Deliver Me from Evil by Mary Monroe

Bestseller Monroe delivers what could be her wildest and most entertaining novel yet. Greed, betrayal and murder intersect as Wade Eddie Fisher, who looks like a low-income Lenny Kravitz, and Christine Thurman, the wife of super-successful video store entrepreneur J.R. Thurman, devise a plan to fake her kidnapping, collect $500,000 and get her out of her marriage. (A pre-nup would leave her with nothing if she divorced.) But after the shoddy plan is put into action and creepy thug Jason Mack comes onboard, things quickly disintegrate. J.R. offers to pay double for Christine's immediate and safe return, setting into motion among the conspirators murderous plots and double-crosses. The narrative is fun but suffers from repetitive exposition and unsympathetic characters, though their nasty (or pathetic, depending) natures create enough surprises to keep readers piqued till the end. Publishers Weekly

Do You Take this Woman by RM Johnson

"Love — or as one of the characters in Johnson's latest soap opera calls it, 'plain, stupid, make-you-disrespect-the-hell-out-of-yourself love' — makes people do silly things. But even that fails to explain the absurd lengths to which three African-American Chicagoans go in Johnson's disappointing seventh novel (after The Million Dollar Divorce ). Magazine editor Carla is neglecting her meek husband, Pete, by meeting Pete's best friend and business partner (and her ex-fianc), Wayne , on the sly. Nothing steamy happens (she just wants to see if she still 'has feelings' for Wayne ). When Pete cheats — and confesses his transgression — Carla wants to even the score by stepping out (for real). Pete agrees, but only if he can pick the man. Pete chooses, of course, Wayne . Carla, afraid of falling deeper in love with Wayne , decides she and Wayne will only pretend to do the deed. But once Wayne and Carla are in the hotel room, things heat up. Pete, unable to contain his jealousy, has Wayne arrested for adultery and soon discovers that Carla's pregnant (and, no, she doesn't know by whom), a revelation that sends Pete on a violent tear. A hokey denouement rounds out this flaccid offering." Publishers Weekly

Jump at the Sun by Kim McLarin

"With a big house in an upscale Boston suburb, a doting scientist husband and two cute daughters, Grace, heroine of this penetrating novel of family affection and disaffection, is living the middle-class black woman's dream. But as she tends to her kids' wearying demands, fends off her husband's desire for a son and watches her sociology Ph.D. go to waste, she feels like 'a claustrophobic in a mining shaft' and fantasizes about ditching her family. It's no idle daydream — her grandmother Rae repeatedly abandoned her children to search for whatever satisfactions life had to offer a Mississippi sharecropper's daughter, while her mother, Mattie, who sacrificed her happiness for her children's, offers an object lesson in the toll that family devotion can take. McLarin ( Taming It Down ) weaves the stories of three generations of mothers and daughters in astringent prose ('You couldn't be expected to live without them, but you'd better remember at all times, even with the good ones, that it was you against them,' Grace muses of the wild cards that are men). Her characters chafe against the bonds of poverty, racism and feminine stereotypes, but their deeper struggle is to resolve their longing for fulfillment with ties of the heart. (July) " Publishers Weekly

Little Black Girl Lost 2 by Keith Lee Johnson

After his blockbuster success of Little Black Girl Lost, Keith Lee Johnson takes us back to 1950's New Orleans , into the world of betrayal, envy, lust, and murder, where everyone has ulterior motives. Little Girl Lost left you in shock right up to the very end with its revealing truths of the world of Johnnie Wise, a 15-year-old girl, who was being pursued by ruthless crime boss, Napoleon Bentley, who will stop at nothing to have this young beauty.

Little Black Girl Lost II, begins as we find Johnnie in bed, and even though there is a thunderstorm directly over her Ashland Estates home, she is sleeping soundly for the first time since the murder of Richard Goode (her mother's killer), and the subsequent riots. However, during her waking hours, Napoleon Bentley enters her mind more often than she'd care to admit. She wants him to bed her again, but she loves Lucas Matthews, her boyfriend. Or is he? the editors

Ms. Etta's Fast House by Victor McGlothin

"McGlothin ( Borrow Trouble ; Down on My Knees ; etc.) creates a sizzling slice of life in 1947 in his fourth novel. Located in St. Louis, Mo.'s the Ville, Ms. Etta's Fast House — considered 'the hottest joint this side of Chicago' where 'couples boogied heartily to exorcise their work week demons, as others swayed to the soulful rhythms' — was the place to be for the young doctors and nurses of the Homer G. Phillips Hospital, the local baseball team and the criminal element. But life in the Ville is forever altered when Baltimore Floyd strolls in with a gun and a plan to horn in on a crooked cop's heroin trafficking operation. Simultaneously, the St. Louis Police Department becomes racially integrated, despite massive riots throughout the city and public outcry against it. As bodies pile up, Baltimore gets under the covers with a cop's wife and soon faces a bogus rape charge, leaving residents of the Ville to try and save him. McGlothin weaves convincing historical elements into a fast-moving caper, and Baltimore Floyd is a delightful scoundrel." Publishers Weekly

That Mean Old Yesterday by Stacey Patton

"Stacey Patton is a tour-de-force writer — weaving together her many gifts as a natural storyteller as well as a steel-eyed historian, scholar, sage, poet, and journalist. In That Mean Old Yesterday , Patton performs a kind of sleight of hand by telling her own heartbreaking and triumphant story in context of the collective journey of African Americans — out of slavery, through freedom, toward redemption. What makes this memoir even more universal and important is that in it we are movingly shown how it is possible to confront the past and why we must." — Mim Eichler Rivas, coauthor of The Pursuit of Happyness with Chris Gardner and Quincy Troupe

Winter Study by Nevada Barr

"In bestseller Barr's chilling 14th mystery thriller to feature National Park Service ranger Anna Pigeon (after 2005's Hard Truth ), Anna joins the team of Winter Study, a research project intended to study the wolves and moose of Michigan's Isle Royale National Park, the setting for 1994's A Superior Death . Complicating the study is Bob Menechinn, an untrustworthy Homeland Security officer assigned to shadow the research. Crowded into inhospitable lodgings and persecuted by unrelenting cold, Anna is far from her comfort zone as nature turns awry with a series of bizarre events. The team stumbles upon the tracks — and the mutilated victim — of a preternaturally large, unidentified beast, and local packs of wolves descend on human-populated areas, a behavior out of step with their species. The campfire legends of youth metastasize into adult fears as Anna must piece together a connection between these anomalies while guarding herself from the strangers around her. Barr's visceral descriptions of the winter cold nicely complement the paranoia that follows the appearance of the mythic monsters at play. Author tour. (Apr.) " Publishers Weekly

Bleeding Kansas by Sara Paretsky

Paretsky takes a break from the mystery genre with this powerful, emotionally genuine tale about the ties of love, family and religious belief in a rural Kansas community. The history of the Schapens, Grelliers and Freemantles in the Kaw River Valley dates back to the mid-19th century, but time, old grudges and religious differences have eroded the bonds of friendship. When John Freemantle's niece moves back to Douglas County , her Wiccan rituals and antiwar activism cause controversy and indirectly inspire teenager Chip Grellier to enlist in the army. After Chip's death in Iraq , the Grellier family begins falling apart. Meanwhile, the fortunes of the Schapens, devout fundamentalist Christians, rise with the emergence of an apparently perfect red heifer, the sacrifice crucial to the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem and the Second Coming of Jesus. This audio's power is in its richly evoked characters, and Susan Ericksen's expressive, sympathetic voice partners perfectly with Paretsky's text. She distinctively voices men, women and teenagers with careful shifts in pitch, inflection and accent. In the end, listeners will be both satisfied by the realistic, uplifting ending and bereft at having to say good-bye to Paretsky's painfully real Kansans. Publishers Weekly

The First Commandment by Brad Thor

Bestseller Thor's latest thrill-ride begins in anguish. Scot Harvath, navy SEAL turned Homeland Security superagent, sits at the bedside of girlfriend Tracy Hastings, who's in a deep coma after being gravely wounded at the end of Takedown . Meanwhile, five terrorists have been released from Guantánamo Bay as part of a secret hostage deal forced upon U.S. president Jack Rutledge. When one of the terrorists starts targeting Scot's friends and family, Scot discovers that the president won't allow the assassin to be hunted down. Soon enough, Scot is on the run from his own government and in pursuit of the killer. Many characters make appearances from earlier books, in particular Scot's ongoing nemesis, the fascinating, intelligence-gathering expert known as the Troll. It's a long, violent, shoot-'em-up, blow-'em-up pulse-pounder that will leave Thor's fans cheering and begging for more. Publishers Weekly

The First Patient by Micheal Palmer

This over-the-top yet endlessly entertaining thriller from bestseller Palmer ( The Fifth Vial ) pits a country doctor against a conspiracy to kill the president. Dr. Gabe Singleton, an old friend of President Andrew Stoddard, is brought to Washington , D.C. , from Wyoming when Jim Ferendelli, Stoddard's former doctor, goes missing. Almost immediately, things fall apart as Stoddard suffers from a random episode of incoherence, and Singleton is shot at while driving in early morning D.C. traffic. Complicating matters is Alison Cromartie, a sexy nurse who captures Singleton's heart. Singleton must figure out who's behind the president's mysterious illness, investigating everyone from the Secret Service agents to the vice president. Citing specific medical and technological processes, Palmer convinces readers that his novel is logical and reasonable, even as he mixes the unlikely with the insanely hyperbolic. The roller-coaster ride of a plot builds to an undeniably shocking conclusion. Publishers Weekly

Last Known Victim by Erica Spindler    

Hurricane Katrina's floodwaters failed to wash away evil in bestseller Spindler's grim vision of New Orleans . In the storm's aftermath, police discover a refrigerator stocked with severed right hands, evidence in a string of bizarre murders attributed to "The Handyman." A shallow grave containing a hand-less body and the badge of Sammy O'Shay, an NOPD captain shot and killed during the hurricane, convinces Capt. Patti O'Shay that the Handyman is responsible for her husband's death. Meanwhile, exotic dancer Yvette Borger claims to have received cryptic, obsessive love notes signed "The Artist," but the NOPD questions her motives and credibility. When O'Shay picks up on similarities between her Handyman and Borger 's Artist, the by-the-book captain finds herself bending the rules to get to the heart of the stripper's story. While strong female leads compete for space, overwritten backstory and subplot sometimes drag on the investigation's urgency. Spindler ( Cause for Alarm ) hints throughout at the killer's psychology, but nothing prepares for the ludicrous diagnosis offered at the end. Publishers Weekly

The Penny Tree by Holly Kennedy    

Kennedy's tedious second novel (after The Tin Box) focuses on Annie Hillman, a mother of two in the middle of a divorce. Her 11-year-old son Eric's rare illness has racked up enormous bills and caused tension in the family, and Luke, her 13-year-old, longs to live with his father, Jack. When Annie loses her job, she moves the brood from Seattle to her hometown, Eagan 's Point, Wash. A series of ads purporting to be from an admirer from Annie's past appear in the local paper, making Annie a minor local celebrity and later attracting the attention of a daytime talk show. The search for the ad author's identity is fruitless, but his unconvincing identity is finally revealed on the talk show. Hillman's writing tends toward the banal ("Funny what our minds keep from us.... What we refuse to accept and what we twist around to look like something that's easier to accept"), and many of the situations are too contrived to elicit the emotive reaction the author intends. Publishers Weekly

A Stranger's Game by Joan Johnston

Ten years after Merle Raye Finkel, a terrified runaway girl, is wrongfully convicted of killing her abusive father in bestseller Johnston's exciting seventh Bittercreek romantic thriller (after The Next Mrs. Blackthorne ), Merle's paroled from a youth facility near Austin, Tex., and assumes a new identity as Grace Caldwell. Grace's hunt for the true killer, which involves examining all cases her Austin police detective dad, Big Mike Finkel, left unsolved, leads to a surprising suspect, FBI Assistant Special Agent Vincent Harkness, who's overseeing security for an upcoming visit of the U.S. president to the University of Texas at Austin campus. Grace hooks up with FBI Supervisory Special Agent Breed Grayhawk in hopes of learning more about his boss, Harkness. When Grace's snooping uncovers a diary by Harkness's wife detailing her sex addict antics and worse, Grace winds up accused of plotting to assassinate the president. A less successful subplot about Texas Ranger Jack McKinley, Breed's best friend, provides a cliffhanger that sets up the author's next nail-biter. Publishers Weekly