Reading Ahead: December 2014, part 1

It's hard to avoid December. Television commercials are already leaning toward the holiday season. Stores are featuring festive decorations. But there's more to look forward to than tinsel and fruitcake, especially if you're a reader. Publishers save some of their best and brightest offerings for the giving season, so pay close attention--there just may be something coming up that you'd like to gift to yourself. And at the library, it's free!

Die Again, by Tess Gerritsen. Gerritsen's Rizzoli & Isles series is hugely popular, even generating a television series based on the characters. And fans will be thrilled with this new installment. When Boston homicide detective Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles are summoned to a crime scene, they find a killing worthy of the most ferocious beast—right down to the claw marks on the corpse. But only the most sinister human hands could have left renowned big-game hunter and taxidermist Leon Gott gruesomely displayed like the once-proud animals whose heads adorn his walls. Did Gott unwittingly awaken a predator more dangerous than any he’s ever hunted?

Hush, by Karen Robards. When Riley Cowan finds her estranged husband Jeff dead in his palatial home, she’s sure it’s no coincidence. The police rule it a suicide, but Riley thinks someone’s out for blood—specifically someone Jeff’s father ripped off in one of the biggest financial fraud cases of all time. She suspects that someone is trying to send a message to Jeff’s father: Tell me where the money is, or everyone you care about will die... Robards has quite a following, and with good reason.

Woman with a Gun, by Philip Margolin. Margolin is perhaps best known for his dark and gritty crime novels, but here he takes a different approach in what critics are calling a haunting thriller. When aspiring novelist Stacey Kim first sees the Pulitzer Prize winning photo "Woman With A Gun" in a museum, she is immediately drawn in, wondering about the circumstances surrounding the photo. What she finds out is that the woman, who stands in a wedding dress with a six shooter behind her back as she faces the ocean, was suspected of shooting her husband, though the case was never solved. Stacey digs deeper and soon learns that the only one who may actually know what happened is the reclusive photographer herself, but she isn't talking... Mystery and suspense readers alike will want a copy.