Lamar Public Library

A lonely old man in early nineteenth-century London hits upon the idea of inviting acquaintances over to read their manuscripts together. The friends gather one night a week between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m., and with the formation of their fictional literary club, Charles Dickens launched Master Humphrey's Clock, a weekly periodical that he published from 1840 to 1841. Recounted with the author's customary flair for humor and pathos, the tales range from...

Edgar Award Finalist: A comical crime caper “filled with action and imagination” (The New York Times Book Review).
 John Dortmunder leaves jail with ten dollars, a train ticket, and nothing to make money on but his good name. Thankfully, his reputation goes far. No one plans a caper better than Dortmunder. His friend Kelp picks him up in a stolen Cadillac and drives him away from Sing-Sing, telling a story of a...

A suspenseful thriller based on true events follows the experiences of an American diplomat in Tehran who becomes a firsthand witness to the military violence, religious extremes, and political machinations of the Iranian Revolution.

Ricky Alleyn, son of the renowned police detective Roderick Alleyn, has taken himself to a secluded island to write a novel. Or think about writing a novel. Or look for distractions so he can avoid writing a novel. The distractions abound, mostly in the form of colorful local characters, so all is beer and skittles until Ricky stumbles across a murder and then gets himself kidnapped. Naturally his father rushes to the island to save the day ...

On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold walked into Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. In a matter of minutes, they would kill twelve students and a teacher and wound twenty-four others before taking their own lives. For the last sixteen years, Sue Klebold, Dylan's mother, has lived with the indescribable grief and shame of that day. How could her child, the promising young man she had loved and raised, be responsible for such...

French's suspenseful but clumsily plotted sixth Frieda Klein thriller (after 2015's Friday on My Mind) finds the London psychotherapist under pressure from shadowy power brokers to stick her nose into one of the country's most notorious crimes. They ostensibly just want her expert opinion on whether Hannah Docherty, convicted as a teen 13 years earlier for the slaughter of her family, seems likely to challenge the verdict now that irregularities have...

Hawker launches an all-out assault on the world’s most powerful arms dealer
For Con Ye Cwong, the Vietnam War will never be over. Head of the North Vietnamese secret police during the brutal conflict, he has built himself an empire selling cocaine and heroin to the West. Even after the war, American servicemen remain his favorite targets. He relishes nothing more than getting a soldier hooked, and then upping the price until the...

Hawker partners with a madam to save a world-class Vegas brothel
James Hawker finds her in the Yellow Pages, listed under “P”—for prostitution. This is Las Vegas, after all, where the world’s oldest profession is just another business. Vegas has been a wide-open town for more than a century: a place where respectable Americans can indulge their darkest fantasies. But an unpleasant new attraction has been...

Simple country handyman Cedric O'Toole relies on his organic vegetable garden to supplement his meager income, so he's upset when vegetables begin disappearing. After several futile attempts to protect the garden, he stakes it out one night with his shotgun and spots a shadowy figure running into the woods. Cedric follows and finds a young boy living rough on his land. The boy has never been taught to read or write, and no one has reported him missing....

"In August of 1844, aman named Leonard Reed takes violently ill at his home near Heathsville, Illinois,and four days later he is dead. The cause? Arsenic poisoning. The suspect? Hiswife, Betsey. The chief witnesses against her? A hired girl, Eveline Deal,and the local apothecary, James Logan.The evidence? Eveline claims she saw Betsey put a pinch of white powder inLeonard's coffee. Betsey Reed, a woman who dabbles in herbal healing, is known about...