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Review: A Most Extraordinary Pursuit (Emmeline Truelove #1) by Juliana Gray
About three chapters into A STRANGE SCOTTISH SHORE, I knew that I needed to read the first book in this series. For one, I thought it would help me figure out some of the little nuances in the book that I was missing, as well as the backstory for many of the characters and their relationships. So confession….I put down A STRANGE SCOTTISH SHORE about five chapters in and started reading this one instead. I just felt like there were so many little things that I was missing and I felt like I was cheating myself by skipping the first book. As the personal secretary of the recently departed Duke…
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Review: The Essence of Malice (Amory Ames #4) by Ashley Weaver
Here I am, yet another late comer to a new mystery series and I find myself wondering how in fact I missed this series in the first place! Picking up a book mid series is always a risk, but I have found that more often than not, the author tries to fill in the missing links for new readers so they don’t feel like they need to start at the beginning. However sometimes it’s just not possible to go back and try to recap everything that a new reader might have missed. While this book was well written and fun to read, I did feel like I needed the other…
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Review: A Strange Scottish Shore (Emmeline Truelove #2) by Juliana Gray
Sometimes you pick up a book in a series and immediately know you are going to love it. That’s what happened with this one. Just the cover and title alone was enough to entice me to read this one and next thing I know, within a couple of pages, I already know I desperately need the first book in the series. For a number of reasons though, not just because I liked Emmeline Truelove and wanted more, but mostly because I felt like I needed to know more about what was going on with the characters and the over all story. Scotland, 1906. A mysterious object discovered inside an ancient…
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Excerpt: THIEF’S MARK (Sharpe & Donovan #7) by Carla Neggers
With fall coming up, I am starting to move into mystery mode. There is something about the turning of the leave and the colder nights that just screams ‘read a mystery’. So as we go into fall, I thought it would share and except from the upcoming mystery, THIEF’S MARK by Carla Neggers. As a young boy, Oliver York witnessed the murder of his wealthy parents in their London apartment. The killers kidnapped him and held him in an isolated Scottish ruin, but he escaped, thwarting their plans for ransom. Now, after thirty years on the run, one of the two men Oliver identified as his tormentors may have surfaced.…
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Review: Impossible Views of the World by Lucy Ives
Person disappears in a museum? A museum mystery? With maps? Yes, yes and yes! Is what went through my mind when this one came up for review. The summary promised lots of tantalizing elements which is what drew me in for a review. Stella Krakus, a curator at Manhattan’s renowned Central Museum of Art, is having the roughest week in approximately ever. Her soon-to-be ex-husband (the perfectly awful Whit Ghiscolmbe) is stalking her, a workplace romance with “a fascinating, hyper-rational narcissist” is in freefall, and a beloved colleague, Paul, has gone missing. Strange things are afoot: CeMArt’s current exhibit is sponsored by a Belgian multinational that wants to take over…
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Review: The Paris Spy (Maggie Hope Mystery #7) by Susan Elia MacNeal
The Maggie Hope mystery series is part mystery and part spy….probably heavier on the spy side but it has murder mystery elements woven in for variety. Some might argue that this series isn’t sure what it is….is it spy or mystery but in my opinion, I like the variation. It keeps thing exciting for me, having a character solve murders in one book and then go on a spy mission in another book. I’ve been a fan of this series for some time now and though I haven’t loved every book, I love Maggie as a character and always excited to see where life will take her next. Maggie Hope…
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Review: The Dream Keeper’s Daughter by Emily Colin
This book has a lovely cover which is what caught my eye enough to read the description as well. I am a huge fan of authors like Menna van Praag and this one is marketed to fans of her work so I instantly felt like this one was worth a read…….eye catching cover and the promise of a time slip romance, easy yes for me. Eight years after the unsolved disappearance of her boyfriend Max Adair, archaeologist Isabel Griffin has managed to move on and rebuild her life with her young daughter, Finn, her last tie to Max. But after a series of strange incidents, Isabel begins to wonder if Max…
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Review: Arrowood by Mick Finlay
I absolutely love the tagline of this book: London Society takes their problems to Sherlock Holmes. Everyone else goes to Arrowood. That totally caught my eye when I was scanning Netgalley in search of new books to read this summer. An anti-Sherlock Holmes sounded refreshing and new. I have been watching the TV show Sherlock (which if you haven’t watched it, go right now to Netflix and start!) and I love the modern take on it, so I thought that something like an anti-Sherlock read would be complimentary. The Afghan War is over and a deal with the Irish appears to have brought an end to sectarian violence, but Britain’s position in the…
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Book Blast: The Babe Ruth Deception by David O Stewart
The Babe Ruth Deception by David O. Stewart Publication Date: June 27, 2017 Kensington Books Hardcover & eBook; 304 Pages Series: A Fraser and Cook Mystery (Book 3) Genre: Fiction/Historical/Mysteries/Baseball As the Roaring Twenties get under way, corruption seems everywhere–from the bootleggers flouting Prohibition to the cherished heroes of the American Pastime now tarnished by scandal. Swept up in the maelstrom are Dr. Jamie Fraser and Speed Cook… Babe Ruth, the Sultan of Swat, is having a record-breaking season in his first year as a New York Yankee. In 1920, he will hit more home runs than any other team in the American League. Larger than life on…
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Review: Murder on Black Swan Lane (A Wrexford and Sloane Mystery #1) by Andrea Penrose
While combing through the catalog of titles on Netgalley, I happened to come across this one and admittedly, was captivated by the cover. I am not really sure why, I mean it’s not like it’s really that new and eye catching….I feel like I’ve seen a ton of books with similar titles that I was passed by in favor of something more eye catching. But for some reason I paused on this one long enough to read the summary. Again, nothing terribly fresh but yet it sounded like just the thing I was looking for…..something predictable. I was dying to read another British detective mystery novel and this sounded like…