What goes best with a good cozy? A mug of coffee, sure. A cup of tea, absolutely. But nothing beats a good cocktail! Here are our hand-picked cocktail pairings for each book in the sampler. Of Manners and Murder by Anastasia Hastings Pimm’s Cup: A London staple created in the 1800s, the same city and century this…
If you’re looking to have yourself a crime-filled little Christmas—at least in terms of your reading—then here are a few recently published books that offer up a dash (or a dollop!) of mayhem, mischief, and murder to go along with the requisite merriment and mistletoe. An Elderly Lady Must Not Be Crossed By Helene Tursten …
Lady Georgiana Rannoch’s friends and relatives know Georgie as the soul of loyalty and discretion and an absolute brick if you’re in trouble. Just ask Queen Mary or Belinda Warburton-Stoke, Georgie’s best friend from Swiss boarding school. Now blissfully married to the Honorable Darcy O’Mara, a Roman Catholic, Georgie, aka Mrs. O’Mara, is no longer…
Every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all forests, and mines, and stone quarries; and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors. —Ralph Waldo Emerson No matter the type of crime fiction, familial relationships are often the key factor in understanding why a bad deed is committed.…
Love and Death Among the Cheetahs by Rhys Bowen is the 13th Royal Spyness Mystery, where Georgie and Darcy are finally on their honeymoon in Kenya’s Happy Valley when murder crashes the party. Lady Georgie marries her Darcy in splendid style. Her bridal attendants are Elizabeth and Margaret Rose, England’s little princesses, in a church…
In 1997, Janet Quin-Harken began writing mysteries for adults under the name Rhys Bowen. Since then, she’s delighted mystery fans for decades with several wonderful series. She’s won the Agatha Award for Best Novel (Murphy’s Law) and has been nominated for the Edgar Award for Best Novel (Evan’s Gate). With 39 books over three series,…
How real is her royal spyness? I receive this question a lot, so I thought I better answer it now that the 12th book in the series, Four Funerals and a Wedding, is out. First, I have to confess that if you check the royal family tree, Lady Georgie doesn’t exist. I’ve never actually mentioned which…
Every Wednesday, we here at Criminal Element will put together a list of Staff Picks of the books that published the day before—sharing the ones that we are looking forward to reading the most! This week, Olen Steinhauer’s contemporary thriller combines with another fantastic anthology edited by Otto Penzler to highlight a great week of books! See what else we’re…
Four Funerals and Maybe a Wedding by Rhys Bowen is the 12th book in the Royal Spyness Mystery series, where Lady Georgiana Rannoch takes on the responsibilities of a grand estate in the days leading up to her wedding to Darcy O’Mara—but proving she can run a household just may be the death of her. If…
Malice Domestic—an annual convention held in Washington, D.C., honoring the best of the traditional/cozy mystery genre—has announced the nominees for 2018's Agatha Awards. Loosely defined as “mysteries which contain no explicit sex or excessive gore or violence,” the Agatha Award salutes the books best typified by the works of Agatha Christie. This year, the annual…
