"The Snow White Christmas Cookie"

New from St. Martin's Minotaur: The Snow White Christmas Cookie: A Berger and Mitry Mystery by David Handler.

About the book, from the publisher:

The newest adventure featuring the mismatched romantic crime-fighting duo of New York City film critic Mitch Berger and Connecticut State Resident Trooper Desiree Mitry presents Des with her first taste of Christmas in the historic New England village of Dorset.

And what a taste it is. Three blizzards have blanketed the village in forty inches of snow. Bryce Peck, Mitch’s blue-blooded neighbor out on Big Sister Island, has just been found dead of a drug overdose. Young Kylie Champlain has slammed her car head-on into an office building after she’s caught trying to shoplift a pair of Ugg boots. And a grinch has taken to stealing the mail from Hank Merrill’s postal route, which happens to be the main route through the historic district.

Stealing the U.S. mail is a serious federal crime, but Des soon discovers that she’s onto something much bigger: a black-market prescription drug gang with ties to organized crime. And now a fourth blizzard is on its way. And so is another murder. And, somehow, the man in her life has managed to land himself smack dab in the middle of the whole mess. Not to mention that he’s in way over his head with Josie Cantro, the beautiful and treacherous life-coach who just may be responsible for it all. If Des doesn’t act fast, this will truly be a Christmas to remember---but for all of the wrong reasons.

David Handler’s ninth book in this original series is brimming with plenty of murder, mayhem, and holiday spirit.

Learn more about the book and author at David Handler's website and blog.

Writers Read: David Handler (October 2011).

"Aztec Revenge"

New from Forge Books: Aztec Revenge by Gary Jennings and Junius Podrug.

About the book, from the publisher:

The fascinating history of Mexico that began in the #1 New York Times bestselling novel Aztec continues....

Don Juan de Zavala was the most skilled fighter in all of New Spain—as gifted with weapons and horses as he was with women. These pleasures were all he desired.
But the magnificent Aztec empire, its grand cities and riches lay broken under the Spanish boot…. Now valiant men and fearless women rise and battle their brutal overlords.

As a warrior-priest leads an Aztec revolt, across the ocean in Spain courageous people battle Napoleon’s invading armies.

No one, including Juan de Zavala could stay neutral. Especially if a shocking secret from Zavala’s lurid past is exposed—a secret so lethal to the Spanish Crown it threatens their very existence. Zavala will be swept from glittering Mexico City to snake-and-croc infested jungles, to lost Mayan civilizations to the torture chambers of the Inquisition, to beautiful Barcelona and the bloody carnage of Napoleon’s war in Spain, to the bloodiest and most spectacular of New Spain’s (colonial Mexico) revolutions.

Everybody wants Don Juan de Zavala…and many people want him dead:

Isabella… Instinctively wicked, sinfully seductive.

Father Hidalgo… Can a man of God take up the sword and lead a people by the hundreds of thousands into a bloody revolution he cannot control?

Raquel… Attractive, sensuous, erudite, she challenges Juan with her mind—and her body.

Marina… A gorgeous pure-blood Aztec, she knows too well the oppressor’s rape and pillage of her people.

"The Witch of Babylon"

New from Forge Books: The Witch of Babylon by D.J. McIntosh.

About the book, from the publisher:

Out of the searing heat and sandstorms of the infamous summer of 2003 in Baghdad comes The Witch of Babylon, a gripping story rooted in ancient Assyrian lore and its little-known but profound significance for the world.

John Madison is a Turkish-American art dealer raised by his much older brother, Samuel, a mover and shaker in New York's art world. Caught between his brother's obsession with saving a priceless relic looted from Iraq's National Museum and a deadly game of revenge staged by his childhood friend, John must solve a puzzle to find the link between a modern-day witch and an ancient one.

Aided by Tomas, an archaeologist, and Ari, an Iraqi photojournalist—two men with their own secrets to hide—John races against time to decipher a biblical prophecy that leads to the dark history behind the science of alchemy. Kidnapped by villainous fortune hunters, John is returned to Iraq, where a fabulous treasure trove awaits discovery—if he can stay alive long enough to find it.

Visit D.J. McIntosh's website, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.

"Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting"

New from Harvard University Press: Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting by Sianne Ngai.

About the book, from the publisher:

The zany, the cute, and the interesting saturate postmodern culture. They dominate the look of its art and commodities as well as our discourse about the ambivalent feelings these objects often inspire. In this radiant study, Sianne Ngai offers a theory of the aesthetic categories that most people use to process the hypercommodified, mass-mediated, performance-driven world of late capitalism, treating them with the same seriousness philosophers have reserved for analysis of the beautiful and the sublime.

Ngai explores how each of these aesthetic categories expresses conflicting feelings that connect to the ways in which postmodern subjects work, exchange, and consume. As a style of performing that takes the form of affective labor, the zany is bound up with production and engages our playfulness and our sense of desperation. The interesting is tied to the circulation of discourse and inspires interest but also boredom. The cute’s involvement with consumption brings out feelings of tenderness and aggression simultaneously. At the deepest level, Ngai argues, these equivocal categories are about our complex relationship to performing, information, and commodities.

Through readings of Adorno, Schlegel, and Nietzsche alongside cultural artifacts ranging from Bob Perelman’s poetry to Ed Ruscha’s photography books to the situation comedy of Lucille Ball, Ngai shows how these everyday aesthetic categories also provide traction to classic problems in aesthetic theory. The zany, cute, and interesting are not postmodernity’s only meaningful aesthetic categories, Ngai argues, but the ones best suited for grasping the radical transformation of aesthetic experience and discourse under its conditions.

"Under the Eye of God"

New from Mysterious Press: Under the Eye of God by Jerome Charyn.

About the book, from the publisher:

After decades of madness in the Bronx, Isaac Sidel visits the craziest state in the country

Isaac Sidel is too popular to be America’s vice president. Once the New York Police Department commissioner, he became the most beloved mayor in the city’s history—famous for his refusal to surrender his Glock, and for his habit of disappearing for months at a time to fight crime at street level. So when baseball czar J. Michael Storm asks Sidel to join him on the election’s Democratic ticket, the two wild men romp to an unprecedented landslide. But as the president-elect’s mandate goes off the rails—threatened by corruption, sex, and God knows what else—he tires of being overshadowed by Sidel, and dispatches him to a place from which tough politicians seldom return: Texas.

In the Lone Star state, Sidel confronts rogue astrologers, accusations of pedophilia, and a dimwitted assassin who doesn’t know when to take an easy shot. If this Bronx bomber doesn’t watch his step, he risks making vice-presidential history by getting killed on the job.

Visit Jerome Charyn's website.

"Three Parts Dead"

New from Tor Books: Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone.

About the book, from the publisher:

A god has died, and it’s up to Tara, first-year associate in the international necromantic firm of Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao, to bring Him back to life before His city falls apart.

Her client is Kos, recently deceased fire god of the city of Alt Coulumb. Without Him, the metropolis’s steam generators will shut down, its trains will cease running, and its four million citizens will riot.

Tara’s job: resurrect Kos before chaos sets in. Her only help: Abelard, a chain-smoking priest of the dead god, who’s having an understandable crisis of faith.

When Tara and Abelard discover that Kos was murdered, they have to make a case in Alt Coulumb’s courts—and their quest for the truth endangers their partnership, their lives, and Alt Coulumb’s slim hope of survival.

Set in a phenomenally built world in which justice is a collective force bestowed on a few, craftsmen fly on lightning bolts, and gargoyles can rule cities, Three Parts Dead introduces readers to an ethical landscape in which the line between right and wrong blurs.

Visit Max Gladstone's website.

"Blood Lance"

New from Minotaur Books: Blood Lance: A Medieval Noir (The Crispin Guest Novels, Volume 5 of 6) by Jeri Westerson.

About the book, from the publisher:

Crispin Guest, returning home after a late night, sees a body hurtling from the uppermost reaches of the London Bridge. Guest's attempted rescue fails, however, and the man—an armourer with a shop on the bridge—is dead. While whispers in the street claim that it was a suicide, Guest—known in certain London circles as The Tracker for his skill in solving puzzles—is unconvinced.

What Guest uncovers is that the armourer had promised Sir Thomas Saunfayl, a friend from Guest's former life, that he would provide him something that would make him unbeatable in battle, something for which he'd paid a small fortune. Sir Thomas believes that the item was in fact the Spear of Longinus - the spear that pierced the side of Christ on the cross—which is believed to make those who possess it invincible.

Complicating matters is another old friend, Geoffrey Chaucer, who suddenly comes to London and is anxious to help Guest find the missing spear, about which he seems to know a bit too much. With various forces anxious to find the spear, the life of Sir Thomas in danger and perhaps the very safety of England hangs in the balance, Guest and his apprentice Jack Tucker must navigate some very perilous waters if they are to survive.

Learn more about the author and her work at Jeri Westerson's website, her "Getting Medieval" blog, and the Crispin Guest Medieval Noir blog.

The Page 69 Test: Veil of Lies.

The Page 69 Test: Serpent in the Thorns.

The Page 69 Test: The Demon's Parchment.

Writers Read: Jeri Westerson.

My Book, The Movie: The Demon's Parchment.

The Page 69 Test: Troubled Bones.

"Sacrifice Fly"

New from Minotaur: Sacrifice Fly by Tim O'Mara.

About the book, from the publisher:

Raymond Donne wasn’t always a schoolteacher. Not only did he patrol the streets of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, as one of New York’s Finest, but being the nephew of the chief of detectives, he was expected to go on to bigger things. At least he was until the accident that destroyed his knees. Unable to do the job the way he wanted, he became a teacher in the same neighborhood, and did everything he could to put the force behind him and come to terms with the change.

Then Frankie Rivas, a student in Ray’s class and a baseball phenom, stops showing up to school. With Frankie in danger of failing and missing out on a scholarship, Ray goes looking for him, only to find Frankie’s father bludgeoned to death in their apartment. Frankie and his younger sister are gone, possibly on the run. But did Frankie really kill his father? Ray can’t believe it. But then who did, and where are Frankie and his sister? Ray doesn’t know, but if he’s going to have any chance of bringing them home safely, he’s going to have to return to the life, the people, and the demons he walked out on all those years ago.

Intense, authentic, and completely gripping, Tim O’Mara’s Sacrifice Fly is an outstanding debut from a stellar new voice in crime fiction.

Visit Tim O'Mara's website and Facebook page.

"A Fatal Winter"

New from Minotaur/Thomas Dunne Books: A Fatal Winter (Max Tudor Series #2) by G. M. Malliet.

About the book, from the publisher:

Last year, Agatha Award-winning author G. M. Malliet charmed mystery lovers, cozy fans, and Agatha Christie devotees with Wicked Autumn, the first mystery featuring her captivating protagonist, Max Tudor, and the small English village of Nether Monkslip.

In A Fatal Winter, Max—Anglican priest, former MI5 agent, and village heartthrob—investigates two deaths at Chedrow Castle. But his growing attraction to Awena Owen complicates his case, as does the recent arrival at Chedrow Castle of a raucous group of long-lost, greedy relatives, any one of whom has a motive for murder. With a cozy setting, intricate puzzles, and a handsome (non-celibate) priest doing the sleuthing, the books in this series are destined to become instant classics in the mystery world.

Visit G. M. Malliet's website, blog, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.

"The Middlesteins"

New from Grand Central Publishing: The Middlesteins by Jami Attenberg.

About the book, from the publisher:

For more than thirty years, Edie and Richard Middlestein shared a solid family life together in the suburbs of Chicago. But now things are splintering apart, for one reason, it seems: Edie's enormous girth. She's obsessed with food--thinking about it, eating it--and if she doesn't stop, she won't have much longer to live.

When Richard abandons his wife, it is up to the next generation to take control. Robin, their schoolteacher daughter, is determined that her father pay for leaving Edie. Benny, an easy-going, pot-smoking family man, just wants to smooth things over. And Rachelle-- a whippet thin perfectionist-- is intent on saving her mother-in-law's life, but this task proves even bigger than planning her twin children's spectacular b'nai mitzvah party. Through it all, they wonder: do Edie's devastating choices rest on her shoulders alone, or are others at fault, too?

With pitch-perfect prose, huge compassion, and sly humor, Jami Attenberg has given us an epic story of marriage, family, and obsession. The Middlesteins explores the hopes and heartbreaks of new and old love, the yearnings of Midwestern America, and our devastating, fascinating preoccupation with food.

Learn more about the author and her work at Jami Attenberg's website and her blog.

The Page 69 Test: The Kept Man.