Prussian Blue by Philip Kerr is the 12th Bernie Gunther novel, where the former Berlin bull and unwilling SS officer Bernie Gunther’s cover is blown, so he must re-enter a cat-and-mouse game that continues to shadow his life a decade after Germany’s defeat in World War 2. First, a moment to mourn Philip Kerr’s passing, just over…
It’s uncommon for a cozy mystery series to sweep me away so completely that I want to visit its setting, especially if it isn’t located in an urban area (as I’m very much a city girl at heart). But the Cajun Country mysteries are so evocative in both their setting’s traditions and food that I’m…
The Tea Master and the Detective by Aliette de Bodard is a futuristic take on the Sherlock Holmes archetype featuring a mysterious female scholar and thoughtful shipmind. How to properly explain the bounty of imagination enclosed within the pages of Aliette de Bodard’s latest novella? It is, above all, a detective story inspired by the…
Lost Books and Old Bones by Paige Shelton is the third book in the Scottish Bookshop Mystery series set in Edinburgh, Scotland, and featuring bookseller and amateur sleuth Delaney Nichols. Welcome to Edinburgh, the setting for Paige Shelton’s delightful Scottish Bookshop Mystery series. Our heroine, Delaney Nichols, has traveled halfway around the world from Kansas in order…
Through her exquisite prose, sharp observation, and deft plotting, Mariah Fredericks invites us into the heart of a changing New York in her remarkable debut adult novel, A Death of No Importance. You’ll likely go into this novel as I did, thinking it’s essentially Downton Abbey with a murder mystery, though set on our side of…
In Prior’s Wood by G. M. Malliet is the seventh book in the Max Tudor series. I’ve been reading G. M. Malliet’s Max Tudor series since the beginning, and I feel that with this seventh installment, she’s really hit her stride with the sly-but-not-unkind humor that leavens an otherwise dark and twisting tale of the inner…
Called to Justice by Edith Maxwell is the second book in the Quaker Midwife Mystery series. Meet Rose Carroll, the 19th-century Quaker midwife who is one of my favorite creations in all of recent fiction. Though still quite young, she is the only practicing midwife in the Massachusetts town of Amesbury, home of the renowned…
The Rules of Backyard Cricket by Jock Serong is a novel of suspense about family, sport, celebrity, rivalry, masculinity and the high price of getting everything you want. I was devastated by the ending of this book but not, perhaps, how Jock Serong wanted. As a mom and as a sports fan, it was very hard…
The Temptation of Forgiveness by Donna Leon is the 27th novel in the bestselling Commissario Guido Brunetti mystery series, where a suspicious accident leads Brunetti to uncover a longstanding scam with disturbing unintended consequences (available March 20, 2018). In this 27th installment of the Commissario Guido Brunetti mystery series, our hero—a detective in the state…
The 19th installment of the bestselling Tea Shop Mystery series plunges us straight into the action as our heroine, tea shop owner Theodosia Brown, and her trusty sidekick/tea sommelier, Drayton Conneley, are enjoying the air at the Charleston mansion of their old friend Timothy Neville. They’ve arrived too late to his Gaslights and Galleons Parade…
