Larry Grieco, Librarian.  The new Tami Hoag mystery, The Bitter Season centers on Minneapolis Detective Nikki Liska, newly assigned to the cold case squad. She is unhappy and bored. She misses the excitement of looking for a killer on the loose, and she misses her long-time partner, Sam Kovac.

Meanwhile Kovac has to adjust to a new partner, “younger than most of Sam’s wardrobe.” Both Liska and Kovac are working on seemingly unrelated cases, one twenty-five years old and the other just recent. There is a woman in Minneapolis who might link the two crimes together. Evi Burke has “a beautiful home, a family, people who love her, and a fulfilling job.” Something out of her past is out to get her, and it causes Liska’s and Kovac’s cases to intertwine. The killer threatens to strike again.

Kirkus Reviews: “[Hoag writes] top-notch psychological thrillers.”

That brings us to a debut novel, Try Not to Breathe, by a British writer who was formerly a journalist. Holly Seddon has written a suspenseful story about another “cold case” in which a reporter tries to solve a fifteen-year-old crime while the victim remains in a coma.

Alex Dale had a great career as a journalist and a happy marriage until her drinking destroyed both. She is still a writer however, and decides to write a feature about Amy Stevenson, the victim of a merciless assault who, after fifteen years, still remains unconscious. Somewhere inside her paralyzed body, though, Amy is aware of her surroundings, but nobody knows it, not even her doctors. Alex begins visiting Amy at the hospital and interviews the original suspects in the attack. She becomes obsessed with solving the crime, and is determined to get to the truth. Because it has become personal, Alex has a chance not only to find justice for Amy, but to achieve a kind of salvation for her own life that she so sorely needs. The story shifts from the present to the past and back again.

Kirkus Reviews: “Engrossing. [Holly] Seddon’s storytelling skills are strong. The world she’s constructed is fascinating and slightly dark.”

Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child have created a series character that the Associated Press calls “a modern-day Sherlock Holmes.” That character is A.X.L. Pendergast who, with his young ward, Constance Greene, tackle the most difficult, and sometimes weirdest cases that come their way.

In Crimson Shore, they travel to the quaint seaside village of Exmouth, Massachusetts, to investigate the theft of a wine collection. While in the wine cellar, they “discover something considerably more disturbing: a bricked-up niche that once held a crumbling skeleton.” Then they find the town itself to be harboring a “very dark and troubled history” of its own. In 1692 there were the famous Salem witch trials, and local legend has it that the real witches escaped Salem and travelled north to Exmouth, where they lived in the surrounding salt marshes, and “continued to practice their wicked arts.” It seems that Constance is the only one who holds the key to solving a series of eerie events, including a murder in the marshes.

The Washington Post: “You might devour the Pendergast books the way kids do Halloween candy.”

The schedule is set for the new film series. Join film critic Walter Chaw and myself on April 30 for The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, the first of five films by the legendary team known as “The Archers,” the name used by collaborators Michael Powell and Emeric Press-burger, who made some of the finest films in the history of cinema. In the weeks to follow, we’ll be showing A Matter of Life and Death, The Red Shoes, Black Narcissus, and Gone to Earth. A complete schedule, with dates and times, will be available in the library and on the library’s website and Facebook page.

The Friends of the Library are having their Spring Book and Bake Sale on Friday and Saturday, April 15 and 16. Besides bargains galore the giant sale affords you the opportunity to support the Friends, who generously fund the Summer Reading Program for kids, the artist-in-residence program, film series, poetry readings, and  are always there whenever the library is in need, like when they made possible the purchase of a new copier last year. Come out on the 15th and 16th and open your hearts and wallets, so the Friends can continue to bolster one of the best rural libraries in the United States.