Library Loot: July 13-19

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire (The Captive Reader) and Marg (The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader) that encourages bloggers to share the books they've checked out of the library. If you'd like to participate, just write up your post, feel free to steal button, and link up using the Mr. Linky the hosting site each week. And, of course, check out what other participants are getting from their libraries.



My Loot:

1. The Mystery of the Third Lucretia by Susan Runholt: If it hadn't been for Lucas's photographic memory, they might not have remembered the man. It had been almost a year since she and Kari had noticed him copying the famous Rembrandt painting in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. But now in the National Gallery in London, they're sure it's the same guy, copying another Rembrandt. What is going on?

The International Herald Tribune gives them their answer. A never-beforeseen Rembrandt painting has been discovered in Amsterdam. The mysterious man must've been working on a forgery! Convinced that no one will believe them without more evidence, the teenage sleuths embark on a madcap adventure to find the forger. But is bringing the criminal to justice worth the price of their lives? (Goodreads synopsis). I've actually finished this one--click title for my review.

2. Heartless by Gail Carriger: Lady Alexia Maccon, soulless, is at it again, only this time the trouble is not her fault. When a mad ghost threatens the queen, Alexia is on the case, following a trail that leads her deep into her husband's past. Top that off with a sister who has joined the suffragette movement (shocking!), Madame Lefoux's latest mechanical invention, and a plague of zombie porcupines and Alexia barely has time to remember she happens to be eight months pregnant. Will Alexia manage to determine who is trying to kill Queen Victoria before it is too late? Is it the vampires again or is there a traitor lurking about in wolf's clothing? And what, exactly, has taken up residence in Lord Akeldama's second best closet?

3. The Prop by Pete Hautman: Peeky Kane is a prop player at an Arizona casino owned by the Santa Cruz tribe. Her job is to play poker. She makes a handsome living off the suckers who populate the card room. Life is sweet. But something's not right at the Casino Santa Cruz. When Peeky finds herself in a fixed game and comes away a thousand dollars richer, she is drawn unwittingly toward the dark side of professional poker. And things are about to get very murky. A band of clown-masked robbers makes off with millions of the casino's dollars and leaves behind four corpses. Peeky recognizes one of the robbers and fears who all may involve. Time to investigate.

4. Bone Harvest by Mary Logue: Then the quiet was broken. The baby reached up a hand and jerked at the tablecloth. A spoon hit her on the head, and she started to cry. Bertha Schuler stuck her head out the door and called that dinner was ready. The clock in the hallway struck the half hour. And the first shot was fired.

The unsolved murders at a remote Wisconsin farmhouse half a century ago have receded into time. But one deranged man will do anything to make sure that all of Pepin County remembers that bloody day.

The world was out of balance. It had been so for nearly fifty years. Only he could see it. Only he could change it.

When a quantity of dangerous pesticides is stolen from the local co-op, Deputy Sheriff Claire Watkins is called in to investigate. The thief has left one bizarre clue: the finger bone of a child long dead. The pesticides soon reappear with devastating effect—in flowerbeds, in animal feed, and in a fatal concoction at a Fourth of July picnic. Each time, a tiny human bone is left at the scene. With the help of Harold Peabody, the quirky, aging editor of the Durand Daily, Claire unravels the secrets of the past, leading her to a pair of young lovers, a man enraged over his mother’s death, an obsessive recluse, and the deputy who first discovered the corpses of the Schuler family Claire desperately races against time to find the madman before he uses the lethal pesticide again. But he won’t be stopped. Not until he gets what he wants.

The truth must be told. Or more will die. The flowers and the birds were only the beginning. . . .

And a load of goodies from the Friends of the Library Bookstore:

Bland Beginnings by Julian Symons
Cop Killer by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö
A Coffin for Dimitrios by Eric Ambler
Garden of Malice by Susan Kenney
A Perfect Red by Amy Butler Greenfield

And the big prize:
Murder for Christmas by Agatha Christie (first edition!!!)