Allison Montclair: Fire Must Burn

by

Sparks & Bainbridge #8

I just love this series.  It has two wonderful main characters, spectacular plotting, and, in post war London, a fascinating time period and setting, making it simply one of the best contemporary traditional detective series out there. In this outing, our two heroines, Iris Sparks and Gwen Bainbridge, are tasked by English government intelligence to assign a woman through their marriage bureau (The Right Sort) to act as an agent as a means to discover if a certain diplomatic employee is loyal to their government or perhaps another. read more

Vivien Chien: Crime Rangoon

by

Noodle Shop #12

The heroine of the fun, bouncy series is Lana Lee, the owner (along with her family) of a restaurant in the Asia Village neighborhood of Cleveland. Lana is browsing in her favorite local bookstore one day when the owner mentions that her employee has quit without warning, leaving her shorthanded for an important upcoming event with a popular writer.  Lana, a big fan, happily offers to help, and the owner assigns her to act as her assistant (mainly monitoring the signing line and opening the books to the right page to be signed). read more

Best of 2025

by

Best of the year lists are so difficult!  I’ve given myself leeway to divide books into categories – cozy, historical, best all around – giving me a chance to spotlight more great reads.  All of the reviews appear either on this website or over at Deadly Pleasures (or both).  Deadly Pleasures also features my pared down top 10 list.  Here are 30 great reads culled from the 100 or so books I read each year.  My standard is simple – a book that stays with me long after I finish it, great writing, great characters.  There are veterans and newbies here.  Dive in! read more

Jennie Godfrey: The List of Suspicious Things

by

This isn’t exactly a mystery but it does have plenty of crime.  Jennie Godfrey creates a 12 year old character as memorable (and perhaps more rooted in reality) than Flavia DeLuce.  Miv, the heroine of the story, lives in 1970’s Yorkshire, with her Dad, her Aunty Jean, and her mother, who doesn’t speak and spends most of her time in her room.  Miv is pretty much left to her own devices but is happy enough hanging out with her best friend, Sharon.

Margaret Thatcher has just been elected and the hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper is in full swing.  While Miv and Sharon are someone insulated from the stories about the Ripper, the news coverage is beginning to grow, and it is becoming unavoidable not to know about him.  The boys at her school even play a game called “Ripper chase.” read more

Best of 2025: Reviewer’s Choice

by

Our reviewers, Margaret Agnew, Cathy Akers-Jordan, Vicki Kondelik and Carla Schantz, are all extremely discerning readers and all have shared their favorites for the year.  I so appreciate the yearly efforts of these wonderful reviewers, and their top 10 lists should help you find a good read.  Some have comments, some (like Margaret) have merely listed their selections in order.  All the choices have been given lots of thought.  Needless to say, their reviews appear on the website, and you can read more about them on the “Our Reviewers” tab here. read more

Clara McKenna: Murder at Cottonwood Creek

by

Stella & Lyndy #7

Murder At Cottonwood Creek Is the seventh book in Clara McKenna’s series set in the early 20th century, about Viscount “Lyndy” Lyndhurst, a British aristocrat, and Stella, his American-born wife, the daughter of a Kentucky horse farmer who was murdered in an earlier book.  It was an arranged marriage at first, but the couple grew to love each other.  A shared love of horses certainly helped.  This book takes place outside the series’ usual setting of the New Forest region of England, as Stella and Lyndy travel to a ranch in Montana, owned by her mother’s second husband, Ned Smith.  There, Lyndy’s father, Lord Atherly, pursues his passion for fossil-hunting, as he works with a paleontologist, Professor Gridley, to search for the fossils of prehistoric horses.  Lyndy, a fan of dime novels, is excited about seeing the “Wild West,” even though he is disappointed that the herds of buffalo have largely died out.  Stella is glad to finally meet her stepfather and twelve-year-old brother.  She has recently settled her father’s estate in Kentucky and brought thoroughbred horses to the ranch. read more

Valerie Wilson Wesley: The Mysterious Death of Junetta Plum

by

Series Debut

Harriet Stone is named for Harriet Tubman – the legendary Tubman had saved her father from slavery (he referred to her as “the General”). Our Harriet is intrepid and courageous, though she herself may not quite be aware of it.  Set in 1926, she’s has lost most of her family as well as her fiancée to the Spanish flu, and she’s in charge of the orphaned Lovey, who is not quite young enough to be her daughter and not quite old enough to be her sister.  Their relationship teeters between the two designations. read more

Elizabeth Penney: Vows and Villainy

by

Cambridge Bookshop #5

In Elizabeth Penny’s fifth addition to her Cambridge Bookshop series, Vows and Villainy, the reader finds Molly Kimball, a librarian who helps her aunt in her bookshop and the local police with their murders in Cambridge, England. Molly uses deductive reasoning and her social prowess to entice others to give her clues and bits of information. She also does not try to solve everything on her own and then turn over the information to the authorities – instead, she keeps the local detectives in the know as she goes, trying her best to be helpful as well as safe. While they might not praise her for her efforts they appreciate and utilize her intel as much as possible, more so now that she has established herself as a credible amateur sleuth. read more

Elly Griffiths: The Frozen People

by

Series Debut

I had decided to skip this book because of the time travel element, but what a huge mistake.  A friend and book club member listed it on her favorites of the year list, and since I trust her taste, I dove in.  I should also, of course, have trusted the great Elly Griffiths, who has one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary crime fiction, not to mention extraordinary storytelling skills.  She has a way of writing that draws the reader in.  Readers, I was all in with this book. read more

Connie Berry: A Grave Deception

by

Kate Hamilton #6

To me this series is an absolute bingeable dream.  If your taste runs to a gentle British police mystery featuring an antiques specialist, these are the books for you.  In the first book in the series (A Dream of Death), 40 something heroine Kate Hamilton, an American antiques dealer, is in the UK to repair her relationship with her dead husband’s sister and she gets more than she bargained for.  In the course of the series she meets her new husband (by book six they are happily married newlyweds).  In each novel, there’s an unusual antiquity or archaeological find that holds the threads of the plot together. read more