V.M. Burns: The Next Deadly Chapter

Mystery Bookshop #10

In V. M Burns’ mystery bookshop series, Samantha Washington, who prefers to go by Sam, owns a bookstore in Michigan and is a recent publisher of her own cozy mystery. Thanks to the support from her grandmother, Nana Jo, and her friends from the Shady Acres Retirement Village. Sam has not only written about murder, but has solved a few as well, including one where the ever ornery and confrontational Sheriff Brad Pitt, or Stinky Pitt as they prefer to call him, ended up in her debt, much to his horror and embarrassment. Sam has also recently become engaged to her friend and former investigator Frank Patterson. It really does seem that Sam’s life is looking up, even with the murders she keeps helping to solve. read more

Harini Nagendra: Murder Under a Red Moon

The second novel in Harini Nagendra’s charming series featuring new bride and fledgling detective, Kaveri Murthy, finds Kaveri struggling to get along with her mother in law, Bhargavi.  When Bhargavi asks Kaveri as a favor to look into an embezzlement at her cousin’s husband’s factory, she reluctantly agrees, even though she feels unqualified to take on this job.  When she goes to meet her mother in law’s cousin at the factory, the two women enter the factory, and find the man dead.  Somehow Nagendra manages to make this almost expected death shocking and terrible, and Kaveri is caught up in taking the grieving woman back home and getting her settled. Now that the embezzlement has turned to murder, Kaveri knows she wants to investigate. read more