Reviews

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...

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...

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...

Last Spring, Amanda Flower won the Agatha Award for Best Historical Novel for Because I Could Not Stop for Death, the first book in her new Emily Dickinson Mystery series. This was an auspicious start to what is growing into a beloved historical series. The second...

From the Booking Desk: As I explained on social media, with my own creative writing flourishing, I am struggling to find a balance with the reading and reviewing I love so much. My fans have begged me not to stop reviewing completely, so I am working to find a way to...

Picking up a debut novel is always an exciting gamble. Readers are hoping to discover their next favorite author at the inception of their career or a book they can confidently recommend to all their friends. When that happens, it is almost like magic. Based on...

City of Vengeance launches D. V. Bishop’s series set in sixteenth century Florence. With this first case, his main character—Cesare Aldo—instantly joins the ranks of iconic historical crime fiction protagonists. Aldo is a former soldier and is now an officer in the...

Janice Hallett’s The Christmas Appeal is a holiday-themed novella that returns readers to Lower Lockwood and updates them on the goings-on with The Fairway Players roughly three years after the action of Hallett’s debut novel, The Appeal. First it must be said that...

You are likely thinking "Do we really need another version of Murder on the Orient Express?" And the answer to this question is yes, and maybe no. Murder on the Orient Express The Graphic Novel adapted and illustrated by Bob Al-Greene is a beautiful and faithful...

There is a feeling readers get when they know they are in the hands of one of their favorite consummate storytellers. It is a bond built on trust influenced by past success. So even if the current novel is quite different from what has come before, the end result of a...

It is rare when a novel that is virtually impossible to classify succeeds on all levels, but that is exactly what Ashley Winstead accomplishes with Midnight is the Darkest Hour. This book works as a mystery, as a thriller, as a romance, as a serial killer exposé, as a...

Eliza Clark burst onto the literary landscape with her debut novel, Boy Parts. When your first book is so full of vitality and freshness, the pressure on the follow-up must feel overwhelming; but not for Eliza Clark, she seems to take it in stride and ups her game...

When cracking the spine of a Lori Rader-Day book, readers know they are about to embark on an emotional excursion where the precarious path is lit by a compelling central mystery that leads to a destination that is as satisfying as the journey getting there. Her...

Brooke Robinson is a playwright who used the downtime during the pandemic to write her first novel, The Interpreter. While it is quite a dense book, Robinson executes it with skill and style—entertaining while also educating. As readers will no doubt guess from the...

When a highly respected blogger raves about a novel, readers (and other reviewers) take notice. Such is the case with Ayo Onatade when it comes to Jake Lamar’s Viper’s Dream. Viper’s Dream was released earlier this year in the United Kingdom, where Onatade resides....

Over her varied career, Jess Lourey has amassed a loyal fanbase who not only devour her books the moment they appear, but who will also tell everyone they know to read her work. After a stellar run of standalones in which her profile in the crime fiction community...

Murder at the Residence by Stella Blómkvist The mystery behind this series is just as intriguing as the books themselves. Stella Blomkvist is not just the character in the novels but is also the nom-de-plume used by the mysterious author no one has been able to...

With each book, Kia Abdullah continues to highlight her willingness to tell the difficult stories, the ones that most writers would conjure in their mind before kindly telling themselves “there’s no way in hell I’m going there.” Because of her bravery, each novel...

Reykjavík is the new novel from Icelandic crime fiction superstar, Ragnar Jónasson, written in collaboration with the Prime Minister of Iceland, Katrín Jakobsdóttir. With that pedigree, anticipation for this new thriller is understandably high and thankfully, this...