Cover Reveal: Jennifer Hawkins, Murder Always Barks Twice

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I’m delighted to reveal the cover of Jennifer Hawkins’ Murder Always Barks Twice, the second installment in her chatty corgi series, coming out August 3rd.  Jennifer lives and writes in Michigan, and as Delia James, writes the Magical Cat mysteries.  Find her on twitter @JenHawkinsAuth1.   She has a newsletter for events, updates, releases and all kind of book recommendations from very cool people here.

Jennifer says:  Thanks to Aunt Agatha’s for helping me share my new cover!  I love this one so much – it’s got everything.  The house in the background is exactly how I pictured Truscott Grange where the mystery takes place, and we’ve got an adorable rendition of Oliver the Chatty Corgi himself.  Plus, all the cake! read more

Book Club: Thin Ice

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Paige Shelton will join our book club via zoom on Sunday, May 16, at 2 p.m.  Message us on facebook or contact us at store (at) auntagathas.com for a zoom invitation.  We’ll be reading the first book in her Alaska Wild series, Thin Ice.   The second novel, Cold Wind, is nominated for a Mary Higgins Clark Award this year!

Here’s a precis of Thin Ice, and you can read my review of Cold Wind here.

Beth Rivers is on the run – she’s doing the only thing she could think of to keep herself safe. Known to the world as thriller author Elizabeth Fairchild, she had become the subject of a fanatic’s obsession. After being held in a van for three days by her kidnapper, Levi Brooks, Beth managed to escape, and until he is captured, she’s got to get away. Cold and remote, Alaska seems tailor-made for her to hideout. read more

Book Club: When No One is Watching

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Join our book club on Sunday,  April 18 at 2 p.m. via zoom to discuss Alyssa Cole’s Edgar nominee, When No One is Watching.  All are welcome – message us on facebook or email us at store (at) auntagathas.com for a zoom invitation.  Here’s a precis of the novel:

Sydney Green is Brooklyn born and raised, but her beloved neighborhood seems to change every time she blinks. Condos are sprouting like weeds, FOR SALE signs are popping up overnight, and the neighbors she’s known all her life are disappearing. To hold onto her community’s past and present, Sydney channels her frustration into a walking tour and finds an unlikely and unwanted assistant in one of the new arrivals to the block—her neighbor Theo. read more

Ben Machell: The Unusual Suspect: The Rise and Fall of a Modern Day Outlaw

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Character is key in almost any book.  This was brought home to me recently when I read and really enjoyed The Unusual Suspect by Ben Machell after having encountered several other true crime books that simply didn’t satisfy.  The trend today is to serve up an unsolved mystery and slather it with internet speculation and/or trial transcripts.  there may be a few satisfying crime books, fact or fiction, where you never find out who dun it, but it’s certainly very few.  I won’t name names, but if you write a book about say, a person who evidently either killed themselves or was murdered in a flamboyant fashion, it’s important to know their character to decide which of the two were more likely, something a journalistic “just the facts” approach doesn’t provide. read more

Tasha Alexander: The Dark Heart of Florence

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Tasha Alexander writes one of the most reliably entertaining series in mystery fiction – every book has a complex plot, often a dual timeline, a bit of romance, plus the reader gets to go on some armchair travel and learn a bit of history to boot.  In this latest Lady Emily outing, her dishy husband, Colin, takes her to Florence, along with her friend Cecile, for cover, as he works on something so secret for the Crown that he can’t even tell Emily.

It’s 1903 and they’re staying at Colin’s newly discovered daughter, Kat’s, home in Florence, and merely reading the descriptions of Florence will make you long not just for armchair travel but for the real thing.  Emily and Cecile are folded into Colin’s work by a circumstance beyond his control – when they arrive at the villa, one of the workers plunges to his death from the top of the villa and is discovered by one of the maids.  Emily and Cecile think they can do better winkling out what really happened to him, and of course, they are correct. read more

SJ Bennett: The Windsor Knot

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This book is adorable in the best possible way.  I usually hate it when real people are used as the detective, and in the case of this novel “the detective” is one of the most famous people on the planet, Queen Elizabeth II.  But SJ Bennett has real affection and reverence – in the nicest way – for her majesty and the actual detecting is mostly done by the Queen’s Assistant Private Secretary, Rozie Oshodi, a British Nigerian who shares the Queen’s affection for horses and would do anything for the “boss.” read more

Lauren Willig: Band of Sisters

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This is a slightly different book for Lauren Willig, as it’s more straight up history than romance or mystery.  It’s about a group of women, Smith College alums, graduating right before WWI, who form a relief unit and head to France to help the victims of the war in the French countryside.  They set sail for Paris in the summer of 1917, with ideas of what Paris will be like wildly out of sync with wartime Paris.  One girl is planning to buy her trousseau.

The two central characters are Kate, a scholarship girl at Smith who has been working as a French tutor, and Emmie, a wealthy daughter of a politically active suffragette.  The two had been best friends at Smith – Emmie’s sweet goofiness balanced by Kate’s practicality.  Kate wears a pretty big chip on her shoulder, though, and it often gets in the way of the friendship.  When they arrive in Paris, everything is topsy turvy. read more

Charles Finch: An Extravagant Death

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Confession: this is the first Charles Finch book I’ve read.  I’m not sure why as it falls in my reading wheelhouse – I love historical novels and Finch is covering a period of history I enjoy reading about.  I’ve certainly devoured books by Tasha Alexander, Deanna Raybourn, Dianne Freeman, Maureen Jennings and Anne Perry.  Finch takes a comfortable seat beside these writers, and his detective, Charles Lenox, is an appealing Englishman, covering the London streets of the 1870’s.  This is a later book in the series and Lenox is comfortably married to the glamourous and capable Lady Jane, he’s settled in his career, but he has always felt a yearning to travel. read more

Susanna Calkins: The Sign of the Gallows

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I love this series set in 1660’s London, featuring former maid turned bookseller Lucy Campion.  London has weathered both the plague and the great fire, and the upheaval finds some women able to take work usually reserved for men.  While Lucy is not technically a bookseller’s apprentice, she does everything an apprentice would do.  In the 1660’s, bookselling also meant publishing, so Lucy works as a typesetter, a sometime writer of murder broadsheets, which were often sold at public executions, as well as working as a seller.  Her intelligence and connections to the wealthy Hargreaves family, her former employer, get her into some places the police cannot go. She’s also torn between two suitors – Constable Duncan and Adam Hargreaves. read more

Elle Cosimano: Finlay Donovan is Killing It

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This book, which opens amidst the morning chaos of a mother with two children, one of whom has just cut off part of her hair right before school, breezily catches the feel of young motherhood.  It’s exasperating, exhausting, and nerve wracking. Finlay drops the kids off at school as she heads to meet her book agent and deliver the bad news that the book she’s supposed to turn in is nowhere near finished.

On top of all this, Finlay’s husband has left her for the cute realtor, his sod business is going full blast, and she has a mountain of bills to pay with no means to do so.  Also, to spite her, her ex has let the baby sitter go.  Things go poorly with her agent where they’ve met for coffee, but a woman nearby, over hearing – and misinterpreting – their conversation (Finlay writes thrillers) leaves a mystery note on Finlay’s table.  The sum of $50,000 is mentioned and there’s a phone number. read more