Pretty Is by Maggie Mitchell is a psychological thriller that follows two girls that were kidnapped as kids, whose lives intertwine once again, almost twenty years later, when a movie with a shockingly familiar plot forces them to confront their past (On sale today!). I do so love a good literary mystery, especially when it…
The second book in Ovidia Yu’s Singaporean Mystery series starring Rosie Lee—a cafe-owning widow affectionately called Aunty by all who know her—sees our intrepid, if unlikely, heroine caught up in the death of two people at an event she was catering. Aunty Lee had prepared a delicacy that, much like the infamous fugu fish, could…
A Game for All the Family by Sophie Hannah is a standalone thriller by this New York Times bestselling author, where a woman is pulled into a deadly game of deception, secrets, and lies, and must find the truth in order to defeat a mysterious opponent, protect her daughter, and save her own life. I…
Mystery novels are my intellectual comfort food, so when a series comes along that combines murder with my idea of actual, physical comfort food, it’s hard to resist! Aunty Lee’s Delights is the story of Singaporean Rosie Lee, a middle-aged widow who runs a cafe more to keep herself busy than to actually turn a…
The Silent Dead by Tetsuya Honda follows the young Lieutenant Reiko Himekawa of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police’s Homicide Division as she investigates a string of strange murders that might include her as the next victim. Like many other mystery lovers, I'm a big fan of the police procedural. Most of my experience has been with…
Unbecoming by Rebecca Scherm is a psychological thriller involving an art heist, a cat-and-mouse waiting game, and a transformation of a small-town girl from Tennessee. In the seemingly endless parade of novels breathlessly proclaimed as the next Gone Girl (which is a book I adored, for the record), it’s hard not to view each newcomer…
Dragon Day by Lisa Brackmann is the final book in the Ellie McEnroe trilogy about American vereran of the Iraqi War currently living in Beijing (available August 18, 2015). This novel had me hooked from the very first page, when our heroine, Ellie McEnroe, describes in her distinctively wry narrative voice not only modern China,…
The Naked Eye by Iris Johansen and Roy Johansen is the third thriller featuring Kendra Michaels, a law-enforcement consultant with heightened observational skills (available July 14, 2015). I’m really not sure how I’ve managed to be an avid reader of mystery novels for this long without encountering any Iris Johansen novels before The Naked Eye.…
One Way or Another by Elizabeth Adler is a thriller that opens aboard a luxury yacht where a woman is thrown into the ocean in a clear case of attempted murder (available July 7, 2015). In Elizabeth Adler’s latest thriller, a young woman named Angie is bludgeoned aboard a luxury yacht, thrown overboard, and left…
The Convictions of John Delahunt by Andrew Hughes is a historical thriller set in 1840s Dublin about a man who slowly begins to betray everything and everyone close to him (available June 15, 2015). What a fascinating book. It starts out fairly slowly, in your standard “I’m a criminal looking back at my sordid history”…
