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CELA's audiobooks and magazines are available in Direct to Player and downloadable formats. We no longer mail out CDs. Please contact us for more information.
Showing 1 - 20 of 35 items
By Jacqueline Winspear. 2024
A MILESTONE IN HISTORICAL MYSTERY FICTION AS MAISIE DOBBS TAKES HER FINAL BOWLondon, 1945: Four adolescent orphans with a dark…
wartime history are squatting in a vacant Belgravia mansion—the owners having fled London under heavy Luftwaffe bombing. Psychologist and Investigator Maisie Dobbs visits the mansion on behalf of the owners and discovers that a demobilized soldier, gravely ill and reeling from his experiences overseas, has taken shelter with the group.Maisie's quest to bring comfort to the youngsters and the ailing soldier brings to light a decades-old mystery concerning Maisie's first husband, James Compton, who was killed while piloting an experimental fighter aircraft. As Maisie unravels the threads of her dead husband's life, she is forced to examine her own painful past and question beliefs she has always accepted as true.The award-winning Maisie Dobbs series has garnered hundreds of thousands of followers, readers drawn to a woman who is of her time, yet familiar in ours—and who inspires with her resilience and capacity for endurance. This final assignment of her own choosing not only opens a new future for Maisie and her family, but serves as a fascinating portrayal of the challenges facing the people of Britain at the close of the Second World WarBy Seraphina Nova Glass. 2024
The Most Anticipated 2024 Book Releases by Nerd Daily Most Anticipated Crime Fiction Novels of 2024 by Novel Suspects "[An]…
entertaining thriller [that] maintain[s] tension and intrigue through to the satisfying end. The author's fans will devour this." —Publishers Weekly The Paris Apartment meets The Wrong Family in this thrilling tale of crime, passion and murder set in a run-down apartment complex packed with shady characters willing to go to deadly lengths to keep their darkest secrets from the stranger in their midst. When Anna Hartley's husband, Henry, calls her with a terrible, guilty confession, she can't believe what she hears. It has to be a bad joke—the mild, predictable artist she married would never hurt a fly, let alone commit murder. But her confusion turns to horror when police find his body washed up on the banks of the Rio Grande. Desperate for answers to the millions of questions his untimely death has raised, Anna checks in to The Sycamores, the run-down motel turned apartment Henry rented as an art studio. As she absorbs every bit of gossip the eclectic mix of residents are willing to share about her husband and each other, she begins to piece together a picture of a very different man than the one she married, and the life he led behind her back. The more she learns, and the less sense things seem to make, she finds herself wondering: Did she ever really know Henry at all? But Henry's secrets aren't the only ones; as Anna's search for clues expands, Cass, the mysterious, jaded motel manager, seems more and more determined to keep Anna in the dark. And when threatening letters start appearing at her door, Anna has to decide what's more important—the truth, or her own safetyBy Charlotte Vassell. 2024
From the celebrated author of The Other Half comes a fabulous whodunit about two cold cases in which things go…
missing: a fourteen-year-old girl and a multi-million-dollar pension fund. Early one morning, a men's rowing team discovers a body floating face down in the Thames. Many years before, the chief executive of a clothing manufacturer walked off with a multi-million dollar corporate retirement fund and disappeared without a trace. Now, the discovery of this body has reopened that cold case.℗ Meanwhile, Detective Inspector Caius Beauchamp has his own evening at the theater upended by the discovery of a dead body just a few seats away. Two decades ago, Eliza Chapel, a fourteen-year-old student at a girls boarding school in Cornwall, disappeared in the middle of the night under dubious circumstances. A second body and a second cold case reopened.℗ As DI Caius Beauchamp-along with his associates Matt Chung and Amy Noakes-investigates these parallel missing persons cases, he finds himself ensnared in the unexpected political machinations of a duke-in-waiting. This is yet another masterful mystery from Charlotte Vassell that is every bit as pointed as it is poignantBy Liz Moore. 2024
"Riveting from page one to the last breathless word."-Rebecca Makkai, New York Times bestselling author of I Have Some Questions…
For You "Brilliant, riveting .. an epic mystery, a family saga and a survival guide...I loved this book."℗ -Miranda Cowley Heller, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Paper Palace When a teenager vanishes from her Adirondack summer camp, two worlds collide Early morning, August 1975: a camp counselor discovers an empty bunk. Its occupant, Barbara Van Laar, has gone missing. Barbara isn't just any thirteen-year-old: she's the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region's residents. And this isn't the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared. Barbara's older brother similarly vanished fourteen years ago, never to be found. As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore's multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances. It is Liz Moore's most ambitious and wide-reaching novel yetBy Bonnie Kistler. 2024
"A truly spectacular psychological thriller with a dazzling mystery at its core. Shell Games is the ultimate one-sitting read that…
has everything — incredible family dynamics, characters that burst off the page and a premise so deliciously enticing and surprising that the pages quite simply turn themselves. Bonnie Kistler is a genius!"—Matthew Blake, author of Anna O A brilliant page-turning thriller about a young woman whose fabulously wealthy mother might be the victim of an elaborate con or might be losing her mind––and the daughter can't tell where the truth lies. Julie's mother Kate is a force of nature––a glamorous woman of seventy, a self-made real estate developer, a grande dame in Florida society, and a power broker in Florida politics. It wasn't easy for Julie to grow up in the shadow of such a dynamo, but she loves her mother, and she and her husband Eric are thrilled when Kate marries her long-lost high school sweetheart, a salt-of-the-earth man named Charlie. But their storybook romance ends abruptly. On their wedding night, Kate calls the police in hysterics to report that Charlie just confessed to a notorious unsolved crime from decades before. Charlie says she imagined it. Eric says that Kate has dementia. And the FBI says that Charlie couldn't possibly have committed that crime. Julie doesn't know what to believe. Is her brilliant mother losing her mind? Or is sweet, lovable Charlie gaslighting Kate to gain control of her fortune? As Julie tries to navigate through this maze of paranoia and mind games, cracks start to develop in her own marriage as it seems that Eric is keeping secrets . . . Set against a backdrop of rampant development and devastating climate change, Shell Games is a psychological thriller that will make your head spin and the pages turn as you wonder exactly who is doing what to whomBy Lawrence Robbins. 2024
A Washington, DC, litigator is hired to defend his best friend, the former President of the United States, against a…
murder charge in this novel that is "clever and thrilling with a shocking twist" ( People ). After a long career as one of DC's most powerful litigators, Rob Jacobson is faced with the case of a lifetime: the former President of the United States—his childhood best friend—has been accused of murdering his mistress. Rob knows he's the only one who can prove his friend's innocence, but he is soon overwhelmed as he attempts to devise a strategy to defend an authoritative man with a taste for infidelity, serious anger issues, and unconventional sexual appetites. As the high-profile case unfurls, the troubled, intertwining pasts of the two men complicate Rob's efforts and soon, doubts begin to grow in his head. Could his oldest friend truly be capable of murder or is something even darker at play? "Robbins...keeps the pace fast and the courtroom scenes convincing" ( The New York Times Book Review ) in this sensational thriller by a true DC legal insiderBy Sarah Easter Collins. 2024
“So, so, so good. An elegant, twisting story of loss and longing, of the ache of the unknown and the…
drowning weight of past trauma."—Chris Whitaker, New York Times bestselling author of All the Colors of the Dark EDGAR AWARD FINALIST • A BOOKPAGE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • A WASHINGTON POST AND BLOOMBERG BEST BOOK OF THE SEASON A heart-wrenching mystery about sisters, lovers, and a dinner party gone wrong. Twenty-five years ago, a young girl left home to walk to school. Her younger sister soon followed. But one of them arrived, and one of them didn’t. Her sister’s disappearance has defined Willa’s life. Everyone thinks her sister is dead, but Willa knows she isn’t. Because there are some things that only sisters know about each other—and some bonds only sisters can break. Willa sees fragments of her sister everywhere—the way that woman on the train turns her head, the gait of that woman in Paris. If there’s the slightest resemblance, Willa drops everything, and everyone, and tries to see if it is her. When Willa is invited to a dinner party thrown by her first love, she has no reason to expect it will be anything other than an ordinary evening. Both of them have moved on, ancient history. But nothing about Willa’s life has been ordinary since the day her sister disappeared, and that’s not about to change tonight. Sarah Easter Collins has written an extraordinary novel about memory, lost love, and long-buried secrets that sometimes see the light of dayBy P. J Nelson. 2024
In this atmospheric Southern cozy debut, Madeline Brimley returns to the bookstore she inherited, discovering that small towns hold deadly…
secrets. Madeline Brimley left small-town Georgia many years ago to go to college and pursue her dreams on the stage. Her dramatic escapades are many, but success has eluded her, leaving her at loose ends. But then she gets word that not only has her beloved, eccentric Aunt Rose passed, but she's left Madeline her equally eccentric bookstore housed in an old Victorian mansion in the small college town of Enigma. But when she arrives in her beat-up Fiat to claim The Old Juniper Bookstore—and restart her life—Madeline is faced with unexpected challenges. The gazebo in the backyard is set ablaze, and a late-night caller threatens to burn the whole store down if she doesn't leave immediately. But Madeline Brimley, not one to be intimidated, ignores the threats and soldiers on. Until there's another fire and a murder in the store itself. Now, with a cloud of suspicion falling over her, it's up to Madeline to untangle the skein of secrets and find the killer before she herself is the next victimBy Amy Tintera. 2024
"A world-class whodunit." —Stephen King "An extremely successful high-wire act, balancing between dark comedy and darker thrills." —Alex Michaelides, #1…
New York Times bestselling author "Laugh-out-loud funny, thrilling and twisty..." —Liane Moriarty, #1 New York Times bestselling author What if you thought you murdered your best friend? And if everyone else thought so too? And what if the truth doesn't matter? After Lucy is found wandering the streets, covered in her best friend Savvy's blood, everyone thinks she is a murderer. Lucy and Savvy were the golden girls of their small Texas town: pretty, smart, and enviable. Lucy married a dream guy with a big ring and an even bigger new home. Savvy was the social butterfly loved by all, and if you believe the rumors, especially popular with the men in town. It's been years since that horrible night, a night Lucy can't remember anything about, and she has since moved to LA and started a new life. But now the phenomenally huge hit true crime podcast "Listen for the Lie," and its too-good looking host Ben Owens, have decided to investigate Savvy's murder for the show's second season. Lucy is forced to return to the place she vowed never to set foot in again to solve her friend's murder, even if she is the one that did it. The truth is out there, if we just listenBy Nicolás Ferraro. 2021
A teenage girl and her gangster father embark on a road trip toward revenge in this award-winning coming-of-age Argentinian noir.Fifteen-year-old…
Ámbar has never known any parent other than her father, Víctor Mondragón, nor any life other than his. On any given Friday night, Ámbar longs to be at the arcade or a rock concert, but she&’s more likely to be patching up Víctor&’s latest bullet hole in a dingy motel or creating a new set of fake identities for the both of them.When a tattooed mercenary kills Víctor&’s best friend and vows that Víctor is next, father and daughter set off on a joyride across Argentina in search of bloody retribution. But Ámbar&’s growing pains hurt worse than her beloved sawed-off shotgun&’s kickback as she begins to question the structure of her world. How much is her father not telling her? Could her life ever be different? And will she survive long enough to find out?It&’s kill or be killed in this gritty, devastating coming-of-age thriller from the king of Argentine neo-noir.By Amy Tintera. 2024
New York Times BestsellerA Good Morning America Book Club Pick"A world-class whodunit."—Stephen King“An extremely successful high-wire act, balancing between dark…
comedy and darker thrills.”—Alex Michaelides, #1 New York Times bestselling author“Laugh-out-loud funny, thrilling and twisty...”—Liane Moriarty, #1 New York Times bestselling authorWhat if you thought you murdered your best friend? And if everyone else thought so too? And what if the truth doesn't matter?After Lucy is found wandering the streets, covered in her best friend Savvy’s blood, everyone thinks she is a murderer. Lucy and Savvy were the golden girls of their small Texas town: pretty, smart, and enviable. Lucy married a dream guy with a big ring and an even bigger new home. Savvy was the social butterfly loved by all, and if you believe the rumors, especially popular with the men in town. It’s been years since that horrible night, a night Lucy can’t remember anything about, and she has since moved to LA and started a new life. But now the phenomenally huge hit true crime podcast "Listen for the Lie," and its too-good looking host Ben Owens, have decided to investigate Savvy’s murder for the show’s second season. Lucy is forced to return to the place she vowed never to set foot in again to solve her friend’s murder, even if she is the one that did it.The truth is out there, if we just listen.By Jacqueline Winspear. 2024
Psychologist and investigator Maisie Dobbs unravels a profound mystery from her past in a war-torn nation grappling with its future.**…
London, 1945: Four adolescent orphans with a dark wartime history are squatting in a vacant Belgravia mansion—the owners having fled London under heavy Luftwaffe bombing. Psychologist and Investigator Maisie Dobbs visits the mansion on behalf of the owners and discovers that a demobilized soldier, gravely ill and reeling from his experiences overseas, has taken shelter with the group. Maisie’s quest to bring comfort to the youngsters and the ailing soldier brings to light a decades-old mystery concerning Maisie’s first husband, James Compton, who was killed while piloting an experimental fighter aircraft. As Maisie unravels the threads of her dead husband’s life, she is forced to examine her own painful past and question beliefs she has always accepted as true. The award-winning Maisie Dobbs series has garnered hundreds of thousands of followers, readers drawn to a woman who is of her time, yet familiar in ours—and who inspires with her resilience and capacity for endurance. This final assignment of her own choosing not only opens a new future for Maisie and her family, but serves as a fascinating portrayal of the challenges facing the people of Britain at the close of the Second World War. New York Times BestsellerBy Carol Goodman. 2024
Jane Eyre meets The Thirteenth Tale in this new modern gothic mystery from two-time Mary Higgins Clark Award–winner Carol Goodman, about a…
reclusive writer who is desperate to rewrite the past.Losing yourself inside of a book can be dangerous. Not everyone finds their way out.Agnes Corey, a junior editor at a small independent publisher, has been hired by enigmatic author Veronica St. Clair to transcribe the sequel to her 1993 hit phenomenon, The Secret of Wyldcliffe Heights. St. Clair has been a recluse since the publication of the Jane Eyre-esque book, which coincided with a terrible fire that blinded and scarred her. Arriving in the Hudson Valley at St. Clair’s crumbling estate, which was once a psychiatric hospital for “wayward women,” Agnes is eager to ensure St. Clair’s devoted fans will get the sequel they’ve been anticipating for the past thirty years.As St. Clair dictates, Agnes realizes there are clues in the story that reveal the true—and terrifying—events three decades ago that inspired the original novel. The line between fact and fiction becomes increasingly blurred, and Agnes discovers terrible secrets about an unresolved murder from long ago, which have startling connections to her own life. As St. Clair’s twisting tale infiltrates Agnes’s psyche, Agnes begins to question her own sanity—and safety. In order to save herself, Agnes must uncover what really happened to St. Clair, and in doing so, set free the stories of all the women victimized by Wyldcliffe Heights.By Charlotte Vassell. 2024
From the celebrated author of The Other Half comes a fabulous whodunit about two cold cases in which things go…
missing: a fourteen-year-old girl and a multi-million-dollar pension fund.Early one morning, a men&’s rowing team discovers a body floating face down in the Thames. Many years before, the chief executive of a clothing manufacturer walked off with a multi-million dollar corporate retirement fund and disappeared without a trace. Now, the discovery of this body has reopened that cold case. Meanwhile, Detective Inspector Caius Beauchamp has his own evening at the theater upended by the discovery of a dead body just a few seats away. Two decades ago, Eliza Chapel, a fourteen-year-old student at a girls boarding school in Cornwall, disappeared in the middle of the night under dubious circumstances. A second body and a second cold case reopened. As DI Caius Beauchamp—along with his associates Matt Chung and Amy Noakes—investigates these parallel missing persons cases, he finds himself ensnared in the unexpected political machinations of a duke-in-waiting. This is yet another masterful mystery from Charlotte Vassell that is every bit as pointed as it is poignant.By Katie Tietjen. 2024
Inspired by the real-life mother of forensic science, Frances Glessner Lee, and featuring a whip-smart, intrepid sleuth in post-WWII Vermont,…
this debut historical mystery will appeal to fans of Victoria Thompson and Rhys Bowen.Maple Bishop is ready to put WWII and the grief of losing her husband, Bill, behind her. But when she discovers that Bill left her penniless, Maple realizes she could lose her Vermont home next and sets out to make money the only way she knows how: by selling her intricately crafted dollhouses. Business is off to a good start—until Maple discovers her first customer dead, his body hanging precariously in his own barn.Something about the supposed suicide rubs Maple the wrong way, but local authorities brush off her concerns. Determined to help them see &“what&’s big in what&’s small,&” Maple turns to what she knows best, painstakingly recreating the gruesome scene in miniature: death in a nutshell.With the help of a rookie officer named Kenny, Maple uses her macabre miniature to dig into the dark undercurrents of her sleepy town, where everyone seems to have a secret—and a grudge. But when her nosy neighbor goes missing and she herself becomes a suspect, it&’ll be up to Maple to find the devil in the details—and put him behind bars.Drawing inspiration from true crime and offering readers a smartly plotted puzzle of a mystery, Death in the Details is a stunning series debut.By Sulari Gentill. 2024
"Gentill nimbly balances the plausible with the outlandish in this sly thriller set in the publishing world." —Publishers WeeklyFrom 2023…
Edgar Award nominee and bestselling author Sulari Gentill comes a literary thriller about an aspiring writer who meets and falls in love with her literary idol—only to find him murdered the day after she gave him her manuscript to read. There's nothing easier to dismiss than a conspiracy theory—until it turns out to be trueWhen Theodosia Benton abandons her career path as an attorney and shows up on her brother's doorstep with two suitcases and an unfinished novel, she expects to face a few challenges. Will her brother support her ambition or send her back to finish her degree? What will her parents say when they learn of her decision? Does she even have what it takes to be a successful writer?What Theo never expects is to be drawn into a hidden literary world in which identity is something that can be lost and remade for the sake of an audience. When her mentor, a highly successful author, is brutally murdered, Theo wants the killer to be found and justice to be served. Then the police begin looking at her brother, Gus, as their prime suspect, and Theo does the unthinkable in order to protect him. But the writer has left a trail, a thread out of the labyrinth in the form of a story. Gus finds that thread and follows it, and in his attempt to save his sister he inadvertently threatens the foundations of the labyrinth itself. To protect the carefully constructed narrative, Theo Benton, and everyone looking for her, will have to die.By Katarina Bivald. 2024
The best stories are the ones we didn't know needed to be toldThe small, rundown village of Great Diddling is…
full of stories—author Berit Gardner can feel it. The way the villagers avoid outsiders, the furtive stares and whispers in the presence of newcomers… Berit can sense the edge of a story waiting to be unraveled, and she's just the person to do it. In fact, with a book deadline looming over her and no manuscript (not even the idea for a manuscript, truth be told), Berit doesn't just want this story. She needs it.Then, while attending a village tea party, Berit becomes part of the action herself. An explosion in the library of the village's grand manor kills a local man, and the resulting investigation and influx of outsiders sends the quiet, rundown community into chaos. The residents of Great Diddling, each one more eccentric and interesting than any character Berit could have invented, rewrite their own narrative and transform the death of one of their own from a tragedy into a new beginning. Taking advantage of Great Diddling's new notoriety, the villagers band together to start a book and murder festival designed to bring desperately-needed tourists to their town. What they couldn't have predicted is how the new story they've begun to tell will change all their lives forever.Uplifting, charming, and laugh-out-loud funny, The Murders in Great Diddling by New York Times bestselling author Katarina Bivald is a celebration of the life-changing magic of books and the people who love them.By Beverley McLachlin. 2023
From the former Chief Justice of Canada and #1 bestselling author of Full Disclosure comes a razor-sharp thriller featuring defense…
attorney Jilly Truitt as she defends a high-profile mother accused of kidnapping her own child.Jilly Truitt has always put her job as a criminal defense lawyer first, but becoming a new mother has changed her priorities. For the first time in her career, she&’s taking some long-overdue time away from her firm and the day-to-day grind of cases, enjoying the quiet delights of motherhood. Then the daughter of celebrity pop star Trist Jones goes missing and his ex-wife, Katie, is charged with kidnapping. Everyone from the police to the media believe Katie is guilty—her reputation was ripped to shreds in the tabloids during their divorce and subsequent custody battle. Call it mother&’s intuition, but Jilly has her doubts. Katie&’s whole life was about being a mother, and she and Trist were very public about their problems conceiving, shining a spotlight on their use of a surrogate. After everything she went through to have a child, Katie claims that she would never do anything to hurt her daughter, and she begs Jilly to take her case. Jilly agrees, but Katie&’s prospects don&’t look good. Police have found a witness who says he saw Katie with Tess the afternoon she disappeared, and they are close to giving up the search. The best chance Jilly has of clearing Katie&’s name is to find the missing girl. But as the weeks go by, the police begin to suspect that Tess might be dead. With the threat of a murder charge hanging over Katie&’s head, Jilly must find the real kidnapper and save Tess before it&’s too late.By Michelle Chouinard. 2024
In Michelle Chouinard’s clever mystery The Serial Killer Guide to San Francisco, the granddaughter of a serial killer shows readers…
another side of the beloved city.Welcome to San Francisco, a city with killer charm.The chill of a San Francisco summer can be deadly. No one knows this better than Capri Sanzio, who makes her living giving serial killer tours of the city. Capri has been interested in the topic since she was a kid, when she discovered she’s the granddaughter of serial killer William ‘Overkill Bill’ Sanzio. She’s always believed in his innocence, though she's never taken the leap to fully dive into the case.But now an Overkill Bill copycat has struck in San Francisco. And Capri’s former mother-in-law, Sylvia, just cut off Capri’s daughter’s tuition payments. Needing cash, Capri wonders if this is the time to exonerate her grandfather. The case is back in the news and the police will be looking to understand the past to catch a present-day killer. Capri could finally uncover the truth about Overkill Bill—documenting the process with a podcast and a book—and hopefully earn some money.Before Capri can get very far, the cops discover the copycat’s latest victim: Sylvia. Capri soon finds herself at the heart of the police’s investigation for an entirely different reason. She and her daughter are prime suspects.By Ayla Rose. 2024
A quaint Vermont inn offers idyllic peace–until a body is found on the property–in this charming series debut, perfect for…
fans of Ellen Byron and Ellery Adams.When thirty-three-year-old Hannah Solace returns to her hometown to renovate and reopen the inn she co-owns with her sister Reggie, her mission is to give the old Victorian hotel an entirely new life. She&’s even planting pollinator gardens around the inn–native flowers and fruit trees to lure honeybees and houseguests alike. Hannah&’s fresh start is stymied by Reggie&’s continual interference, unreliable contractors, a check-the-couch-for-coins budget, and townspeople Hannah left behind fifteen years ago. Her main source of camaraderie is Ezra Grayson, an eighty-year-old recluse who lives nearby. After an unsettling conversation with a disgruntled Ezra, Hannah is horrified to discover him dead on her property later that day. Ezra had always had plenty of people to complain about, especially locals trying to force him out of his property for its prime real estate. As buzz around town grows after his death, Hannah finds herself on the short list of suspects. Hannah starts digging and quickly discovers that secrets lurk beneath the charming surface of the town she once again calls home.