Mycroft and Sherlock: The Empty Birdcage is the third installment in the series from authors Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse. When a distant relative of Queen Victoria has been slain by the Fire Four Eleven serial murderer, Mycroft investigates with Sherlock, whose interest in the criminal mind grows into an obsession. The dynamic historical fiction…

Ain’t Nobody Nobody by Heather Harper Ellett is a riveting debut novel about family and loyalty, old grudges, and new lives—a cross between Faulkner and Breaking Bad from a talented new writer with an authentic Texas voice. Heather Harper Ellett is a vibrant new voice in the mystery scene. Ain’t Nobody Nobody was a delight to…

Perusing the list of Edgar winners, trying to decide which I wanted to tackle for this retrospective, New Orleans Mourning jumped out almost immediately thanks to its utterly gonzo synopsis: It’s Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and civic leader and socialite Chauncey St. Amant has been crowned Rex, King of Carnival. But his day of…

Strangers at the Gate by Catriona McPherson is a twisty, fascinating mystery that asks the question: Who do you turn to when everyone’s a stranger and you’ve stopped believing your own eyes? Finnie Doyle and Paddy Lamb are leaving city life in Edinburgh behind them and moving to the little town of Simmerton. Paddy’s been…

In G.A. McKevett’s Murder in the Corn Maze the roots of the Moonlight Magnolia Detective Agency reach back to the 1980s in the little town of McGill, Georgia—where Stella Reid and her seven grandkids enjoy some spooky Halloween fun and stumble into murder . . . G.A. McKevett (a.k.a. Sonja Massie) has been delighting mystery…

The Missing Ones by Edwin Hill is the second book in the Hester Thursby Mystery series, where murder, missing children, and more haunt Finisterre Island, off the coast of Maine. New England author Edwin Hill hovered on the periphery of the mystery scene before going all-in with last year’s Little Comfort, the Agatha Award-nominated title…

A recent transfer to Atlanta, and the resulting ninety-minute commute, led me down an audio content rabbit hole. My first venture into this world was Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie. As the winner of the Booker of Bookers, Rushdie’s sprawling magical fiction merits its own review. With that said, I learned Midnight’s Children is not…

Sharon Farrow’s Berry Basket Mysteries is one of the most consistently well-put-together culinary cozy series out there, with some really solid mystery writing to underpin the charming small-town proceedings. Set in Oriole Point, a popular (but, alas, fictional) tourist destination on the banks of Lake Michigan, the series stars Marlee Jacobs, the proprietor of the…

Pursuit by Joyce Carol Oates is a novel of suspense about a newly married woman forced to confront the dark secrets of her past when the recurring nightmares from her childhood return.  The prolific talent of Joyce Carol Oates is legendary, as is her ability to write from the perspective of the diseased male mind, like…

Lisa Unger’s new book explores the way humans deal with the horrors of the world, and what happens when those horrors push us too far.  At first glance, the protagonist of this book, Rain Winter, seems like a normal new mother. She is nervous about her baby girl, she is fraught with stress, and she…