

Review of Etiquette & Espionage (Finishing School #1) by Gail Carriger
The first in the author's young adult steampunk Finishing School series offers wonderful, typically strong Carriger women with unique...
Jul 9, 2025


Review of Harmattan Season by Tochi Onyebuchi
I was taken with the premise of conflicts and mystery in a post-colonial West African city, but I didn't feel very connected to or...
Jun 10, 2025


Review of The Strange Case of Jane O. by Karen Thompson Walker
Walker offers an unreliable main protagonist, her dedicated new psychiatrist, increasingly inexplicable and complicated occurrences, and...
May 27, 2025


Review of I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman
Harpman's slim novel poses a mysterious situation without promising concrete explanations. Our main protagonist knows little about her...
May 22, 2025


Review of Murder by Memory (Dorothy Gentleman #1) by Olivia Waite
The playful tone and clever main protagonist in Olivia Waite's science-fiction novella make for an appealing mystery and lay the...
May 13, 2025


Review of Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaughy
Mysteries abound within McConaghy's Wild Dark Shore , but the story is largely an atmospheric story of isolation and loss set against the...
Apr 24, 2025


Review of Saltwater by Katy Hays
The glamorous setting of Capri is the star of Saltwater . I struggled to care about the characters' sense of life-and-death stakes...
Apr 17, 2025


Review of The Life We Bury (Joe Talbert #1) by Allen Eskens
The pacing of The Life We Bury built from slow and steady to a whirlwind. It always seemed clear that we would have clean resolutions to...
Apr 16, 2025


Review of The Child Finder (Naomi Cottle #1) by Rene Denfeld
I love a frigid setting, and Rene Denfeld's The Child Finder immerses the reader in an icy, wild forest as instinctive, savvy, and...
Apr 10, 2025


Review of Kills Well with Others (Killers of a Certain Age #2) by Deanna Raybourn
Killers of a Certain Age was darkly funny, action-packed, feminist, and friend-focused. I love the second installment's return to my...
Apr 2, 2025


Review of Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall
In Hall's Broken Country , characters do their duties, find wondrous love, feel heartbreak, suffer tragedies, sometimes act impulsively,...
Apr 1, 2025


Review of Famous Last Words by Gillian McAllister
The author of the fantastic Wrong Place, Wrong Time is back with a smart, twisty mystery that's wonderfully heavy on character...
Mar 20, 2025


Six of My Favorite Mystery Reads of the Year
Six Great Bossy Mystery Reads I didn't read as many mysteries last year as I typically do, but here are six of my favorites. I'm hoping...
Feb 21, 2025


Review of The Bletchley Riddle by Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin
This middle-grade writing collaboration inserts a clever young protagonist into the behind-the-scenes World War II British codebreaking...
Feb 6, 2025


Review of Death at the Sign of the Rook (Jackson Brodie #6) by Kate Atkinson
Atkinson's cozy, Agatha Christie-style novel features former lawman Jackson Brodie, a mystery within a mystery, a real-life killer who...
Jan 16, 2025


Review of The Resurrectionist by A. Rae Dunlap
Dunlap's debut novel explores early Edinburgh surgical schools, questionable methods of obtaining study subjects, a main protagonist's...
Jan 14, 2025


Review of Voyage of the Damned by Frances White
Frances White's debut is a locked-room mystery on a magical ship full of uncertain alliances, deadly vendettas, and a sassy and...
Jan 3, 2025


Review of Pines (Wayward Pines #1) by Blake Crouch
In the first book of Blake Crouch's haunting mystery trilogy, secret agent Ethan Burke tries to grasp the shifts in time, widespread...
Nov 21, 2024


Review of Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll
Knoll's novel was inspired by real events; Bright Young Women traces a serial killer targeting young women and in the character of...
Oct 16, 2024


Review of The Trap (Alias Emma #3) by Ava Glass
In the third Emma Makepeace novel, British spy Emma goes rogue in order to save world leaders and prevent an assassination at the hands...
Sep 19, 2024
