New Leaf Updated Voting Thread for November • If Books Could Kill, Thrilling Stories

[CRussel]

Apologies for messing up the first of these polls. I was rushed, and had too many interruptions. And not even @issybird had the power to fix it, so we're trying again...

It's time to select the book that the New Leaf Book Club will read in November, 2020. The theme is If Books Could Kill, Thrilling Stories


We love new participants. We're happy for you to vote, but in the interest of a vibrant conversation, we'd like to request that you please not vote unless you plan to join the discussion whatever the selection. So if you haven't posted in a book club thread yet, do please say a quick hello here or in the Welcome thread.

This is a poll. Vote for as many books as you'd like. Questions? FAQs | Guidelines Or just ask!

Choices:

• Friday the Rabbi Slept Late by Harry Kemelman
  Spoiler:

  David Small is the new rabbi in the small Massachusetts town of Barnard’s Crossing. Although he’d rather spend his days engaged in Torah study and theological debate, the daily chores of synagogue life are all-consuming—that is, until the day a nanny’s body is found on the rain-soaked asphalt of the temple’s parking lot.
  
  When the young woman’s purse is discovered in Rabbi Small’s car, he will have to use his scholarly skills and Talmudic wisdom—and collaborate with the Irish-Catholic police chief—to exonerate himself and find the real killer.
  
  Blending this unorthodox sleuth’s quick intellect with thrilling action, Friday the Rabbi Slept Late is the exciting first installment of the beloved bestselling mystery series that offers a Jewish twist on the clerical mystery, a delightful discovery for fans of Father Brown and Father Dowling or readers of Faye Kellerman’s suspense novels set in the Orthodox community.

  208 pp.
• The Girl in the Ice by Robert Bryndza
  Spoiler:

  Originally Posted by Goodreads

  Detective Erika Foster#1
  When a young boy discovers the body of a woman beneath a thick sheet of ice in a South London park, Detective Erika Foster is called in to lead the murder investigation.
  
  The victim, a beautiful young socialite, appeared to have the perfect life. Yet when Erika begins to dig deeper, she starts to connect the dots between the murder and the killings of three prostitutes, all found strangled, hands bound and dumped in water around London.
  
  What dark secrets is the girl in the ice hiding?
  
  As Erika inches closer to uncovering the truth, the killer is closing in on Erika.
  
  The last investigation Erika led went badly wrong… resulting in the death of her husband. With her career hanging by a thread, Erika must now battle her own personal demons as well as a killer more deadly than any she’s faced before. But will she get to him before he strikes again?

  417 pp.
  
• Still Life by Louise Penny
  Spoiler:

  Originally Posted by Goodreads

  As the early morning mist clears on Thanksgiving Sunday, the homes of Three Pines come to life - all except one…
  
  To locals, the village is a safe haven. So they are bewildered when a well-loved member of the community is found lying dead in the maple woods. Surely it was an accident - a hunter's arrow gone astray. Who could want Jane Neal dead?
  
  In a long and distinguished career with the Sûreté du Quebec, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache has learned to look for snakes in Eden. Gamache knows something dark is lurking behind the white picket fences, and if he watches closely enough, Three Pines will begin to give up its secrets…

  (Canada, 2005, 321 pp.)
  
• Casino Royale, by Ian Fleming
  Spoiler:

  Originally Posted by wikipedia

  The story concerns the British secret agent James Bond, gambling at the casino in Royale-les-Eaux to bankrupt Le Chiffre, the treasurer of a French union and a member of the Russian secret service. Bond is supported in his endeavours by Vesper Lynd, a member of his own service, as well as Felix Leiter of the CIA and René Mathis of the French Deuxième Bureau. Fleming used his wartime experiences as a member of the Naval Intelligence Division, and the people he met during his work, to provide plot elements; the character of Bond also reflected many of Fleming's personal tastes. Fleming wrote the draft in early 1952 at his Goldeneye estate in Jamaica while awaiting his marriage. He was initially unsure whether the work was suitable for publication, but was assured by his friend, the novelist William Plomer, that the novel had promise.
  
  Within the spy storyline, Casino Royale deals with themes of Britain's position in the world, particularly the relationship with the US in light of the defections to the Soviet Union of the British agents Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean. The book was given broadly positive reviews by critics at the time and sold out in less than a month after its UK release on 13 April 1953...

  (GB, 1953, 220 pp.)
  
• A Killer in King's Cove, by Iona Whishaw
  Spoiler:

  Originally Posted by Goodreads

  It is 1946, and war-weary young ex-intelligence officer Lane Winslow leaves London to look for a fresh start. When she finds herself happily settled into a sleepy hamlet nestled in the idyllic interior of British Columbia surrounded by a suitably eclectic cast of small-town characters she feels like she may finally be able to put her past to rest.
  
  But then a body is discovered, the victim of murder, and although she works alongside the town’s inspectors Darling and Ames to discover who might have possibly have motivation to kill, she unknowingly casts doubt on herself. As the investigation reveals facts that she has desperately tried to keep a secret, it threatens to pull her into a vortex of even greater losses than the ones she has already endured.
  
  A clever postwar mystery that will appeal to fan of historical mysteries with women sleuths like the Maisie Dobbs series by Jacqueline Winspear or the Bess Crawford series by Charles Todd.

  (Canada, 2015, 432 pp.)
  
• Dragonwyck by Anya Seton
  Spoiler:

  A novel of seduction, mystery, and danger set in New York’s Hudson Valley in the nineteenth century, by the author of Foxfire.
  
  There was, on the Hudson, a way of life such as this, and there was a house not unlike Dragonwyck . . .
  
  In the spring of 1844, the Wells family receives a letter from a distant relative, the wealthy landowner Nicholas Van Ryn. He has invited one of their daughters for an extended visit at his Hudson Valley estate, Dragonwyck. Eighteen-year-old Miranda, bored with her local suitors and commonplace life on the farm, leaps at the chance for an escape. She immediately falls under the spell of both the master and his mansion, mesmerized by the Gothic towers, flowering gardens, and luxurious lifestyle—but unaware of the dark, terrible secrets that await.
  
  Anya Seton masterfully tells the heart-stopping story of a remarkable woman, her remarkable passions, and the mystery that resides in the magnificent hallways of Dragonwyck.

  (USA, 1944, 419 pp.)
  
• A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness
  Spoiler:

  Deborah Harkness’s sparkling debut, A Discovery of Witches, has brought her into the spotlight and galvanized fans around the world. In this tale of passion and obsession, Diana Bishop, a young scholar and a descendant of witches, discovers a long-lost and enchanted alchemical manuscript, Ashmole 782, deep in Oxford's Bodleian Library. Its reappearance summons a fantastical underworld, which she navigates with her leading man, vampire geneticist Matthew Clairmont.

  594 pp.
  
• The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley
  Spoiler:

  Originally Posted by Amazon

  When Smith was a boy, he and his family went on an Easter pilgrimage with their local parish to the Loney, a bleak stretch of the English coastline, to visit an ancient shrine, in search of healing for Smith’s disabled brother. But the locals were none too pleased to welcome them, and the two brothers soon became entangled in a troubling morass of dangerous rituals. For years after, Smith carries the burden of what happened that spring. And when he hears that the body of a young child has been found during a storm at the Loney, he’s forced to reckon with his darkest secrets, no matter the cost. “The masterpiece by which Hurley will enter the Guild of the Gothic” (Guardian), The Loney marks the arrival of a remarkable new talent.

  (GB, 2015, 369 pp.)

NOTE: This will be my last month leading the New Leaf Book Club. And, I suspect, the last month of its existence, certainly in its current form. So, let's make it a good one!

[Luffy]

I've voted. Thanks CRussel for notifying me of the new poll.

[JSWolf]

I've voted. We do have a rather diverse selection this time.

[CRussel]

And we have a run-off. Y'all would do that to me on my last round, wouldn't you?

Poll up shortly. This will be a binary choice poll. If it's still tied after this, I'll choose the final book, but otherwise I won't vote.

ETA: Poll's UP!