aunt_agatha

Dorothy Howell: Shear Terror

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Sewing Studio #3

Shear Terror is the third book in Dorothy Howell’s Sewing Studio Mystery series. Abbey Chandler is our protagonist, and she lives with her Aunt Sarah in Hideaway Grove, California. She organizes and heads a charity effort to make pillow dresses for girls in Africa, and plenty of people in town enjoy attending the events. In addition, she has taken up teaching herself how to sew and is currently trying to grow a business creating embroidered handbags. Unfortunately, making ends meet is a little difficult, and she has taken up a job at the local Visitor Center. Currently they are getting ready for the annual Lost and Found Day, which requires employees to sort through all the lost and found items turned into the Visitor Center for the past year to resale at extremely discounted prices. read more

Andrea Penrose: Murder at King’s Crossing

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Wrexford & Sloane #8

Murder at King’s Crossing is the eighth installment in Andrea Penrose’s Wrexford and Sloane series set in Regency England.  The two protagonists are the Earl of Wrexford, a chemist and amateur sleuth, and his wife Charlotte Sloane, who, under the name of A.J. Quill, is England’s leading satirical cartoonist.  Wrexford has a logical mind and relies on deductive reasoning and the scientific method to solve crimes, while Charlotte uses her intuition and her artist’s eye for detail.  Usually they arrive at the same conclusion using very different methods. read more

Jenny Milchman: The Usual Silence

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Series Debut

It’s been awhile since Jenny Milchman had a new book out (The Second Mother, 2020) but her brand of feminist, almost gentle, thrillers are always appealing and difficult to put down once you’ve started reading one.  Her new book is the launch of a series featuring Dr. Arles Shepherd, a therapist who, as the book opens, is in disgrace. She’s been fired from her job as she appears to have huge gaps in her memory, one of which happened during a session with a client.

Arles also has an ailing stepfather suffering from dementia, and when she visits, it’s clear there’s some kind of bad emotional backstory, and that he’s hung on to a family property that belongs to her.  She plans to take over the property and turn it into a therapeutic immersive camp for families.  It’s also clear she’s had a long obsession with a certain photograph, and she’s just found the identity of the person in the photo.  Part of the reason for her therapy camp is the woman in the photo, who happens to have an autistic son.  She’s a perfect fit for the camp. read more

Michelle Chouinard: The Serial Killer Guide to San Francisco

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I enjoy picking up a book where I don’t know what to expect, and it’s even better when the book I’ve selected doesn’t match my expectations — but in a good way. From the title, I supposed this book would be all shiny concept, heavy on clever plot, no emotional engagement, but probably funny.  It does have a shiny concept, but the concept (as it should be), is just the kick off.  Heroine Capri (like the car, the pants or the island) Sanzio, granddaughter of a serial killer, makes her living giving – you guessed it – serial killer tours of San Francisco.  She’s been quite successful, and the patrons only infrequently ask questions about her grandfather, who was known as “Overkill Bill.” read more

Laura Jensen Walker: Death of a Flying Nightingale

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Recently, while reading the Jungle Red Writers blog, I was entranced by Laura Jensen Walker’s description of how she got the idea for this book: a TV show about nursing orderlies in the WWII British Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF). Dubbed the “Flying Nightingales,” these women, some as young as 17, were give a mere six weeks medical training before being put in charge of the care of 24 wounded soldiers per flight. Since the planes carried supplies that included munitions, they could not be marked with a red cross, making them fair game to German fire. As Walker explained in her blog post “On the flights back to England, the nursing orderlies weren’t allowed to wear parachutes. They were expected to remain on board with the wounded if the plane crashed […]. The Nightingales changed bandages, emptied colostomy bags, cleared tracheotomy tubes, wedged sick bags beneath the chins of the wounded, and provided tea and comfort to soldiers with horrific injuries.” read more

Alan Bradley: What Time the Sexton’s Spade Doth Rust

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Flavia DeLuce #11

If you haven’t read this series, and I must admit that I have not, you are missing a treat. Flavia is the world’s most precocious 11-year-old chemist and poison expert. A British orphan with very adult British attitudes in 1950s England, Flavia nonchalantly deals with post-war rationing, dead bodies, poisons, spies, kidnapping, and murder – along with a couple of surprises I won’t spoil.

The plot revolves around the death of a neighbor, Major Greyleigh, who apparently died from eating poison mushrooms cooked by Flavia’s housekeeper, Mrs. Mullet. Surely she wouldn’t murder someone, even accidentally! Major Greyleigh was once a hangman. Could he have been murdered by a family member of someone he killed in the line of duty? Investigating the murder leads Flavia to a nearby American airbase with unexpected and surprising complications. read more

Tasha Alexander: Death by Misadventure

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Lady Emily #18

I’ll freely admit that I love this series.  Of course some of them are even yummier than others, and this latest one might be one of the most delicious.  The books follow Lady Emily and her dishy husband, Colin, as they investigate crimes all over the globe, and although Colin has a mysterious secret arrangement with her majesty’s government, it’s often Lady Emily’s intuition and intelligence that solves the case.  Another standard element in the books is a dual timeline, with events from the past connecting or relating to events in the present in some form or fashion, with part of the mystery consisting of figuring out how. read more

November Book Club: Vanessa Lillie

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Vanessa Lillie, author of last year’s Blood Sisters, will be joining our November book club via zoom on Sunday, November 17th at 2 p.m.  This is a wonderful first in a series novel featuring a Cherokee woman who works for the Bureau of Indian Affairs.  She lives in Rhode Island but is called back to her Native Oklahoma, where she encounters ghosts of her past as well as a wall of family resentment and hostility.  She’s an archeologist, so she’s been called back to examine a skull that’s been found with her ID in it’s jaws.  This was a wonderful, textured, emotional read, one of my favorites of 2023.  My review can be found here.  All are welcome.  Copies (paperbacks available after October 1) are available on our website.  If you’d like the zoom link, message me on facebook or email me at store (at) auntagathas.com. read more

Matthew Becker: Run

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Debut

This book is by a former customer of ours, who, as a kid, used to shop with his family at our store.  He and his brother gobbled up thrillers like they were candy, and I’m happy to say, Becker has now written an excellent one of his own.  I have rules when I’m reading a thriller, and if they don’t meet them, I always feel a lack.  They are: upping the ante; the seemingly unsolvable problem; the twist; specifity; and pace.

Becker ups the ante right off the bat.  Ben and Veronica, a happy, seemingly ideal couple, are suddenly split apart when Veronica disappears after a mass shooting in a Washington DC park. Immediately, the reader is on Ben’s side as he tries to find his wife, the only clue being a mysterious text she’d sent him out of the blue before her disappearance. There’s the unsolvable problem: where is Veronica, and why has she disappeared? read more

Ragnar Jonasson: Death at the Sanitorium

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Author Jonasson, an Icelandic fan of Agatha Christie from a child, had read all the available books translated by the time he was 17.  At that point, craving more, he simply went to the publisher and asked if he himself could translate more of her previously untranslated titles.  They agreed, and Jonasson was treated to a master class in plot, structure, character and setting as he did his work.  As evidenced by his own books, the lessons certainly took.  Like Christie’s, his books are perfectly structured, have memorably distinctive characters and always feature an evocative setting.  Oh, and they are also short, another valuable lesson he gleaned from Agatha. read more