Untouchable Spring


G. Kalyana Rao - 2010
    Using the oral story-telling tradition, Rao has brought to the fore not just the social and cultural life of generations of Dalits, but their art forms. Through the stories of successive generations, we are taken on a journey to their heart from those who were exploited to those who discover their humanity through defiance. The reminiscences of Ruth take us to her husband Reuben's family in Yennela Dinni, to the boy Yellanna, his being chased away by his caste superiors , his music, his son Sivaiah's escape from the drought along with his wife, the latter's conversion to Christianity, the brutality against him and other Dalit Christians, the birth of Reuben when things seem to fall apart and he is later left in an orphanage, and then to Reuben's search for his roots. This faithful translation from the Telugu, arousing pity for all that is pitiable and rage at what man has done to man, points to the growing awareness of people's rights and how they are driven to armed struggle.

All In


Simona Ahrnstedt - 2014
    Ruthless. Notorious. Unstoppable. He's out to hijack the ultimate prize, Investum. After years of planning, all the players are in place; he needs just one member of the aristocratic owning family on his side--Natalia De la Grip. Elegant, brilliant, driven to succeed in a man's world, Natalia is curious about David's unexpected invitation to lunch. Everyone knows that he is rich, dangerous, unethical; she soon discovers he is also deeply scarred. The attraction between these two is impossible, but the long Swedish nights unfold an affair that will bring to light shocking secrets, forever alter a family, and force both Natalia and David to confront their innermost fears and desires. "Fast-paced, sexy and smart!" --New York Times bestselling author Lori Foster"Given the popularity of Steig Larsson and Jo Nesbo, the idea is to introduce American audiences to another kind of Swedish commercial fiction. . . .I'm grabbing this one." --BookRiot

The Mournful Demeanour of Lieutenant Boruvka: Detective Tales


Josef Škvorecký - 1966
    Twelve bizarre tales—to be read as a continuous account—involve theatrical people, musicians, and mountaineers, who lead the lieutenant, and the reader, on an ingenious chase through the paths of crime.

Night of the Milky Way Railway


Kenji Miyazawa - 1934
    Giovanni and his friend Campanella, who is dead from drowning, travel on a celestial railway which is a ferry of souls journeying to the afterlife.

The Heart of God: Prayers of Rabindranath Tagore


Rabindranath Tagore - 1997
    He was also a distinguished author, educator, social reformer, and philosopher. Today, Tagore along with Mahatma Gandhi is prized as the foremost intellectual and spiritual advocates of India's liberation from imperial rule. This inspiring collection of Tagore's poetry represents his "simple prayers of common life." Each of the seventy-seven prayers is an eloquent affirmation of the divine in the face of both joy and sorrow. Like the Psalms of David, they transcend time and speak directly to the human heart. The spirit of this collection may be best symbolized by a single sentence by Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, the renowned philosopher and statesman who served as president of India: "Rabindranath Tagore was one of the few representatives of the universal person to whom the future of the world belongs."

Girls Like Us


Cristina Alger - 2019
    Nell and her father, Homicide Detective Martin Flynn, have never had much of a relationship. And Suffolk County will always be awash in memories of her mother, Marisol, who was brutally murdered when Nell was just seven.When Martin Flynn dies in a motorcycle accident, Nell returns to the house she grew up in so that she can spread her father's ashes and close his estate. At the behest of her father's partner, Detective Lee Davis, Nell becomes involved in an investigation into the murders of two young women in Suffolk County. The further Nell digs, the more likely it seems to her that her father should be the prime suspect--and that his friends on the police force are covering his tracks. Plagued by doubts about her mother's murder--and her own role in exonerating her father in that case--Nell can't help but ask questions about who killed Ria Ruiz and Adriana Marques and why. But she may not like the answers she finds--not just about those she loves, but about herself.

Facets of Death


Michael Stanley - 2020
    But what was the case that established him as a force to be reckoned with? In Facets of Death, a prequel to the acclaimed Detective Kubu series, the fresh-faced cop gets ensnared in an international web of danger--can he get out before disaster strikes?David Bengu has always stood out from the crowd. His personality and his physique match his nickname, Kubu--Setswana for "hippopotamus"--a seemingly docile creature, but one of the deadliest in Africa. His keen mind and famous persistence have seen him rise in the Botswana CID. But how did he get his start?His resentful new colleagues are suspicious of a detective who has entered the CID straight from university, skipping the usual beat cop phase.Mining diamonds is a lucrative business, but it soon proves itself deadly. Shortly after Kubu joins the CID, the richest diamond mine in the world is robbed of 100,000 carats of diamonds in transit. The robbery is well-executed and brutal. Police immediately suspect an inside job, but there is no evidence of who it could be.When the robbers are killed execution-style in South Africa and the diamonds are still missing, the game changes, and suspicion focuses on a witch doctor and his son. Does Kubu have the skill and the integrity to engineer an international trap and catch those responsible, or will the biggest risk of his life end in disaster?A riveting addition to Michael Stanley's award-winning books set in Botswana, Facets of Death proves Kubu worthy of his name...

I Know You Know


Gilly Macmillan - 2018
    A man was convicted of the brutal crime, but decades later, questions still linger.For his whole life, filmmaker Cody Swift has been haunted by the deaths of his childhood best friends. The loose ends of the police investigation consume him so much that he decides to return to Bristol in search of answers. Hoping to uncover new evidence, and to encourage those who may be keeping long-buried secrets to speak up, Cody starts a podcast to record his findings. But there are many people who don’t want the case—along with old wounds—reopened so many years after the tragedy, especially Charlie’s mother, Jess, who decides to take matters into her own hands.When a long-dead body is found in the same location the boys were left decades before, the disturbing discovery launches another murder investigation. Now Detective John Fletcher, the investigator on the original case, must reopen his dusty files and decide if the two murders are linked. With his career at risk, the clock is ticking and lives are in jeopardy…

Missing Pieces


Heather Gudenkauf - 2016
    The case rocked the small farm town of Penny Gate, Iowa, where Jack was raised, and for years Jack avoided returning home. But when his beloved aunt Julia is in an accident, hospitalized in a coma, Jack and Sarah are forced to confront the past that they have long evaded. Upon arriving in Penny Gate, Sarah and Jack are welcomed by the family Jack left behind all those years ago—barely a trace of the wounds that had once devastated them all. But as facts about Julia's accident begin to surface, Sarah realizes that nothing about the Quinlans is what it seems. Caught in a flurry of unanswered questions, Sarah dives deep into the puzzling rabbit hole of Jack's past. But the farther in she climbs, the harder it is for her to get out. And soon she is faced with a deadly truth she may not be prepared for.

Pretty Little Wife


Darby Kane - 2020
    Lila isn’t what she seems. A student vanished months ago. Now, Lila’s husband, Aaron, is also missing. At first these cases are treated as horrible coincidences until it’s discovered the student is really the third of three unexplained disappearances over the last few years. The police are desperate to find the connection, if there even is one. Little do they know they might be stumbling over only part of the truth….With the small town in an uproar, everyone is worried about the whereabouts of their beloved high school teacher. Everyone except Lila, his wife. She’s definitely confused about her missing husband but only because she was the last person to see his body, and now it’s gone.

Murder at Mt. Fuji


Shizuko Natsuki - 1984
    When Chiyo presses Jane to join the Wada family at their plush villa for a New Year's celebration, Jane is curious enough to attend.But soon after her arrival, a most unlikely event occurs: Soft spoken Chiyo is forced to protect herself by committing murder! The powerful Wada family quickly decides they most close ranks to protect Chiyo from the police and that Jane must become a conspirator in the plot.As the drama of the police investigation slowly unfolds, Jane begins realize that all is not what it seems - and that her years of study in Japanese culture could never have prepared her for the dilemma that now confronts her...

The Last Time I Saw You


Liv Constantine - 2019
    Parrish follows that success with an addictive novel filled with shocking twists about the aftermath of a brutal high-society murder.Dr. Kate English has it all. Not only is she the heiress to a large fortune; she has a gorgeous husband and daughter, a high-flying career, and a beautiful home anyone would envy.But all that changes the night Kate’s mother, Lily, is found dead, brutally murdered in her own home. Heartbroken and distraught, Kate reaches out to her estranged best friend, Blaire Barrington, who rushes to her side for the funeral, where the years of distance between them are forgotten in a moment.That evening, Kate’s grief turns to horror when she receives an anonymous text: You think you’re sad now, just wait. By the time I’m finished with you, you’ll wish you had been buried today. More than ever, Kate needs her old friend’s help.Once Blaire decides to take the investigation into her own hands, it becomes clear that all is not as it seems in Baltimore high society. As infidelity, lies, and betrayals come to light, and tensions rise to a boiling point, she begins to alienate Kate’s friends and relatives with her relentless, accusatory questions, as she tries to find Lily’s killer. The murderer could be anyone—friend, neighbor, loved one. But whoever it is, it’s clear that Kate is next on their list. . .In The Last Time I Saw You, Liv Constantine takes the lightning pace of The Last Mrs. Parrish and raises the stakes, creating an exquisitely tension-filled and absorbing tale of psychological suspense in which innocent lives—and one woman’s sanity—hang in the balance.

The Calendar Man


Christoffer Petersen - 2018
    But when the frozen body of a young man is discovered several days before a referendum that will decide the future of Greenland, Greenland’s First Minister urges Petra to forgo retirement and investigate the case.As the people of Nuuk lock their doors, and the voting booths are empty, Petra stretches the limited resources of the department and orders more police onto the streets in a desperate hunt for a killer determined to make this Christmas one to remember.Set in Greenland, "The Calendar Man" twists Greenlandic politics, traditions and myths into a dark tale set in the darkest month of the year, in a frighteningly imaginable future. "The Calendar Man" is set many years after the events in the Greenland Crime series, but features several of the characters introduced in those books.Inspired by the Scandinavian and Greenlandic tradition of Christmas Advent Calendars, "The Calendar Man" has 24 parts, one for each day in December, leading up to the conclusion on December 24th, Christmas Eve, when Greenlanders and Scandinavians celebrate Christmas. "The Calendar Man" can also be read as a "regular" book.

Hunting Game


Helene Tursten - 2014
    From a young age, 28-year-old Embla Nyström has been plagued by chronic nightmares and racing thoughts. Though she still develops unhealthy fixations and makes rash decisions from time to time, she has learned to channel most of her anxious energy into her position as Detective Inspector in the mobile unit in Gothenburg, Sweden, and into sports. A talented hunter and prize-winning Nordic welterweight, she is glad to be taking a vacation from her high-stress job to attend the annual moose hunt with her family and friends.But when Embla arrives at her uncle’s cabin in rural Dalsland, she sees an unfamiliar face has joined the group: Peter, an enigmatic young divorcé. And she isn’t the only one to take notice. One longtime member of the hunt doesn’t welcome the presence of an outsider and is quick to point out that with Peter, the group’s number reaches thirteen, a bad omen for the week.Sure enough, a string of unsettling incidents follow, culminating in the disappearance of two men from a neighboring group of hunters. Embla takes charge of the search, and they soon find one of the missing men floating facedown in the nearby lake, his arm tightly wedged between two rocks. Just what she needs on her vacation. With the help of local reinforcements, Embla delves into the dark pasts of her fellow hunters in search of a killer.

The Sinner


Petra Hammesfahr - 1999
    Why? What would cause this quiet, kind young mother to stab a complete stranger in the throat over and over again, in full view of her family and friends? For the local police, it's an open-and-shut case. Cora quickly confesses and there's no shortage of witnesses, but those questions remain unanswered. Haunted by the case, the police commissioner refuses to close the file and begins his own maverick investigation. So begins the slow unraveling of Cora's past, a harrowing descent into a woman's private hell. A dark, spellbinding novel, where the truth is to be questioned at every turn, The Sinner has been a bestseller around the world, and is poised to be a summer smash with the coming TV adaptation, already hailed as one of the most anticipated shows of the summer."The Sinner is unnerving and weird and guaranteed to stick with you weeks later." -Sarah Weinman, editor of Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives and Women Crime Writers"Hauntingly insightful and sensitive." -The Guardian