Hayley Powell is in for the shock of her life when she accompanies one of her best friends, Mona Barnes, on what should be a routine-if-time-consuming errand. Mona’s dad, Bubba, has gone to his cabin in Bar Harbor, Maine, for an ice-fishing weekend. Unfortunately, he’s neglected to bring his heart medication with him. Mona’s mom,…
I can’t believe that this is the sixth Jackson Brodie novel! It’s always a jolt to pick up the latest in the series and realize that about as much time has passed in the books as it has in the real world. Jackson is now well into his 60s, reflecting on his mortality and ruing…
Once upon a time, Jenny St. John was an aspiring actress with one excellent leading role credit to her name. That movie, unfortunately, was never released, though its director Serge Grumet would go on to find lasting fame in the film industry. Jenny, on the other hand, bounced from audition to audition before finally giving…
When our amnesiac heroine comes to, she realizes that she’s standing in a British courtroom. She quickly learns that her name is Lila Dalton and that she’s the barrister in charge of defending the man sitting in the dock. Unfortunately, she has no idea what her client is accused of, who he is, or how…
Every volume of Flame Tree Press’ Beyond And Within series is a collector’s delight, and this latest is no exception. Even setting aside the physical beauty of the book – with its foiled hardcover, painted fore-edges, matching endpapers and double ribbons – this is a terrific collection of nineteen short stories revolving around the theme…
Kitchen witch Mia Malone is seriously thinking about quitting her day job as catering manager for the Lodge, the renowned local ski resort. She’d originally taken on the position when the Lodge decided to stop outsourcing its catering gigs to independent businesses like her own Mia’s Morsels, making it much harder to keep her small…
I don’t know if anyone writing today delves quite as hard as Jesse Q. Sutanto does into toxic, obsessive female friendships. She writes so unflinchingly of terrible thoughts and behavior, showing not only their aftermath but also their genesis, as her characters love and fight and some ultimately even kill over the course of their…
The genre of Sherlock Holmes pastiche novels has only grown by leaps and bounds since the turn of the 21st century. While very few works can recapture the ingenious spark of the originals without feeling like cheap imitations, I’ve almost uniformly enjoyed the ones that set Holmes and his loyal companion Dr. John Watson in…
Blacklick, Indiana, is the kind of crumbling small town most people fight to get away from. Meg Finch almost managed it, before collapsing into a strung-together life of gig work and the perpetual struggle to keep her head above water. Her younger sister Esther actually made it all the way out to the Chicago suburbs…
Ruby has big dreams of leaving her Massachusetts hometown and traveling the world, no matter what her somewhat overprotective father says. Encouraged by her best friends Val and Sean, she’s started a YouTube channel called Ruby’s Hidden Gems to showcase the little-traveled areas around her, in hopes of one day expanding her coverage much farther…
