New in August

3 stars

"On the outside they were the golden family with the perfect life. On the inside they built the perfect lie. A young nanny who plunged to her death, or was she pushed? A nine-year-old girl who collects sharp objects and refuses to speak. A lawyer whose job it is to uncover who in the family is a victim and who is a murderer. But how can you find out the truth when everyone here is lying? Rose Barclay is a nine-year-old girl who witnessed the possible...

"As New York Times bestseller Ann Cleeves's beloved Vera series explodes in popularity in print and on TV, this stunning eleventh book explores the web of secrets surrounding a young man's death. The man's body is found in the early morning light by a local dog walker in the park outside Rosebank, a home for troubled teens in the coastal village of Longwater. The victim is Josh, a staff member, who was due to work the previous night but never showed...

"The disappearance of a local politician's teenaged daughter is major news in Minnesota. As a huge manhunt is launched to find her, Cork O'Connor's grandson stumbles across the shallow grave of a young Ojibwe woman--but nobody seems that interested. Nobody, that is, except Cork and the newly formed Iron Lake Ojibwe Tribal Police. As Cork and the tribal officers dig into the circumstances of this mysterious and grim discovery, they uncover a connection...

"Detective Elise King's investigation into a woman's murder is getting derailed by a reporter who insists on doing her own investigation in this nail-biting mystery from the author of Local Gone Missing. When Karen Simmons is murdered on Valentine's Day, Detective Elise King wonders if she was killed by a man she met online. Karen was all over the dating apps, leading some townspeople to blame her for her own death, while others band together to protest...

"London: 1968. Liz Houghton is languishing as an obituary writer at a London newspaper when a young girl's disappearance captivates the city. If Liz can break the story, it's her way into the newsroom. She already has a scoop: her best friend Marisa is a police officer who is assigned to the case. Liz follows Marisa to Dorset, where they make another disturbing discovery. Twenty-five years ago, three girls disappeared while evacuating from London...

5 stars

"Years ago Alex Marks escaped to New York City for a fresh start. Now, aside from trips to her regular diner for coffee, she keeps to herself, gets her perfectly normal copywriting job done, and doesn't date. Her carefully cultivated world is upended when her childhood hero, Francis Keen, is brutally murdered. Francis was the woman behind the famous advice column, Dear Constance, and her words helped Alex through some of her darkest times. When Alex...

"It's been almost a year since Clay Edison was forced out of his job at the coroner's bureau. Now he's on his own, working as a private eye, scraping by. Clay is brought a fraud case that begins with a man surprised to learn that he's been named the executor of his grandmother's estate. Her accounts are a mess, and not everything is adding up. He's at the end of his rope and needs Clay's expertise. As Clay dives deeper into a decades-old scheme targeting...