Into the Fire is the 5th entry in Gregg Hurwitz’s hugely entertaining Orphan X series, which follows Evan Smoak, who at the age of 12 was plucked from a foster home and trained as an assassin for the government’s secret Orphan X program. He’s Jason Bourne with a touch of MacGyver and a hint of…
In Many Rivers to Cross by Peter Robinson, Inspector Banks is dragged into a disturbing world of drugs, guns, and possible sex trafficking. Like many long-running series, open-ended storylines are a feature of the Inspector Banks mysteries. Not every investigation is tied up with a neat bow on the last page. Careless Love, the last…
Focusing on the motivations, The Anatomy of a Spy by Michael Smith tells the story of why spies spy, presenting a wealth of spy stories—some previously unknown and some famous—from the very human angle of the agents themselves. I used to be a big fan of spy stories, à la James Bond, where dashing men…
In this debut novel, Raymond Fleischmann takes readers to remote Alaska, where Else seeks the truth about her long lost sister from a man she knows to be a murderer. 1941. It’s been over twenty years since Elisabeth’s twin sister, Jacqueline, vanished. Else, as she’s known to friends and family, has moved on with her…
Kate Keddie’s smooth, predictable life careens off course when her husband, John, doesn’t return from a medical conference in London. A conference, she quickly discovers, he never attended. For a job he hasn’t had in months. The bigger question was where had John been for the past three months? Nausea swept through her system. Her…
The Mitford Scandal by Jessica Fellowes is the third book in the Mitford Murders series, where lady’s maid Louisa Cannon accompanies Diana Mitford into a turbulent late-1920s Europe. June 1928: Louisa Cannon, former nursery maid to the colorful Mitford family, is realizing the life of an independent career girl in London is more difficult than…
The 2008 Edgar Awards were not exactly a banner year for diversity, with no nominees being women or writers of color, but it was a year of heavy-hitters nevertheless, with John Hart, Benjamin Black (Christine Falls), Ken Bruen (Priest), Reed Farrel Coleman (Soul Patch), and Michael Chabon (The Yiddish Policemen’s Union) vying for the honor.…
An Incantation of Cats is the second novel in the Witch Cats Of Cambridge Series by Clea Simon in which Harriet, Laurel, and Clara, three magical cats, must learn to work together to save the person they all love. Becca Colwin has hung out her shingle as a witch detective, to the mixed feelings of…
In her debut historical mystery, The Companion, Kim Taylor Blakemore takes readers to New Hampshire in 1855, where Lucy Blunt revisits the events that landed her on death row. I first came across Kim Taylor Blakemore on Instagram. The photos she posts of her research drew me in. Many were in relation to her writing…
1 THE GAME The blue light of the computer screen was flickering on Charlie’s and Peter’s faces, making them look like astronauts lit by the cosmos. “Say something.” “No.” “Seriously. Go for it.” “This is stupid.” “Don’t you want to meet God?” There was a knock on the door. Charlie’s father. Peter rushed to snub…
