Lauren Willig: Band of Sisters

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

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

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

Stephanie Graves: Olive Bright, Pigeoneer

This novel will be published December 29.

This novel is more of a village cozy than a war novel, though it’s set at the start of WWII in the tiny British village of Pipley.  The heroine, Olive, longs to enlist as a FANY (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry), but she’s tethered to home, helping her father with her stepmother, who has MS, as well as with a young war refugee, Jonathon.  She also has the responsibility of the family pigeon loft, a fine one, and one her bristly father hopes will meet with the approval of the NPS, or National Pigeon Service. read more

Maureen Jennings: November Rain

This is the second entry in Maureen Jennings’ Paradise Café series, set in almost wartime Toronto (1936).  Detective Murdoch’s son, Jack, is now the “Detective Murdoch” in this series, which centers on young Charlotte Frayne, who has joined up with an older private investigator, Mr. Gilmore.  Mr. Gilmore is out of town as the story opens.

Charlotte arrives to open the office and discovers two women waiting for her, both of them in heavy mourning.  As Jennings lays her story parameters out in this first chapter, I think her rare capacity for both breaking a reader’s heart and reaching it have never been more strongly on display than they are here.  The women relate the story of the suicide of Gerald Jessup, the son of one and the wife of the other. read more

Rosemary Simpson: Death, Diamonds and Deception

Death, Diamonds, and Deception is the fifth book in Rosemary Simpson’s Gilded Age mystery series set in New York City in the 1880s.  It’s the first I’ve read, but I enjoyed it so much that I will definitely look for the others.  The two protagonists are heiress Prudence MacKenzie and ex-Pinkerton agent Geoffrey Hunter, who are partners in a detective agency.  Prudence is the daughter of a wealthy judge, a prominent man in New York, who died about two years before this book begins.  She is part of the city’s elite, the world of the Astors and Vanderbilts, even though she defies the standards of that society by becoming a detective.  Geoffrey is a Southerner who came to New York around the time of the Civil War because he was anti-slavery.  He is quite a bit older than she is.  Prudence is around twenty, and, although Geoffrey’s age is not specified, it seems that he was already an adult at the time of the Civil War, so he must be in his early forties at least. read more

Darcie Wilde: A Lady Compromised

This novel is reviewed by our occasional and gifted reviewer, Vicki Kondelik.  It will be available November 24.

A Lady Compromised is the fourth book in the Regency mystery series by Darcie Wilde (a pseudonym for Sarah Zettel) featuring Rosalind Thorne, a gentlewoman living in reduced circumstances after a family scandal.  To make a living for herself, Rosalind helps society ladies solve their problems, which, in this book and the others in the series, include murder investigation.  At the beginning of this book, Rosalind travels to Cassell House, the country estate of Devon Winterbourne, who has recently, and unexpectedly, inherited the title of Duke of Casselmaine following the untimely deaths of his father and older brother.  Rosalind and Devon had been close to becoming engaged before Rosalind’s father’s disgrace, at a time when Devon was a second son, with no prospects of inheriting the dukedom.  Now his cousin, Rosalind’s friend Louisa, is getting married, and Rosalind is looking forward to attending the wedding and possibly rekindling her romance with Devon. read more

Nev March: Murder in Old Bombay

This novel will be published November 10, 2020.

This charming novel is the righteous winner of the Minotaur/MWA First Crime novel prize.  Set in 1892 Bombay during the British Raj, this novel focuses on Captain Jim Agnihotri, who has left the military after a long stint in the hospital.  The book has an excellent opening line: “I turned thirty in hospital…with little to read but newspapers.”

In said newspapers, Captain Jim reads the story of two Parsee women who plunged to their deaths from a University clock tower.  One was a young bride, one, her younger sister in law.  When Jim reads a plea in letter form in the newspaper from the young widower, he is sure that the details of the crime don’t add up.  The husband pleads that this was not a suicide but the recently concluded trial leaves this stain and uncertainty on the family. read more

Libby Fischer Hellman: A Bend in the River

Libby Hellman is known for her slightly gritty mysteries set in Chicago, often reaching back into the past.  Her first novel, An Eye for Murder (2002) looked back to the holocaust; she’s ventured to Cuba, to the 60’s in the United States, to WWII, and to Iran.  This is her first novel, however, that’s straight up history. She sets it in Vietnam in 1968, during the war.  As someone who came of age in the late 70’s, the Vietnam War wasn’t history.  It was news.  It was classmates wearing POW and MIA bracelets.  It was on TV and in the newspapers almost every day. read more

A Bouquet of Historical Mysteries

To my mind, historical mysteries are some of the best mysteries being written at the moment.  They combine classic elements of detective fiction, unmarred by cell phones or computers, and combine it with fascinating time periods and characters.  These wonderful books are now all available to order on our website, along with many other historical mysteries (have a browse!) Kathleen Marple Kalb’s first novel came out this April, a difficult time for a first novel, with no bookstore events or conferences to attend.  I am not a fan of the cover art, but I am a huge fan of this charming debut.  My review ran in Mystery Scene, and you can read it here.   The main character, Ella Shane, is a “trouser diva”, an opera singer who sings men’s roles in 1899.  At the time, opera was a travelling proposition, as the Met was new.  If you enjoy books by C.S. Harris, Anna Lee Huber or Dianne Freeman, check this one out. read more