“The New Iberia Blues” by James Lee Burke – Crucifix of Stardom

James Lee Burke has sent detective Dave Robicheaux on many sordid adventures throughout his excursions in the realm of literature, and it seems he isn't done with the man yet as he gets wrapped up with a decadent case in The New Iberia Blues.

The story begins to unfold as the death of a young woman shocks the country, eventually sending our beloved detective on a morally-bankrupt journey through the cesspools of Hollywood, the underworld of the mafia and the perilous backwoods of Louisiana.

“The Things We Don't Say” by Ella Carey – The Inauthentic Testament

The lives we live, in the end, often boil down into nothing but a series of memories we dearly hold on to. What would happen though, if one day near the end, a shadow of doubt was cast on all you believed to be true about yourself?

This is precisely a predicament the ninety-year-old Emma Temple finds herself in Ella Carey's The Things We Don't Say. The most important thing she has left from her husband is the painting he made of her many years ago... and it has just been declared an inauthentic fraud.