We welcome Julia Spencer-Fleming back to the Odyssey for her second visit and her latest Millers Kill mystery, I Shall Not Want:

People die. Marriages fail. In the small But in Millers Kill, New York, life doesn’t stop for heartbreak. A brand-new officer in the police department, a breaking-and-entering, and trouble within his own family keep Police Chief Russ Van Alstyne busy enough to ignore the pain of losing his wife---and the woman he loves. Meanwhile, at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, the Reverend Clare Fergusson is trying to keep her vestry, her bishop, and her National Guard superiors happy---all the while denying her own wounded soul. When a Mexican farmhand stumbles over a Latino man killed with a single shot to the back of his head, Clare is sucked into the investigation through her involvement in the migrant community.

"Keenly moving and occasionally laugh-out-loud funny, this is a tour de force in a series that seems to have jumped levels in quality." – Booklist

Louis Bayard

The Black Tower

Louis Bayard’s most recent book, The Pale Blue Eye, was an Odyssey Pick for our First Edition Club. Now he presents us with another historical crime fiction book in which reality is blended with fiction and the suspense is non-stop: Vidocq. The name strikes terror in the Parisian underworld of 1818. As founder and chief of a newly created plainclothes police force, Vidocq has used his mastery of disguise and surveillance to capture some of France’s most notorious and elusive criminals. Now he is hot on the trail of a tantalizing mystery—the fate of the young dauphin Louis-Charles, son of Marie-Antoinette and King Louis XVI.

"The Black Tower breathes life into the world’s first police detective, Vidocq, a literary feat that happily waited for this novelist. As the gripping and nuanced story races through the parlor rooms and back alleys of Paris, Bayard shows why he is at the forefront of literary historical fiction today." -- Matthew Pearl, author of The Dante Club and The Poe Shadow

New York Times bestselling author Tess Gerritsen returns to the Odyssey for her latest Jane Rizzoli / Maura Isles thriller. By turns darkly enthralling and relentlessly surprising, The Keepsake showcases an author at the peak of her storytelling powers.

For untold years, the perfectly preserved mummy had lain forgotten in the dusty basement of Boston’s Crispin Museum. Now its sudden rediscovery by museum staff is both a major coup and an attention-grabbing mystery. Dubbed "Madam X," the mummy–to all appearances, an ancient Egyptian artifact–seems a ghoulish godsend for the financially struggling institution. But medical examiner Maura Isles soon discovers a macabre message hidden within the corpse–horrifying proof that this "centuries-old" relic is instead a modern-day murder victim. To Maura and Boston homicide detective Jane Rizzoli, the forensic evidence is unmistakable, its implications terrifying. And when the grisly remains of yet another woman are found in the hidden recesses of the museum, it becomes chillingly clear that a maniac is at large–and is now taunting them.

Praise for Tess Gerritsen:

"Pulse-pounding fun" Philadelphia Inquirer
"Scary and brilliant" Toronto Globe and Mail
"Polished, riveting prose" Chicago Tribune.
"[Tess Gerritsen is] medical suspense queen" Publishers Weekly

One of the most imaginitive writers of his generation, Dennis Lehane returns to the Odyssey with The Given Day. Set in Boston at the end of the First World War, the book tells the story of two families – one black and one white – swept up in a maelstrom of revolutionaries and anarchists; immigrants and ward bosses; Brahmins and "ordinary" citizens, all engaged in a battle for survival and power. The Given Day explores the crippling violence and irrepressible exuberance of a country at war with, and the thrall of, itself. As Danny Luther, and others around them struggle to define themselves in increasingly turbulent times, they gradually find family in one another, and together, ride a rising storm of hardship, deprivation, and hope that will change their lives.

"Rollicking, brawling, gritty, political, and always completely absorbing," … "a rich and satisfying epic." Stewart O’Nan, author of Last Night at the Lobster, A Prayer for the Dying, and Snow Angels

Archer Mayor

Joe Gunther’s 19th adventure, The Catch, is primarily placed in Maine and focuses on the activities of one Alan Budney, the disaffected son of an old-time lobsterman. The book begins, however, in Vermont, where a deputy sheriff is shot to death during a routine traffic stop on a dark country road. This shooting gets Joe Gunther and the VBI involved in the investigation, pursuing the two bad guys, and headed toward a rendezvous, of sorts, with Budney and his plans to usurp and replace Maine’s biggest drug lord. (And that’s just the beginning…)

"As a stylist, Mayor is one of those meticulous construction workers who are fascinated by the way things function. He's the boss man on procedures." "…Dazzling." —

"Mayor is not given to gimmicks and manipulation. There are flashier writers, but few deliver such well-rounded novels of such consistent high quality." —Arizona Daily Star

"... among the best cop stories being written today." – Booklist