92 books like Palace Council

The devastating story of two boys unjustly sentenced to serve time in a nightmarish juvenile reform school, The Nickel Boys won a Pulitzer Prize and became a New York Times bestseller.

It is a must-read for anyone sampling literary works featuring Florida. The boys in the story, Elwood and Turner, endure and witness hellish abuse at the Nickel Academy. The boys’ haunting story, exquisitely told by Colson Whitehead, is based on Florida’s real-life Dozier school where thousands of children were tortured, raped, and murdered for more than a century.

Whitehead’s unflinching descriptions of terror and abuse can be tough to take, but they serve an important purpose, by forcing the reader to confront the hellish reality that was America under Jim Crow laws. Long after the last page is turned, if ever, this novel won’t leave you.

Easy Rawlins is an African American private detective in 1960s Los Angeles. Easy gets a visit from a troubled Vietnam veteran at his office. The vet tells an implausible story of him and his lover being attacked in a citrus grove outside the city. He may have killed the man. The woman and his dog are missing. Rawlins’ gut tells him the case is nothing but trouble. He takes the case anyway. The bond between veterans overriding all other concerns. Blood Grove is an exhilarating, mystery soup involving moguls, sociopaths, cops, hippies, extremists, and swindlers. Requiring Easy to call upon help from his friends. Friends who range from genius to lethal. I loved going along with Easy on this case. Admiring his resolve and intelligence in solving the mystery.

Dr. Alex Cross and Detective John Sampson are preparing to leave on their “manly trip” into the Montana wilderness when they receive a call from Metro PD. A dead CIA officer puts a pause on their plans. During his investigation, Alex receives an unnerving text from the criminal genius known as “M” who has terrorized Cross and his family for years. Alex and John eventually make it to Montana. Their vacation takes a treacherous 360-degree turn as they venture deep into the rugged Montana wilderness. Two rival teams of trained assassins are hunting them. One controlled by “M”. The other by the cartel. Cross and Sampson are isolated and cut off in a life-or-death struggle. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. A thriller right up until the end.

This historical novel takes place in 1963 Los Angeles. Harry Ingram is an African American Korean War veteran, news/forensic photographer, and process server. Ingram arrives at a scene to photograph a deadly automobile accident. He recognizes the vehicle. It belongs to an old army buddy. Ingram sees evidence of foul play when he develops his photos of the accident. He is compelled to investigate. With Martin Luther King Jr’s Freedom Rally just around the corner, racial tensions are running high. Ingram dives headlong into the sordid underbelly of LA. Armed primarily with his camera and wits Ingram tangles with gangsters, fanatics, racists, and blackmailers in an effort to weed out justice for his friend. The captivating content, distinctive characters, and crisp dialogue kept me on the edge of my seat. 

“‘Well, my dear,’ said Miss Marple, ‘human nature is much the same everywhere, and, of course, one has opportunities of observing it at closer quarters in a village.'” (The Thumb Mark of St. Peter) An Irish village is the setting for Gordon’s fourth Gethsemene Brown mystery. When African-American violinist Gethsemane Brown takes a job leading the orchestra at a boys’ school in the village of Dunmullach, she has no idea her cliffside cottage comes complete with a resident ghost, Eamon McCarthy. Nor does she imagine she’ll become the village’s amateur sleuth—with a little help from Eamon, of course. When a wedding party descends on the village, Gethsemane learns the groom-to-be once jilted her friend Frankie’s new girlfriend, Verna. When the groom turns up dead, Verna is the logical suspect. 

There is little in life, be it circumstances or people, which appear to be as they’re presented and Montgomery does a masterful job of exampling this fact in “Deception,” a captivating thriller. Finley Borders, the daughter of a prostitute; murdered by the drugged-out pimp assigned to the role of “father” when their daughter was just a child, embodies an ambition that pushes her from the Faraday Center for Children just as she reaches the age of emancipation. At a young age, she has seen much more of life than is warranted but understands there is so much more to be lived. Frequency at the card table during the late nights and early morning hours when she’d escape, unknown, from the center groomed Fin for a lifestyle amidst the underworld’s elite.

While sitting at a high stakes “by invitation only” poker table in Cannes, Findley receives an urgent phone call that… show more.

As a chocoholic, I had to check out the Death by Chocolate Mysteries by Sarah Graves, and I definitely wasn’t disappointed.

Protagonist Jacobia “Jake” Tiptree and her best friend sell their delectable chocolate creations from their shop, the Chocolate Moose, in Eastport, Maine, while solving local mysteries.

Death by Chocolate Cherry Cheesecake is sprinkled with intense, page-turning scenes and plenty of chocolate, making this a fun and delicious cozy mystery.

I loved the unique premise of the protagonist, Eleanor, having prosopagnosia which is known as face blindness—the inability to recognize a familiar person’s face. I also loved the setting of an old mansion deep in the woods of Sweden. The house had been kept a secret until Eleanor’s grandmother died, leaving it to Eleanor in her will. She returns there to prepare it for sale, but things do not go as smoothly as she’d hoped. I enjoyed the atmospheric, creepy setting of the old home full of family secrets, shadows, and things that should never have been disturbed.  

The Perfect Poison is part of a successful and sexy series by Amanda Quick.

It’s a Victorian-era whodunnit with a woman botanist, Lucinda Bromley, who has an unladylike flair for psychically detecting poison.

Called upon by the sympathetic Inspector Spellar, she finds that an upper-class gent was killed by Castor Bean oil combined with a toxic and rare fern — one that she grows. Her budding romance and that of Caleb Jones, part of the secretive Arcane Society, are steamy.

The dialogue is engaging and well-suited to the time period (a talent for any author). This paranormal mystery romance makes for a quick and entertaining read that pulls you into the flora and fauna of the Victorian Age.

Lisa Black’s Gardiner and Renner series juxtapose the worlds of law and lawless. Maggie Gardiner is drawn into an untenable alliance with Jack Renner. He is a police detective and a killer, bent only on making the world safer by killing criminals without the bother of arrest and trial. She, as a forensic investigator, finds herself in a catch-22; she cannot finger Jack without incriminating herself as an accessory. While shielding Jack’s identity she inexorably digs an even deeper legal crevasse for herself.