Ah, here is Ava Barry’s Windhall, a deliciously dark murder mystery about the golden age of Hollywood. Back then, a leading lady’s dead body is discovered in her equally famous director’s rose garden. He’s charged with murder, but the case is thrown out before the trial, and the director vanishes. Now, sixty-nine years later, another woman …
Published originally in 1932, and said to be the first detective novel by an African-American author, this witty, shrewdly plotted whodunit (recently reissued) was penned by Rudolph Fisher, a New York City radiographer, short-story writer, and musician, active in the Harlem Renaissance. It tosses us onto the hectic scene of a nighttime slaying, the victim …
I met Rob Phillips a few weeks ago. He had on a mask. So, I might not be able to recognize him on the street after COVID-19. I have, however, read his Yakima Herald Republic column for years. I love the comfortable way he writes, never exuding the expert outdoorsman vibe that keeps others from …
I have been reading books since the early 1950s and reviewing/posting the reviews for the past decade. I do not know how I missed Blake Pierce for all of those years. I have just read book one in the European Voyage Cozy Mystery series entitled Murder (and Baklava). It has two components that I am …
If you thought Horowitz’s Magpie Murders (2017) was circuitously plotted, wait till you see the puzzles offered in this closely connected sequel. We return here to the company of Susan Ryeland, the London book editor who solved the slaying of one of her authors, Alan Conway, in the previous mystery. Now living in Crete, where she runs …
Author Pam Stucky is joined by booksellers from Madison Books (James Crossley), Queen Anne Book Company (Tegan Tigani), and Ballast Book Company (Suzanne Droppert) to discuss why and how we can support our local bookstores, especially now in this difficult pandemic season. Local bookstores have been facing growing challenges for several years, but the pandemic …
From the recommendations of bookseller and kids’ author Rosanne Parry, here are three middle grade novels perfect for 9- to 14-year-olds: The Artifact Hunters by Janet Fox is like Harry Potter set in a magical school in Scotland. But, unlike Harry Potter, the characters travel through time in an attempt to solve real historical problems and keep the dangers of the …
A wedding invitation you definitely might want to decline! Foley follows in the footsteps of Agatha Christie with a remote setting of an island off the coast of Ireland and explosive secrets between spouses, siblings, and guests you can’t wait to discover. With lives and reputations at stake, who doesn’t want a front row seat? …
Fifty years after publishing his first novel—the wonderful Wobble to Death, about murder during a Victorian race walking competition—British author Lovesey returns to the sports world in this 19th mystery starring Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond. In the run-up to Bath, England’s spring half-marathon, we’re introduced to Maeve Kelly, a usually non-athletic schoolteacher, who’s training for this …
I love Donna Leon’s Brunetti mysteries! To me, her latest, Trace Elements, is one of her more “Italian” stories. There is a lot about the canals of Venice and Venetian politics, as well as a mystery that starts with the deathbed whisper, “They killed him. It was bad money. I told him no.” –Wendy B., …
