Andrea Maria Schenkel: The Murder Farm. €12,20
Winner of Deutscher Krimi-Preis, Kategorie National 2007, Friedrich-Glauser-Krimipreis 2007 für das beste Debüt und dem Corine - Internationaler Buchpreis, Kategorie Weltbild Leserpreis 2007, Schwedischer Krimipreis, Martin Beck Award 2008.
An entire family is dead - a man, his wife, their daughter, her two children and their new maid - brutally murdered witha pickaxe at their remote home, now known as "The Murder Farm".
The papers are full of stories and rumours, but the police have no firm leads and seemingly no sense of how they might set about finding the killer. Then a former resident of the village returns home to see if they can succeed where outsiders have failed.
Compared it Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood", Andrea Maria Schenkel's debut is an unforgettable detective story in which neither police, journalists nor the narrator can find the solution; the reader alone reaches the shattering conclusion.

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Jacqueline Winspear: An incomplete Revenge. € 10,80
A Maisie-Dobbs-Mystery
With the country in the grip of economic malaise, Maisie Dobbs is relieved to accept an apparently straightforward assignment to investigate a potential land purchase. Her inquiries take her to a picturesque village in Kent during the hop-picking season, but beneath its pastoral surface she finds evidence that something is amiss. Mysterious fires erupt in the village with alarming regularity, and a series of petty crimes suggest a darker criminal element at work. A peculiar secrecy shrouds the village, and ultimately Maisie must draw on her finely-honed skills of detection to solve one of her most intriguing cases yet.

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Colin Cotterill: Disco for the Departed. € 11,40
Dr Siri Paiboun has been despatched to the country's north where a mummified arm has appeared protruding from a concrete path laid in front of the President's new mansion. Dr Siri's disinterment and autopsy of the body attached to the arm provide some grisly surprises but it is his gifts as a shaman that him on the trail of the killer.

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Colin Cotterill: Thirty-Three Teeth. € 11,60
Dr Siri Paiboun has rather enjoyed his first five months in office. Now, as hot-season nights close in, Siri is spirited away from Laos' steamy capital on a Matter of National Security. Arriving in Luang Prabang, he's a busy man, examining carbonized corpses, dining with the deposed king and being rescued by the ghost of an elephant.

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Colin Cotterill: The Coroner`s Lunch. € 12,20
Laos,1976. The monarchy has been deposed, the Communist Pathet Lao have taken over. Most of the educated class has fled, but Dr Siri Paiboun, a Paris-trained doctor remains. And so this 72-year-old physician is appointed state coroner, despite having no training, equipment, experience or even inclination for the job. But the job's not that bad and Siri quickly settles into a routine of studying outdated medical texts, scrounging scarce supplies, and circumnavigating bureaucratic red tape to arrive at justice. The fact that the recently departed are prone to pay Siri the odd, unwanted nocturnal visit turns out to be an added bonus in his new line of work. But when the wife of a party leader turns up dead and the bodies of tortured Vietnamese soldiers start bobbing to the surface of a Laotian lake, all eyes turn to Siri. Faced with official cover-ups and an emerging international crisis, the doctor enlists old friends, village shamans, forest spirits, dream visits from the dead - and even the occasional bit of medical deduction - to solve the crimes.

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Natsuo Kirino: Real world. € 9,10
In a suburb on the outskirts of Tokyo, four teenage girls drift through a hot smoggy August. and tedious summer school classes. There`s dependable Toshi, brainy Terauchi, Yuzan, grief-stricken and confused, and Kirarin, whose late nights and reckless behaviour remain a secret from those around her.
Then Toshi`s next-door neighbour is found brutally murdered and the girls suspect Worm, the neighbour`s son and high-school misfit. But when he disappears (having stolen Toshi`s bike and mobile) the four girls become irresistibly drawn into a treacherous vortex of brutality and seduction which rises from within themselves as well as the world around them.

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Brian McGilloway: Borderlands. € 9,20
Introducing Inspector Benedict Devlin . . .
The corpse of local teenager Angela Cashell is found on the Tyrone- Donegal border, between the North and South of Ireland, in an area known as the borderlands. Garda Inspector Benedict Devlin heads the investigation: the only clues are a gold ring placed on the girl's finger and an old photograph, left where she died.
Then another teenager is murdered, and things become further complicated when Devlin unearths a link between the recent killings and the disappearance of a prostitute twenty-five years earlier - a case in which he believes one of his own colleagues is implicated.
As a thickening snow storm blurs the border between North and South, Devlin finds the distinction between right and wrong, vengeance and justice, and even police-officer and criminal becoming equally unclear.
A dazzling and lyrical debut crime novel, Borderlands marks the beginning of a compelling new series featuring Inspector Benedict Devlin.

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Elizabeth George: Careless in red. € 9,20
Scotland Yard’s Thomas Lynley returns to investigate what may be a perfect crime. On a lonely stretch of coastline, Lynley discovers the body of a young man. Thus begins a quest to unmask a clever and ruthless murderer. But this time, Lynley’s not in charge. He’s a witness—and possibly even a suspect. The local detective leading the investigation soon figures out that Lynley can help. So can his former associate Barbara Havers, whom Scotland Yard sends to Cornwall, ostensibly to assist in the investigation, but unofficially to check up on Lynley and possibly win him back to the Yard.

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Tana French: In the woods. € 12,60
A gorgeously written novel that marks the debut of an astonishing new voice in psychological suspense.
As dusk approaches a small Dublin suburb in the summer of 1984, mothers begin to call their children home. But on this warm evening, three children do not return from the dark and silent woods. When the police arrive, they find only one of the children gripping a tree trunk in terror, wearing blood-filled sneakers, and unable to recall a single detail of the previous hours.
Twenty years later, the found boy, Rob Ryan, is a detective on the Dublin Murder Squad and keeps his past a secret. But when a twelve-year-old girl is found murdered in the same woods, he and Detective Cassie Maddox—his partner and closest friend—find themselves investigating a case chillingly similar to the previous unsolved mystery. Now, with only snippets of long-buried memories to guide him, Ryan has the chance to uncover both the mystery of the case before him and that of his own shadowy past.
Richly atmospheric, stunning in its complexity, and utterly convincing and surprising to the end, In the Woods is sure to enthrall fans of Mystic River and The Lovely Bones.

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Natsuo Kirino: Grotesque. € 9,00
Two prostitutes have been murdered in Tokyo.
Yuriko had been working as a prostitute all her adult life, starting while still at school, where her stunning beauty compensated for what she lacked in intellect and commanded attention from older men.
Kazue worked for a blue-chip company and had good career prospects, but was unpopular with colleagues and felt isolated. She chose to walk the streets at night where she hoped to get noticed.
Twenty years previously both women were educated at an elite school for young ladies, and both exhibited exceptional promise prior to their brutal, unnecessary deaths. How and why did this tragedy occur? With narration from Yuriko’s embittered, unattractive sister and through the girls’ journals and diaries Kirino allows their shocking story to unfurl.
As with Out, Grotesque gets under the skin, and Kirino’s analysis of the female psyche grips the reader. The extreme need to succeed, and the vicious desire to be accepted in the bewildering environment of modern life is explored here with acute and chilling insight. Grotesque is a masterful and haunting achievement.

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