National Network for Equitable Library Service

Con man Max O’Brien gets pulled into a grisly conspiracy while investigating his lover’s murder. Distraught by the murder of Tanzanian lawyer and ex-lover Valéria Michieka and her daughter Sophie, Max O’Brien travels to Tanzania to track down those responsible. What starts as a fight for justice quickly becomes entangled with the persecution of albinos in the East African state.

In this fifth installment of the Aliette Nouvelle mysteries, Aliette is now, officially, Chief Inspector Nouvelle. After a difficult breakup with former boss and boyfriend Claude Neon, the inspector is transferred from an urban beat in Alsace to the south of France. She is given command of a small brigade at St-Brin, a sleepy town in a valley where wine is the primary industry and source of identity.When Joel Guatto, scion of an old wine-producing family, and recently defeated political candidate, is shot dead on the beach, it appears to be a politically motivated murder. But is it?

Trevor and Margaret Rudley have had their share of misfortunes at The Pleasant Inn, the cherished Ontario cottage-country hotel they've owned for twenty-five years. There have been boating accidents, accidental poisonings, and then there was that unfortunate ski-lift incident. But this year their hopes are high for the summer season. However, barely a week goes by before their hopes are dashed. There's a dead body making a nuisance of itself in the wine cellar, and it's nobody the Rudleys know.

Inspector Frank Foote's quiet Winnipeg neighbourhood is greening into summer when a dead baby is discovered in his neighbour's rain barrel. The tiny body has evidently been in the rain barrel for some time, and there are no obvious leads in the case. Frank is a cop, and he's seen a lot of crime scenes, but this one is a little too close to home. Meanwhile, Gus Olsen, who made the gruesome discovery, is a little worried about a mysterious woman who is cruising their quiet neighbourhood in her Lincoln Town Car.

On a spring morning in 1925, Sunny Palmer disappears from her baby carriage in Picardy's restaurant in downtown Winnipeg. It happens in seconds when big sister Violet and her mother are choosing their treats from the dessert display. As those first minutes turn to days, months, then years, the Palmer family collapses and gradually glues itself back together in a new form.A decade later, the Dirty Thirties are in full swing: on a hot summer day in June of 1936, two drifters looking for work turn up in the Palmers' back yard.

After leaving the Winnipeg Police force, former Inspector Frank Foote has gone into home renovations. Tearing down a wall on a Norwood Flats job one day, he and his partner come across the skeleton of a small female who has been imprisoned there. They alert the police, who confiscate their tools and remove them from the crime scene. Frank doesn't tell them about the photograph he's found tucked in the wall space with the young woman. He may be retired, but his investigative instincts are still strong.

Inspector Aliette Nouvelle's romantic life is in tatters. This sad fact becomes a heavy distraction as she goes back and forth from France to Switzerland, trying to determine who killed a Basel art gallery security guard found at a gay gathering spot on the French bank of the Rhine. A damaged painting of a shoemaker found near the body motivates the inspector almost more than the fact of murder.Aliette identifies with the image of a dedicated artisan working in solitude. With love dissolving, her work has become all-consuming.

When Vito Santoro's body is inadvertently unearthed by a demolition crew in Fregene, Italy, his siblings are thrown into turmoil, having been told by their sister Piera that Vito had fled to Argentina fifty years earlier after abandoning his wife and son. Piera, the self-proclaimed matriarch, locks herself in her room, refusing to speak to anyone but her Canadian nephew, David. Now scattered over three continents, the family members regroup in Italy to try to discover the truth.

Newspaper reporter Leo Fabian doesn't think of himself as an opportunist. But when the object of his desire, Stevie Lord, loses the object of her desire to murder, he finds a whole new way to penetrate a woman's heart. Who would want to kill Michael Rossiter anyway? Scion of an old Winnipeg newspaper family, he may have been rich, but he didn't really seem to have enemies. But as Leo delves deeper into the circumstances surrounding Michael's death, he learns some surprising things about his friend that quite possibly led to his demise.

Beryl Kyte, a letter carrier who lives in the Winnipeg neighbourhood of Norwood Flats, goes out for a hike one beautiful spring Sunday and literally trips over a body in the woods of the St. Vital Park. It's a dead woman with mushrooms sprouting in her mouth. In a panic, Beryl struggles out to the main road and manages to hail a cellphone-toting passerby who notifies the police. Among the many officers who arrive on the scene is Inspector Frank Foote, whom she has seen around her neighborhood. A badly shaken Beryl is questioned and escorted home.