Death, Freedom, and Odysseus

Indulgence in Death by J.D. Robb
When a murder disrupts the Irish vacation she is taking with her husband, Roarke, Eve realizes that no place is safe -- not an Irish wood or the streets of the maniac city she calls home. But nothing prepares her for what she discovers upon her return to the cop shop in New York City... A driver for a top-of-the-line limousine service is found dead--shot through the neck with a crossbow. With a method established, but no motive to be found, Eve begins to fear that she has come across that most dangerous of criminals, a thrill killer, but one with a taste for the finer things in life--and death.

The Mistress of Nothing by Kate Pullinger
When Lady Duff Gordon, paragon of London society, departs for the hot, dry climate of Egypt to seek relief from her debilitating tuberculosis, her lady's maid, Sally, doesn't hesitate to leave the only world she has known in order to remain at her mistress's side. As Sally gets farther and farther from home, she experiences freedoms she has never known--forgoing corsets and wearing native dress, learning Arabic, and having her first taste of romance. But freedom is a luxury that a lady's maid can ill afford, and when Sally's newfound passion for life causes her to forget what she is entitled to, she is brutally reminded she is a mistress of nothing. Ultimately she must choose her master and a way back home -- or a way to an unknown future.

The Lost Books of Odyssey by Zachary Mason
This is reimagined tale of Homer's classic story of the hero Odysseus and his long journey home after the fall of Troy. With hypnotic prose, terrific imagination, and dazzling literary skill, Mason creates alternative episodes, fragments, and revisions of Homer's original that, taken together, open up this classic Greek myth to endless reverberating interpretations.