A Pretty Deceit by Anna Lee Huber is the fourth book in the Verity Kent Mystery series, set in the aftermath of the Great War, where the line between friend and foe may be hard to discern, even for indomitable former Secret Service agent Verity Kent. The first anniversary of the Armistice is fast approaching.…
Socialite-turned-amateur detective Amory Ames is about to turn into something else: a mother. Nearing the end of her pregnancy, Amory has left the glitz and glamour of 1930’s London for the peace and quiet of Thornecrest, her husband Milo’s country house in Kent. There, her days are filled with planning the Springtide Festival, the annual…
When I was a teenager, Mommy and Drea and I would picnic on the roof every Fourth of July. Brooklyn sprawling around us as fireworks burst in the distance. When I’d clambered up there as an adult, alone, I’d been struck by how claustrophobic the view looked, with new buildings filling the neighborhoods around where…
Evie Mead has had a rough week. Her beloved husband Robert has died suddenly. His lawyer informs her that his fortune has disappeared via bad investments. And she discovers that all that may be left is a hotel on the remote Tregarrick Rock, off the English coast. All Evie wants to do is hide away…
The Two Mrs. Carlyles by Suzanne Rindell is a suspenseful and page-turning descent into obsession, love, and murder in the wake of San Francisco’s most deadly earthquake. Violet is a woman with many secrets. After St. Hilda’s Home for Girls burned to the ground, she was left to make her way in turn-of-the-century San Francisco…
It all seems so straightforward at the beginning: Captain Moon and his teenage daughter Suzie come to William Arrowood, private inquiry agent, and his partner Norman Barnett because someone has been vandalizing their riverboat. The Gravesend Queen is the Moons’ source of income, used to ferry day-trippers down the Thames, and the pair can’t afford…
When it comes to dramatic death scenes, few screenwriters have surpassed William Shakespeare. He raised that bar sky high four hundred years ago, with demises ranging from the realistically tragic (Ophelia’s drowning in Hamlet) to the action-packed (any of the stirring battles in his history plays), the downright bizarre (Antigonus’ legendary “exit, pursued by a…
Death of an American Beauty by Mariah Fredericks is the third book in the compelling Jane Prescott series, set in Gilded Age New York, where the ladies’ maid is determined to discover who is making death into their own twisted art form. Ladies’ maid Jane Prescott’s vacation doesn’t go quite according to plan. First, she’s…
Who Speaks for the Damned by C. S. Harris is the 15th Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery, where the viscount investigates the mysterious life and death of a nobleman convicted of murder. While London is in the midst of a gala for the Allied Sovereigns’ celebration commemorating the end of the Napoleonic Wars, Sebastian St. Cyr,…
It’s January 1832 in Scotland, and Kiera — former Lady Darby, now Mrs. Gage — and her husband, Sebastian, are attending a Twelfth Night party hosted by the scandalous and flamboyant Duchess of Bowmont. Usually, such festivities would be of no interest to the introverted artist, but after spending the holidays with her family —…
