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"  1. Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), by Sara Gran   The hard-living, wisecracking titular detective bounces around post-Katrina New Orleans trying to track down a missing prosecutor in this auspicious debut of a new mystery series\u2014and the Big Easy is every bit her equal in sass and flavor.  Gran&amp;#039;s master detective, Claire DeWitt, uses illegal drugs, lies when it suits her, and takes unethical liberties, yet she is brilliant and the go-to sleuth when you have big money and an unsolvable case. Called on a case from her respite in Northern California to the wasteland of New Orleans, she reflects: &amp;quot;Omens change. Signs shift. Nothing is permanent.&amp;quot; With wry humor, DeWitt embarks on a hunt for a missing assistant district attorney from the New Orleans prosecutor&amp;#039;s office. Her client, Leon, wants to know what happened to him, even though he assumes he&amp;#039;s dead, as he has been missing for more than two years. She immerses herself in the sensual experience that is New Orleans and takes the reader with her: eating jambalaya and po&amp;#039; boys, drinking chicory coffee and good bourbon, prowling parks and jails to interview witnesses, hacking into computers, and vandalizing property. With flashbacks of Claire&amp;#039;s childhood in Brooklyn, there&amp;#039;s more to Gran&amp;#039;s story than a typical whodunit. Dead proves to hold more than a neatly tied up ending\u2014it&amp;#039;s fascinating.\u2014Narci Drossos, Valdosta, GA This is detective noir at its best. Gran is a master of dialogue, and her characters are richly and complexly drawn. Her victims often sit alongside her villains, and they need each other to make sense of the experience they share. Gran&amp;#039;s New Orleans isn&amp;#039;t for the faint of heart, and the city&amp;#039;s beautiful and violent backdrop proves to be Claire&amp;#039;s greatest mystery of all\u2014one that &amp;quot;ain&amp;#039;t no place for happy endings.&amp;quot;\u2014Maria Sabistina, Rocky River, OH Claire DeWitt is an unlikely detective. Her methods are a bit unique\u2014she uses her dreams, pot, and a quirky book by a late French detective, Jacques Silette, to uncover information. Gran expertly uses the devastated Big Easy as an eerie backdrop for this well-paced mystery. The rough-and-tumble DeWitt is a bit prickly, bad with people, and makes questionable decisions. Yet, as the story unfolds it&amp;#039;s hard not to warm to her and root for her\u2014and for New Orleans.\u2014Kaarin Moore, Washington, DC Gran&amp;#039;s Claire DeWitt is far more interesting than the mystery she solves. She is gritty, raw, and utterly fascinating. I&amp;#039;m eagerly awaiting the next DeWitt mystery.\u2014Carrie Dunham-LaGree, Albany, NY This is the most original mystery I&amp;#039;ve read in years.\u2014Meghan Allen North Coventry, PA If Gran were headlining at a comedy club, it would be wise to grab a ticket. She&amp;#039;s dead-on funny in her depiction of Claire DeWitt and the host of misfits she encounters in New Orleans, and she&amp;#039;s great with surprise comebacks and puns.\u2014 Ivy V. Pittman, Montclair, NJ  Instead of reading the next installment, I think I will wait for the movie that\u2014with the right cast\u2014should be great fun.\u2014Marilyn Ludzki, Elmwood Park, NJ Chockfull of inevitable cliffhangers, Gran&amp;#039;s detective novel\u2014the first from this planned series\u2014is somewhat exhausting. The narrative is reinvigorated by the eerie influence of a grim and reeling New Orleans\u2014a modern twist on a decidedly traditional tale.\u2014Anne Fallon, New York, New York DeWitt&amp;#039;s obvious self destruction is difficult to consume page after page. While she obviously wants to come across as gritty and tough, she instead comes across as someone who is lonely, clinging to the past, and lacking any real foundation. And while there&amp;#039;s no denying the abominable conditions and crushed spirit that New Orleans must contend with, Gran paints a picture so grim that there is no redemption to be found anywhere.\u2014Suzanne Warner, Alameda, CA  2. The Twisted Thread (Voice), by Charlotte Bacon   Almost as winning, in our readers&amp;#039; view, was this taut tale: A popular girl at a New England prep school is murdered, and suspects are thick on the ground both within the school and among the townies who coexist uneasily with these privileged kids. Word: You won&amp;#039;t guess the ending.   Anyone who loved going back in time with John Knowles&amp;#039; A Separate Peace will love Bacon&amp;#039;s take on the elite New England prep academy in The Twisted Thread. Bacon evokes an air of privilege tainted by Gothic secrets at Armitage Academy in Massachusetts. She creates a social divide by juxtaposing the wealthy prepsters &amp;quot;on the hill&amp;quot; to the somewhat lesser-than townies below. There are many secrets in Thread, including a sanctioned &amp;quot;not so secret&amp;quot; society that espouses cruelty. The murder story that unfolds isn&amp;#039;t a pretty one, and Bacon&amp;#039;s inside view invites the reader to challenge the complicit environment on a closed campus.\u2014Narci Drossos, Valdosta, GA Bacon&amp;#039;s tangled mystery surrounds the violent and untimely death of Claire Harkness\u2014a seemingly perfect specimen of WASP greatness who is saddled with a grisly secret life that leads to her tragic demise. The author shifts the focus of the narrative in exploring Harkness&amp;#039;s death and its subsequent investigation. This kaleidoscope storytelling steers an entertaining yet somewhat archetypal tale of the deviant lives of the rich and overeducated away from the boring and expected. It&amp;#039;s a complex, fast-paced thriller, equal parts smart and salacious: Catcher in the Rye meets Cruel Intentions.\u2014Anne Fallon, New York City Bacon expertly captures the privilege and ennui of a clique of girls led by Claire\u2014girls who clearly admired and feared Claire&amp;#039;s beauty, candor, and strength. The story is narrated through the eyes of Madeline Christopher, a dormitory resident advisor and teaching assistant, as well as one of the detectives assigned to the case, who happens to be a former student at the school. As the police work to solve the murder and try to find Claire&amp;#039;s missing newborn, we are taken into a world of secrets, conspiracies, old wounds, and new bonds.\u2014Marilyn Ludzki, Elmwood Park, NJ Bacon&amp;#039;s The Twisted Thread enters Gossip Girl territory. Weaving in many well-developed red herrings, the reader is well, let&amp;#039;s just say it: hooked. While the ending is reminiscent of a Perry Mason finale, with many elaborate explanations tying up all the loose ends, overall this tale is luscious and meaty.\u2014Penny Bernal, Encinitas, CA I set out to despise these characters, and I was confident I could predict the ending before the story even began. Luckily, I was thrown for a loop. Bacon&amp;#039;s Thread reminds us that we are all a part of the human condition\u2014despite wealth, privilege, and beauty\u2014and we all feel pain, love, loss, neglect, and maybe a yearning for something different. No one is immune to these experiences, and that&amp;#039;s what kept me turning the pages, desperately wanting to understand who did what and why.\u2014Suzanne Warner, Alameda, CA This murder mystery brings to light difficult issues\u2014discrimination due to sexual orientation, abortion, child pornography, and the possible sexual assault of a minor\u2014but the author simply hints at these topics without taking them head on. Playing with nuance would be a perfectly legitimate endeavor. Yet, talking around challenging topics by bringing them up and then backing off is weak. Thread might be a technically well written story, but the writing lacks bravery.\u2014Kaarin Moore, Washington DC At Armitage boarding school, a young girl&amp;#039;s death has turned everyone into a mute or a zombie. It&amp;#039;s hard to tell. No one wants to talk, yet everyone holds a piece of the mystery as to what happened to Claire long before she died. While the circumstances and the investigation following her death are detailed as they should be, Bacon spends too much time dragging the reader along a dark and slow path to clues and a resolution. If you&amp;#039;re looking for a slow, mysterious read, and have the patience to endure the needless details, then The Twisted Thread is it. Yawn.\u2014Ivy V. Pittman, Montclair, NJ  The first half of Bacon&amp;#039;s mystery has all the makings of a great suspense novel. She deftly exposes class and social tensions between a powerful scholastic institution and its working-class neighbors, without making apologies or excuses for either side. Where Bacon falls short is developing her characters to their fullest potential. The great suspense of the novel is lost among digressions, and Bacon&amp;#039;s experimentation with dialogue and narrative technique are best left to a creative writing class. She tries to do too much here, and ultimately she doesn&amp;#039;t need to; she already had the makings of a great mystery in place.\u2014Maria Sabistina, Rocky River, OH  3. The Ghost of Greenwich Village (Ballantine), by Lorna Graham  Readers also enjoyed the fizzier quest that propels this love letter to the Big Apple, as a budding TV writer struggles with her apartment&amp;#039;s flinty resident ghost (a frustrated Beat-era author) and the shadow of her late bohemian mom&amp;#039;s high expectations.  Graham explores what it means to belong to a place and to follow your own path and create your own story. For Eve Weldon, it means moving to Greenwich Village to follow in her mother&amp;#039;s footsteps and realize her dream of becoming a writer. Along the way, she meets a cast of characters from the past and present, all looking for the same thing: love and acceptance in the big city. Ultimately, this is a love story between a girl and her city\u2014Greenwich Village is really the heroine of this novel. The star-crossed lovers are its historic buildings and streets and the ghosts that haunt them. Graham does a beautiful job of capturing the magic of New York&amp;#039;s literary past in her creation of Eve&amp;#039;s story, and readers can&amp;#039;t help but cheer Eve on as she finds her way in the Big Apple.\u2014Maria Sabistina, Rocky River, OH When Eve Weldon moves into a small apartment in Greenwich Village, she sets out on an adventure to learn more about her mother, who lived in the area during the 1960s. Eve soon discovers that her apartment is haunted by Donald, a crotchety and demanding Beatnik ghost, who is trying to use Eve to write down his very odd poems. Her new job writing fluffy segments on the morning news show Smell the Coffee isn&amp;#039;t the poetic life she thought she would lead. Eve encounters some very interesting characters as she tries to piece together information from her mother&amp;#039;s past, including a reclusive fashion designer and a friendly vintage clothing seller. The real story is Eve learning about making her own community, finding her way in New York, learning about her past, and believing in herself.\u2014Kaarin Moore, Washington DC Ghost is a quirky, engaging read. Although the premise\u2014friendship with a ghost\u2014sounds a bit ridiculous, Graham&amp;#039;s writing makes this coming-of-age novel a delight. It manages to be both light-hearted and surprisingly affecting.\u2014Carrie Dunham-LaGree, Albany, NY Unfortunately, Ghost is a confused and a watered-down parable\u2014one that has too many moving parts without substance.\u2014Anne Fallon, New York, New York Eve is warm and relatable, but the instant ease with which she performs the duties of her new job despite having no experience in that field makes for a less-than-plausible situation. As is the unlikely friendship she forms with a reclusive renowned designer. What keeps the reader going is the beautiful dialogue and stylistic appeal that Graham brings to the table.\u2014Suzanne Warner, Alameda, CA "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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