Glenfield BookChats May 2009

A country house whodunnit introducing Superintendent Duncan Kincaid and Sergeant Gemma James. Kincaid's holiday in Yorkshire turns sinister when one of the hotel guests is found murdered in the hotel's whirlpool bath. Ably assisted by Gemma, Kincaid sets out to track down a surprising killer.

It is 1913 and ex-soldier turned professional big game hunter, Leon Courtney, is in British East Africa guiding rich and powerful men from America and Europe on safaris in the Masai tribe territories. One of his clients, German industrialist Count Otto Von Meerbach, has a company which builds aircraft and vehicles for the Kaiser's burgeoning army. But Leon had not bargained for falling passionately in love with Eva, the Count's beautiful and enigmatic mistress. Just prior to the outbreak of World War I, Leon is recruited by his uncle, Penrod Ballantyne, Commander of the British Forces in East Africa, to gather information from Von Meerbach. He stumbles on a plot against the British involving the disenchanted survivors of the Boer War, but it is only when Eva and Von Meerbach return to Africa that Leon finds out who and what is really behind the conspiracy.

"Desiree" charts the passions and intrigues of Bonaparte's court seen through the eyes of the merchant's daughter from Marseilles who was Napoleon's fiance and rose to become the Queen of Sweden.

Based on the book by Joseph F. Girzone. The town of Auburn was always normal, to say the least. True, the people there weren't really a "community", but they never noticed until a stranger named Joshua rolled into town one morning. In small ways, Joshua began to help out around the town. An old Baptist church that came down in a storm is his big project. With the help of stuttering Theo, who dreams of being a preacher, he brings the town together to restore the old building. In this way, the whole town unites and becomes a community. This attracts the attention of Father Tordone, who is a bitter man due to the fact that he lost a position in the Vatican. When the mysterious Joshua begins to show up in two places at once and miraculously cures a blind woman, Father Tordone believes Joshua is a false prophet, trying to cheat people. When he revivesTheo from death after he falls from the roof of the newly completed church Father Tordone seeks out an official condemnation from the Vatican. But Joshua melts his icy heart, and the reformed Father becomes a Vatican member. Joshua sees the Pope himself and reveals himself as Jesus!

Bringing the message of God's love, Joshua reaches out to the citizens of a city devastated by AIDS, poverty, racism, and other urban problems.

"Fourteen-year-old Trixie Jackson hoped she had a future to look forward to. But when she is sacked from the local factory she is forced to work as a housekeeper for one of her father's friends; a man she instinctively dislikes. Kept under lock and key, her life soon becomes a living hell. But in her haste to escape she injures herself and ends up in hospital. However, her troubles are only just beginning. When her mother is involved in a tragic accident and dies, Trixie and her younger sister Cilla are left at the mercy of their bullying father. All too quickly he brings his mistress Daisy into the house. And she will stop at nothing to make the girls' lives utter misery."--Book jacket.

Jill Bolte Taylor was a 37-year-old Harvard-trained and published brain scientist when a blood vessel exploded in her brain. Through the eyes of a curious neuroanatomist, she watched her mind completely deteriorate whereby she could not walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of her life. Because of her understanding of how the brain works, her respect for the cells composing her human form, and an amazing mother, Jill completely recovered her mind and body. In My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientists Personal Journey, Jill shares with us her recommendations for recovery and the insight she gained from having this ironic and unusual voyage into, and back out of, the silent abyss of a wounded brain.

Paris, July 1942: Ten-year-old Sarah is brutally arrested with her family in the Vel' d'Hiv' roundup, the most notorious act of French collaboration with the Nazis. But before the police come to take them, Sarah locks her younger brother, Michel, in their favorite hiding place, a cupboard in the family's apartment. She keeps the key, thinking that she will be back within a few hours. Paris, May 2002: On Vel'd'Hiv's sixtieth anniversary, Julia Jarmond, an American journalist, is asked by her Paris-based American magazine to write an article about this black day in France's past. Julia has lived in Paris for nearly twenty-five years, married a Frenchman, and she is shocked both by her ignorance about the event and the silence that still surrounds it. In the course of her investigation, she stumbles onto a trail of long-hidden family secrets that connects her to Sarah. Julia finds herself compelled to retrace the girl's ordeal, from the terrible days spent shut in at the Vel' d'Hiv' to the camps and beyond. As she probes into Sarah's past, she begins to question her own place in France and to reevaluate her marriage and her life.

When her husband apparently decides to run away from home, Grace Brookman copes with the upheaval by pretending to family and friends that he is still around.;When her husband apparently decides to run away from home, Grace Brookman copes with the upheaval by pretending to family and friends that he is still around, undertaking a life of deception as her charade becomes ever more elaborate, but clues gradually emerge that suggest that her spouse is not the man she thought he was.

After Albert Stucky, a brutal and clever serial killer known as "The Collector," escapes from prison, he forces FBI profiler Maggie O'Dell, the agent who originally captured him, to play a deadly game when he targets her and everyone associated with her.

Set during a year that begins with France's fall to the Nazis in June 1940 and ends with Germany turning its attention to Russia, Suite Francaise falls into two parts. The first is a brilliant depiction of a group of Parisians as they flee the Nazi invasion and make their way through the chaos of France; the second follows the inhabitants of a small rural community under occupation who find themselves thrown together in ways they never expected.

The third volume in the fictional biography of Egypt's most glamorous Pharoah. Ramses II is faced with the superior might of the Hittite army and yet how can he prepare adequately for the battle at Kadesh when the health of his beloved royal wife, Nefertari, declines so rapidly?

"Things are finally looking up for defense attorney Mickey Haller. After two years of wrong turns, he is back in the courtroom. When his famed former colleague Jerry Vincent is murdered, Haller inherits the biggest case he's ever had: defending Walter Elliot, a prominent Hollywood producer accused of murdering his wife and her lover. Haller has his hands full with Elliot, who seems more concerned about his movies than about a possible life sentence. With a key part of the defense's strategy missing, Mickey scrambles to prepare for trial, and the pressure only intensifies when he learns that Vincent's killer may be coming for him next. Enter Harry Bosch. Determined to find Vincent's murderer, Bosch will do whatever it takes to crack the case, even if that means using Haller as bait."--Publisher description.

Mickey Haller has spent all his professional life afraid that he wouldn't recognize innocence if it stood right in front of him. But what he should have been on the watch for was evil. Haller is a Lincoln Lawyer, a criminal defense attorney who operates out of the backseat of his Lincoln Town Car, traveling between the far-flung courthouses of Los Angeles to defend clients of every kind. Bikers, con artists, drunk drivers, drug dealers - they're all on Mickey Haller's client list. For him, the law is rarely about guilt or innocence - it's about negotiation and manipulation. Sometimes it's even about justice. A Beverly Hills playboy arrested for attacking a woman he picked up in a bar chooses Haller to defend him, and Mickey has his first high-paying client in years. It is a defense attorney's dream, what they call a franchise case. And as the evidence stacks up, Haller comes to believe this may be the easiest case of his career.

On his return to Thebes after great victories against sea raiders, Pharaoh Tuthmosis II is struck dead at the foot of the statue of Amun-Ra. As news of his death spreads, a witch pollutes the Pharaoh's unfinished tomb, and so begins a series of events which must reveal the great secrets of Egypt.

FBI profiler Sophie Anderson is still trying to come to terms with the horrors she experienced six months ago. A vacation to Arizona is a welcome break. But then bodies start appearing on a university campus. At first it looks like the gruesome work of a new serial killer - Sophie does not recognise the lethal signature from the FBI database. Her holiday is over. Then a discovery is made which changes everything. There's more than one killer.

A short story. New Yorker Magazine, Feb 2009. http://www.elgar.govt.nz:80/record=b1877512~S6

The Purse-Driven Life isnt exactly about finding the deeper meaning in life; its more about shifting your perspective just enough to locate the deep humour and joy waiting to be uncovered in everyday life. Renfroe offers a pull-no-punches look at the life of mid-life women.

"Mackenzie Allen Phillips' youngest daughter, Missy, has been abducted during a family vacation and evidence that she may have been brutally murdered is found in an abandoned shack deep in the Oregon wilderness. Four years later in the midst of his Great Sadness, Mack receives a suspicious note, apparently from God, inviting him back to that shack for a weekend. Against his better judgment he arrives at the shack on a wintry afternoon and walks back into his darkest nightmare. What he finds there will change Mack's world forever."--Publisher description.

Inspired by the life of legendary photographer Edward Curtis, a series of tales about a photographer's developing relationship with the Native Americans he astonishes by showing them pictures of themselves is interspersed with parallel tales about an unsung soldier, a husband, and a father.

1097 and crusading fervour has swept Europe. The Infidels have seized Jerusalem, and an outraged Pope urban II has called for the Kingdom of Western Europe to march east and reclaim the Holy Land in the name of Christendom. The response is overwhelming: thousands flock to join up, eager to undertake the greatest pilgrimage of all. Hugh de Payens, his younger sister Eleanor and his close friend Godefroi of St Omer, are no exception. Caught up in the great swirl of events, they join Count Raymond of Toulouse's army, preparing for an epic journey across Europe, through glittering Byzantium, to their final goal: Jerusalem. With weapons supplied and armour bought, there's a fever of excitement amongst Hugh and the other crusaders as they embark on their travels. But that's before they know the depth of the hardships, treachery, trickery and bloodshed they will have to endure.

Four days after Abigail Browning's wedding, her life changed in a way she never expected: her husband was shot, meeting his death along the rocky Mount Desert Island coast. Was it a random act of violence, or could someone have wanted Christopher dead? That's the question that has haunted Abigail, now a homicide detective, for the past seven years. As determined as ever to find her husband's killer, she returns to the foggy Maine island -- and the home she has inherited there -- after receiving an anonymous tip. Is it just another false lead by someone looking for attention? Or can she finally prove that his death was tied to something that happened that night . . . and that he was murdered? As the search-and-rescue worker who located Chris too late to save him, Owen Garrison still carries guilt from that fateful night. Constantly on the go as an expert in his field, he's back in Maine for the summer. Right from the start, Abigail's presence ruffles feathers among the islanders. Owen sees she's not the same woman she was seven years ago. As he helps her unravel the mystery, they learn that the layers of deceit and lies are even thicker than they could have imagined. They're convinced that Chris was killed because he got too close to the truth and that the danger he faced isn't in the past -- it's here and now. And it's up to Abigail and Owen to keep pushing for the truth . . . to stop a killer from striking again.