Gearing up for Summer Reads...Don't miss the May offerings...

The "Merry Month of May" offers up many new releases in a wide range of genres, so get ready for some reading enjoyment. Here is just a small sampling of books that might be of interest to you:

May 5, 2009:
Elaine Viets adds another chapter to her Dead-End Job mystery series with KILLER CUTS (Obsidian hardcover). With a résumé that includes attempted assault and alimony evasion, Helen Hawthorne is living on the lam and working wherever she can. This time, she’s assistant to Miguel Angel, the Cuban manager of a chic salon where a haircut can cost as much as a car payment. While working the wedding of a wealthy gossip blogger and cable TV show host, things get hairy for Helen when the man ends up dead – murdered at his own wedding.

LAST VAMPIRE STANDING (Berkley trade) is the second installment in Nancy Haddock’s series about a recently revived vampire princess and her entertaining adventures adjusting to life in the 21st century. Vampire princess Francesca is living a normal, peaceful existence in St. Augustine, Florida, with friendly neighbors and great friends. When a stranger crashes a party seeking sanctuary, she puts Cesca and her newfound friends in grave danger – the woman is being followed by a psychotic vampire with a murderous agenda.

Catherine Mann continues her Dark Ops series with HOTSHOT (Berkley Sensation) this time telling the story of Air Force pilot Major Vince “Vapor” DeLuca, who’s just accepted his most difficult recon mission ever – keeping an eye on Shay Bassett. She’s scheduled to tell Congress about Cleveland’s escalating gang activity, and someone is trying to stop her from testifying. Her life now depends on trusting the one man who burned her so badly years ago – and still makes her hot.

The second book in Angela Knight’s Time Hunters trilogy, GUARDIAN: THE TIME HUNTERS (Berkley), tells the futuristic tale of Riane Arvid, a superhuman cop from the future trapped in the year 2009 by group of murderous fanatics called the Xeran. Nick Wyatt is a 21st century warrior who’s been a target of the Xeran his entire life. He’s the only one Riane can turn to, but his intentions are as mysterious as his origins. In an attempt to discover the truth about each other, both Riane and Nick decide mutual seduction is the best tactic.

UNDER FIRE (Signet Eclipse) is book two in Jo Davis’ exciting Firefighters of Station Five series. Zack fights fires and saves lives for a living, but his personal life is not as exciting – until he rescues Corrine Shannon. This sharp-tongued exotic dancer soon has the shy Zack burning with passion. Just as they are getting to know each other better, they find themselves targeted by two relentless enemies with 50 million reasons to succeed. Will their newfound romance survive their struggle to stay alive?

May 12, 2009:
Karna Small Bodman gives fans another stellar political thriller with FINAL FINESSE (Forge hardcover). Samantha Reid, the White House Deputy Director for Homeland Security, deals with national security threats on a daily basis. When a natural- gas pipeline explodes in America’s heartland, she senses pending disaster and tries to convince reluctant officials to take action. After several more explosions, Samantha teams up with Tripp Adams, VP of GeoGlobal Oil & Gas, owner of the pipelines, to investigate. As they spend time together trying to solve the mystery of the explosions and the motives of the group behind the havoc, Samantha and Tripp grow very close. Then Tripp is sent to South America – and disappears. Now Samantha must deal with political intrigue at the highest levels as she races to find Tripp and stop a team of foreign agents before they carry out their final deadly scheme.

WHISPERED LIES (Pocket trade) by Sherrilyn Kenyon and Dianna Love is the latest book to feature the BAD (Bureau of American Defense) Agency. A gutsy female informant must come out of hiding to bring down a secret organization that’s become America’s number one threat. BAD has intercepted an anonymous tip, and agent Carlos Delgado leads his team on a daring mission to flush out the highly sought-after informant. For the past decade, Gabrielle Saxe has been hiding from a killer while also providing anonymous tips about international criminals to intelligence agencies. When she hears from a friend, who’s supposed to be dead, Gabrielle is forced to risk it all. This puts her in the direct path of operatives on a dangerous mission…and into the arms of a man whose duty is to hand her over to Interpol as an international felon.

The venerable Minnesota crime fighter Lucas Davenport returns in John Sandford’s WICKED PREY (Putnam hardcover), the 19th book in this compelling, entertaining and suspenseful crime series. The Republicans are coming to St. Paul for their national convention. However, the big party is anything but fun when a crew of professional stick-up men decides to take advantage of all those political moneymen with briefcases full of cash. If that weren’t headache enough for Davenport, things are about to get worse. A pimp and petty thief blames Davenport for putting him in a wheelchair with a stray bullet, and the psychotic man has been nursing his grudge ever since. He’s intent on making the cop really suffer for the deed, so he targets Davenport’s 14-year-old adoptive daughter. Add in a right-wing-crazy with a sniper rifle roaming a city filled with the most powerful politicians on earth and you have the makings of a catastrophic event.

May 19, 2009:
Mary Balogh concludes her Huxtable family saga, set in the glittering world of Regency England, with SEDUCING AN ANGEL (Delacorte hardcover). This story sweeps us into a world of scandal and intrigue as we are introduced to Stephen, the youngest Huxtable sibling and only son. Stephen will risk his reputation and his heart in a scandalous liaison with Cassandra Belmont, an infamous beauty intent on seduction. But when passion turns the tables on them both, who can say who has seduced whom?

The second installment in Allison Brennan’s Sacramento FBI trilogy, FATAL SECRETS (Ballantine), features FBI agent Dean Hooper. When a top lieutenant in a notorious ring of human traffickers agrees to turn state’s evidence, Immigration and Customs Enforcement senior agent Sonia Knight believes she’ll finally take down the illegal operation’s devilish mastermind, Xavier Jones. But when an FBI sting on Jones’ criminal enterprise collides with an ICE stakeout, Sonia is enraged. FBI agent Dean Hooper has been chasing Jones for years on money-laundering and tax-evasion charges and doesn’t need or want a hot-headed ICE agent second-guessing his every move. When the Bureau is ordered to join forces with ICE, Sonia is just as livid. Will their team effort pay off, or will Sonia and Dean pay the ultimate price with their lives?

WHISPERS OF THE DEAD (Delacorte hardcover) is the latest in Simon Beckett’s Dr. David Hunter series. Hunter, a British forensic anthropologist, comes to the U. S. to study at the legendary Knoxville, Tennessee, “Body Farm.” Soon after arriving, he winds up in the center of an investigation far from his jurisdiction when a crime scene is uncovered in a remote Smoky Mountain cabin. Within days, Hunter realizes he’s dealing with a serial killer who’s intimately familiar with the intricacies of forensics. And the killer keeps coming up with surprises, until he finally sets his sights on Hunter himself.

In GONE TOMORROW (Delacorte hardcover), Lee Child’s 13th novel featuring Jack Reacher, we find Reacher riding the New York City subway late at night with only five other passengers. The woman sitting directly across from him displays all the signs of a suicide bomber that Reacher learned from his military days. From this pulse-pounding start, Reacher will be plunged into the depths of a conspiracy concealed since the start of the Soviet-Afghan War – one that will have deadly consequences for today’s war on terrorism. Through one hairpin surprise after another, this thriller spans three decades and gnaws at the heart of America.

May 26, 2009:
McALISTAIR’S FORTUNE (Leisure) by Alissa Johnson is the third book in her Regency-set Providence series, following AS LUCK WOULD HAVE IT and TEMPTING FATE. While eavesdropping where she shouldn’t, Evie Cole discovers her guardians’ devious plans to snare a husband for her. But Evie doesn’t hear the entire scheme, which has some dire consequences for everyone involved.

THE ACCIDENTAL LAWMAN (Steeple Hill) by Jill Marie Landis tells the inspirational story of Hank Larson, who foils a bank robbery as soon as he sets foot in the small town of Glory, Texas. It doesn’t matter that one of the bandits literally tripped over Hank's dusty boots. Suddenly Hank is hailed as a hero and appointed sheriff. Everyone thinks the Lord led him there to save the day. Everyone, that is, except the town's pretty healer, Amelia Hawthorne. The robber who got away was her brother, and now it's Hank's job to apprehend him. Knowing what it’s like to lose your family, Hank works at restoring Amelia's shaky faith. But doing what is right just might break her heart.

THE COPTIC SECRET (Leisure) by Gregg Loomis continues the exciting adventures of Lang Reilly. This fourth thriller in the series finds Lang attending a gala to celebrate the find of the century – previously unknown Gospels containing startling revelations. But before the parchments can be revealed, shots ring out in the British Museum and the Gospels – along with Lang’s friend – are taken. An ancient, mysterious organization will kill anyone who comes close to the parchments, but Lang is not easily intimidated. The more his life is threatened, the more determined he is to learn the truth.

Ana Leigh continues the tale of The Fraser family with HOLDING OUT FOR A HERO (Pocket Star), the fifth installment in this series set in the Old West. Rico Fraser wants nothing more than to return to the Fraser clan's California home, find a good woman and start his own family. Before that can happen, he has to deal with Ben Slatter, who brutally murdered Rico's mother three years earlier. So when Slatter and his gang abduct a young ranch heiress, Rico seizes the chance to bring his adversary in – dead or alive. Born into privilege, Jenny Burke’s life is devoid of any excitement… until she’s kidnapped. When she’s rescued by a sexy bounty hunter, life will never be the same for Jenny, or Rico either.

BLIND SIGHT (Doubleday hardcover) is the third book by Terri Persons to feature FBI special agent Bernadette St. Clare. A deer hunter tracking his wounded prey through the Minnesota woods gets more than he bargained for when he makes the grisly discovery of a young girl’s body. The condition of the corpse is shocking: The girl had been pregnant, but the fetus was removed from her womb and an inverted pentagram drawn on her forehead. After the girl is identified as the daughter of a high-powered Senator, the FBI is called in to find the murderer – and the missing baby. The investigation is hampered by the many lies that lead a circuitous – and deadly – route to the truth. It takes dogged police work and Bernadette’s unique powers of second sight to apprehend the killers in one of the toughest crimes they’ve ever solved.

In MASTER OF CRAVING (Pocket Star), book three in the Blood Sword Legacy series by Karin Tabke, eight mercenary knights, each of them base born, each of them bound by unspeakable torture in a Saracen prison, each of them branded with the mark of the sword for life, find their destinies marked by a woman. It is whispered that each Blood Sword is destined to find only one woman who will bear him (and only him) sons, and until that one woman is found, he will battle and ravage the land. Stefan de Valrey is left unconscious on the battlefield, while his sworn brothers are captured. Despite horrible injuries, Stefan vows to do whatever it takes to rescue them, even abducting the beautiful Welsh maiden Arianrhod as hostage to exchange for his brothers. He soon finds he’s unable to control the situation, or the feisty princess, or the fiery passion that burns so hot between them.

Colleen Thompson dishes up another spine-tingling romantic suspense with BENEATH BONE LAKE (Love Spell). When Ruby Monroe’s young daughter goes missing and she’s threatened by a tattooed gunman, she has no one else to turn to for help but neighbor Sam McCoy, the sexy bad-boy with a criminal past. Then a body is found in Bone Lake. With the local sheriff involved, Ruby wonders if her trust is misplaced as her frantic search for answers uncovers corruption, dirty secrets and her own hidden desires.

Lara Adrian’s remarkable Midnight Breed series continues with the sixth installment, ASHES OF MIDNIGHT (Dell). Claire Roth is driven from her home by a fiery threat that seems to come from hell itself. Then, from out of the flames and ash, a vampire warrior emerges – Andreas Reichen, her onetime lover, now a stranger consumed by vengeance. But Claire cannot escape his fury, or the hunger that plunges her into his world of eternal darkness and unending pleasure. Nothing will stop Andreas from destroying the vampire responsible for slaughtering his Breed brethren…even if he must use his former lover as a pawn in the deadly mission. And so a dangerous seduction begins – one that blurs the lines between predator and prey and stokes the flames of a consuming, white-hot passion.

In a recent Romantic Reads posting from Dorchester Editor Leah Hultenschmidt, she addressed the issue of what’s been happening with their Shomi line of cutting-edge urban fantasy novels. Leah had this to say: “With the recent market constrictions, it was getting difficult to have an added romance in certain months on the list. So we’ve folded some Shomi titles into the Love Spell line and moved some to a new position geared more toward fantasy/urban fantasy in Leisure, depending on the book’s content. We’re definitely still doing cutting-edge, innovative romance.” So fans of Shomi can get their fix May 26, 2009, with the release of TEKGRRL (Leisure) by A. J. Menden, the second book in her EHJ series. When Mindy was 12, she asked to go to The School like other gifted girls. Her parents sent her to another planet. Today, back on Earth, Mindy is a mechanical genius with the Elite Hands of Justice, America's premier superhero squad. She's been having headaches though, and not just because she’s pushing 30, or that her longtime crush is flirting with another teammate. What's burning Mindy’s brain is a past she can't recall – a past that’s been erased. Now her worst nightmare is returning; only she, her friends and her one true love can stop it.

As always, there’s more to come next month, so stay tuned…Tanzey

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