Best of: History Mystery 2022

One reason I love historical mystery fiction so much is that the characters are operating without technology – they are using old fashioned deductive reasoning to solve their cases.  This year there was an incredible variety of wonderful work to choose from, embracing periods from just pre-WWII America in both the Southwest and in LA; to the East Coast in the 50’s; to Ohio in the 20’s; to Emily Dickinson and her maid investigating a crime close to home.  And of course there are some new installments of some always excellent series fiction, as well as two break outs with first in series books. read more

January Book Club: A Bend of Light

Our January book club will meet on zoom on Sunday, January 22, at 2 p.m.  We’ll be discussing Joy Jordan-Lake’s A Bend of Light.  Publisher’s description: A quiet coastal village in post–World War II America is shaken when the secrets of the past and present collide in a riveting novel by the bestselling author of Under a Gilded Moon.

Five years after the war, Amie Stilwell, a photo interpreter for an Allied unit in England, returns to her hometown in Maine. Jobless and discouraged but stubbornly resourceful, she’s starting over in the same coastal village where her life once went so wrong. Waiting for her is Shibby Travis, the surrogate mother with whom Amie never lost touch. But the unexpected also awaits… read more