The Rest of March

I better hurry and get the rest of March's interesting titles in here before it IS March. There are quite a few I would like to cover.

First, is Keija Parssinen's The Unraveling of Mercy Louis out on March 10. Of the 8 people who have read and reviewed it, 7 gave it 5 out of 5 stars and one gave it 4.5. This is the story about the pressures of growing up in a small town in Texas and the difficulties in finding your own way. It is also a psychological suspense story. Mercy Louis is the star of the girl's basketball team and everyone feels sure she will make her way to bigger and better things. On the opening night of the new season, Mercy collapses and one by one other girls are hit with the same condition. What is happening here?

Lili Anolik has a debut novel, a suspense story, entitled Dark Rooms arriving on March 3rd. Outgoing, beautiful and wild, 16 year old Nica Baker is murdered and her older sister, Grace, is lost without her. She leaves college, comes home and is distressed when the murderer is announced to be a lonely classmate who committed suicide. She feels she must track down the actual killer.

M.J. Carter has The Strangler Vine coming out on March 31st. This is a historical mystery taking place in India in the early nineteenth century. William Avery is a soldier who had hoped for more action and Jeremiah Blake is an agent who has become disillusioned with the East India Company. They are sent to find a missing writer and end up in the darker side of Calcutta where secrets appear and lives are in danger.

Claire Kells has another debut in Girl Underwater coming out on March 31st. Avery Delacorte is a competitive swimmer with a scholarship to a university in California. A flight she is taking home at Thanksgiving crashes on a Colorado lake. The only survivors are Avery, three small children and a swim team member, Colin Shea. This is a story of surviving and the psychological results of it. Very well written so say the reviewers.

Cara Black has her 15th Aimee Leduc title, Murder on the Champs de Mars coming out on March 3rd. Leduc is a Parisian computer security detective. She recently became a new single mother and is trying to work while being sleep deprived. A French Gypsy boy comes to her and says his dying mother has a message for her that has to do with Leduc's fathers murder. When they get to the hospital, the dying woman has disappeared. What can Aimee do but try to find her?

Elizabeth Haynes has Behind Closed Doors coming on March 31st. This is the second in the Briarstone series. Detective Inspector Louisa Smith revisits a cold case dealing with the disappearance of 15 year old Scarlett Rainsford. The case has bothered Smith all these years and now Scarlett is found during a raid of a brothel in Briarstone. What had happened to her and why is her family not happy to see her?

Mary Doria Russell has Epitaph: A Novel of the O.K. Corral coming out on March 3rd. I am surprised this didn't make the LibraryReads list - I nominated it. Reviewers have loved it. This book follows Russell's Doc, which follow Doc Holliday from his birth in Georgia to Southern aristocracy to the Southwest. This title examines the west of 1881 with it's deeply divided nation, vicious politics, smuggling and gang warfare. It culminates in the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. This is not the story of the movie. One reviewer called it a bravura feat of storytelling and another called it 'one of the greatest books in years and the best Western since Lonesome Dove."

Enjoy. I hope you find something that tempts you.