Nonna Maria and the Case of the Missing Bride

December 1, 2021

In a series starter from the ever-popular Armstrong, homicide detective Mallory is in 2019 Edinburgh when she experiences A Rip Through Time and winds up in one of the city's alleyways in 1869, inhabiting the body of strangled-if-not-quite-dead housemaid Catriona Thomson and soon hunting for a killer (50,000-copy first printing). In Atherton's Aunt Dimity and the Enchanted Cottage, the redoubtable sleuth and her English-village neighbors fail in their attempt to befriend standoffish newcomer Crispin Windle until they discover the ruins of a Victorian woolen mill--and the graves of children who worked there, whom they seek to identify (30,000-copy first printing; originally scheduled for July 2021). In Nonna Maria and the Case of the Missing Bride, crusty but beloved widow Nonna Maria--who lives on the isle of Ischia in the Gulf of Naples and was inspired by the No. 1 New York Times best-selling Carcaterra's grandmother--intervenes when a young bride-to-be declares that she's afraid of her fianc�. In Haines's Lady of Bones, Mississippi-based Sarah Booth Delaney of the Delaney Detective Agency is attending a party alit with jack-o-lanterns when she's approached by a woman seeking her vanished daughter, who has been investigating the disappearance of young women in New Orleans every Halloween for the last five years (40,000-copy first printing). The internationally best-selling author of the "Dark Iceland" and "Hulda" series, J�nasson sets his new standalone during an Icelandic blizzard, with four frantic friends sheltering in an abandoned hunting lodge and facing a reignited tragedy that likely makes them wish they were all Outside (50,000-copy first printing). In Klingborg's Wild Prey, Inspector Lu Fei of the Chinese Police travels to a remote region of Myanmar to find a missing 15-year-old girl in a case involving the illegal trafficking of exotic animals (50,000-copy first printing). In Robert B. Parker's Revenge Tour, Lupica assigns PI Sunny Randall the thankless task of investigating actress friend Melanie Joan Hall when Melanie's manager turns up dead, her bank account looks to be wiped out, and details of her past suddenly seem more imagined than real. In Paretsky's Overboard, a seriously injured teenage girl discovered by V.I. Warshawski on Lake Michigan's rocky shore subsequently vanishes from the hospital, and the iconic detective must chase down a monstrous conspiracy with pandemic-ridden Chicago as backdrop (100,000-copy first printing). Pursuing a massive drugs-and-weapons shipment being shepherded across the U.S.-Mexican border by former cops with the warning "You talk, you die" written on their bodies, Patterson/Paetro stalwart Sgt. Lindsay Boxer suddenly has 22 Seconds to decide what her fate will be. Second in the new series from librarian Weaver, who launched her writing career with the delightful Amory Ames mysteries, The Key to Deceit has breaker-and-enterer Ellie McDonnell again approached by stuffed-shirt good-guy Major Ramsey in World War II London: he wants her to discover which side the female spy found bobbing in the Thames was on (40,000-copy first printing).

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February 14, 2022
Nonna Maria, the distinctive protagonist of this gentle standalone from bestseller Carcaterra (the Tank Rizzo series), seldom travels from her home on the Italian island of Ischia, though she has a vast network of friends who come to her “with issues that should be brought to the attention of the local carabinieri and not a widow with a bad right leg.” She, in turn, depends on her buddies, including a Camorra crime boss and a priest, to help her resolve any problems that can’t be cleared up by common sense alone. One such is the plight of a reluctant bride-to-be, who has impetuously agreed to marry a handsome stranger and is now afraid to break things off for fear of what he might do to her family. Meanwhile, Nonna Maria uses her encyclopedic knowledge of the island and its inhabitants to help a carabinieri captain investigate the death of an 85-year-old tour boat captain. All the nice people involved are rewarded with happy endings. Italophiles wishing for a brief vacation in charming and clever company will revel in this love letter to Ischia. Agent: Suzanne Gluck, WME.

April 1, 2022
Nonna Maria has lived on the Italian island of Ischia her whole life. Thanks to her wisdom and abiding sense of calm, she's the person Ischians turn to when they need help with a problem, and Nonna Maria always finds a solution. So she's happy to help when Anna claims she's unwittingly become engaged to a handsome man from Naples. She fears he drugged her; otherwise, she'd never have agreed to marry a virtual stranger. Can Nonna Maria help Anna send the stranger packing? Nonna Maria agrees to investigate, but in doing so uncovers a drug-running ring and an unscrupulous couple who target wealthy women. Enlisting the help of some unlikely friends--a retired gangster, the chief of the island's Carabinieri, a priest, and a winemaker--she concocts a cunning plan to help Anna and nail the crooks. Nostalgia for Ischia's simpler way of life, nearly lost in the face of the fast-paced modern world, combines successfully with a suspenseful plot and a feisty heroine who's as kind as she is steely.

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