Latest Reviews
Angelica Glass spent decades as a social worker helping families struggling with poverty, addiction, abuse and neglect. Needing relief from work-related stress, she turned to walking as an outlet. What began as a way to incorporate more exercise into her busy life transformed into something extraordinary: a years-long odyssey in which Glass drew upon physical exercise, a close observation of the natural world, and long periods of introspection to reconcile with her own past. Between moments of awe as she explored her community and documented what she saw with her camera, she grappled with the turmoil of her early years in a complicated, challenging family, the aging process, long-held insecurities and grief.
Martha’s Vineyard, 1923. The sea was the gift that kept on giving to Lena Jameson’s father, Earl, a fisherman turned successful rumrunner who built up a small fortune smuggling liquor from offshore ships to thirsty customers back on the island. But when Earl and his entire crew are lost in a mysterious shipwreck that some whisper was no accident, his loved ones are left reeling and penniless. And Lena, who had been on the cusp of a college career in Boston, sees her future slipping away. Desperate to save her family, as well as her own hopes of escaping their small town, Lena decides to take over Earl’s rum-running business. But as buried secrets rise to the surface and the temptations of the glittering underworld pull Lena in deeper, everything she’s fought to protect soon hangs in the balance.
Fred and Thea Morgan-Lane coauthor the wildly successful Death Takes a Holiday series, and they’ve been invited to the Italian castle where it all began for a mystery conference celebrating their first novel, Death Takes the Castle. But 20 years and 20 books after they met, Thea wants out. Shortly after their arrival at the beautiful Castellarosa, a shocking death takes place when the wrong person drinks a cocktail meant for Thea. Could someone be trying to kill her? When a second death occurs, a disturbing pattern emerges. These deaths aren’t random --- they’re following the murders in Death Takes the Castle exactly. In order to save the day --- and maybe even their marriage --- the unhappy couple will have to work together to figure out who is using their book as a blueprint for a killing spree.
Kelly Williams, a private investigator in Nashville, helps women. Her latest client is Sarah Owens, better known as Seraph, the magnetic and polarizing lead singer of the indie sensation The Garden Snakes. After a series of threats turns violent, she hires Kelly to identify her assailant. With feminist anthems, cryptic lyrical Easter eggs, and an electrifying stage presence, Seraph has built a fiercely loyal following --- and attracted a number of critics. At that level of fame, her attacker could be anyone. Then, in the middle of a Nashville performance, Seraph is shot on stage. The ambulance carrying her disappears. As the city reels and conspiracy theories swirl, Kelly is pulled into a dangerous web of secrets involving Seraph’s bandmates, her troubled past, and the high cost of stardom.
The Shadow Step: One taken simultaneously by a pair of dancers facing the same direction, one of them behind and slightly shifted leftwards ("in the shadow"). A perfectly executed shadow step demonstrates synchronized elegance. It showcases a couple in near telepathic harmony with one another. It normally does not end with someone stone-dead in a lake. DS Declan Miller is a magnet for strange cases, but an innocent man confessing to the crime? That’s a first. Things rapidly escalate when the murder that isn’t really a murder attracts the unwanted attention of a drug Queenpin, a deranged ex-squaddie, and a lovesick gangland enforcer. And when a real murder follows --- and a student is kidnapped --- all evidence points back to the same innocent man.
A disgraced intel officer anxious to redeem herself after a disastrous mission, January Holte vows to uncover the identity of a traitor who is selling her agency's secrets. The few clues she's found have led her to a sleepy river town: Lethey, Texas --- and to Bill Connors, the one man who might know the truth. July Whitlock, a rookie bodyguard, searches for his one and only client, who has suddenly disappeared. He follows a trail to Lethey to find his missing protectee: Bill Connors. But Bill's friends and enemies in Lethey have secrets of their own. And as January and July ask questions no one wants to answer, they find a tangled web of murder, greed and ambition --- one that will kill anyone who tries to unravel its mysteries.
Meg Gregory never wanted to return to Tuskin, the small Georgia town in which she grew up. But after her divorce left her wounded, she knew she had to quit running. Now, years later, Meg is bent on hiding from the memories that haunt her. Because she skipped town for a reason, and that reason runs deep. But when Meg's unassuming granddaughter, Lucy, is suddenly charged with the murder of her boyfriend, everything changes. Meg knows Lucy couldn't have done it. As she fights for Lucy's innocence, memories from the past threaten to break free, and she's left to contemplate a different murder, a different dead boy, a different summer under the hot Georgia sun. And soon enough, Meg isn't quite sure what is memory and who is innocent.
Siblings Allison and Luke have been through a lot together. They’ve always stood by each other. They’d do anything for each other. Or so it seems. When Allison’s husband, Finley, is murdered, the investigation threatens to expose the siblings’ darkest secrets. An illicit affair. A decades-old accident. A stunning deception. How do these events explain Finley’s death? How far will Allison and Luke go to keep their secrets buried? And can the siblings even trust one another anymore? As the investigation winds tighter and past and present collide, the most shocking betrayal might lie a little too close to home.
Rebecca Wright is a defense attorney living in the Lower 48 when she suddenly finds herself a widow and an empty nester. In need of a radical change, she accepts a public defender position in Utqiagvik on Alaska’s North Slope. When two well-known sisters, Bernice and Wanda Ipalook, are found murdered, Wright is tasked with representing Amos Lane, a drifter on the short list of murder suspects. Criminal charges are looming. But this is summer in northern Alaska, the season of the midnight sun, when 24-hour sunlight makes it difficult for witnesses to confirm the time --- or even the day --- they last saw anyone. Wright must navigate, among other things, an unreliable client and a prosecution willing to entrap her to get a conviction.
A strange voice from inside the woods, repeating a child’s counting rhyme. A body discovered in the water. Thirty years later, a woman begins receiving a string of anonymous text messages, repeating that same rhyme. Then she disappears. On Valentine’s Day, detectives Naia Thulin and Mark Hess are searching to find the missing woman. But when they uncover links to a decades-old cold case, their investigation takes a terrifying turn. A violent killer is on the loose. Can Hess and Thulin catch them before they strike again?
