Here are 35 books that Bones of Paradise fans have personally recommended if you like
Bones of Paradise.
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In the early 1980s, I fell in love with the Big Island of Hawaiʻi, its people – including my wife’s Native Hawaiian relatives – and its history. My wife and I owned a home on the South Kohala Coast of the Big Island for twenty years, where I assembled a library of Hawaiian history and began reading all things Hawaiian, including detective fiction. Every year, Hawaiʻi inspires so many books, fiction and non-fiction, well-publicized or obscure, that it’s fun to mention some that Hawaiʻi lovers and residents may have missed.
In 1931, Thalia Massie, the bored wife of a naval officer stationed in Honolulu, accused six nonwhite islanders of gang rape.
The trial loosed a storm of racist hatred and sexual hysteria nationwide (Hearst papers, I’m looking at you). But the evidence was scant – for one thing, she almost certainly had not been raped – and the trial ended in a hung jury.
Outraged that she hadn’t been believed, Thalia’s husband, mother, and friends then kidnapped and murdered one of the Native Hawaiian defendants as an “honor killing.” Caught in the act, the Massies got Clarence Darrow to defend them.
He lost at trial but, scandalously, the all-white killers were released within hours. During the two years these events played out, racial divisions in Hawaiʻi became re-aligned – the concept of “locals” was born, embracing all nonwhite ethnic groups for the first time, and all in opposition to haoles…
In the fall of 1931, Thalia Massie, the bored, aristocratic wife of a young naval officer stationed in Honolulu, accused six nonwhite islanders of gang rape. The ensuing trial let loose a storm of racial and sexual hysteria, but the case against the suspects was scant and the trial ended in a hung jury. Outraged, Thalia’s socialite mother arranged the kidnapping and murder of one of the suspects. In the spectacularly publicized trial that followed, Clarence Darrow came to Hawai’i to defend Thalia’s mother, a sorry epitaph to a noble career.
In the early 1980s, I fell in love with the Big Island of Hawaiʻi, its people – including my wife’s Native Hawaiian relatives – and its history. My wife and I owned a home on the South Kohala Coast of the Big Island for twenty years, where I assembled a library of Hawaiian history and began reading all things Hawaiian, including detective fiction. Every year, Hawaiʻi inspires so many books, fiction and non-fiction, well-publicized or obscure, that it’s fun to mention some that Hawaiʻi lovers and residents may have missed.
In this unusual novel, still in print after a century, Hula is a bewitching teenager raised on a Maui cattle ranch and proficient on horseback, among other talents.
She attracts male attention, some acceptable by standards of the time (today she seems awfully young for her older suitors), and some markedly inappropriate even then. Drama ensues against a period-piece Maui backdrop: almost no cars on the island, few roads, and day-long steamer trips along the coast for sea travel from one town to another.
The literary style and point of view, with the author hopping from one character’s head to another, often in a single paragraph, can at once surprise and delight modern readers. Armine von Tempski, who grew up on Maui, set other novels there, but Hula, her first, remains uniquely intriguing – especially for Maui lovers!
1928. Maui writer Armine von Tempski, who died almost a half-century ago, is one of Hawaii's enduring literary legends. She spent her childhood years on the family ranch in Haleakala with her Polish-American father and English mother. Her books reveal the daily life and customs on Hawaii with a colorful prose that captures the beauty of the spectacular tropics. The novel tells the colorful, sensual tale of Hula Calhoun, the daughter of a Hawaiian Planter, sidesteps the dissolute influence of her father through the guidance of her Uncle Edwin, who prefers a more natural existence to the society life of…
In the early 1980s, I fell in love with the Big Island of Hawaiʻi, its people – including my wife’s Native Hawaiian relatives – and its history. My wife and I owned a home on the South Kohala Coast of the Big Island for twenty years, where I assembled a library of Hawaiian history and began reading all things Hawaiian, including detective fiction. Every year, Hawaiʻi inspires so many books, fiction and non-fiction, well-publicized or obscure, that it’s fun to mention some that Hawaiʻi lovers and residents may have missed.
Princess Victoria Kaʻiulani is among those brave real-life heroines who remain inspiring despite terrible tragedies, in Kaʻiulani’s case the theft of the Hawaiian kingdom in a coup by white planters in 1893 when she was only seventeen, and her shockingly premature death only six years later, at twenty-three, after being caught far from shelter in a chilling Hawaiʻi rain storm.
In those six years, she became a figure on the world stage, welcomed by the royal houses of Europe as the forceful, articulate, and beautiful advocate (educated in England) pleading for the Hawaiian Kingdom’s formal diplomatic recognition and its return by the United States.
U.S. annexation, an admitted wrong, might have been righted by her efforts had not Alfred Thayer Mahan’s relentless crusade persuaded Congress and the President that the U.S. needed Pearl Harbor to project U.S. naval power across the Pacific.
Ironically, Kaʻiulani’s planned marriage to a Japanese prince,…
In the early 1980s, I fell in love with the Big Island of Hawaiʻi, its people – including my wife’s Native Hawaiian relatives – and its history. My wife and I owned a home on the South Kohala Coast of the Big Island for twenty years, where I assembled a library of Hawaiian history and began reading all things Hawaiian, including detective fiction. Every year, Hawaiʻi inspires so many books, fiction and non-fiction, well-publicized or obscure, that it’s fun to mention some that Hawaiʻi lovers and residents may have missed.
Murders in academia are a special genre within the universe of detective fiction, but Frankie Bow – the pen name of a highly amused and amusing university professor – has created her own delightful franchise, extended into a series of eleven short, light-hearted, and gently satirical volumes featuring Professor Molly Barda as a sardonic sleuth, one who voices her observations almost as aphorisms.
Although The Musubi Murder is number two in the series, set at the faintly ludicrous Mahina State University ("Where Your Future Begins Tomorrow"), it’s a good place for the reader to start following Professor Molly. Musubi itself may not be addictive for everyone (it’s cooked Spam secured to sushi rice by a strip of seaweed), but Frankie Bow’s mystery series surely is.
"If you like your cozy mysteries with humor and a satisfying dose of sarcasm, Frankie Bow is your go-to author." ― Laura's Interests Book Blog
After a brutal year on the academic job market, Professor Molly Barda finally lands a teaching job. In Mahina, Hawaii!
But Mahina isn't exactly paradise.
Chronically-underfunded Mahina State University ("Where Your Future Begins Tomorrow") doesn't boast rolling green lawns or wood paneled offices. Molly sits on a yoga ball because there's no budget for office furniture. Her dean, unwilling to lose paying customers, won't let her report cheating students.
When I began compiling stories for my collection, I noted the theme of disappearance throughout. I’m not sure why that’s the case. Perhaps because I’ve dealt with disappearance on a personal level. Perhaps almost all stories deal with the theme. I have also always been fascinated by people who disappear (such as Agatha Christie), especially into the wild. As a former book editor, my reading standards are very high. The books I’ve recommended are superb and still resonate with me years after I’ve read them. I hope you explore this list and that the characters in these unique and well-crafted stories linger on, even after you’ve finished the last page.
One of my working titles for my book was A Country All Its Own, a phrase pulled from this exquisite novel set in Hilo, Hawaii. Ball plays with the theme of disappearance throughout, and it’s basically the female version of Australia Stories. Kinau, the narrator, is also shaped by her mother’s stories and haunted by the disappearance of her father, and the death of her ex-husband's stepson, who comes to the island in search of his own destiny. Original and breathtaking in its craft and message, Ball is an accomplished storyteller.
A haunting tale of obsessive love, and how an otherwise strong young woman releases herself from it. What if you lived in a world where you could wake the dead, where men had a shark jaw buried in their backs just as the shark god did when he stepped on the shore and became human? A place where scalding lava ran through the streets of the town and down into the hissing sea. Where women picked up guns and never put them down again, where it rained three days out of three, and ghosts drank from the rain gutters and…
I have always been a storyteller and I’m fascinated by the use of language and how a story can be told well. I’ve used storytelling as an entrepreneur, executive, and management consultant, and my two business books for enlightened entrepreneurship use real-life stories to make the messages and lessons learned more memorable. Fictional versions of those stories were wandering through my imagination to make them more fun to read (and to write) for about fifteen years before they emerged in the Dale Hunter crime thriller series to show that entrepreneurs are not all evil, selfish monsters; sometimes they’re the hero!
This book is the best model for me of what I wanted to write with my own Dale Hunter crime thriller series: a scientist, entrepreneur, or professional as the hero, not a private detective or law enforcement officer, and it’s set in Montreal with all the unique characteristics of that fascinating, multicultural historic city, including the bilingual dialogue unique to Montrealers that Reichs manages to untangle for readers to follow easily.
In addition, she tells the terrifying story of a forensic anthropologist helping to track down a serial killer who finds herself to be the next targeted victim. Déjà Dead is the novel that launched Tempe Brennan novels and the award-winning Bones TV series.
Bagged and discarded, the dismembered body of a woman is discovered in the grounds of an abandoned monastery.
Dr Temperance Brennan, Director of Forensic Anthropology for the province of Quebec, has been researching recent disappearances in the city.
Soon she is convinced that a serial killer is at work. But when no one else seems to care, her anger forces her to take matters into her own hands. Her determined probing has placed those closest to her in mortal danger, however.
Can Tempe make her crucial breakthrough before the killer strikes again?
My first editor informed me I was a mystery writer and my first mystery conference categorized me as a Southern humorous mystery writer. I didn’t intend to write Southern humorous mysteries but find the world-view of my characters and the world they live in quite comical and southern (my characters and I live in Georgia). I also abhor crime, so the dead bodies that keep appearing in my stories need to be dealt with lightly. I’m happy to be a Wall Street Journal bestselling and international award-winning author with eighteen books and counting in three series, Cherry Tucker Mysteries, Maizie Albright Star Detectives, and Finley Goodhart Crime Capers.
Southern Appalachia is as southern as the Cotton Belt, but the Smokies have a culture as unique as the bayou or the western reaches of Texas. Sharyn McCrumb has a wealth of historical knowledge when it comes to the Blue Ridge Appalachians, but she knows mountain folk's minds and motivations even more. McCrumb’s amateur sleuth Elizabeth MacPherson series’ is satirical and wry, full of wit and grit. Rock solid mysteries mired in history and loaded with character. I love them all, but the last is my favorite. The title alone makes me smile.
Bestselling author Sharyn McCrumb, internationally acclaimed for the "quiet fire"* of her Appalachian Ballad novels, clearly has a dark side--a wicked, sardonic wit that has prompted critics to compare her to Jane Austen and Jonathan Swift.
Readers and reviewers alike also have lauded Ms. McCrumb for her inspired chronicles of forensic anthropologist Elizabeth MacPherson. In her newest tale in the MacPherson saga, McCrumb examines society's fascination with beauty--and the deceptiveness of outer appearances. Elizabeth herself, hospitalized for depression over her missing husband, learns that insanity liberates one from polite hypocrisy, enabling a "crazy lady" to remark: "Anorexia is not a…
I write historical mysteries, and developed an interest in early forensics when I was a police officer. I have worked in private industry, as a civilian police worker, and in a department connected to the Home Office. Historical mysteries particularly appeal to me as they present a different, and very specific, challenge. There’s no lab to process evidence, and everything needs to be double-checked for anachronisms, even down to the colour of light from gas lamps in different areas. Extensive research acted as the foundation for developing the characters in The Innocents Mystery Series. I like my mysteries twisty, complex, and intricate; through a fog of history and a touch of light humour.
This is exactly the kind of book I find fascinating, with real-life historical mysteries being explored and researched using cutting-edge scientific methodologies. It covers so many aspects of forensics, from facial reconstruction to DNA. If you are the kind of person who loves seeing famous people from history analysed for poisons, seeing mummies facing the same medical problems as we do, and wonder if a skull found in an attic belongs to a king, then this is the book for you.
Did Richard the Lionheart really die from just a crossbow wound, or was there foul play? Who are the two infant children buried in Tutankhamen's tomb? Could a skull found in a tax collector's attic be the long-lost head of Henri IV? In When Science Sheds Light on History, Philippe Charlier, the "Indiana Jones of the graveyards," travels the globe with his forensics team to unravel these and other historic mysteries. To get answers, Charlier looks for clues in medical records, death masks, fingerprints, and bloodstains. He even enlists the help of perfume experts to smell and identify embalming materials.…
At an early age, I became a fan of tightly plotted mysteries that play fair with the reader. This led to my career in mystery games and videos and a dozen books of short mysteries. It also led to my TV career. When the creator of Monkrealized he needed some twisty plots, he visited a bookstore, found my books, and tracked me down. Since then, I’ve been plying my trade on the small screen as well, working with some very talented people, like Steve Martin, who needed a mystery guy to come in and add some structure to their ideas.
A forensic anthropologist tackles three murders, separated by time but united by their theme, the evil that men do – and by men, I mean the male of the species. The outrageous humor and atmospheric southern setting draw you in, and you don’t realize until too late how your expectations have been overturned.
The eighth book in the Elizabeth MacPherson series.
When forensic anthropologist Elizabeth MacPherson becomes the official P.I. for her brother Bill's fledgling Virginia law firm, she quickly takes on two complex cases. Eleanor Royden, a perfect lawyer's wife for twenty years, has shot her ex-husband and his wife in cold blood. And Donna Jean Morgan is implicated in the death of her Bible-thumping bigamist husband.
Bill's feminist firebrand partner, A. P. Hill, does her damnedest for Eleanor, an abused wife in denial, and Bill gallantly defends Donna Jean. Meanwhile, Elizabeth's forensic expertise, including her special knowledge of poisons, gives her the most challenging case of her career. .…
When you write a book, it’s natural to put yourself in it. You’re the avenger, the rookie agent, the hard-drinking detective. But how many of us volunteer to be the corpse? I sit here every day in the cancer unit at a public Thai hospital and smile at folks who won’t be around much longer. I wrote fifteen books in a series about a coroner. I painted the victims colorfully when they were still alive but how much respect did I show them once they were chunks of slowly decaying meat? From now on my treatment of the souls that smile back at me will take on a new life.
Nobody does gore with more charm than the British, and Becket loves his blood and guts. His victims are barely recognizable. But I selected this novel mainly for its setting at a body farm. I have a card in my wallet offering my organs when I have no further use for them. But the farm is peopled with volunteer cadavers; those who have agreed to donate their bodies for forensic studies. Offering up a live heart is one thing. But you’d have to sign off ownership of the whole kit and kaboodle to science once that heart stops beating. It’s nice to think my body has some use when I’m done with it.
