This almost Dickensian thriller starts with a young woman who’s just been kidnapped by persons unknown and is being kept in the dark, both figuratively and literally. After losing her parents at a young age, Amelie Lamont lived on the streets until she was more or less rescued by Carolyn Blakely, the woman who would…
The Earl and Countess of Wrexford are newlyweds but are currently in London instead of honeymooning at the earl’s country seat. It’s a matter of duty calls because of his elevated rank, as Wrexford and his bride are expected to be present during high-profile events. The visit of the Russian tsar certainly applies, “especially with…
Meg Langslow has a merry mess on her hands, although it wouldn’t be Christmas in the fictional town of Caerphilly, Virginia if all was well. Meg’s brother Rob, the creator/owner of the software company Mutant Wizards, is “doing a rush project” for AcerGen, a Canadian firm that specializes in “forensic genealogy and DNA analysis.” There…
With one seemingly simple comment from one character to another, Ava Barry perfectly captures the heart of her newest thriller, Double Exposure: “Double exposure. A broken piece of film. Damaged imagery, you know?” Double Exposure is a cat and mouse mystery where the role of the cat and the mouse are constantly interchanging. Set in…
Wild Ffion Morgan was no one’s idea of the kind of girl who’d grow up to be a police officer, but here she is at 30, Cwm Coed’s own Detective Constable, with a fairly wide remit from the North Wales Police. Like nearly everyone else in her small Welsh town, she opposed the building of…
Wanda M. Morris emerged as a powerhouse suspense novelist with last year’s All Her Little Secrets. That book won both the 2022 Lefty Award for Best Debut Mystery Novel, the Georgia Author of the Year Award for Best First Novel, and was nominated for several other accolades. It’s also under option as a limited series…
When floodwaters sweep through Minnesota’s Red River Valley, Cash Blackbear is mostly worried about how they’ll affect her ability to pick up work on the now-waterlogged local farmsteads. The college classes that her mentor, County Sheriff Wheaton, insists she take don’t fill up enough of her time. Neither do her ace pool-shooting abilities, nor her…
In Andy Carpenter’s household, the Christmas season lasts from Halloween to February due to the insistence of his Yuletide-loving wife, Laurie. While Andy grumbles, he mostly doesn’t mind. In fact, he’s downright feeling the holiday spirit as December rolls around and one of the employees at his dog rescue, the Tara Foundation, asks for his…
Jesse Cooper is your average computer science student at American University. Perhaps the most unusual thing about him is that he lives with his double-first-cousin twice-removed, the redoubtable Ethel Crestwater. Now in her seventies, Ethel essentially runs a boarding house for federal agents and other law enforcement officers in her Arlington, Virginia home. Since Jesse…
Perspective can be difficult to maintain in general, let alone in times of a pandemic. Covid found many of us—readers and writers—craving comfort in the familiar to counter fear of the unknown. Consequently, #1 New York Times bestselling author Patricia Cornwell was unexpectedly inspired to revisit her iconic sleuth, forensic pathologist Dr. Kay Scarpetta, in…
