Poker Night in the exclusive gated community of Kingsland, New York comes to an explosive close when a series of frantic 911 calls comes in to dispatch. The first is by far the most pressing. The normally composed and elegant Victoria Barnes has come home to find her politician husband shot to death in his…

Amaya Bloom has problems. Once a brash young woman ready to take on the world, nowadays she’s content to run a small spice shop in California and quietly stalk her former best friend on social media. Kaavi Fonseka seems to have everything Amaya once thought was within her reach, too: a glamorous life of wealth…

Today I’m speaking with Scott Blackburn. Scott’s debut novel—It Dies With You—is a literary/mystery hybrid from Crooked Lane Books. J.B.: Scott, thanks for speaking with me. Let’s jump right in. Can you tell me a bit about yourself and your background? Scott: My pleasure. I’m a 39-year-old English instructor, born and raised in North Carolina…

While Three Assassins is billed as the follow up to Kotaro Isaka’s bestselling Bullet Train, it was actually written some years before, and has now been ably translated from the Japanese by Sam Malissa. If you enjoyed Bullet Train as much as I did, then you mustn’t miss this novel—and not just because of Mr…

The fog is rolling in on Charleston, South Carolina, on the fateful evening that Theodosia Browning decides to take a shortcut while walking to the tea shop she owns. Her path leads her through St. Philip’s Graveyard—the kind of place guaranteed to spook the faint of heart—but Theo, fortunately, doesn’t believe in ghostly menaces. Unfortunately,…

CHAPTER ONE Joe Gunther crested the hill overlooking a small cluster of flashing, multihued vehicles below. They made him think of a swarm of fireflies, settled untidily by the side of the road, but in fact were a group of cruisers and unmarked cars much like his own. They appeared randomly scattered, as if abruptly…

Grace Bernard has known for a long time that her father abandoned her mother and herself to eke out a hardscrabble London living on their own. But she’s a teenager when she realizes exactly the breadth of his neglect, and how callously his wealthy family has consigned her to the ash heap. After her mother…

Fiction writers (which includes film writers) complain that there is nothing new to write about. Apparently all the storylines, characters, plot points, and scenes have already been invented. Which I agree does sound dire. But the situation is even worse than that—they forget to mention that there is only one narrative plot. One story.  I’ll…

A murder she doesn’t remember committing. A killer she doesn’t remember meeting. Megan Goldin’s Stay Awake is an electrifying novel that proves memory can be deadly. Liv Reese wakes up in the back of a taxi with no idea where she is or how she got there.  When she’s dropped off at the door of…

Geneva Chase is still doing freelance work as an investigative journalist for her dying newspaper, The Sheffield Post, when she gets the call to cover a breaking story. Elliot Carlson is a local news anchor with a huge chip on his shoulder. Genie has never liked him, but even she is shocked to learn he’s…