Minotaur Books

Vikki VanSickle: The Mystic and the Missing Girl

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Vikki VanSickle has had a long career as a children’s author (and bookseller), and this is her first foray into the world of adult mystery writing.  As I read the book I was thinking “this is kind of like a grown up version of Nancy Drew,” and after reading VanSickle’s biography, it makes sense. The main character, Drew Benson, has inherited her Aunt Hannah’s metaphysical shop, as well as the building it was housed in, which includes an apartment.  Like many another cozy heroine, Drew has returned back home to find herself after a mainly unsatisfying job in the city. read more

Louise Penny: Miss Wolcott’s Ghost

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Chief Inspector Gamache #21

It’s been a while.  I wasn’t a huge fan of the last two Gamache books, or of the more recent thriller co-written with Melissa Fung, but with Miss Wolcott’s Ghost Louise Penny has returned to the form that has made me a giant supporter of her work.  I’ll never forget the spell put on me by her first novel, Still Life, and that reading rapture was gifted to me again with this book.  When I hit the three-quarter mark, I was glued to the pages and didn’t leave my chair. read more

Mariah Fredericks: Murder on 34th Street

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What Fredricks has put under the tree for her readers this year is an instant Christmas classic, the kind of book you might reach for every December – but only if your taste runs to a few murder victims in Santa’s bag.  Set in 1932, main character Grace Verlander is in charge of much of the big Macy’s Thanksgiving day parade, an event as big in 1932 as it is today.  Her biggest headache is that someone has threatened Santa Claus, and she must do everything she can to keep the big fellow safe despite the chaos of the parade. read more

Ann Cleeves: The Dying Light

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Matthew Venn #4

Over a forty year writing career, Ann Cleeves has emerged as one of the very best traditional mystery writers around.  With three very well regarded series to her credit, Shetland, Vera, and Matthew Venn, she’s achieved something few writers are capable of: creating several discrete casts of characters who differ from each other, yet remain individual and memorable.   Her latest features Matthew Venn, a gay Detective Inspector in Devon, who, despite being shunned by his religious parents when he lost his faith, now lives very happily with his husband, the chill and patient Jonathan, the two of them comprising one of the nicest couples in mystery fiction. read more

Tasha Alexander: Murder on the Sacred River

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Lady Emily #20

Murder on the Sacred River is the twentieth novel in Tasha Alexander’s series about Lady Emily Hargreaves, an unconventional English noblewoman in the late 19th-early 20th century, and her handsome husband Colin, a secret agent for the British government.  Long-time readers of the series will know that Emily and Colin have traveled all over the world, and that each book—at least, the ones that don’t take place in England—has a different setting.  This one takes place in India in 1908.  The beginning of the book finds Emily and Colin staying with a group of British tourists at the Ahilya Fort in Maheshwar.  This fort was built in the 18th century by the maharani Ahilya (full name: Ahilyabai Holkar), a ruling queen who was, and still is, revered for improving the lot of the common people of her kingdom, especially women.  As usual with Alexander, Emily’s adventures are intertwined with a plot set in the more distant past, and in this book it’s the story of Ahilya, and how she came to rule her kingdom. read more

Hank Phillippi Ryan: Mother Daughter Sister Stranger

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Nearly twenty books in, accomplished pro Hank Phillippi Ryan can keep you entertained, squeeze your heart, make you cry, give you a bit of a scare and make the whole darn thing look easy.  But this one achieves just a little bit more, with the characters so beautifully delineated, and the family tensions and problems that gives the plot its legs so poignant, that the book had me aching to actually reach into the pages and help the compelling characters in some way.

Ryan always has a great set up – here Eliza is caring for niece Piper for a week while her sister Bea takes some time away from it all after a divorce. The problems start when the day comes for Bea to collect Piper and she doesn’t show up. At first the family rationalizes that Bea must have gotten the wrong day. The following day is the annual family “remembrance day,” when Eliza, Bea and Piper go to the cemetery to visit the grave of Eliza and Bea’s parents, who died in a plane crash many years back. Since they know Bea packed an appropriate remembrance day dress, they conclude Bea must mean to meet them there, so they head over the next morning, but, again she’s a no show. read more

Kate Westbury: The Oxford Guide to Scandal and Lies

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Debut

Set in Oxford in 1951, this delightful first novel features an opposites attract type couple, Ginevra Bishop and Simon Braithwaite.  Bishop, Gin to her friends, is a well connected redhead familiar with the upper crust boys who have joined her at Oxford.  Simon Braithwaite, on the other hand, is a clever working-class veteran damaged by the war who has come to the campus in order to escape his ghosts (what we would now recognize as PTSD).

At that time, the after effects of the war remained inescapable, with both the student body and the faculty staffed with war veterans, all of them struggling with their own nightmare memories. As the book opens, Gin, searching for a study spot in the crowded Bodleian library, asks her favorite librarian, Tolliver, for a tip, and ends up next to a hostile and inhospitable Simon. Meeting cute, the two glare at one another over the top of their research tomes, and so far, so cozy.  It’s only when Simon and Gin discover the body of sweet old Tolliver at the moment he’s drawing his final breath that things take a slightly darker turn.  It’s murder, and the pair are soon recruited by British intelligence. read more

Donna Andrews: Probable Caws

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Meg Lanslow #39

After 27 years, 40 books, and unprecedented number of punny bird titles, the Meg Langslow series remains fresh and entertaining as ever. #40 (Jay to the World) will be released in time for Christmas and #39 (Probable Caws) is available now. In Probable Caws Meg and her family are helping retired heavy metal drummer Ragnar Ragnarsen cope with temporarily housing fifty horses from Hoof and Hearth rescue on his estate.

Why move the horses? Able Abernathy, who owns the farm where Hoof and Hearth is based, has just lost his father who apparently died intestate. That means Able does not technically own the farm and his co-inheritor brother George’s only interest in the farm is selling it for a profit. Did George to try harm the horses so his brother would move them off the farm, making it easier to sell? Is there a missing will that might prevent the sale of the farm? And when there’s a murder at Ragnar’s farm, is it related to the horses, the dispute over the farm, or something else? read more

Cate Conte: Purranormal Activity

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Cat Cafe #10

Maddie James has added a new service to JJ’s House of Purrs cat café on Daybreak Island, MA: a mobile cat café for parties. When client Olivia McAllister sets up a meeting to plan a dual birthday party for her daughter and granddaughter, Maddie soon learns that Olivia was her mother’s best friend when they were teenagers – and that Olivia mysteriously disappeared decades ago.

When Maddie and her mom arrive at Olivia’s house to discuss party plans, they find the door ajar and no sign of Olivia. Fearing the worst, they enter the house and find a cat who leads them to Olivia’s dead body. Who could want the grandmother dead? Is her death related to her mysterious disappearance as a teen? What about the rumors that the city wants her historical home for a museum? Could her family disagree with her secret plans to turn their ancestral home into a B&B? Is the cat the ghost cat of Daybreak Island and does it really herald life-changing events? read more

Elizabeth Penney: Dungeons and Danger

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Ravensea Castle #2

Above the village of Monkwell, Yorkshire, sits Ravensea Castle, home of the Asquith family since 1138. The current family includes herbalist Nora, her sister popular TV actress Tamsyn, mead-brewer brother Will, amateur historian and father Arthur, Rolf the English Mastiff, Ruffian the cat, and several ghosts, including the ghost of ancestor Sir Percival. What more could one ask for in a castle-turned-B&B?

It’s almost Halloween and Will is hosting a Viking Fest at the castle to promote his mead. Hundreds of visitors in Viking costumes turn up, along with actual B&B guests: a history professor (with the hilariously appropriate name of Tweedy) and a group of ghost hunters filming an episode of Britain’s Got Ghosts (just in time for ghostly Halloween appearances). Tweedy convinces Arthur to let him search Ravensea for a lost Viking treasure while the ghost hunters hope to capture images of the ghost of Rusla, a Viking shield maiden known to haunt the battlements. read more