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Review: India Black (Madam of Espionage #1) by Carol K Carr
This book has randomly surfaced on my Goodreads recommendations page and Twitter feed for the last few years now. I personally love the cover and thought it sounded like an intriguing read. Well recently I saw someone else on Twitter reading it and I suddenly felt like it was time to check it out. When Sir Archibald Latham of the War Office dies from a heart attack while visiting her brothel, Madam India Black is unexpectedly thrust into a deadly game between Russian and British agents who are seeking the military secrets Latham carried. Blackmailed into recovering the missing documents by the British spy known as French, India finds herself…
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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…
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Review: The Pursuit of Pearls (Clara Vine #4) by Jane Thynne
In the spring of 1939 war is on the horizon. Clara Vine is living in Nazi Germany working as an actress but that’s not the only thing she’s doing. She is also there to spy on the personal lives of top Nazi leaders for British intelligence. Each day that Clara remains in Berlin is a day closer to war and should she be caught, she would be in grave danger. Suddenly, someone close to Clara is found murdered. The victim is Lottie Franke, an aspiring costume designer and student at the prestigious Faith and Beauty finishing school that trains young women to become the wives of the Nazi elite. While the…
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Review: Midnight in Berlin by James MacManus
I am a sucker for war romances…..and that’s sort of what I thought I was getting with this book. While it does have elements of romance, it’s more of a book about the beginning days of WWII and what was going on behind the scenes with diplomatic discussions etc. Berlin, 1938. Newly-appointed diplomat, Noel Macrae and his wife Primrose arrive at the British Embassy in Berlin. Prime Minister Chamberlain is intent on placating Nazi Germany, but Macrae is less so. Convinced Hitler can be stopped by other means than appeasement, he soon discovers he is not the only dissenting voice in the Embassy and finds that some senior officers in the German…
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Review: A Prisoner in Malta by Phillip DePoy
Someone is plotting to kill Queen Elizabeth. The Queen’s spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham has changed the nineteen year old Christopher Marlowe with tracking down the truth of this impending threat. The only thing anyone knows for sure is there is a prisoner who has information about the plot and Walsingham feels sure that Marlowe can rescue the prisoner and discover what there is to know about the threat. Christopher Marlowe has quite the reputation….he’s known as a brawler, womanizer, genius, and social upstart at Cambridge. His investigation will take him through a treacherous world of Catholic sympathizers, the Spanish government, and double agents…..this isn’t going to be an open and…
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Review: Mrs Roosevelt’s Confidante (Maggie Hope Mystery #5) by Susan Elia MacNeal
Maggie Hope has just landed state side after being in England for quite some time. She has come with Prime Minister Churchill and the rest of his cabinet to meet with President Roosevelt weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The two world leaders plan on presenting a unified front to the world as allies in the wars against Germany and the Japanese but their relationship is tedious. Any little scandal could threaten to undo their diplomatic relationship. And the murder of a White House aide qualifies as a scandal! Mrs Roosevelt’s secretary, Blanche, failed to show up for work and Mrs Roosevelt herself insists on checking up on her.…
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Special Feature: THE DISTANCE by Helen Giltrow
A dark, ultra-contemporary, and relentlessly paced debut thriller about a London society woman trying to put her secret criminal past behind her, and the hit man who comes to her with an impossible job she can’t refuse. Charlotte Alton is an elegant socialite. But behind the locked doors of her sleek, high-security apartment in London’s Docklands, she becomes Karla. Karla’s business is information. Specifically, making it disappear. She’s the unseen figure who, for a commanding price, will cover a criminal’s tracks. A perfectionist, she’s only made one slip in her career—several years ago she revealed her face to a man named Simon Johanssen, an ex-special forces sniper turned killer-for-hire. After…
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Review: Alaina Claiborne (British Agent #1) by M.K. McClintock
As a young girl, Alaina Claiborne witnesses a the murder of her parents…..an event that she doesn’t fully understand. At ten years old, Alaina remains in her parents estate with her guardians, her aunt Charlotte and her uncle Sebastiaan. As she grows older, she only minutely remembers the murders and she only finds comfort when riding her horses. One afternoon she is out for a ride, she stops at her favorite spot on the lake by her property. There she runs into her new neighbor, Tristan Sheffield. She is frustrated that this man has intruded on her favorite spot but yet she is oddly intrigued by him. He is handsome to be sure,…
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Review: The Patriot Threat (Cotton Malone #10) by Steve Berry
I’ve read a couple of the books in the Cotton Malone series and really really enjoyed them. Steve Berry has a special talent for merging politics, history, and conspiracy all together so well. This time, our favorite ‘retired’ agent is recruited by his former boss to find a North Korean who has some top secret Treasury files. Basically his novel begs the question “what if federal taxes were actually illegal”. This case is anything but straight forward for Cotton and he finds himself globe trotting, trying to chase down leads and to recover the documents, not to mention wading through convoluted history. The reader is treated to an array of historic facts (and…
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Special Feature: TWEET-A-THON with author Steve Berry
Steve Berry’s latest historic thriller/spy novel in the Cotton Malone series, THE PATRIOT THREAT, is bring released on March 31st! I will be posting a review on it in April but until then, here is a fun event you can participate in! Starting March 22nd, you can use the hash tag #PatriotThreat to connect with fellow fans of the book and to check out some cool history facts! Please consider joining in with this Tweet-a-Thon!