Campus Crime Novels
Name of the Rose
An international sensation and winner of the Premio Strega and the Prix Médicis Etranger awards, this enthralling medieval murder mystery "explodes with pyrotechnic inventions, literally as well as figuratively" (The New York Times)
The year is 1327. Benedictines in a wealthy Italian abbey are suspected of heresy, and Brother William of Baskerville arrives to investigate. When his delicate mission is suddenly overshadowed by seven bizarre deaths, Brother William turns detective. His tools are the logic of Aristotle, the theology of Aquinas, the empirical insights of Roger Bacon -- all sharpened to a glistening edge by wry humor and a ferocious curiosity. He collects evidence, deciphers secret symbols and coded manuscripts, and digs into the eerie labyrinth of the abbey, where "the most interesting things happen at night."
"Like the labyrinthine library at its heart, this brilliant novel has many cunning passages and secret chambers . . . Fascinating . . . ingenious . . . dazzling." --Newsweek
Shortest Way to Hades
Die first, pay later. It seemed the perfect way to avoid three million in taxes on a five-million-pound estate: change the trust arrangement. Everyone in the family agreed to support the heiress, the ravishing raven-haired Camilla Galloway, in her court petition--except dreary Cousin Deirdre, who suddenly demanded a small fortune for her signature. Then Deirdre had a terrible accident. That was when the young London barristers handling the trust--Cantrip, Selena, Timothy, Ragwort, and Julia--summoned their Oxford friend Professor Hilary Tamar to Lincoln's Inn. Julia thinks it's murder. Hilary demurs. Why didn't the heiress die? But when the accidents escalate and they learn of the naked lunch at Uncle Rupert's, Hilary the Scholar embarks on the most perilous quest of all: the truth. Don't miss any of Sarah Caudwell's riveting Hilary Tamar mysteries:
THUS WAS ADONIS MURDERED - THE SHORTEST WAY TO HADES - THE SIRENS SANG OF MURDER - THE SIBYL IN HER GRAVE
Theban Mysteries
Thus Was Adonis Murdered
THUS WAS ADONIS MURDERED - THE SHORTEST WAY TO HADES - THE SIRENS SANG OF MURDER - THE SIBYL IN HER GRAVE
Murder Is Academic
P.M. Carlson's campus crime novels are populated by lively, intelligent, good-humored students and grown-ups, just like the people whom we find on real campuses. Carlson also gets how colleges work. Her mysteries feel real, but they're also the best version of real: we wish we could be on Carlson's campuses, hanging out with her people. Murder Is Academic is Carlson's second Maggie Ryan mystery -- a more conventional whodunit than the series opener, Audition for Murder, and a litlte darker. Set in the late '60s and early '70s, they are terrific mysteries and engaging explorations of recent history. Highly recommend, so highly that when the original publishers Avon and Bantam let them go, I brought all eight books back into print so that readers could get them all.
- Jim Huang, Bookshop Director