The following titles are available in sets of approximately fifteen copies; sometimes more. Those with an asterisk * have a study guide to accompany the title. Please call (801) 359-9670 to check availability. We invite you to select books from the following themes. (Some titles may be found in more than one category.)

Mysteries

“A” is for Alibi – (Sue Grafton, 1982) The pretty, young wife of a slick divorce lawyer and slippery ladies man is convicted of his murder by a jury. Out on parole after eight years in prison, she hires a detective to discover who really killed her husband. But the trail is eight years cold, and at the end is a chilling unexpected twist, a second eight year old murder and a brand-new corpse. Newsweek calls this book, “smart, well-paced, and very funny.”

And Then There Were None – (Agatha Christie, 1939) Ten strangers are gathered together on an isolated island by a mysterious host.  One by one the guests share the darkest secrets of their wicked pasts. And one by one, they die. (Also published as Ten Little Indians).

Farewell, My Lovely - (Raymond Chandler, 1940) Gritty, well-plotted and brutally realistic, Raymond Chandler's novels depict the lowlife of the City of Angels in the 30s and 40s. They feature tough guy Philip Marlowe, the archetypal private eye who spawned countless imitators.

* The Maltese Falcon – (Dashielle Hammett, 1929) A treasure worth killing for. Sam Spade, a slightly shopworn private eye with his own solitary code of ethics. A perfumed grifter named Joel Cairo, a fat man named Gutman, and Brigid O’Shaughnessy, a beautiful and treacherous woman whose loyalties shift at the drop of a dime. These are the ingredients of Dashiell Hammett’s coolly glittering gem of detective fiction, a novel that has haunted three generations of readers.

The Nine Tailors – (Dorothy L. Sayers, 1934) The nine strokes from the belfry of an ancient country church toll out the death of an unknown man and call the famous Lord Peter Wimsey to one of his most brilliant cases. Steeped in the atmosphere of a quiet parish in the strange, flat fen-country of East Anglia, this is a tale of suspense, character, and mood by an author the critics rate as one of the greatest masters of the mystery novel.

The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary - (Simon Winchester, 1998) Part homage to the greatest reference work of all time, the Oxford English Dictionary, part mystery, part intellectual history of Victorian England, The Professor and the Madman tells the parallel stories of the dictionary's genius editor and one of his most prolific contributors, an insane American doctor committed to an asylum for murder.

An Unsuitable Job for a Woman – (P.D. James, 1972) This whodunit follows a determined young lady detective along a trail of aristocratic secrets and sins as she reaches the conclusion that the nicest people can do the nastiest things. Time magazine calls P.D. James the “reigning mistress of murder.

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