Mystery

Canton Seniors Book Discussion Group: May

Join us for a live virtual program on Thursday, May 27, 2021 at 2:00PM via Zoom video conference as the Canton Seniors Book Discussion Group discusses: 

Also available in: e-book | audiobook | e-audiobook

At a gala party thrown by her parents, Evelyn Hardcastle will be killed. Again. She's been murdered hundreds of times, and each day, Aiden Bishop is too late to save her. Doomed to repeat the same day over and over, Aiden's only escape is to solve Evelyn Hardcastle's murder and conquer the shadows of an enemy he struggles to even comprehend. But nothing and no one are quite what they seem.

Upcoming sessions

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Masterpiece (aka Masterpiece Theatre, Masterpiece Mystery) turns 50 this year. Celebrate with our wide collection of Masterpiece movies and series, located in the TV section, and books throughout Fiction and Nonfiction. Cheers!

The official Downton Abbey cookbook by Annie (Food historian) Gray

Canton Seniors Book Discussion: March

Join us for a live virtual program on Thursday, March 25, 2021 at 2:00PM via Zoom video conference as the Canton Seniors Book Discussion Group discusses: 

The paper wasp : a novel by Lauren Acampora
Also available in: e-book

In small-town Michigan, Abby Graven leads a solitary life. Once a bright student on the cusp of a promising art career, she now languishes in her childhood home, trudging to and from her job as a supermarket cashier. Each day she is taunted from the magazine racks by the success of her former best friend Elise, a rising Hollywood starlet whose life in pictures Abby obsessively scrapbooks. At night Abby escapes through the films of her favorite director, Auguste Perren, a cult figure known for his creative institute the Rhizome. Inspired by Perren, Abby draws fantastical storyboards based on her often premonitory dreams, a visionary gift she keeps hidden. 

This book is immediately available on Hoopla in e-book format. If you would like to reserve a print copy, you may stop in to pick one up or call 734-397-0999 and select option 4. Holds pick up of materials is also available.

Upcoming sessions

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If you enjoy John Sanford, Vince Flynn, Lee Child, or David Rosenfelt try one of these suggestions of gripping mysteries with great characters. Many are part of ongoing series.

American spy : a novel by Lauren Wilkinson
Also available in: e-book | e-audiobook

It's 1986, the heart of the Cold War, and Marie Mitchell is an intelligence officer with the FBI. She's brilliant, but she's also a young black woman working in an old boys' club. Her career has stalled and her days are filled with monotonous paperwork. So when she's given the opportunity to join a shadowy task force aimed at undermining Thomas Sankara, the charismatic revolutionary president of Burkina Faso whose Communist ideology has made him a target for American intervention, she says yes.

Bad monkey by Carl Hiaasen
Also available in: e-book | audiobook

Andrew Yancy--late of the Miami Police and soon-to-be-late of the Monroe County sheriff's office--has a human arm in his freezer. There's a logical explanation for that, but not for how and why it parted from its shadowy owner. For more Andrew Yancy, check out Razor Girl.

With her final book, Kiss the Girls and Make Them Cry, having published in November 2019, we say good-bye to Mary Higgens Clark.  She passed away Friday, January 31, 2020 at the age of 92. Revisit some of your old favorites or try her for the first time. She'd like that.

Kiss the girls and make them cry by Mary Higgins Clark

The mysteries and thrillers published in 1988 have had some staying power. The list below shows titles that are still of interest today, over 30 years later.

Everyone is stymied when two of Pickax's most prominent citizens are found murdered in their home. But even more puzzling to Qwill is Koko's sudden and unaccountable attraction to rubber cement.

Lightning by 1945- Dean R. (Dean Ray) Koontz
Also available in: audiobook

In the midst of a raging blizzard, lightning struck on the night Laura Shane was born. And a mysterious blond-haired stranger showed up just in time to save her from dying. 

Years later, in the wake of another storm, Laura will be saved again. For someone is watching over her. Is he the guardian angel he seems? The devil in disguise? Or the master of a haunting destiny beyond all time and space?

C.J. Box is the bestselling author of the Joe Pickett mystery series. 

Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett has now been the protagonist in seventeen novels, starting with Open Season in 2001. Over that time, he’s taken on environmental terrorists, rogue federal land managers, animal mutilators, crazed cowboy hitmen, corrupt bureaucrats, homicidal animal rights advocates, and violent dysfunctional families. Source.

If you enjoy reading about unlikely heros who can hold their own, then you may enjoy titles by authors similar to C.J. Box...

A dangerous man by Robert Crais
Also available in: e-book | audiobook | large print

A brilliant new crime novel from the beloved, bestselling, and award-winning master of the genre--and Joe Pike's most perilous case to date. Joe Pike didn't expect to rescue a woman that day. He went to the bank same as anyone goes to the bank, and returned to his Jeep. So when Isabel Roland, the lonely young teller who helped him, steps out of the bank on her way to lunch, Joe is on hand when two men abduct her. Joe chases them down, and the two men are arrested. But instead of putting the drama to bed, the arrests are only the beginning of the trouble for Joe and Izzy. After posting bail, the two abductors are murdered and Izzy disappears. Pike calls on his friend, Elvis Cole, to help learn the truth. What Elvis uncovers is a twisted family story that involves corporate whistleblowing, huge amounts of cash, the Witness Relocation Program, and a long line of lies. But what of all that did Izzy know? Is she a perpetrator or a victim? And how far will Joe go to find out?

 

July 24th is National and International Private Investigator Day, apparently in honor of François Vidocq, one of the first in the profession. If you're looking to celebrate and have a keen nose for a story with a good Private Investigator, try one of these.

Titles are organized generally from youngest interest level to oldest, but every reader is different and may find titles that appeal to them throughout the list.

Mitzi Tulane may be only three years old, but she sure knows how to follow a trail of evidence and solve tough mysteries. From the strange happenings in the kitchen to the sudden arrival of every family member she's ever met, Mitzi pieces together the clues and (finally) realizes that she's . . . in the middle of her own surprise birthday party!

When Whobert Whover, owl detective finds Perry the possum lying still on the ground, he sets out to determine who is responsible for his condition and questions the nearby wildlife.

New this month in the Large Print collection are a variety of romance, mystery, and thriller titles. A few are featured below, with additional new titles available in the Large Print collection at the Library.

Sunset beach [large print] by 1954- Mary Kay Andrews
Also available in: print | audiobook

Pull up a lounge chair and have a cocktail at Sunset Beach - it comes with a twist. Drue Campbell's life is adrift. Out of a job and down on her luck, life doesn't seem to be getting any better when her estranged father, Brice Campbell, a flamboyant personal injury attorney, shows up at her mother's funeral after a twenty-year absence. Worse, he's remarried - to Drue's eighth grade frenemy, Wendy, now his office manager. And they're offering her a job. It seems like the job from hell, but the offer is sweetened by the news of her inheritance - her grandparents' beach bungalow in the sleepy town of Sunset Beach, a charming but storm-damaged eyesore now surrounded by waterfront McMansions. With no other prospects, Drue begrudgingly joins the firm, spendingher days screening out the grifters whose phone calls flood the law office. Working with Wendy is no picnic either. But when a suspicious death at an exclusive beach resort nearby exposes possible corruption at her father's firm, she goes from unwilling cubicle rat to unwitting investigator, and is drawn into a case that may - or may not - involve her father. With an office romance building, a decades-old missing persons case re-opened, and a cottage in rehab, one thing is for sure at Sunset Beach: there's a storm on the horizon. 

Queen bee : a novel by Dorothea Benton Frank
Also available in: print | audiobook

Beekeeper Holly McNee Kensen quietly lives in a world of her own on Sullivans Island, tending her hives and working at the local island library. Holly calls her mother The Queen Bee because she's a demanding hulk of a woman. Her mother, a devoted hypochondriac, might be unaware that she's quite ill but that doesn't stop her from tormenting Holly. To escape the drama, Holly's sister Leslie married and moved away, wanting little to do with island life. Holly's escape is to submerge herself in the lives of the two young boys next door and their widowed father, Archie.

Her world is upended when the more flamboyant Leslie returns and both sisters, polar opposites, fixate on what's happening in their neighbor's home. Is Archie really in love with that awful ice queen of a woman? If Archie marries her, what will become of his little boys? Restless Leslie is desperate for validation after her imploded marriage, squandering her favors on any and all takers. Their mother ups her game in an uproarious and theatrical downward spiral. Scandalized Holly is talking to her honey bees a mile a minute, as though they'll give her a solution to all the chaos. Maybe they will.

Queen Bee is a classic Lowcountry Tale--warm, wise and hilarious, it roars with humanity and a dropperful of whodunit added for good measure by an unseen hand.

What do cozy mystery books and romance books have in common? An affinity for silly titles such as:

Mulch Ado About Murder

Chili Con Corpses

How to Flirt with a Naked Werewolf

So I Married a Sorcerer

We've created a Battle of the Bad Books. Vote for your favorite "bad" mystery or romance title each week and watch how the bracket is narrowed to the ultimate winner. Check out the display and related books available for check-out at CPL.

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