Reviews

Fans of Hank Phillippi Ryan’s Jane Ryland series and Christina Kovac's The Cutaway will want to grab a copy of Off The Air, the debut novel by Christina Estes. Like those other novels, Estes makes her reporter—Jolene Garcia—the voice of the narrative, but in many...

King Nyx by Kirsten Bakis is one of the strangest and most unclassifiable novels readers are likely to stumble upon. Every time you think you have a grasp on what you think it might be, Bakis subverts that expectation and King Nyx becomes something completely...

Continuing his quozy (queer cozy) series that began with the critically-acclaimed and quadruple crime fiction award-nominated Devil’s Chew Toy, Rob Osler’s latest—Cirque Du Slay—proves that his winning combination of lovably-relatable characters, play-fair mysteries,...

Last year, K. B. Jackson launched her middle-grade Sasquatch Hunters series with The Sasquatch of Hawthorne Elementary. That book is now an Agatha Award Nominee for Best Children’s/YA Mystery, which makes the release of the sequel—The Sasquatch of Harriman Lake—all...

Readers would be forgiven for having burn-out from the proliferation of destination mysteries. There have certainly been more than a few of them in the past few years, often without much variation. The trouble with this type of fatigue is that sometimes there really...

From the Booking Desk: In case you haven’t heard, Crippen & Landru are celebrating their 30th anniversary this week. To celebrate the milestone, they are offering 30% off until tomorrow (February 15th). I decided to mark the occasion with a review of Elaine Viets’...

Jenny Hollander’s debut—Everyone Who Can Forgive Me is Dead—is generating a fair amount of buzz, for good reason. This is an impeccably plotted example of psychological suspense destined to convert casual readers into lifelong fans. “Scarlet Christmas” is the moniker...

With social media, movies, television, and more vying for readers attention, the days of those massively long epic novels are mostly a thing of the past, and yet, occasionally, a work that defies the odds comes along, determined to remind us that there is nothing like...

Readers picking up a Freida McFadden novel should go in knowing they are going to have to suspend disbelief—as this is an author who loves to craft the most twisted plots—but should also prepare to be glued to the page until the final moments of the book. In some...

Heather Levy’s debut novel, Walking Through Needles, made clear that she was an author determined to write mysteries that push boundaries—without worry about the delicate sensibilities of the Old Guard—forging virgin ground and embracing new readers to the genre with...

Last year, it seemed as though everyone who picked up Benjamin Stevenson’s debut, Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone, came away from the experience calling themselves a devoted fan. They will be happy to know that the second novel featuring Ernest Cunningham,...

The Gilded Age is currently all the rage, so it is to be expected that this vibrant historical time would find its way into crime fiction. Readers should be delighted that their guide for this latest foray will be celebrated and award-winning author Mariah Fredericks....

Under the right set of circumstances, perhaps anyone is capable of murder. Or maybe the truth is, everyone is capable of murder. With his new book, Who to Believe, Edwin Hill uses a creative structure to expose readers to the idea that point of view is the key element...

With the release of The Commandments—his first book to be translated into English—Oskar Gudmundsson came out of the gate swinging, making it clear that he was an author who would not shy away from challenging subject matter, writing in a style that is brutal and...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...