I love the ways in which this series has gone deeper into the psyches and relationships of the Ferrara Family it’s named for as it progresses, culminating in this excellent examination of mothers and daughters and what siblings owe one another, all with a murder mystery woven throughout. Murder at the Mistletoe Ball is almost…
Will Way is the first person called out whenever there’s a police officer-involved shooting in Brooklyn. A union representative from the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, he gets forty-eight hours with the officers involved before anyone else does, whether it be the cops’ own bosses, Internal Affairs or the District Attorney’s office. His job is to look…
Donut-maker Emily Westhill is looking forward to a white Christmas, especially if it means extra ski time with police detective Brent Nyce at the chalet home he’s just bought a short way outside of their town of Fallingbrook, Wisconsin. Of course, ski time isn’t the only kind of time she’s looking forward to spending with…
Samantha Barnes is hoping that her notoriety as a viral YouTube star for slicing off her now-ex-husband’s fingertip during an ill-advised knife fight has died down so she can concentrate on her life as a restaurant critic and maker of far tamer accompanying food videos. With the holiday season coming up, she’s also preoccupied with…
Back we go into the mind and psyche of serial killer Joe Goldberg, as he navigates life in suburbia while grappling with what it means to be a father, in both Season 3 of the hit Netflix series as well as the book on which it’s based, Caroline Kepnes’s You Love Me. It is both…
Mia Carina is gearing up for a busy holiday season, both at the Belle View Banquet Manor she runs with her dad, Ravello—former mob guy gone straight—and at home with her paternal grandmother, Elisabetta, who is hellbent on winning the annual block decoration award. At work, at least, she has the help of a mostly…
Time to check out the beginning of a delightful culinary cozy mystery series by one of my favorite authors! I came to this series a bit later in its run and am so thrilled to get a chance to go back to its very start here for this column. Thirty-something artist Maggie Crozat has returned…
I don’t think I’ve ever read a book that was so page-turning yet also filled with so much beautiful pathos. I had to stop reading on occasion and take breaks just to pull myself together emotionally before being able to plunge back into James Kestrel’s affecting narrative. Perhaps it is a failure of my own…
Eleanor Wilde, one-time fake medium and now a village witch in the English countryside, is thrilled to be hosting her brother Liam for the summer. What neither of the American siblings had accounted for when planning this visit was the countryside’s dismal heat. When Vivian Hartford, local grand dame and the mother of Eleanor’s wealthy…
In the Company of Witches by Auralee Wallace is the first book in the magical and charming new Evenfall Witches B&B cozy mystery series, where a guest dies in the bed and breakfast Brynn Warren helps her aunts run, and the young witch must rely on some good old-fashioned investigating to clear her Aunt Nora’s…
