Big Eye, a Taiwanese gangster, sends two of his henchmen for his nephew Jing-nan, owner of the Unknown Pleasures food stand in the Taipei Night Market.  Big Eye wants Jing-nan to bring Mei-ling, Big Eye's 16 year old daughter, to Taipei for awhile.  Mei-ling is rebellious and spoiled, under the influence of her unsavory boyfriend.  Big Eye hopes that Jing-nan can set her on a right path.
     Jing-nan has no leverage.  He is being monitored by Big Eye's goons and manipulated by Mei-ling.  Problems begin before they even return to Taipei.   As the story evolves Jing-nan realizes that his cousin's visit involves more than just babysitting a troublesome teenager.  The action escalates as the big secret underlying Mei-ling's problem comes to the surface.
     Incensed is about an entertaining cast of characters operating in a fascinating setting.  The culture of the Taipei Night Market and food stands is authentic-and mouth watering.  The sights and smells permeate every chapter of the book.  The characters are instrumental in portraying life in Taiwan, including the strong family obligations and respect for the rules governing those relationships.
     Mr. Lin is an accomplished writer, expertly giving the reader a mystery laced with a fine sense of humor.  Incensed is the second book in the Taipei Night Market series.  The book may be read without reading Ghost Month, the first book in the series.  However, this reader missed the first book and looks forward to reading it.  A very enjoyable read.Soho First Printing, Signed:26.95

In this second in Alyssa Maxwell's Lady and Lady's Maid series, set in post-World War I England, Lady Phoebe Renshaw and her lady's maid, Eva Huntford, encounter an uncharitable killer at a charity luncheon sponsored by a posh school for girls. The Haverleigh School's headmistress, Miss Finch, succumbs to a poison-laced dessert. While the girls at Haverleigh all come from highly respected families, none of them, or the members of the staff, are excluded from suspicion. Lady Phoebe focuses on the students while Eva centers her efforts on the staff. The result is a most enjoyable, entertaining, and suspenseful mystery.
     Alyssa Maxwell is adept at weaving a fascinating historical tale, and she more than amply demonstrates that skill here. She has chosen a time and place in which the world was changing swiftly for women. The old roles were shifting, and the members of various generations and social castes adapted in different ways. The author captures this state of flux very well indeed. Her characters are fully realized, the depiction of setting nicely done, and the plot, with its twists and turns, compelling.
     All in all, a most delightful read. I look forward to more mysteries in this series.
Kensington First Printing, Signed:25.00

    

M. J. Carter - Infidel Stain. London 1841. A shocking series of murders in the world of London's gutter press forces Jeremiah Blake and William Avery back together after time and distance weakened the close bond between them. 16.00

 

Clive Cussler - Cutthroat.The year is 1911. Chief Investigator Isaac Bell of the Van Dorn Detective Agency is hired to find a young woman who ran away from home to become an actress. PUT 29.00
 - Gangster. It is 1906, and in New York City, the Italian crime group known as the Black Hand is on a spree of kidnapping, extortion and arson. When a group of the Black Hand's victims hire the Van Dorn agency to protect their businesses, Detective Isaac Bell forms a crack squad and begins scouring the city for clues. 9.99

Phillip DePoy - English Agent. In 1583, young Christopher Marlowe, student, brawler, rakehell, and would-be playwright, has had a dreadful evening. The first performance of his play in a disreputable Cambridge bar is a flop, and then he's attacked while in the company of Thomas Kyd. MPS 26.00

 

David Downing - Lenin's Roller Coaster. Winter 1917. British spy Jack McColl is assigned a sabotage mission deep in Central Asia, where German influence is strong. SO 27.95

 

Lindsay Faye - Jane Steele. A sensitive orphan, Jane Steele suffers first at the hands of her spiteful aunt and predatory cousin, then at a grim school where she fights for her very life until escaping to London, leaving the corpses of her tormentors behind her. 16.00

 

Alan Furst - Hero of France. 1941. In Paris and in the farmhouses, barns, and churches of the French countryside, small groups of ordinary men and women are determined to take down the occupying forces of Adolf Hitler. 16.00

 

C. S. Harris - When Falcons Fall. Ayleswick-on-Teme, 1813. Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, has come to this seemingly peaceful Shropshire village to honor a slain friend and on a quest to learn more about his own ancestry. 15.00

 

Philip Kerr - Other Side of Silence. 1956. The war is over and Bernie Gunther, former Berlin homicide detective and unwilling SS officer, is living on the French Riviera and is the go-to guy at the Grand-Hotel du Cap-Ferrat where the richest and most famous living writer in the world, W. Somerset Maugham, is being blackmailed. 16.00

 

Ian McGuire - North Water. Henry Drax is a harpooner on a Yorkshire whaler bound for the rich hunting waters of the arctic circle. Also aboard is Patrick Sumner, an ex-army surgeon with a shattered reputation, no money, and no better option than to sail as the ship's medic on this violent, filthy, and ill-fated voyage. 16.00

 

Renee Patrick - Design for Dying. Los Angeles.1937. Lillian Frost has traded dreams of stardom for security as a department store salesgirl until she discovers she's a suspect in the murder of her former roommate, Ruby Carroll. 15.99

 

Cathy Pegau - Murder on Location. In the Alaska Territory, suffragette Charlotte Brody is a newspaper reporter in the frontier town of Cordova. She's a woman ahead of her time living on the rugged edge of civilization, but right now the most dangerous element she faces may come from sunny California. 15.00

Anne Perry - Murder on the Serpentine. It is not the custom for the commander of Special Branch to receive a royal summons, so Thomas Pitt knows it must be for a matter of the gravest importance. The body of Sir John Halberd, the Queen's confidant, has been found in the shallow water of the Serpentine in Hyde Park, bearing the evidence of a fatal blow to the head. RH 28.00  

 - Treachery at Lancaster Gate. When an explosion in London kills two policemen and seriously injures three more, many believe that anarchists are the culprits. But Thomas Pitt, commander of Special Branch, knows the city's radical groups well enough to suspect that someone with decidedly more personal motives lit the deadly fuse. 16.00

 

Bill Schutt - Hell's Gate. 1944. As war rages across Europe and the Pacific, Army intel makes a shocking discovery: a three-hundred-foot Japanese submarine marooned and empty, deep in the Brazilian interior. 9.99

Jacqueline Winspear - In This Grave Hour.  Sunday September 3rd 1939.  At the moment Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain broadcasts to the nation Britain's declaration of war with Germany, a senior Secret Service agent breaks into Maisie Dobbs' flat to await her return. Dr. Francesca Thomas has an urgent assignment for Maisie: to find the killer of a man who escaped occupied Belgium as a boy, some twenty-three years earlier during the Great War. HC 27.99

In South Bass Island on Lake Erie, ambitious twins are causing double trouble for the League of Literary Ladies. 7.99