Nature

Ann Cleeves: The Raging Storm

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Two Rivers #3

Ann Cleeves goes from strength to strength.  The third novel in her Matthew Venn series finds Matthew investigating a crime in a village he’d visited as a child. The book opens with the raging storm of the title, and no one is better than Ann Cleeves at setting the stage using nature as a backdrop.  The coastal town where the story takes place gets a “callout” – the volunteer coast guard heads out to see what’s up with an abandoned boat in the middle of a storm.  They find the boat, and inside, the body of a man. read more

Alice Henderson: A Solitude of Wolverines

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This book will be published October 27, 2020.

If this book isn’t the birth of a long running series, I would be stunned.  A definite relative of Nevada Barr’s long running and beloved Anna Pidgeon series, Alice Henderson has created an adventure suspense mystery with a foundation in the natural world.  While Anna Pigeon is a parks ranger, Alex Carter is a biologist who studies endangered species in their dwindling habitats.  Like Anna, however, Alex is definitely a bad ass.

Proving her hand with action scenes, the book opens with Alex attending an event celebrating the saving of a natural habitat within a city.  Her discovery of over a hundred species of birds who called the area home has prompted the city of Boston to create a protected space, upsetting plans for a development project.  Alex is due to be interviewed by a TV reporter – during the interview the two women are shot at and while Alex escapes, she is traumatized by the incident. read more

Margaret Mizushima: Hanging Falls

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This novel will be published on September 8.  You can pre-order it here.

Margaret Mizushima must have been a fan of Nancy Drew as a child, as she has the narrative gift familiar to lovers of Carolyn Keene of leaving a little cliff hanger at the end of each chapter (or novel, as the case may be).  I love series fiction for many reasons, but a big reason is visiting and checking in with the continuing lives of characters I’ve come to know and love, just as I loved checking in with Nancy, George and Bess when I was a girl. read more