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…
The first few pages of this arresting novel paint a picture of the heroine as a quiet young academic who uses the act of sentence diagramming as a centering exercise and basks when her untrumpeted genius is finally recognized by another. In fact, the adult Maggie Moore at the beginning of this book is so…
Hanna, the bad seed protagonist of Zoje Stage’s blockbuster novel Baby Teeth, is back and all grown up. After high school, she decided to study to be a phlebotomist, affording her a career that allows her to inflict a little “accidental” pain whenever she’s feeling frustrated. Usually, she’s excellent at her job, with a reputation…
Lee Barrett Mondello has to wear a lot of hats in her work at Salem, Massachusetts’ WICH-TV. While she’s officially the television station’s program director, her boss, Bruce Doan, would be much happier if she would again take on the role of executive director of documentaries–especially with a big-budget movie currently in town. Night Magic,…
Shari Lapena’s latest novel is a sensitive and moving account of how the murder of a teenage girl throws an entire small town into turmoil. Told from multiple points of view, it shows how a violent death can expose festering secrets and weaknesses, but also how people can find the strength to do the right…
Like everyone else with a healthy interest in pop culture and history, I already knew that the Medici family of Europe’s Renaissance period had quite the reputation for being terrible people. However, it was only with this novel, Caitlin Schneiderhan’s illuminating historical mystery for young adult readers, that I wholly understood why. In the early…
Marlowe Wexler has a near photographic memory, a crush on her gorgeous co-worker Akilah Jones, and about the worst first date story of all time. When a kindly neighbor gives her the chance to leave town for the summer and lick her emotional wounds while working on one of the nearby Thousand Islands, she takes…
Stella Hudson is an unusual type of lawyer. She generally works at the behest of divorce court judges to advocate for children at the center of the most difficult and contentious custody cases. As a best interest attorney, or guardian ad litem, her sole focus is on what’s best for the children she represents. Her…
