I’m a voracious reader and watcher of movies and TV shows—in other words, I’m in love with stories. But after a while, it becomes harder and harder to find a story I haven’t heard, seen, or read before, so I get so excited when I find something completely new to me or a quirky take on a familiar story. These are books I really treasure for their ability to take me by surprise.
I wrote a mystery that at first didn’t seem to be that unusual. My protagonist, Georgia Thackery, is an adjunct English professor and single mother. InA Skeleton in the Family, the first in the series, Georgia moves back home and has to confront the family skeleton. That’s a common theme in cozies, but the difference is that Georgia’s family skeleton is a literal skeleton. Named Sid. He walks, talks, and tells bad bone jokes. After an unexpected encounter, they set out to solve Sid’s own murder. I came up with the crime-solving Osteo-American while trying to think of a paranormal cozy setup that hadn’t been done before. It’s not fair to ask for twisty stories if I don’t try to write one myself.
In which Feste, the fool from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night returns to Thirteenth Century Illyria to solve the mystery of Duke Orsino. And why is a fool investigating crime? Because he’s part of the Fool’s Guild, a group of fools, bards, and jugglers that act as secret agents to influence the politics of the day. Really. Exciting, well-researched, and plenty of puns, so what’s not to love? There are six books and a handful of stories in the series, and each one is a delight.
A historical mystery set in the thirteenth century in the mythical Duchy of Orsino on the Adriatic Coast (ie Dalmatia, part of the former Yugoslavia) and featuring characters of Shakespeare's play TWELFTH NIGHT. Twelve years after the events of the play, the Duke of Orsino has been murdered and the duchy is in a state of political turmoil. Feste (the fool), believing he sees the hand of Malvolio in all of this is sent by the Fool's Guild to stabilise the political situation and uncover who is responsible.
The title and the sword-wielding gingerbread man on the cover sold me immediately. A fourteen-year-old magicker, who isn’t considered powerful enough to be a real wizard, uses her dough-based powers in her aunt’s bakery to make tough dough fluffy and keep bread from burning. Oh, and telling gingerbread men to dance and making sourdough starter into a quasi-pet named Bob. When she finds a body in the bakery, she gets caught up in larger mysteries and learns how a little baking can save a lot of lives. Plus there are some insightful reflections on why we need heroes. It’s the first of Kingfisher’s books I’ve read, but it won’t be the last.
Fourteen-year-old Mona isn't like the wizards charged with defending the city. She can't control lightning or speak to water. Her familiar is a sourdough starter and her magic only works on bread. She has a comfortable life in her aunt's bakery making gingerbread men dance.
But Mona's life is turned upside down when she finds a dead body on the bakery floor. An assassin is stalking the streets of Mona's city, preying on magic folk, and it appears that Mona is his next target. And in an embattled city suddenly bereft of wizards, the assassin may be the least of…
I started the Sookie Stackhouse mysteries when Dead Until Darkwas first released, and after all the Draculas and Lestats I’d read about before, the idea of a vampire named Bill totally charmed me. I love the way the books blend the horror and mystery of vampires, werewolves, and other supernatural creatures with the reality of having to serve drinks at a bar, do laundry, and get the driveway paved. I enjoyed every Sookie book and story, and the fact that Harris ended the series on her own terms was such a power move!
Sookie Stackhouse is a small-time cocktail waitress in small-town Louisiana. She's quiet, keeps to herself, and doesn't get out much - not because she's not pretty - she's a very cute bubbly blonde - or not interested in a social life. She really is ...but Sookie's got a bit of a disability. She can read minds. And that doesn't make her too dateable. And then along comes Bill: he's tall, he's dark and he's handsome - and Sookie can't 'hear' a word he's thinking. He's exactly the type of guy she's been waiting all her life for. But Bill has…
I’m a big fan of vampires and werewolves in fiction, and I think the Fangborn series is one of the most original takes on the legends I’ve encountered. Vampires and werewolves are parts of the same family—as in a vampire sister and a werewolf brother in the first Fangborn story—and both types of supernatural creatures use their special abilities to fight evil. After debuting the series in the mystery story “The Night Things Changed,” Cameron went on to write three excellent Fangborn books, but I really enjoy the variety of the short stories, and I’m so pleased that she recently collected them into this volume.
The Fangborn are werewolves, vampires, and oracles dedicated to protecting humanity. Known as “Pandora’s Orphans,” the Fangborn Family is the hope that was left behind when evil was released into the world. Through the millennia, they’ve tracked and fought that evil in secret.
Since 2008, and the publication of “The Night Things Changed,” ten award-winning tales of the Fangborn have been published in best-selling anthologies and magazines. They are collected here for the first time, with an all-new adventure, never before published.
Nationally best-selling author Dana Cameron writes across many genres, but especially crime and speculative fiction. Her work, inspired…
While planning a trip to England, I saw that Deeds of the Disturberwas set in London and grabbed it to read on the airplane. That’s not the book I’m recommending, but I want to save you from my mistake. Deeds is the fifth Amelia Peabody book – you should start with the first, Crocodile on the Sandbank. Amelia Peabody, an English spinster in 1884, comes into money and decides to travel. When she arrives in Egypt, she falls in love both with the country and with archelogy. The backdrop of historical Egyptology is fascinating, and the book could make my list for that alone, but what really sparkles is Amelia’s voice and her way of dealing with a mysterious wandering mummy. Plus there’s a romance that is equally touching and hilarious.
Amelia Peabody is Elizabeth Peters' most brilliant and best-loved creation, a thoroughly Victorian feminist who takes the stuffy world of archaeology by storm with her shocking men's pants and no-nonsense attitude!
In this first adventure, our headstrong heroine decides to use her substantial inheritance to see the world. On her travels, she rescues a gentlewoman in distress - Evelyn Barton-Forbes - and the two become friends. The two companions continue to Egypt where they face mysteries, mummies and the redoubtable Radcliffe Emerson, an outspoken archaeologist, who doesn't need women to help him solve mysteries -- at least that's what he…
I’m a professional historian and life-long lover of early American history. My fascination with the American Revolution began during the bicentennial in 1976, when my family traveled across the country for celebrations in Williamsburg and Philadelphia. That history, though, seemed disconnected to the place I grew up—Arkansas—so when I went to graduate school in history, I researched in French and Spanish archives to learn about their eighteenth-century interactions with Arkansas’s Native nations, the Osages and Quapaws. Now I teach early American history and Native American history at UNC-Chapel Hill and have written several books on how Native American, European, and African people interacted across North America.
A magisterial history of Indigenous North America that places the power of Native nations at its center, telling their story from the rise of ancient cities more than a thousand years ago to fights for sovereignty that continue today
Long before the colonization of North America, Indigenous Americans built diverse civilizations and adapted to a changing world in ways that reverberated globally. And, as award-winning historian Kathleen DuVal vividly recounts, when Europeans did arrive, no civilization came to a halt because of a few wandering explorers, even when the strangers came well armed.
A millennium ago, North American cities rivaled urban centers around the world in size. Then, following a period of climate change and instability, numerous smaller nations emerged, moving away from rather than toward urbanization. From this urban past, egalitarian government structures, diplomacy, and complex economies spread…
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