Kendra Donovan, FBI agent displaced in time, is visiting the Tower Of London with her friend Lady Rebecca Blackburn when an altercation captures their attention. They come to the rescue of Horatia Gavenston, a well-to-do middle-aged brewster, who was set upon by an unpleasant old acquaintance but insists it wasn’t anything she couldn’t handle herself.…

The Revelators by Ace Atkins is the 10th novel in the Quinn Colson series, where the sheriff returns to take down a criminal syndicate that has ravaged his community, threatened his family, and tried to have him killed. Sheriff Quinn Colson barely survived the ambush that was meant to take him off the board in…

Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir is the second book in the Locked Tomb Trilogy where a galaxy is turned inside out as one necromancer struggles to survive the wreckage of herself aboard the Emperor’s haunted space station. Firstly, do not bother reading this book if you have not already read the superlative Gideon the…

Chapter 4: Boomtown I was beginning to think of Rock Springs in a way I knew I would always think of it, a lowdown city full of crimes and whores and disappointments… —Richard Ford, “Rock Springs” 1987   Two men walked into a bar. Actually, it was not yet a drinking establishment. Ed Varley’s family…

In The Night Swim, a new thriller from Megan Goldin, a true crime podcast host covering a controversial trial finds herself drawn deep into a small town’s dark past and a brutal crime that took place there years before. Rachel Krall has taken her hit true crime podcast on the road to semi-anonymously cover a…

The time is 1703, the dawn of a new century. Amateur botanist Lady Cecily Kay has traveled from Smyrna to London. Her diplomat husband encouraged her to leave Turkey; theirs is not an amicable marriage. Cecily has arranged to stay in London at the house of noted collector Sir Barnaby Mayne. Access to his research…

I truly love the Mahalia Watkins Soul Food Mystery series—and not just because it’s set a county over from mine in Prince George’s County, Maryland. The fourth installment of this charming culinary cozy series sees our 40-something restaurateur heroine offered a chance to judge an episode of the hit cooking competition show Elite Chef. After…

His & Hers features two life-weary protagonists: Londoner Anna Andrews, a suddenly unemployed television newsreader, demoted to covering breaking stories, and Jack Harper, a detective. The overarching theme is captured by Shakespeare’s, “What’s past is prologue,” (The Tempest). Andrews and Harper, from their vantage points of media and police, are investigating the case of a…

CHAPTER 1 Thursday, February 23 More often than you’d think, the troublemakers sit in first class. Not the upgraders. They’re so thankful for a golden ticket to the promised land, they stay on best behavior in hopes of proving they belong in the club full-time. Most of them are business types who simply want to…

As I reread the review I wrote for book three in this series, I was struck by the commonalities it shared with book four. No Woods So Dark as These has indeed all the signs and qualities of another masterpiece by Randall Silvis. And yet no two of his books are alike. The very first…