• Review: The Inheritance (Charles Lenox Mysteries #10) by Charles Finch

    One of my favorite ‘armchair detectives’ is back…..though he’s less of an amateur and more of a professional than he was in the first books! Charles Lenox receives a cryptic note from a former classmate, pleading for help and eludes to the fact that he might be in danger. Lenox and his friend Leigh agree to meet but when Leigh doesn’t turn up, Lenox begins to worry. Fortunately Leigh is found alive but his lawyer is not……and it’s clear that Leigh is being stalked by a group of gangsters but what is unclear is the why? Leigh was lured back to London after many years abroad, with the promise of…

  • Cover Reveal: The Fortune Teller by Gwendolyn Womack

    The Fortune Teller by Gwendolyn Womack Release Date: June 6, 2017 Picador USA eBook & Paperback; 320 Pages Genre: Fiction/Romantic Suspense     FROM THE AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR OF THE MEMORY PAINTER COMES A SWEEPING AND SUSPENSEFUL TALE OF ROMANCE, FATE, AND FORTUNE. Semele Cohen appraises antiquities for an exclusive Manhattan auction house, specializing in deciphering ancient texts. And when she discovers a manuscript written in the time of Cleopatra, she knows it will be the find of her career. Its author tells the story of a priceless tarot deck, now lost to history, but as Semele delves further she realizes the manuscript is more than it seems. Both a memoir…

  • Review: The Secret Chord by Geraldine Brooks

    Finding a historical fiction novel set in the ‘ancient world’ always seems to be a challenge for me. In my experience, the historical fiction genre is saturated with books from the Tudor, Regency, and Victorian eras, so when I find a historical fiction novel set in another era, I’m usually on board to give it a shot. THE SECRET CHORD is one such novel….something different set in a unique period of time.

  • Review: A Girl Like You: A Henrietta and Inspector Howard Novel by Michelle Cox

    For Henrietta von Harmon times are hard. Not only is it the 1930s but her father committed suicide leaving behind a large family. Henrietta helps support her family by working as a 26 girl in a local pub and waiting tables when she can. But it’s not enough. So she takes a job taxi dancing to help support her younger siblings and mother. It’s while she’s taxi driving that she meets the mysterious Clive Howard. Detective Inspector Howard is investigating the dance hall as a potential supplier of prostitutes to a mob establishment.

  • Review: A Murder in Time (Kendra Donovan #1) by Julie McElwain

    Kendra Donovan has worked hard to become respected in the FBI as one of their youngest agents ever. She has been working tirelessly on a case that reveals a mole within the FBI itself. She is wounded during the course of duty and once she recovers she is hell bent on revenge for her team. Unfortunately her quest for revenge is short lived as she falls through a worm hole at a castle in England only to reemerge in the early 19th century…..1815. After having more or less come to terms with the fact that she some how time travels back to 1815, she realizes her purpose there might be more…

  • Review: The Queen’s Accomplice (Maggie Hope Mystery #6) by Susan Elia MacNeal

    I’ve been a fan of Maggie Hope for quite some time now. I read the first book when it came out and fell in love with that sassy red head. Over the years, Maggie’s adventures have been one part spy and one part detective/mystery series. Maggie has also evolved immensely as a character which if both exciting and at times a little sad when you look back on how much she has changed over the course of the books. In this book, there is a madman on the loose, systematically murdering women in the fashion of Jack the Ripper. Dubbed ‘The Blackout Beast’ by the press and the women of London…

  • Special Feature: New Title and Cover THEY WERE LIKE FAMILY TO ME by Helen Maryles Shankman

    Critically praised, beloved by readers, In the Land of Armadillos has an evocative new cover and title, They Were Like Family to Me. Now in Paperback! Available October 1942. With the Nazi Party at the height of its power, the occupying army empties Poland’s towns and cities of their Jewish citizens. As neighbor turns on neighbor and survival often demands unthinkable choices, Poland has become a moral quagmire—a place of shifting truths and blinding ambiguities. Blending folklore and fact, Helen Maryles Shankman shows us the people of Wlodawa, a remote Polish town. We meet a cold-blooded SS officer dedicated to rescuing the Jewish creator of his son’s favorite picture book; a…

  • Book Blast: The Beauty Shop by Suzy Henderson

    The Beauty Shop by Suzy Henderson Publication Date: November 2016 eBook & Paperback; 350 Pages Genre: Historical Romance England, 1942. After three years of WWII, Britain is showing the scars. But in this darkest of days, three lives intertwine, changing their destinies and those of many more. Dr Archibald McIndoe, a New Zealand plastic surgeon with unorthodox methods, is on a mission to treat and rehabilitate badly burned airmen – their bodies and souls. With the camaraderie and support of the Guinea Pig Club, his boys battle to overcome disfigurement, pain, and prejudice to learn to live again. John ‘Mac’ Mackenzie of the US Air Force is aware of the…

  • Review: Dark Road to Darjeeling (Lady Julia Grey #4) by Deanna Raybourn

    Fall is the perfect time to read a good mystery…..my fall reading is always full of mysteries, thrillers, suspense, and detective novel. We have had a few foggy mornings here in the Pacific Northwest so I couldn’t help but read yet another Lady Julia mystery! This book finds the newly married Lady Julia and her husband, Nicholas Brisbane, enjoying their honeymoon abroad when a couple of Julia’s siblings show up and beg them to join them on the road to India. Julia’s sister, Portia, is sure that her long time friend and lover, Jane, is in danger. Jane recently abandoned Portia for a more ‘conventional life’ with Freddy Cavendish in…

  • Review: Midsummer Night (Lady Julia Grey #3.5) by Deanna Raybourn

    So I rarely do anything by halves…..especially when it comes to reading! Though I tend to shy away from novellas because I always feel they are incomplete or just fluff but something compelled me to read this Lady Julia novella. On one hand, it was simply fluff but on the other hand I wanted to read in detail about Lady Julia and Brisbane’s wedding so I spent the $1.99 and bought the novella! This ‘mystery’ basically covers the days leading up to the wedding with a little case of hidden identity thrown in. Lady Julia wants nothing more than to marry her friend and sort of colleague, Nicholas Brisbane. The…