Cranston Public Library

"Todd has written a first novel that speaks out, urgently and compassionately, for a long-dead generation....A meticulously wrought puzzle."
—New York Times Book Review

"An intricately plotted mystery. With this remarkable debut, Charles Todd breaks new ground in the historical crime novel."
—Peter Lovesey, author of The Circle

"You're going to love Todd."
—Stephen King, Entertainment Weekly

The

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"Midafternoon on a Tuesday, it occurred to Bean Jessup that she was forgetting her husband's face." So begins this smart and charmingly written debut novel about a young woman trying to start over amid the grandeur of the Alaskan landscape and the creaky confines of an isolated fishing village and its relentless and pungent salmon cannery. A Hole in the Heart is the story of what happens when Bean arrives after accepting a last-minute elementary-school-teaching...

In the dangerous dark of winter in an Eastern European village during the early seventeenth century, Peter learns from a gypsy girl that the Shadow Queen is behind the recent murders and reanimations, and his father's secret past may hold the key to stopping her.

"The days are turning colder, preparations are under way for the Winter Fest, and everyone is hoping for a little holiday magic on the Finfarran peninsula. And as Cassie Fitzgerald, fresh from Toronto, is about to discover, there's more to the holidays on the west coast of Ireland than mistletoe and mince pies. Enchanted by the small town where her dad was born, Cassie makes friends and joins local librarian Hanna Casey's writing group in Lissbeg...

Opinion is divided in a village in the English Cotswolds to a company's request to bottle water from the village spring. One side sees economic benefits, the other a degraded environment. When the council chairman who was to make a decision is murdered, sleuth Agatha Raisin goes to work.

Protecting her beloved students from the devastating world outside of their 1934 Berlin classroom, Thekla Köppen sacrifices some of her personal freedoms to retain her teaching position until activities within Hitler's early regime test her moral courage.

After she attends a Christmas service, Dorothy Martin, 60, an American widow living in England whose outrageous hats are the talk of the village, stumbles over the body of the local canon. She turns sleuth to help out the chief constable, also a widower.

A land developer is killed in Sherebury, England, and police suspect environmentalists, but they are too busy to handle the case because of a forthcoming royal visit. So the case is taken by Dorothy Martin, an American widow working in a bookstore who is the sweetheart of the chief of police.

A new mystery series featuring Evan Evans, the new constable of Llanfair in Wales. It is a town of eccentrics, among them two competitive ministers, one lascivious barmaid and three other Evans, ' Evans-the-Meat, Evans-the-Milk, and Evans-the-Mail. Evans-the-Copper's first case is the murder of hitchhikers.