strip, so she’s got a lot on her plate: the Adult Film industry’s annual awards banquet, a spouse-swapping convention, sex toy purveyors preying on the pocket-protector crowd attending ElectroniCon … Still, Lucky can’t resist turning over a few stones.
When a former flame is one of the snakes she uncovers, Lucky’s certain she’s no longer dealing with an anonymous Sin City suicide. To top it all off, Lucky’s best friend Teddie—Las Vegas’ finest female impersonator—presses to take their relationship to the next level. Leave it to Lucky to attract a man who looks better in a dress than she does.
Lucky must manage the Babylon’s onslaught of outrageous festivities, solve a murder, and struggle to keep her life and libido from spinning out of control … not to mention keep her balance in six inch heels.
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Title: Tressed to Kill
Author: Lila Dare
Series Character: Grace Terhune, Southern Beauty Shop
Format: Mass Market Paperback
What we know about the character: Grace Ann Terhune is a beautician in her mother's salon in St. Elizabeth, Georgia.
Her first case: St. Elizabeth offers charm, Southern hospitality-and, most recently, murder. When hairdresser Grace Terhune and her mother, Violetta, gussy up all the high-society ladies attending the town meeting, they find their snobbiest client dead. The police believe the mother-daughter duo did her in. But before things get snarled beyond repair, Grace sets out to clear their names.
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Title: The Poacher's Son
Author: Paul Doiron
Series Character: Mike Bowditch
Format: Hardcover
What we know about the character: Mike Bowditch is a game warden in Maine.
His first case: Mike returns home one evening to find an alarming voice from the past on his answering machine: his father, Jack, a hard-drinking womanizer who makes his living poaching illegal game. An even more frightening call comes the next morning from the police: They are searching for the man who killed a beloved local cop the night before -- and his father is their prime suspect. Jack has escaped from police custody, and only Mike believes that his tormented father might not be guilty.
Now, alienated from the woman he loves, shunned by colleagues who have no sympathy for the suspected cop killer, Mike must come to terms with his haunted past. He knows firsthand Jack’s brutality, but is the man capable of murder? Desperate and alone, Mike strikes up an uneasy alliance with a retired warden pilot, and together the two men journey deep into the Maine wilderness in search of a runaway fugitive. There they meet a beautiful woman who claims to be Jack’s mistress but who seems to be guarding a more dangerous secret. The only way for Mike to save his father now is to find the real killer -- which could mean putting everyone he loves in the line of fire.
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Title: Blood Oath
Author: Christopher Farnsworth
Series Character: Nathaniel Cade
Format: Hardcover
What we know about the character: Nathaniel Cade is a vampire sworn to protect the President and the United States from supernatural threats.
His first case: Zach Barrows is an ambitious young White House staffer whose career takes an unexpected turn when he's partnered with Nathaniel Cade, a secret agent sworn to protect the president. But Cade is no ordinary civil servant. Bound by a special blood oath, Cade has spent more than 140 years in service to the president, battling nightmares before they can break into the daylight world of the American dream.
Immediately Zach and Cade receive their first joint assignment: one that uncovers a shadowy government conspiracy and a plot to attack the Unites States with a gruesome new biological weapon. Zach soon learns that the world is far stranger, and far more dangerous, than he ever imagined ... and that his partner is the least of his problems.
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Title: Love Mercy
Author: Earlene Fowler
Series Character: Love Mercy Johnson
Format: Mass Market Paperback
What we know about the character: Love Mercy Johnson is a photojournalist and co-owner of the Buttercream Café in Morro Bay, California.
Her first case: She still listens for her husband's comforting laugh, but with her friend's help, Love is trying to move on. Then her 18-year-old estranged granddaughter shows up, forcing them both to confront old resentments. And when disaster strikes, they must discover if they can change their lives -- and the lives of those they love -- for the better.
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Title: The Insider
Author: Reece Hirsch
Series Character: Will Connelly
Format: Mass Market Paperback
What we know about the character: Will Connelly is a corporate attorney in San Francisco.
His first case: First Will's colleague hurtles to his death outside his office window. Within days, he's is a prime suspect in a murder, the target of an S.E.C. insider trading investigation, and a pawn in a complex criminal scheme involving the Russian mafia and a ruthless terrorist plot. Now, to top things off, he must ensure a deadly enemy doesn't gain access to the nation's most sensitive and confidential information -- that has the power to do incalculable, irrevocable harm.
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Title: A Timely Vision
Author: Joyce and Jim Lavene
Series Character: Dae O'Donnell, Missing Pieces
Format: Mass Market Paperback
What we know about the character: Dae O'Donnell is mayor of the small town of Duck, North Carolina.
Her first case: Dae is the person everyone turns to when they've lost something. One touch and Dae can find it, and missing pieces seem to find their way to her, whether she wants them to or not.
When Miss Mildred asks Dae to find her missing watch, Dae finds herself looking for more than mislaid jewelry -- she must prove the town matriarch isn't a cold-blooded killer.
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Title: Under the Eye of Kali
Author: Susan Oleksiw
Series Character: Anita Ray
Format: Hardcover
What we know about the character: Anita Ray helps her aunt manage a hotel in south India.
Her first case: In the middle of the tourist season in tropical South India, four American women meet over breakfast at Hotel Delite. Two of the women are traveling together, and three seem to be from the same city. All seems idyllic until one woman goes missing and another becomes deathly ill. Anita plunges into the mystery, to save a guest and her aunt's livelihood.
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Title: The Hangman's Row Enquiry
Author: Ann Purser
Series Character: Ivy Beasley
Format: Mass Market Paperback
What we know about the character: Ivy Beasley is an amateur sleuth living in a retirement residence in the Suffolk village of Barrington. She was introduced in the Round Ringford series.
Her first case: Ivy has found a silver lining in her golden years as an amateur sleuth.
She teams up with Gus, a mysterious newcomer to the small English village of Barrington who can't resist a little excitement even as he strives to keep his past a secret, and her own cousin, a widow with time on her hands and money in her purse. Together they're determined to solve the murder of Gus's elderly neighbor.
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Title: Follow Me Down
Author: Marc Strange
Series Character: Orwell Brennan
Format: Hardcover
What we know about the character: Orwell Brennan is a police chief in a rural town in Ontario.
His first case: A man, hanging from a tree at the edge of the forest that surrounds Dockerty, Newry County, has been shot with arrows, two of which pin his belly to the tree trunk. Orwell, Dockerty’s chief of police, wonders whether it’s a hunting accident when a sergeant tells him it’s been ruled a murder. He also tells the chief that it’s now in the hands of Metro Homicide and outside his concern. But Orwell has never listened much to those telling him to mind his own business, and this case has far too many unanswered questions to suit him. He decides he can’t and won’t let it go until he knows what really happened—no matter whose toes he steps on.
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For a list of more 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 2010 releases.
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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