Mia Malone is making quite a success of her catering/takeaway business, Mia’s Morsels, and is starting to think of diverting funds to more cosmetic improvements on the schoolhouse she recently turned into her catering hall and home. It’s dismaying that John Louis, the man who caused her so much trouble over the school several months…
This dark, witty tale of five assassins on the same bullet train has already been turned into a forthcoming film, with Brad Pitt leading a stellar cast. It’s easy to see why! Translated from the Japanese by Sam Malissa, this novel’s frenetic energy brings to mind the best of modern crime cinema, with multiple points…
One of my favorite things with really good long-running cozy series, culinary or otherwise, is seeing how the characters continue to develop and grow with each book. Over the course of 14 novels and the handful of novellas that make up the Hayley Powell Food and Cocktails Mystery series, I’ve been so pleased to see…
The Turnout by Megan Abbott is a tale both alarming and irresistible, a sharp and strange dissection of family ties and sexuality, femininity and power, that displays the underbelly of the dancing world. Dara and Marie Durant are sisters but, more importantly, they’re dancers. Like their mother, they both showed early talent as ballerinas and…
A Time to Swill by bestselling author Sherry Harris is the second book in her new Chloe Jackson, Sea Glass Saloon Mystery series, where an abandoned ship with a skeleton aboard reopens a decade-old missing persons case that bartender sleuth Chloe must suss out before more violence befalls her idyllic Florida town of Emerald Cove.…
A lawyer surprises our heroine, septuagenarian Mikki Lincoln, with news that an old family friend has recently passed away, bequeathing to her a farming property a short distance away from her own Lenape Hollow, New York home. Literally old: Tessa Swarthout was a friend of Mikki’s mom, and passed away at the ripe old age…
A Good Day for Chardonnay by New York Times bestselling author Darynda Jones is the second novel in her laugh-out-loud Sunshine Vicram mystery series set in Del Sol, New Mexico. The follow-up to the sensational A Bad Day for Sunshine resolves many of the intriguing plot points first seeded in its predecessor even as it…
It’s one setback after another as Miranda Trent struggles to get the moonshine distillery her deceased uncle left to her up and running before the deadline she needs to meet in order to fully inherit his estate. Between fixing up her outbuildings and overseeing the nature hikes and art classes that are her professional bread…
I continue to admire Julie Anne Lindsey’s utter mastery of the craft of storytelling here with this third installment of her Cider Shop mystery series. Absorbing and believable, these mysteries depict an imperfect but relatable heroine who loves her West Virginia home of Blossom Valley so much that she’ll do almost anything to protect it…
The Other Passenger by Louise Candlish is an unputdownable, twisting thriller that explores privilege, societal pressures, and crime when a commuter becomes a suspect in his friend’s mysterious disappearance. Underneath the skin of this propulsive thriller involving the sudden disappearance of a charismatic young man is a thoughtful, socially conscious examination of contemporary mores and…
