THE DEAD CERTAIN DOUBT is a noir gem, peppered with American muscle cars, a hard-drinking hero, and universal life lessons. Ed Earl Burch is a Dallas private eye of a certain age. With an angel on one shoulder and the devil everywhere else, he’s too young to retire,...
In SQUATTER’S RIGHTS by Cheril Thomas, compelling family secrets come with the house. The first book in the Eastern Shores Mysteries introduces us to attorney Grace Reagan, who just bought the huge money pit on Maryland’s rural Eastern Shore where her mother grew up....
I love reading a good mystery as much as I love writing them! Here's what I read this week. A new Hercule Poirot mystery Mystery fans can’t get enough of Agatha Christie’s fussy Belgian detective (cue Sir Kenneth Branagh, please!) and THE MONOGRAM MURDERS shows why....
Debut thriller SWEETLAND takes off like a rocket and never loses speed. Author Dareth Pray is one to watch! Erin Stark is a new kind of female thriller heroine, giving fictional male colleagues like James Reece (THE TERMINAL LIST) and Jack Reacher (BETTER OFF DEAD) a...
A tall frosty glass of Prohibition, ballplayers and mobsters? I drank up a dozen books while researching 1926 for the Galliano Club thriller series. Now that MURDER AT THE GALLIANO CLUB has hit your favorite bookstore, I highly recommend the following: SCARFACE AND...
THE GUILTY DIE TWICE offers a memorable cast of characters, two pivotal crimes, lots of deliciously grubby political machinations, and both sides of the death penalty argument. The writing is both fluid and precise, without (thankfully) lots of legal jargon. The...
Past and present collide in this clever thriller that moves between present-day Naples, Italy, and Berkeley, California in 1969. A NEAPOLITAN INTRIGUE deals with serious topics with a smooth prose and a dab of humor at the right moments. I read it in one day, and...
I’ve been gobbling up the Inspector Ian Rutledge historical mystery series by Charles Todd and A PALE HORSE is a prime example of what makes this post-WWI series so irresistible. You get a travelogue of Great Britain, layers of plot complexity, and a flawed hero who...
I was recently invited to curate a page on Shepherd, a new book discovery website. Warning, this site can easily become your new favorite rabbit hole. Authors are invited to introduce their book at the beginning of a showcase of books similar in genre or theme. I...
I love Goldberg’s Ian Ludlow series, starting with the ridiculously wonderful KILLER THRILLER, in which a nerdy writer repeatedly saves the world, but I was willing to go along for a more serious ride in BONE CANYON. A traditional police procedural, BONE CANYON...
I’ve been roaming Amazon, looking for historical fiction set in the blue collar world of the 1920’s and 30’s and won the prize when I discovered BACK SIDE OF A BLUE MOON, the first book in Caleb Pirtle’s Boomtown Saga trilogy. Part Music Man, part Grapes of Wrath,...
I was already a fan of this author duo’s espionage thrillers but COMMAND and CONTROL by David Bruns and J.R. Olson ratchets up the intensity to truly epic levels. Buckle up, because this a fast-paced thrill ride through an ocean churning with conflict, tech wizardry,...
First off, let me confess that I’m such a fan of the Richard Sharpe historical thriller series that we own ALL of the Sharpe television episodes starring Sean Bean (on video) AND the Sharpe board game which is like Risk but cooler. So I was thrilled that Bernard...
THIEF OF SOULS by Brian Klingborg I love a mystery with a unique plotline in which a crime or a twist (or both!) is only possible because of the setting. And I love an author who pulls me into that setting and makes me experience it in an almost tactile fashion. THIEF...
KILLER THRILLER by Lee Goldberg Action thriller writer Ian Ludlow is at it again in this zany unputdownable page-turner, the sequel to the equally wonderful TRUE FICTION. Like TRUE FICTION, KILLER THRILLER combines an over-the-top plot with author Goldberg’s own...