After the delightful debut novel of Christin Brecher’s Nantucket Candle Maker Mystery series, which featured a terrific manor-house-style murder mystery, the last thing I expected was for the follow up to turn into a spy thriller! But Ms. Brecher carries it off with aplomb, even if I did spend a good part of the proceedings…
It’s been a month since Berry Basket store owner Marlee Jacob brought a killer to justice, and she’s ready to put the whole thing behind her as she and her friends look forward to a summer of fun. The nearby Blackberry Art School is hosting its centenary and has invited all its previous students from…
I remember when I was younger and firmly convinced that any media adaptation of a novel must always be inferior to its source material. In recent years, I’ve been gladly disabused of this notion and nowhere more intriguingly so than with the second season of You on Netflix, based loosely on Caroline Kepnes’ sophomore novel,…
The Only Child by Mi-Ae Seo is an eerie and absorbing novel following a criminal psychologist who has discovered shocking and possibly dangerous connections between a serial killer and her stepdaughter. Yi Seonkyeong is a young criminal psychologist who’s just wrapping up her first semester of teaching when she receives a curious request. A convicted serial killer named…
Hannah Capin’s terrific debut novel, The Dead Queens Club, was a YA thriller that re-examined the legacy of Henry VIII via transplantation to a present-day Indiana high school. With her sophomore effort, Foul Is Fair, she continues her quest to reclaim the role and agency of women in history and literature via a devastating adaptation…
After enjoying the latest two of Sharon Farrow’s terrific Berry Basket Mystery series, I decided to go back to the beginning and see where it all started for Marlee Jacob and her eclectic crew of family and friends. As Dying for Strawberries begins, town booster Piper Lyall-Pierce is busy, as usual, organizing a festival to…
One Day You’ll Burn by Joseph Schneider is the first in the new LAPD Detective Tully Jarsdel Mysteries series featuring an unusual sort of police officer: a near-30-year-old history professor turned police recruit. Tully Jarsdel is an unusual sort of police detective. Nearing 30 and on track to become a professor of history—following in the…
The pet-loving town of Wagtail, Virginia, is all aflutter at the imminent arrival of Pippin, America’s Favorite Dog. Soon to star in a new sitcom, Pippin along with his handler, Jim, and the rest of the main cast of the show have been sent to stay at the Sugar Maple Inn for some quality bonding…
Clare Cosi wakes up on a New York City park bench one morning believing that she’s still a recently divorced single mom angry at her cheating ex-husband, Matt, for leaving her to raise their 11-year-old daughter virtually alone as she struggles to put food on the table. Instinct leads her back to the Village Blend,…
Let’s be very clear here: Joe Goldberg is a bad guy. It doesn’t matter that he’s really good-looking, as played by Penn Badgley in what one could say is the natural evolution of his career from playing part-time creeper Dan Humphrey on Gossip Girl, another show adapted from a popular book series. Full disclosure: I…
