A Rip Through Time

December 1, 2021

In a series starter from the ever-popular Armstrong, homicide detective Mallory is in 2019 Edinburgh when she experiences A Rip Through Time and winds up in one of the city's alleyways in 1869, inhabiting the body of strangled-if-not-quite-dead housemaid Catriona Thomson and soon hunting for a killer (50,000-copy first printing). In Atherton's Aunt Dimity and the Enchanted Cottage, the redoubtable sleuth and her English-village neighbors fail in their attempt to befriend standoffish newcomer Crispin Windle until they discover the ruins of a Victorian woolen mill--and the graves of children who worked there, whom they seek to identify (30,000-copy first printing; originally scheduled for July 2021). In Nonna Maria and the Case of the Missing Bride, crusty but beloved widow Nonna Maria--who lives on the isle of Ischia in the Gulf of Naples and was inspired by the No. 1 New York Times best-selling Carcaterra's grandmother--intervenes when a young bride-to-be declares that she's afraid of her fianc�. In Haines's Lady of Bones, Mississippi-based Sarah Booth Delaney of the Delaney Detective Agency is attending a party alit with jack-o-lanterns when she's approached by a woman seeking her vanished daughter, who has been investigating the disappearance of young women in New Orleans every Halloween for the last five years (40,000-copy first printing). The internationally best-selling author of the "Dark Iceland" and "Hulda" series, J�nasson sets his new standalone during an Icelandic blizzard, with four frantic friends sheltering in an abandoned hunting lodge and facing a reignited tragedy that likely makes them wish they were all Outside (50,000-copy first printing). In Klingborg's Wild Prey, Inspector Lu Fei of the Chinese Police travels to a remote region of Myanmar to find a missing 15-year-old girl in a case involving the illegal trafficking of exotic animals (50,000-copy first printing). In Robert B. Parker's Revenge Tour, Lupica assigns PI Sunny Randall the thankless task of investigating actress friend Melanie Joan Hall when Melanie's manager turns up dead, her bank account looks to be wiped out, and details of her past suddenly seem more imagined than real. In Paretsky's Overboard, a seriously injured teenage girl discovered by V.I. Warshawski on Lake Michigan's rocky shore subsequently vanishes from the hospital, and the iconic detective must chase down a monstrous conspiracy with pandemic-ridden Chicago as backdrop (100,000-copy first printing). Pursuing a massive drugs-and-weapons shipment being shepherded across the U.S.-Mexican border by former cops with the warning "You talk, you die" written on their bodies, Patterson/Paetro stalwart Sgt. Lindsay Boxer suddenly has 22 Seconds to decide what her fate will be. Second in the new series from librarian Weaver, who launched her writing career with the delightful Amory Ames mysteries, The Key to Deceit has breaker-and-enterer Ellie McDonnell again approached by stuffed-shirt good-guy Major Ramsey in World War II London: he wants her to discover which side the female spy found bobbing in the Thames was on (40,000-copy first printing).

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March 7, 2022
When the Scottish grandmother of Vancouver police detective Mallory Atkinson, the narrator of this inventive series launch from bestseller Armstrong (the Rockton novels), enters hospice care, Mallory flies to Edinburgh for one last visit. After a difficult day at Nan’s bedside, Mallory jogs through the Grassmarket, where she spies a flickering female figure in Victorian garb calling for help. When Mallory stops to assist, a man ambushes and chokes her. Mallory wakes in 1869 Edinburgh, her consciousness trapped in the bruised body of the woman she tried to save—an illiterate housemaid named Catriona Mitchell. Mallory tries to keep a low profile lest Catriona’s employers—undertaker Duncan Gray and his widowed half-sister, chemist Isla Ballantyne—fire or institutionalize her before Mallory finds a way home, but when she realizes Duncan is a forensics pioneer working with a forward-thinking cop to solve a bizarre murder, Mallory can’t resist getting involved. Armstrong puts a fresh, fun spin on an age-old premise. Mallory’s snarky narration complements the delightfully preposterous plot, and the vividly sketched cast is studded with charming iconoclasts. Readers will eagerly anticipate future installments. Agent: Lucienne Diver, Knight Agency.

March 1, 2022
Popular fantasy novelist Armstrong (the Darkest Powers series; the Rockton novels; Tales of the Otherworld) launches a new series with this time-travel mystery. Mallory, an American homicide cop, is in Scotland, visiting her grandmother. After she's viciously assaulted, she awakens feeling . . . different. Turns out she's now 150 years in the past, in another woman's body. The woman whose body she now inhabits works as an assistant to an undertaker who doubles as a medical examiner, and soon Mallory finds herself on the trail of a murderer. But how to solve the bigger mystery and find the time-traveler's way back home? Readers who enjoy a good time-travel mystery might notice similarities to Julie McElwain's A Murder in Time (2016) and its sequels (in which a modern-day FBI agent finds herself catapulted back to the mid-1800s), but Armstrong's fans can be assured that this is no imitation: Armstrong has her own voice, and this is a promising start to a new series.

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March 15, 2022
A Vancouver police detective visiting Edinburgh is magically transported back to 1869, where she gets involved in a murder case in which her avatar is deeply implicated. One moment Detective Mallory Atkinson is getting throttled by an identifiable man; the next she's awakening as Catriona Mitchell, who's been similarly strangled and left for dead in the same spot. The second attack turns out to be useful for Mallory, who uses Catriona's trauma as an excuse for forgetting lots of things she ought to know as housemaid to undertaker Duncan Gray, whose medical degree sharpens his interest in the death of Evening Courant crime reporter Archie Evans, a victim of what only Mallory recognizes as waterboarding. What did Archie know that someone wanted to torture out of him? Partnering alternately with Edinburgh Detective Hugh McCreadle; her employer; and Gray's half sister, shrewd herbalist Isla Ballantyne, Mallory peers into Edinburgh's seamy underside as she struggles to uncover the truth. It's a tough job because the most dramatic discoveries she makes are that the woman whose body she's inhabiting is a bully and a thief and maybe worse and that Evans' killer, who goes on to stage another murder that uncannily foretells the work of Jack the Ripper, may well be another visitor from the 21st century. Armstrong handles the time-traveling problems concerning Mallory's disjointed consciousness and other characters' awareness that she's not your typical housemaid with unusual resourcefulness and dexterity. Although the heroine is desperate to return to her own time and place by hook or by crook, the fade-out presents a future that's pleasingly ambiguous. The murders are the least mysterious aspect of this clever time-traveling thriller.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from March 1, 2022

"Rockton" series author Armstrong builds an intense, intricately plotted mystery in this series debut. Vancouver police detective Mallory Atkinson is in Edinburgh, Scotland, to be with her beloved grandmother, who is dying. When she's out running, she hears a scream and follows it down an alley. Instead of saving the woman, Mallory is attacked and loses consciousness. She wakes up in an Edinburgh household in 1869. She's in the body of Catriona Mitchell, the 19-year-old housemaid she saw being strangled. She's lucky that Dr. Duncan Gray is her employer because he's fascinated by forensics, and together with a police detective, he's interested in new methods. He's even willing to allow his housemaid to assist in his studies. Mallory believes the only way to get back to 2019 is to find the man who killed Catriona. She hides her knowledge of 21st-century police procedures while juggling her investigation and her incompetence as a housemaid. As the strangler escalates his killing, Mallory works with a small team of investigators without revealing she's from the future. VERDICT The complex characters cope with racism and sexism in Victorian Edinburgh. Highly recommended for fans of Julie McElwain's "Kendra Donovan" time-travel series.--Lesa Holstine

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