Sworn to Silence by Linda Castillo is the first book in the Kate Burkholder mystery series set in the small fictional town of Painters Mill, Ohio, in the heart of Amish country. “Time flies” and “So many books, so little time” are two clichés that banged up against my reading life when I was offered the…
Set in the long, hot Hungarian summer of 2015―and revealing the hidden, criminal world beneath Budapest’s glittering facade―District VIII is the first novel in the new Detective Balthazar Kovacs mystery series from Adam LeBor. Talk about a book ripped from the headlines. Adam LeBor’s District VIII opens with a Prologue. It’s 6:05 a.m. on Friday, September…
Tornado Weather by Deborah E. Kennedy is an affecting portrait of a complex and flawed cast of characters striving to find fulfillment in their lives—and Kennedy brilliantly shows that there is nothing average about an average life. Tornado Weather is a difficult book to classify. Sure, there is a crime or two—but is it really a…
Inspired by true events, Dark Chapter by Winnie M. Li is both a literary masterpiece and a riveting novel of suspense about of the dark chapters and chance encounters that can irrevocably determine the shape of our lives. It’s a good thing Dark Chapter is nominated for an Edgar Award for Best First Novel because…
The Paris Spy by Susan Elia MacNeal is the seventh Maggie Hope Mystery, where American-born spy and code-breaker extraordinaire Maggie Hope secretly navigates Nazi-occupied France to find two brave women during the darkest days of World War II. The Paris Spy is the first Maggie Hope Mystery I’ve read, and when friends found out I was reading…
Tangerine by Christine Mangan is a sharp dagger of a book—a debut so tightly wound, so replete with exotic imagery and charm, so full of precise details and extraordinary craftsmanship, it will leave you absolutely breathless (available March 27, 2018). The manuscript that eventually became Tangerine was plucked from a slush pile by literary agent…
When a murder echoing a 15-year-old cold case rocks the Southern town of Savannah, crime reporter Harper McClain risks everything to find the identity of this calculated killer in Christi Daugherty's new novel The Echo Killing. I was immediately pulled into this novel and read it in just a few sittings over two days. This…
Force of Nature by Jane Harper is the second book in the Aaron Falk series, where five women go on a hike and only four return, begging the question: how well do you really know the people you work with? Last year, I approached Jane Harper’s international bestseller, The Dry, with a bit of trepidation.…
A sweeping novel of remarkable ambition and depth, The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin is a deeply moving testament to the power of story, the nature of belief, and the unrelenting pull of familial bonds, which probes the line between destiny and choice, reality and illusion, this world and the next (available January 9, 2018). I…
World War with China explodes in Hunter Killer, David Poyer's powerful, all-too-believable novel about how the next world war might unfold. This novel is full of movement and the chaos of wartime. As a result, it’s difficult to write about, but at its most basic, it follows the storylines of five people: Dan Lenson, Admiral,…
