I get a fuzzy, euphoric feeling when I see a room full of books I can smell and touch. Thrillers, mysteries, epic fantasies, classics, romance… Ah, to find narratives with strong characters, amazing worlds, and thick plots that I can get lost in! A little spice is always nice, but please don’t violate me with explicit obscenities. My soul is not meant for these modern times. I’m especially impressed when writers have the ability to paint sensual scenes in a subtle, crafty way that leaves the details to a reader’s imagination. My happy place is reading in a treehouse library that overlooks my forest. One day I’ll go there.
First, I am always on the hunt for a great mystery series, and this is a wonderful time travel mystery that switches between the modern era and takes the main character female back to the year 1810. I really got into the book in the historical setting; the writer did a great job painting a picture of Victorian England.
One of the reasons I chose this book to read was because it weaves in my favorite kind of romance story: slow burn! Sans explicit sex scenes, which, in my opinion, when it comes to sex scenes, less is more to the imagination.
When a 21st century property developer meets a Regency gentleman- what could possibly go wrong?
A great deal, it turns out. When Natasha Rowlands steps through a door in the house that will be her home she finds herself in 1810 with not only a Regency gentleman, but also a murder victim on the premises. If it is a shock for her, it is equally disconcerting for Lord Halwell's steward, his natural son, but neither of them are prepared for a serial killer, the mystery of Lord Halwell's second wife or the growing attraction between them.
Ahhh! I loved this one. It was epic fantasy at its finest, with compelling characters and a style of writing that had me enthralled from start to finish. I felt the Norse-inspired world-building was magnificent. I was caught up in the plot, the frustration, the desire.
Another slow burn that had me still thinking about it two days after I’d finished it.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A shield maiden blessed by the gods battles to unite a nation under a power-hungry king—while fighting her growing desire for his fiery son—in the first book of a Norse-inspired fantasy romance duology from the author of The Bridge Kingdom series.
“THE must-read fantasy of 2024!”—Jennifer L. Armentrout, author of From Blood and Ash
Bound in an unwanted marriage, Freya spends her days gutting fish but dreams of becoming a warrior. And of putting an axe in her boorish husband’s back.
Freya’s dreams abruptly become reality when her husband betrays her to the region’s jarl,…
I go insane over a killerrific suspense thriller, and this one checked all the right boxes for me. The setting is 1930s England, for one. So many of my favorite mysteries are set in that era.
The main character was easy to fall in love with. I loved that she was a female spy in that time period. It was thought-provoking and torturous trying to guess how to solve the crime.
The fifth novel in Anne Perry's breathtakingly tense and exciting spy thriller series, featuring young British photographer and secret agent Elena Standish, set in the 1930s when the world was a place of increasing fear and uncertainty...
As Hitler's influence spreads across Europe, the future of Britain is at stake...
It is late summer 1934 when retired MI6 agent John Repton's body is found near Wyndham Hall in the Cotswolds. Repton was killed while investigating the Wyndham family's ties to fascist sympathisers, and Elena Standish is assigned to discover if one of them resorted to murder . . .
I love Suzanne Collins's writing style. She sucked me into her narrative on the first page, and I read it without putting it down. I saw the film before I read the book, and didn’t like the main character in the film because she seemed hardened and ruthless. But when I read the book I understood her, I could empathize with why she became so hardened.
The world-building was phenomenal, the mystery and slow burn love, along with the love triangle all served to captivate me.
Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen regards it as a death sentence when she is forced to represent her district in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV. But Katniss has been close to death before - and survival, for her, is second nature. The Hunger Games is a searing novel set in a future with unsettling parallels to our present. Welcome to the deadliest reality TV show ever...
I immediately found myself lost in this enemies-to-lovers adventure. The bewitching storyline and mystery kept me engaged from the start. I couldn’t put the book down. The writer, Kristen Ciccarrelli, was new to me when I began this series, and she made a beautiful impression by capturing my interest from page one.
Crimson Moth was the first in the Heartless Hunter series, and I look forward to reading the next one!
Enemies-to-lovers doesn't get more high stakes than a witch and a witch hunter falling in love in bestselling author Kristen Ciccarelli's latest romantic fantasy.
On the night Rune's life changed forever, blood ran in the streets. Now, in the aftermath of a devastating revolution, witches have been diminished from powerful rulers to outcasts ruthlessly hunted due to their waning magic, and Rune must hide what she is.
Spending her days pretending to be nothing more than a vapid young socialite, Rune spends her nights as the Crimson Moth, a witch vigilante who rescues her kind from being purged. When a…
In the summer of 2226, Courtney’s husband was killed by the tyrannical Peace Alliance (PAX). She and her two college-age children persevere. Nearby, Lord Ranfurly seeks a nanny for his five-year-old twins. Courtney answers the Ranfurly ad for a live-in nanny, and on her first day on the job, she finds a gardener murdered. She finds herself in a mind-boggling vortex of intrigue and deception, at the same time conflicted by her feelings for Lord Ranfurly and his driver, Sean Knight.
Little does Courtney know that Lord Ranfurly is a member of CAPE, a secret resistance of spies and vigilantes who fight crime and aim to bring down PAX. She discovers all too soon that it is dangerous to fall in love at Ranfurly Manor.
To hide a corporation’s failure to properly service a space ship, Captain Jonas Stryker is prosecuted but saved from imprisonment by a dying man, who hires Stryker to collect asteroids for their mineral content. Stryker soon finds he must stop a shadowy corporate group called The Board, who employ space piracy, terrorism, and even weaponised asteroids to overthrow the Federation government.
Set in Lagrange points, space stations, the Moon and outback Australia, it is a fast-moving story with some speculative future technology. If you were interested in the NASA attempt to alter the orbit of the asteroid Dimorphos, you might…
When a trial to cover-up a corporate failure ends Captain Jonas Stryker's career, he wants revenge against The Board, a ruthless, shadowy organization with limitless funds that employs space piracy, terrorism, and even weaponised asteroids. Posing as a space miner, Stryker learns that The Board wants him killed, while a young female SCIB police agent wants retribution against him for having her career spoiled at his trial. As Stryker avoids attempts to kill him, he becomes the only chance to prevent The Board from overturning the Federation Government and imposing a Fascist-style rule. A story of greed, corruption and honour,…
