Safiya Mirza is a high school senior looking forward to enrolling at Northwestern University and subsequently pursuing a career in journalism. As editor-in-chief of her private school’s newspaper, she’s already had run-ins with Principal Hardy, who doesn’t like how her paper insists on bringing up issues he regards as controversial. But then her online column…
I love reading a haunted house novel where the haunted house is actually scary. The title hacienda of Isabel Cañas’ debut novel delivers on that in spades, in this eerie cross between Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca and Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting Of Hill House. Even more absorbingly, the story is set amidst the turmoil immediately…
Had Jane Austen ever turned her hand to greater murder mysteries than the quasi-Gothic plot that nearly ruined Catherine Morland’s relationship with Henry Tilney in Northanger Abbey, then I daresay she’d be both impressed and extremely pleased with what Claudia Gray has done here in homage to her completed novels. Ms. Gray deftly assembles beloved…
Jenna Hart is about to get married! But so, too, are the flocks of women who’ve descended on her small town of Crystal Cove, California, for the Bride’s Dream Expo. As proprietor of the Cookbook Nook, this is the perfect opportunity for her to feature plenty of wedding-themed wares in hopes of cashing in on…
Judith Potts is a bit of an eccentric, living happily alone in the Marlow mansion she inherited from her late Great Aunt Betty, along with a portfolio of investments that keep her well off. Setting crosswords for national newspapers keeps her mind occupied. For physical exercise, she likes to slip nude into the River Thames,…
It has been a banner year for books riffing off of the still unexplained disappearance of Agatha Christie almost a century ago. Between Nina de Gramont’s exquisite historical mystery The Christie Affair and this modern-day young adult adaptation, there’s such a wealth of recent writing taking inspiration from Mystery’s Grand Dame herself to produce twisty,…
Mia Malone is thinking of ways to expand her catering and cooking school business when an unexpected opportunity falls into her lap. Her young assistant, Christina Adams, has been roped into being a bridesmaid for a woman she barely knows. Serendipitously or otherwise, the father of the bride has also recently fired the wedding planner…
It’s pretty clear from the start of this darkly comic meditation on death and the afterlife that Angus Mooney, our main protagonist, is dead. The kind of juvenile hoodlum who grows up to be only marginally employed, Angus finally finds direction after meeting the beautiful, irrepressible Gracie Adler. The two quickly fall in love and…
Buckle up, fans of the Death by Chocolate series, it’s going to be a bumpy night! Jake Tiptree and Ellie White are dazzled when movie star Ingrid Merryfield steps into their Chocolate Moose Bakery one evening, interrupting their discussion over whether to keep their somewhat out-of-the-way store open for the winter. Ingrid has just bought…
Vera Vixen is enjoying celebrating the end of fall at Shady Hollow’s annual Harvest Festival in the company of her beau, Deputy Orville Braun. It’s a rare day off for them both: she’s the local newspaper’s star reporter, while he’s the one who usually does the heavy lifting in the town’s police station, where he’s…
