Review: Home by Nightfall (Charles Lenox Mysteries #9) by Charles Finch

The once arm chair detective, Charles Lenox, has now successfully made the big shift to being in ‘trade’ with his detective agency and partners. Things seem to be going well for Lenox, Dallington, and Polly….they have after all hired a ‘staff’ of detectives to help with their work load, but their rival LeMire also threatens to take away some of their business.

All of London is buzzing with the disappearance of a famous German pianist….everyone is speculating  that the Yard will call in a consulting detective firm….Lenox hopes it’s his. While he waits to hear if he will be brought in, his brother Edmund is grieving the loss of his wife and asks Lenox to come to Sussex to help him get re-adjusted to his house and being alone on the estate.

Lenox gladly accepts, he hasn’t been home for an extended visit in ages and when the news comes that LeMire has been called in as the consulting firm….Lenox gladly goes to Sussex.

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Review: The Lake House by Kate Morton

Alice Edevane grew up in a charming lake house on Cornwall coast just after the Great War. Cornwall is a mystical place that inspires imagination and welcomes thoughts of magic. A perfect place to inspire a young girl to write.

Alice always knew she wanted to be a writer and living in a large home full of people with their own ‘stories’ she couldn’t help but write them down. But one summer, the unthinkable happens….her brother disappears without a trace never to be seen again. Alice thinks she knows what happened and for the next seventy years she harbors extreme guilt.

Now a successful mystery writer, Alice buries her secret deep within and prays that no one will find out what really happened to her little brother Theo and after seventy years and the case still unsolved, she begins to feel safe…..until Sadie Sparrow arrives in Cornwall.

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Review: Moriarty (Sherlock Holmes by Anthony Horowitz #2) by Anthony Horowitz

Shortly after Sherlock Holmes and his adversary, James Moriarty, go over Reichenbach Falls a body is pulled from the water. American detective, Frederick Chase, rushed to Switzerland where he hopes to identify the body as Moriarty’s and ultimately recover a letter sent from notorious American criminal, Clarence Devereux.

Devereux and Moriarty had planned to form a partnership that would make them the most formidable crime syndicate in Britain and America. But with Moriarty dead, that leaves Devereux holding the reigns.

Chase plans to stop Devereux by any means necessary. When he arrives are Reichenbach falls he meets British detective Athelney Jones who has learned many of Sherlock Holmes’s methods of deduction. The soon for a team and start investigating the links between Devereux and other criminals in Britain but at every turn they meet a dead end…..literally.

The body count is piling up and the pressure is on for Chase and Jones to stop the criminal gang before it’s too late. Chase has spent a good deal of time studying Devereux and though no one has seen his face, he suffers from a rare condition known as agoraphobia. Chase and Jones hope to identify Devereux by exploiting his phobia.

The two detectives encounter many unspeakable crimes and twisted plots as they track the gang through London. Together Chase and Jones make a great team….they almost mirror Holmes and Watson.

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Spotlight Feature: MARGARET KERR MYSTERY SERIES

Please join Margaret Kerr as she tours the blogosphere for her Margaret Kerr Mystery Series, from October 12-23, with HF Virtual Book Tours, and enter to win one of three (3) Sets of A TRUST BETRAYED and THE FIRE IN THE FLINT in eBook!

A Trust Betrayed (Book One)

03_A Trust Betrayed
“Thirteenth-century Edinburgh comes off the page cold and convincing, from the smoke and noise of the tavern kitchen to Holyrood Abbey under a treacherous abbot. Most enjoyable.” —THE LIST

In the spring of 1297 the English army controls lowland Scotland and Margaret Kerr’s husband Roger Sinclair is missing. He’d headed to Dundee in autumn, writing to Margaret with a promise to be home for Christmas, but it’s past Easter. Is he caught up in the swelling rebellion against the English? Is he even alive? When his cousin, Jack, is murdered on the streets of Edinburgh, Roger’s last known location, Margaret coerces her brother Andrew, a priest, to escort her to the city.

She finds Edinburgh scarred by war—houses burnt, walls stained with blood, shops shuttered—and the townsfolk simmering with resentment, harboring secrets. Even her uncle, innkeeper Murdoch Kerr, meets her questions with silence. Are his secrets the keys to Roger’s disappearance? What terrible sin torments her brother? Is it her husband she glimpses in the rain, scarred, haunted? Desperate, Margaret makes alliances that risk both her own life and that of her brother in her search for answers. She learns that war twists love and loyalties, and that, until tested, we cannot know our own hearts, much less those of our loved ones.

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The Fire in the Flint (Book Two)

04_The Fire in the Flint“Intrigue abounds…. Robb’s captivating blend of history and mystery vividly evokes medieval Scotland.” —BOOKLIST

Scots are gathering in Murdoch Kerr’s Edinburgh tavern, plotting to drive out the English forces. Margaret takes her place there as innkeeper, collecting information to pass on to William Wallace—until murder gives the English an excuse to shutter the tavern. The dead man was a witness to the intruders who raided chests belonging to Margaret’s husband and her father, the latest in a string of violent raids on Margaret’s family, but no one knows the identity of the raiders or what they’re searching for.

Margaret’s uncle urges her to escape Edinburgh, but as she flees north with her husband Roger, Margaret grows suspicious about his sudden wish to speak with her mother, Christiana, who is a soothsayer. Margaret once innocently shared with Roger one of Christiana’s visions, of “the true king of Scotland” riding into Edinburgh. Now she begins to wonder if their trip is part of a mission engineered by the English crown…

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A Cruel Courtship (Book Three)

05_A Cruel Courtship“This is history as it should be told!” —GOOD BOOK GUIDE

In late summer 1297, Margaret Kerr heads to the town of Stirling at the request of William Wallace’s man James Comyn. Her mission is to discover the fate of a young spy who had infiltrated the English garrison at Stirling Castle, but on the journey Margaret is haunted by dreams—or are they visions?—of danger.

He who holds Stirling Castle holds Scotland—and a bloody battle for the castle is imminent. But as the Scots prepare to cast off the English yoke, Margaret’s flashes of the future allow her to glimpse what is to come—and show her that she can trust no one, not even her closest friends.

A CRUEL COURTSHIP is a harrowing account of the days before the bloody battle of Stirling Bridge, and the story of a young woman’s awakening.

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Review: The Debt of Tamar by Nicole Dweck

This novel is so much more than simply a historical fiction novel. This novel was also an wonderful piece of literary fiction, with hints of romance and a story about the bonds of friendship all set in an exotic location.

When this book came across my nightstand for review, I jumped at it. The cover is eye catching and the title hints at something different and exotic feeling, I didn’t even bother reading the description because I was already sold just from what I saw and this novel did not disappoint!

In 2002, Selim Osman, the last descendant of Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, flees Istanbul for New York. In a twist of fate he meets Hannah, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor and an artist striving to understand a father she barely knows.

Unaware the connection they share goes back centuries, the two feel an immediate pull to one another. But as their story intertwines with that of their ancestors, the heroic but ultimately tragic decision that bound two families centuries ago ripples into the future, threatening to tear Hannah and Selim apart.

This novel takes the reader all over the world and through history….from a 16th-century harem to a seaside village in the Holy Land, from Nazi-occupied Paris, to modern-day Manhattan, readers will be captivated by the  love, history, and fate happening throughout the story.

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