England

Elly Griffiths: The Night Hawks

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Elly Griffiths is playing to her strengths with this (seemingly) effortless, blast to read entry in her Ruth Galloway series.  Ruth is back home where she belongs, having broken it off with the unfortunate Frank, and she and Nelson are once again having fated and tense encounters.  Ruth is now head of the archaeology department at her university, discovering the paperwork and supervision headaches that come with being in charge.  She’s especially annoyed by the “new Ruth”, David, the know-it-all older lecturer she herself has hired.  He seems to be tagging along everywhere she goes and trying to tell her what to do. read more

Erica Ruth Neubauer: Murder at Wedgefield Manor

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Murder at Wedgefield Manor is the delightful second book in Erica Ruth Neubauer’s series set in the 1920s, featuring the adventurous American World War I widow Jane Wunderly.  After solving a mystery in Egypt in the first book, Murder at the Mena House, Jane, her matchmaking Aunt Millie, and Millie’s secret daughter Lillian arrive at Wedgefield Manor, the English country estate of Lord Hughes, who had been Millie’s lover years ago.  Quite possibly, Millie and Hughes are rekindling their romance.  Lillian is the product of their brief affair.  Lord Hughes and his wife had adopted Lillian and raised her as their own, and as far as Jane knows, Lillian is not aware of the fact that Millie is her mother–a fact that Jane had uncovered in the course of her investigation in Egypt, where she met Lillian for the first time. read more