This is a darker kind of historical fiction. Dorin Toth
is a representative of the church who travels with his dog, Vinegar Tom, to
investigate occult occurrences.
Taking place in Austria 1686, this story
absolutely drips atmosphere; the menace and the horror are expertly layered in so
that you are absolutely ‘there’. Toth also has to fight the prejudice against
him because of his Romany background, and it is this, his desire to do right by
folk who would rather see him dead, that makes him such a compelling character.
Utterly atmospheric, you couldn’t better this if you like historical horror.
Two plagues rage in the countryside. One plague is smallpox, a torturous disease that ravages the body, turning homes into tombs. The other ailment is more mysterious, a scourge of occult origin, a plague that ravages the mind and consumes the soul. Here the deepest horrors are made manifest. Here the dead walk the shadowed wood. Here a spirit and its brood of changelings emerge from the earth to feed. Into this malefic maelstrom enters Dorin Toth, famed occultist and investigator. Accompanied by his faithful greyhound, Vinegar Tom, Toth must find the source of the eldritch epidemic. Will…
I ended up really enjoying this book! I didn't think I'd care for it, and I started it twice. Why? I don't cook, I don't care about cookbooks, and I'm never sure about youthful amateur sleuths.
And although I love New Orleans as a visitor, I don't live there, and surely this was a love letter to The Big Easy. What ultimately impressed me was the complexity of the story, the way it turned into a real tangle of murder and vintage books and sneaky villains.
Add to this a sexy neighbor, cool work friendships, and people with a history and I had a great time reading.
A fantastic new cozy mystery series with a vintage flair from USA Today bestselling and Agatha Award–winning author Ellen Byron.
Twenty-eight-year-old widow Ricki James leaves Los Angeles to start a new life in New Orleans after her showboating actor husband perishes doing a stupid internet stunt. The Big Easy is where she was born and adopted by the NICU nurse who cared for her after Ricki’s teen mother disappeared from the hospital.
Ricki’s dream comes true when she joins the quirky staff of Bon Vee Culinary House Museum, the spectacular former Garden District home of late bon vivant Genevieve “Vee”…
I read at least 100 books each year, mostly novels, and before I became a published author in 2019, used to send a list of my favorite 30 to hundreds of friends, friends of friends, and family. I began hosting New Books in Literature, a podcast channel on the New Books Network, in 2018, and have interviewed over 180 authors so far. It was tough to choose just 5 top books, but in looking over all those interviews, I remembered how much I loved reading these books, all set in the United States long before the 21st century.
The author has recreated 1850s old Los Angeles when it was just a pueblo, and because her husband is currently LA’s archivist, the historical details are accurate.
Her fabulous protagonist Maddie Wilcox has training as a doctor, and when she’s not working in her vineyard, supervising the winemaking, or running her hacienda, she helps heal everyone in town while figuring out who the murderer is.
I love the snappy dialogue and seamless storytelling.
It starts when the inheritance that Lavina Gaines was to receive is stolen by her brother Timothy. Then an old Indian healing woman is murdered. Winemaker and physician Maddie Wilcox wants to find the person responsible for Mama Jane's death, but is also occupied with another killer - the measles.
When Lavina's friend Julia Carson dies trying to rid herself of a pregnancy, Lavina asks Maddie's help finding the man responsible for Julia's child. Soon after, Lavina is killed and her murder bears an uncanny resemblance to that of Mama Jane's. The only motive…
Aury and Scott travel to the Finger Lakes in New York’s wine country to get to the bottom of the mysterious happenings at the Songscape Winery. Disturbed furniture and curious noises are one thing, but when a customer winds up dead, it’s time to dig into the details and see what ferments.
Is there any truth to the Native American legends that cluster near Seneca Lake? Is the warrior’s disapproval of wineries growing legs? Aury will need to pour over the clues to unearth the mystery before the winery’s reputation is crushed. With the annual wine festival just around the corner, Aury harvests more than she bargained for when the killer tries to bottle her up for good.
Aury and Scott travel to the Finger Lakes in New York's wine country to get to the bottom of the mysterious happenings at the Songscape Winery. Disturbed furniture and curious noises are one thing, but when a customer winds up dead, it's time to dig into the details and see what ferments.
Is there any truth to the Native American legends that cluster near Seneca Lake? Is the warrior's disapproval of wineries growing legs?
Aury will need to pour over the clues to unearth the mystery before the winery's reputation is crushed. With the annual wine festival just around the…
Nancy Drew was the gateway drug for my mystery reading and writing addiction. I love unusual sleuths, and sleuths with secrets such as Mrs. Pollifax, Miss Marple, and Stephanie Plum. Dubbed the “takeout queen” by my kids, I love cooking shows and had the good sense to marry a man who enjoys making ice cream.
Krista Davis’ long-running Domestic Diva series is always a treat. Sophie Winston, a creative caterer in charming Old Town Alexandria, Virginia, has been sleuthing for fourteen books, and the latest, The Diva Says Cheesecake is just as fresh and fun as the first. Davis’ witty and warm-hearted sleuth is surrounded by a cast of fun characters that bring the social setting to life. The Diva has done it all from high tea and Thanksgiving dinners, weddings, and celebrity cooking shows, and all of Davis’ recipes are to die for.
In a delicious new Domestic Diva Mystery from New York Times bestselling author Krista Davis, entertaining guru Sophie Winston is faced with a midsummer nightmare when a celebration in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia, is the appetizer for murder . . .
Old Town's midsummer festivities are getting a tasty addition this year. To coincide with a public performance of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream," Bobbie Sue Bodoin, the Queen of Cheesecake, has hired Sophie to organize a dinner with a dessert buffet on the waterfront. Bobbie Sue's homegrown company is thriving, and since her baking dish overfloweth, she wants to…
I’ve been reading the series of mysteries about Joe Leaphorn, Jim Chee, and Bernadette Manuelitto since Tony Hillerman started publishing them in 1970. After he passed away, his daughter Anne continued the series.
All of them are wonderful mysteries, but what I love about them are the descriptions of the landscape, rituals, thought processes and insights into Navaho culture.
The Way of the Bear, the most recent book in the series (#26), is fast paced, engaging and, as always, gives me greater understanding of a different culture.
Fossil harvesting, ancient lore, greed, rejected love and murder combine in this gripping new installment of New York Times bestselling author Anne Hillerman’s Leaphorn, Chee & Manuelito series.
An unexpected death on a lonely road outside of Utah’s Bears Ears National Monument raises questions for Navajo Tribal Police officers Jim Chee and Bernadette Manuelito. Why would a seasoned outdoorsman and well-known paleontologist freeze to death within walking distance of his car? A second death brings more turmoil. Who is the unidentified man killed during a home invasion where nothing much seems to have been taken? Why was he murdered?
I am a huge Megan Abbott fan. I often tell
people that Abbott’s writing reminds me of the feeling you have in a dream, but
this one is more of a nightmare, which is even better.
What is remarkable about
Beware the Woman is the way Abbott combines a very creepy mystery with
truly compelling social commentary.
By the "master of thinly veiled secrets often kept by women who rage underneath their delicate exteriors" (Kirkus Reviews), Beware the Woman is Megan Abbott at the height of her game.
Honey, I just want you to have everything you ever wanted. That’s what Jacy’s mom always told her. And Jacy felt like she finally did. Newly married and with a baby on the way, Jacy and her new husband, Jed, embark on their first road trip together to visit his father, Dr. Ash, in Michigan’s far-flung Upper Peninsula. The moment they arrive at the cottage snug within the lush…
Fallen Graces is a wonderful story that
illustrates forgiveness amidst a challenging situation and is my favorite book
of the Fr. Tom series.
The entire Boston community is baffled by a series of macabre
murders. Fr. Tom risks his life to unmask (and humanize) the killer. The theme
of forgiveness is portrayed with sensitivity.
This is a riveting, page-turning
mystery/thriller that kept me on the edge of my seat until the end.
When a dead man’s body is found in the upper basin of a historic fountain in Boston Common with a cryptic message in his pocket, Detective Brooks reluctantly calls in Father Tom and Angelo to help solve the clues in the hunt for a killer set on justice and revenge. Fallen Graces, the fifth book of the award-winning Father Tom series, delves into the psychological and religious complexities of a killer who becomes as equally unpredictable as dangerous to the parish neighborhood of St. Francis, and Father Tom has no choice but to become more involved, risking his own life…
I’m primarily a science fiction writer and reader, but mystery is my first literary love, and I was the editor-in-chief of the mystery magazine, Plan B. So, I doubly love it when a mystery story takes place in a science fictional world. In my own work, certain themes keep showing up even when I don’t intend them to because I love them as much as I love a juicy mystery: using technology to change our bodies and environments, the struggle that wealth and corporate greed create, how we can learn to understand someone who is radically different from ourselves. These five books hit all those marks for me.
I’ve always wondered about those amateur detectives who just happen to be nearby when murder occurs, especially the sixth or seventh time. Surely they are secretly serial killers, or they’re really, really unlucky. It’s the latter for Mallory Viridian, so when the possibility arises she flees Earth to a space station inhabited only by aliens to escape. I love truly alien aliens, and there are plenty of those on board, with strange customs and otherworldly motives for the ever-increasing number of murders. I also really loved how this book delves into the question of why murder seems to follow Mallory around, and the resolution is satisfying and delightfully science fictional.
Amateur detective Mallory Viridian’s talent for solving murders ruined her life on Earth and drove her to live on an alien space station, but her problems still follow her in this witty, self-aware novel that puts a speculative spin on murder mysteries, from the Hugo-nominated author of Six Wakes.
From idyllic small towns to claustrophobic urban landscapes, Mallory Viridian is constantly embroiled in murder cases that only she has the insight to solve. But outside of a classic mystery novel, being surrounded by death doesn’t make you a charming amateur detective, it makes you a suspect and a social pariah.…
Marc Cameron has a way of intertwining the specific details of law enforcement—gained from personal experience—with compelling, exciting, page-turning, nail-biting stories featuring Deputy US Marshal Arliss Cutter. Cutter’s assignment in Alaska finds him fighting crime in harsh and forbidding environments.
In Cold Snap, the hunt for a serial killer in Anchorage and a doomed prison transport from the far north prove connected as Cutter is stranded in a frozen wilderness with violent and murderous convicts, complicated by marauding wolves and bears. Besides all that, a storm rolls in that’s so cold and violent it can freeze your fingers to the pages.
In Alaska, nature can be cruel... but human nature is crueler.
After an early spring thaw on the Alaskan coast, Anchorage police discover a gruesome new piece of evidence in their search for a serial killer - a dismembered human foot.
In the remote northern town of Deadhorse, Deputy US Marshal Arliss Cutter escorts four very dangerous handcuffed prisoners onto a small bush plane. He's expecting a routine mission and a nonstop flight... But everything goes wrong.
When the plane goes down in the wilderness, all hell breaks loose. The prisoners murder the pilot and a guard and torch the…
It’s
not often we Scots get to read about our history from a Scottish persepctive,
and this crime novel took us right into the aftermath of Culloden, where the
Government troops slaughtered the Jacobites under Bonny Prince Charlie. Six
years later, survivor Iain MacGillivray finds a dead man in his bookshop, and
his desire for peace is tested as a new Jacobite plot begins.
Maclean recreates
the tense atmosphere in this garrison town, where memories of the atrocities
after the battle are still vividly alive, where the Grandes Dames still meet to
toast the king over the water, and the military come down hard on any hint of
rebellion.
The characters and events were vividly described, and I was
delighted to find that some of the most striking scenes really happened.
A GRIPPING HISTORICAL THRILLER SET IN INVERNESS IN THE WAKE OF THE 1746 BATTLE OF CULLODEN.
'This slice of historical fiction takes you on a wild ride' THE TIMES
After Culloden, Iain MacGillivray was left for dead on Drummossie Moor. Wounded, his face brutally slashed, he survived only by pretending to be dead as the Redcoats patrolled the corpses of his Jacobite comrades.
Six years later, with the clan chiefs routed and the Highlands subsumed into the British state, Iain lives a quiet life, working as a bookseller in Inverness. One day, after helping several of his regular customers, he…
