Laura Griffin is an expert guide to the uncomfortable tension between doing one’s job and having a personal life. In the island community of Lost Beach, Texas, navigating tricky conflicts of interest comes with the territory. It’s another gritty and imaginative romantic thriller in the Griffin canon. Midnight Dunes is the third in Laura Griffin’s…
I deeply regret that I have waited this long to get acquainted with Kerry Greenwood’s Phryne Fisher mystery novels. I knew of them, of course, from the entertaining Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries TV series, but had never had the time to investigate the source material until this book landed on my desk (or in my…
Callie Padget is still feeling emotionally fragile about her return to Cattail Island, where she grew up on North Carolina’s Outer Banks. Alas, after being let go as a journalist from the Charlotte newspaper she’d worked for, she has few other options. Her Uncle Hudson welcomes her home with open arms, readying her old bedroom…
Chris Holm is the author of six critically acclaimed novels and numerous works of short fiction. His books include the genre-bending Collector trilogy (Dead Harvest, The Wrong Goodbye, and The Big Reap) and, more recently, two thrillers featuring hitman Michael Hendricks, The Killing Kind and Red Right Hand; the former won the 2016 Anthony Award…
Safiya Mirza is a high school senior looking forward to enrolling at Northwestern University and subsequently pursuing a career in journalism. As editor-in-chief of her private school’s newspaper, she’s already had run-ins with Principal Hardy, who doesn’t like how her paper insists on bringing up issues he regards as controversial. But then her online column…
I love reading a haunted house novel where the haunted house is actually scary. The title hacienda of Isabel Cañas’ debut novel delivers on that in spades, in this eerie cross between Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca and Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting Of Hill House. Even more absorbingly, the story is set amidst the turmoil immediately…
There is no way to sugar coat it: Two Little Girls, YA superstar Laura Jarratt’s adult debut, begins with an absolutely heartbreaking sequence. Lizzie, a barrister specializing in custodial family disputes, is driving her two daughters home after a long-needed vacation. Everything seems normal, they stop for treats at a small shop, and the girls…
Had Jane Austen ever turned her hand to greater murder mysteries than the quasi-Gothic plot that nearly ruined Catherine Morland’s relationship with Henry Tilney in Northanger Abbey, then I daresay she’d be both impressed and extremely pleased with what Claudia Gray has done here in homage to her completed novels. Ms. Gray deftly assembles beloved…
Judith Potts is a bit of an eccentric, living happily alone in the Marlow mansion she inherited from her late Great Aunt Betty, along with a portfolio of investments that keep her well off. Setting crosswords for national newspapers keeps her mind occupied. For physical exercise, she likes to slip nude into the River Thames,…
It has been a banner year for books riffing off of the still unexplained disappearance of Agatha Christie almost a century ago. Between Nina de Gramont’s exquisite historical mystery The Christie Affair and this modern-day young adult adaptation, there’s such a wealth of recent writing taking inspiration from Mystery’s Grand Dame herself to produce twisty,…
