New Fiction this Week

The Sisters by Nancy Jensen
Growing up in hardscrabble Kentucky in the 1920s, with their mother dead and their stepfather an ever-present threat, Bertie Fischer and her older sister, Mabel, have no one but each other--with perhaps a sweetheart for Bertie waiting in the wings. But on the day that Bertie receives her eighth-grade diploma, good intentions go terribly wrong. A choice made in desperate haste sets off a chain of misunderstandings that will divide the sisters and reverberate through three generations of women.

The River Killers by Bruce Burrows
Danny Swanson, Department of Fisheries and Oceans employee and ex-fisherman, isn't exactly upset when he's reassigned from a desk job in Ottawa to a job on the West Coast. His superiors think they're punishing him for insubordination, but Danny is pleased to be back on the Pacific, reconnecting with his old fishing buddies. Revisiting his past life, though, is trolling up some old memories, including a troubling incident from ten years ago, when Danny and his crew pulled up a deformed fish. His shipmate, Billy, reported it to the DFO in Vancouver. Billy and the fish were never seen again. Danny's buddy is on his mind when he stumbles across a photo of the fish in the DFO database, and now Danny won't let Billy's disappearance go unsolved.

The Curse by Harold Robbins
Art investigator Madison Dupre knows a fake when she sees it. When the mysterious Dr. Kaseem offers to pay her a handsome sum to "ransom" a scarab stolen from the tomb of King Tut, her gut tells her to walk away. Since she still needs to pay the rent, Madison throws caution to the wind and prepares to search for the Heart of Egypt. Before she can pack a suitcase, she finds herself framed for murder and on the run. Drawn to Egypt in search of the scarab, Madison is trapped in the land of pharaohs when her passport is seized at the airport. She knows she is being played by Kaseem, who believes the Heart has the power to galvanize the masses to support his secret cause.