2023 – The Year in Statistics

From the Booking Desk: It has been an interesting year in so many ways. My wish for each of you is that no matter what you accomplished (or didn’t) this year, I hope you took a moment to celebrate yourself and know that your family and friends love you. The...

The Weekend Retreat – The BOLO Books Review

With her first two novels—One Night Gone and The Mother Next Door—Tara Laskowski uncovered the secrets behind the façade of suburban families going about their daily lives, but with her latest release—The Weekend Retreat—she is exposing the problems faced by the...

Hercule Poirot’s Silent Night – The BOLO Books Review

When Sophie Hannah first began her continuation of the Hercule Poirot series with The Monogram Murders, there were many skeptical readers wondering both why and if it could ever be successful. Never one to back down from a challenge—and spurred on by the Christie...

Hop Scot – The BOLO Books Review

Six books into Catriona McPherson’s Last Ditch Mystery series and the books just keep getting better—which is saying something, when Scot Free started as such a success. But it is true that Hop Scot is the best in the series to date. One of the complete joys of this...

Christmas Presents – The BOLO Books Review

Lisa Unger continues to mine the depths of psychological suspense to extend her impressive oeuvre with a holiday-themed novella, Christmas Presents. Bookstore owner Madeline Martin anticipated that the biggest stresses of the holiday season would be staffing her...

The BOLO Books Most Wanted List (2010-2023)

From the Booking Desk: When I post my Top Reads list each year, I never actually rank the books and I rarely used to mention what my very favorite book is for any given year. This is largely because it is never as cut and dried as it might seem. There are so many...

The Christmas Guest – The BOLO Books Review

If you like your Christmas tales to be wholesome and filled with happiness and joy, Peter Swanson’s The Christmas Guest is not the book for you. With this novella, Swanson casts a hypnotizing spell over the reader with a plot that is equal parts gripping narrative and...

Top Reads of 2023 According to BOLO Books

As usual, I have taken this task of selecting my Top Reads List very seriously and really struggled to make sure the list commemorates my favorite books of the year. Simply put, sometimes this means splitting hairs and having to leave off books that I truly loved but...

Lest She Forget – The BOLO Books Review

With her debut, Lest She Forget, Lisa Malice manages to achieve the holy grail of thriller writing—a narrative that readers desperately want to race through to find out what’s going to happen next, written so stylishly that those same readers wish to slow down to...