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One of Agatha Christie's most famous mysteries, Murder on the Orient Express was inspired by two real-life crimes and the author's own experience being stranded on the Orient Express during Christmas of 1931. While traveling to Paris, a wealthy American is stabbed to death in his cabin on the Orient Express.

Readers all across America are talking about Stieg Larsson's #1 best-selling trilogy--The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.

Librarian Pick: Ellen:: Detective Stephen Moran has been waiting for his chance to join Dublin's Murder Squad when sixteen-year-old Holly Mackey arrives in his office with a photo of a popular boy whose body was found at a girls boarding school a year earlier. The photo had been posted at The Secret Place,; the school's anonymous gossip board, and the caption says I KNOW WHO KILLED HIM. Stephen joins with Detective Antoinette Conway to reopen the case beneath the watchful eye of Holly's father, fellow detective Frank Mackey.

While in Paris on business, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon receives an urgent late-night phone call: the elderly curator of the Louvre has been murdered inside the museum. Near the body, police have found a baffling cipher. While working to solve the enigmatic riddle, Langdon is stunned to discover it leads to a trail of clues hidden in the works of Da Vinci -- clues visible for all to see -- yet ingeniously disguised by the painter.

At 29, Julie Barenson is too young to give up on love. Four years after her husband's tragic death, she is finally ready to risk giving her heart to someone again. But to whom? Should it be Richard Franklin, who is handsome and sophisticated and treats her like a queen, or Mike Harris, who is Julie's best friend in the world, though not as debonair? Now, with a decision that should bring her more happiness than she's had in years, Julie's life is about to become a living nightmare, as one man's jealousy spins into a deadly obsession.

Thirty-year-old Alexandra Moreland, a prominent interior designer, already heartbroken at the disappearance of her toddler, Matthew, in Central Park two years earlier, now is facing a different tragedy. She is about to be indicted for identity theft and is considered a person of interest in the murder of a woman she barely knew.

Librarian Pick: Ellen:: As dusk approaches a small Dublin suburb in the summer of 1984, mothers begin to call their children home. But on this warm evening, three children do not return from the dark and silent woods. When the police arrive, they find only one of the children gripping a tree trunk in terror, wearing blood-filled sneakers, and unable to recall a single detail of the previous hours. Twenty years later, the found boy, Rob Ryan, is a detective on the Dublin Murder Squad and keeps his past a secret. But when a twelve-year-old girl is found murdered in the same woods, he and Detective Cassie Maddox--his partner and closest friend--find themselves investigating a case chillingly similar to the previous unsolved mystery.

He gave up the money. He gave up the power. Now all he has left is the law. Michael Brock is billing the hours, making the money, rushing relentlessly to the top of Drake & Sweeney, a giant D.C. law firm. One step away from partnership, Michael has it all. Then, in an instant, it all comes undone. A homeless man takes nine lawyers hostage in the firm's plush offices. When it is all over, the man's blood is splattered on Michael's face--and suddenly Michael is willing to do the unthinkable.

Kafka on the Shore is powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home either to escape a gruesome oedipal prophecy or to search for his long-missing mother and sister; and an aging simpleton called Nakata, who never recovered from a wartime affliction and now is drawn toward Kafka for reasons that, like the most basic activities of daily life, he cannot fathom.

When Margo Roth Spiegelman beckons Quentin Jacobsen in the middle of the night--dressed like a ninja and plotting an ingenious campaign of revenge--he follows her. Margo's always planned extravagantly, and, until now, she's always planned solo. After a lifetime of loving Margo from afar, things are finally looking up for Q . . . until day breaks and she has vanished. Always an enigma, Margo has now become a mystery. But there are clues.