26. End in Tears, Ruth Rendell

328 páginas

"A lump of concrete dropped deliberately from a little stone bridge over a relatively unfrequented road kills the wrong person. The driver behind is spared. But only for a while...It is impossible for Chief Inspector Wexford not to wonder how terrible it would be to discover that one of his daughters had been murdered. Sylvia has always been a cause for concern. Living alone with her two children, she is pregnant again. What will happen to the child? The relationship between father and daughter has always been uneasy. But the current situation also provokes an emotional division between Wexford and his wife, Dora. One particular member of the local press is gunning for the Chief Inspector, distinctly unimpressed with what he regards as old-fashioned police methods. But Wexford, with his old friend and partner, Mike Burden, along with two new recruits to the Kingsmarkham team, pursue their inquiries with a diligence and humanity that make Ruth Rendell's detective stories enthralling, exciting and very touching."

25. Honeymoon, James Patterson

311 páginas

Anyone who has missed good suspense novels should put Honeymoon on their list straight away. James Patterson has always been fascinated by serial killers, yet he has tended in the past to stick with the boys; in Nora Sinclair, he and Howard Roughan create a classic Black Widow, who kills her suitors and husbands for their wealth. John O'Hara knows most of the truth about Nora, but until his investigations get close to her, he has no idea of just how much charisma and appeal she brings to the job of murder. And Nora, thinking him just an insurance agent, is surprised by how much she thinks about him, and not necessarily as a future victim. There is a quirky romance here, full of lies and deceit and also genuine feeling and a sense of menacing jeopardy for both viewpoint characters. The story-telling is Patterson's usual fast-paced staccato narration, but it has time for some interesting side-bar issues--there are things in both Nora and John's pasts and presents which only gradually come to our attention.

24. A Desirable Residence, Madeleine Wickham

287 páginas

"Liz and Jonathan Chambers were in trouble. Mortgage trouble. They'd stretched themselves to busting with their new exciting project - well, Liz thought it exciting - buying and managing the Silchester Tutorial College, and now couldn't sell their old house. Here they were, stuck with two mortgages, mounting debts and a miserable adolescent daughter who hadn't wanted to move anyway.Then Marcus Witherstone came into their lives - and at first it seemed he would solve all their problems. Marcus, senior partner in Silchester's leading estate agency, was large, assured, and wore an expensive overcoat. He knew the perfect tenants from London who would rent their old house - glamorous PR girl Ginny and almost-famous Piers. Everything was going to be OK.But soon Marcus found himself involved with Liz in a way he'd never intended. Keeping his adulterous trysts secret from Anthea was uncomfortably easy - most of the time her head was firmly buried in Improve your Child's IQ. Meanwhile, as Liz was lost in blissful dreams of Marcus, Jonathan was left to run the tutorial college. Neither of them had time to notice that teenage Alice was developing a desperate passion for the tenants, Piers and Ginny. Everyone seemed to be entangled with everyone else, in the most awkward possible way. And as events closed in on him, Marcus began to realise that some deceptions are just a bit too close to home."

23. The Gatecrasher, Madeleine Wickham

301 páginas

"Fleur is beautiful but lazy and, at forty, spends her life looking for rich men who can provide her and her teenage daughter with a glamorous and effortless existence. A daily trawl through the court pages of The Times provides her with an unusual but fertile search area - the funerals and memorial services of the great and good, where gatecrashers are so much less noticeable than they would be at a wedding or a christening.It is at one of these sad but oddly festive occasions that she meets Richard, dull but well-off, whose mousey wife has died after a lifetime of enjoyable ill-health. Before long Fleur has become an integral part of Richard's life, offending his friends, interfering in his leisure pursuits (golf bores her, so why should he spend so much time on it?) and stirring up his grown-up children to behave badly."

22. A Vida Secreta das Abelhas

285 páginas

"Um romance sobre o poder transcendente do amor e a faceta feminina de Deus. Uma história que as mães gostarão de contar às filhas.

Lily cresceu na convicção de que, acidentalmente, matou a mãe quando tinha apenas quatro anos. Do que então aconteceu, ela tem não só as suas próprias recordações mas também o relato do pai. Agora, aos catorze anos, tem saudades da mãe, a quem mal conheceu mas de quem recorda a ternura, e sente uma desesperada necessidade de perdão. Vive com o pai, violento e autoritário, numa quinta da Carolina do Sul, e tem apenas uma amiga, Rosaleen, uma criada negra cujo semblante severo esconde um coração doce. Na década de 60, a Carolina do Sul é um sítio onde a segregação é ainda realidade. Quando, ao tentar fazer valer o seu recém- -conquistado direito de voto, Rosaleen é presa e espancada, Lily decide agir. Fugidas à justiça e ao pai de Lily, elas seguem o rasto deixado por uma mulher que morreu dez anos antes e encontram refúgio na casa de três excêntricas irmãs apicultoras. Para Lily esta vai ser uma viagem de descoberta, não só do mundo, mas também do mistério que envolve o passado de sua mãe.

A Vida Secreta das Abelhas é um romance sobre o poder transcendente do amor e a faceta feminina de Deus. Sue Monk Kidd, ao escrever sobre o que é misterioso, e até difícil, na vida, ilumina tudo o que esta tem de maravilhoso. Ela prova que uma família pode ser encontrada nos sítios menos prováveis – talvez não sob o nosso próprio tecto, mas no sítio mágico onde encontramos o amor."

21. Falling Angels, Tracy Chevalier

321 páginas

"A welcome return to a writer whose last book, the much loved and admired Girl With a Pearl Earring has been such an outstanding success. 1901, the year of the Queen's death. The two graves stood next to each other, both beautifully decorated. One had a large urn -- some might say ridiculously large -- and the other, almost leaning over the first, an angel -- some might say overly sentimental. The two families visiting the cemetery to view their respective neighbouring graves were divided even more by social class than by taste. They would certainly never have become acquainted had not their two girls, meeting behind the tombstones, become best friends. And furthermore -- and even more unsuitably -- become involved in the life of the gravedigger's muddied son. As the girls grow up, as the century wears on, as the new era and the new King change social customs, the lives and fortunes of the Colemans and the Waterhouses become more and more closely intertwined -- neighbours in life as well as death."

20. The Vanished Man, Jeffery Deaver

528 páginas

"When a gifted illusionist turns his hand to violent death, The Vanished Man is only one of a series of classic conjuring tricks that paralysed forensic investigator Lincoln Rhyme finds himself having to understand. More important even than the details of technique which Lincoln and his partner Amelia are taught by young illusionist Kara are the conjuror's habits of mind--misdirection piled on deceit piled on false leads. It is not just sleight of hand that deceives the eye; it is where the eye is tricked into looking. Is the killer who calls himself Malerik just after a sequence of showy violent deaths, or is that what he wants Lincoln to think?

This is an impressive addition to Deaver's much-praised sequence of novels about Lincoln and Amelia simply because they find themselves up against an equally intelligent killer with radically different ways of thinking. Their habits of logic and science and legwork are of limited use against someone who constantly stretches the limits of the improbable. Jeffrey Deaver has always been an ingenious thriller writer and this book returns to the sardonic wit of his earliest work as he too engages in endless trickery and confusion of our expectations."