I love to read and write about strong women. I don't necessarily mean gunning down aliens while wearing tight pants. Those books can be good too, but let's be honest, tight pants encourage yeast infections. I prefer books where women handle anything from murder to wayward cats with intelligence and compassion, while wearing whatever they want. The women, I mean. Cats already figured out to skip the pants.
I fell in love with Kate Shugak as soon as I met her on the page.
Kate's an Aleutian private investigator who lives with Mutt, her half-wolf, half-husky, on a 160-acreage homestead in Alaska. Do you know why Kate carries a scar from ear to ear? Do you know why Kate and Mutt's nearest other neighbors are a grizzly bear and a moose, and why they like it that way?
If so, you probably know how everyone turns to Kate for justice and that this very first book won an Edgar Award. Maybe you, like me, have read all 26 books in this series. High five.
Kate Shugak returns to her roots in the far Alaskan north, after leaving the Anchorage D.A.'s office. Her deductive powers are definitely needed when a ranger disappears. Looking for clues among the Aleutian pipeliners, she begins to realize the fine line between lies and loyalties--between justice served and cold murder.
What if you wanted to practice law in India in 1922?
Women weren't allowed in court, but Perveen Mistry becomes a solicitor instead, working behind the scenes on wills and estate files. Perveen's gender becomes an asset when she can speak to women in purdah, a practice where women seclude themselves from men in some Muslim or Hindu communities.
I liked the first book, The Widows of Malabar Hill, but truly enjoyed The Satapur Moonstone, where Perveen heads out to the Sahyadri mountains to help a royal family after the maharaja has died and the crown prince is too young to rule.
In addition to the mystery, and learning about the history of India, I could hear the buzz of mosquitoes, the tree frogs peeping, and the hooting of owls, as well as imagine the tigers and leopards in the jungle.
'Vivid and clever...love her to bits.' Kerry Greenwood, bestselling author of the Miss Phryne Fisher series
The delightfully clever Perveen Mistry, Bombay's first female lawyer, returns in an adventure of treacherous intrigues and suspicious deaths.
India, 1922: It is rainy season in the lush, remote Sahyadri Mountains southeast of Bombay, where the kingdom of Satapur is tucked away. A curse has fallen upon Satapur's royal family, whose maharaja and his teenage son are both dead. The kingdom is now ruled by an agent of the British Raj on behalf of Satapur's two maharanis, the dowager queen and the maharaja's widow.âŠ
Desperate to honor his fatherâs dying wish, Layken Martin vows to do whatever it takes to save the family farm. Once the Army discharges him following World War II, Layken returns to Missouri to find his legacy in shambles and in jeopardy. A foreclosureâŠ
After a Las Vegas stage accident nearly kills the magician named Tempest Raj, the public turns on her, her manager drops her, her friends abandon her, but Tempest moves back to her California childhood home to find the truth. And what a home!
In addition to the central mystery, you'll want to devour all of Grandpa Ash's delicious food (don't worry, recipes at the end) and explore the secret staircases built by her parents, a carpenter (dad) and a stage magician (mom, who has disappeared under the Raj family curse).
"Wildly entertaining." âThe New York Times Book Review
Known for her wonderfully addictive characters, multiple award-winning author Gigi Pandian introduces her newest heroine in this heartfelt series debut. Under Lock & Skeleton Key layers stunning architecture with mouthwatering food in an ode to classic locked-room mysteries that will leave readers enchanted.
An impossible crime. A family legacy. The intrigue of hidden rooms and secret staircases.
After a disastrous accident derails Tempest Rajâs career, and life, she heads back to her childhood home in California to comfort herself with her grandfatherâs Indian home-cooked meals. Though she resists, every day brings herâŠ
It should be a happy ending between Hank and Chloe and the upcoming baby, except the horse belongs to an artist named Junior Whitebear, who returns to town and forms an instant, overpowering connection with Chloe. Mapson writes so well that she makes me ache.
When 34-year-old Chloe Morgan appears on Hank Oliver's doorstep in Cameron, Arizona, she arrives with more than her old white German shepherd, Hannah, and a rambunctious horse in tow. Chloe is pregnant with Hank's child, and she's as tough-talking and vulnerable, skittish and tender as when last we saw her, in Jo-Ann Mapson's acclaimed first novel Hank & Chloe.
Loving Chloe takes up where the earlier novel leaves off. As Chloe and Hank settle somewhat uneasily into domesticity in his grandmother's cabin, a local Navajo legend named Junior Whitebear, an artist whose work has been praised by the eastern commercialâŠ
Whatever happened to the young Carr heiress who vanished years ago? A scheming uncle with an eye on her fortune persuades a vaudeville performer to impersonate his niece in exchange for a share of the inheritance. Desperate for work, Jessie accepts the role and moves from the tawdry world ofâŠ
Minerva Dobbs knows she shouldn't trust Cal, the too-handsome man who asks her out on a date in order to win a bet.
Joke's on him, Min figures out that her stupid ex orchestrated that bet, and Min could use a free meal. Min is an actuary and plays the odds all the time. She doesn't believe in love. But fate keeps smushing her and Cal together, complete with their wacky friends, sexy shoes, donuts, and a cat who won't take no for an answer.
What if a brilliant killer stalks the halls of a Montreal hospital, and you're the only one who knows? Dr. Hope Sze dives into her family medicine residency braced for anything from newborn babies to foot ulcers. The one thing Hope doesn't expect? Murder. Someone killed her supervising physician so cleverly that it looks like an accident. Now Hope fights not only to save lives around the clock, but to unmask the killer, while two different but equally compelling men draw Hope into their own schemes. Sex. Drugs. Doctors. Written by a Derringer Award-winning emergency physician. Because medicine can be murder.
"Dr. Melissa YI has created medical thrillers that shine with authenticity and are impossible to put down."
- Kris Nelscott, New York Times bestseller
Donât mess with the hotheadâor he might just mess with you. Slater Ibåñez is only interested in two kinds of guys: the ones he wants to punch, and the ones he sleeps with. Things get interesting when they start to overlap. A freelance investigator, Slater trolls the dark side ofâŠ