Sheri Cobb South’s new release is a gently charming novel – not surprising since Ms. South is known for her wry humor. What is surprising is that this funny and sweet book is a murder mystery. I’ve worked in a mystery bookstore for years and have been reading mysteries for even longer, and yes, many…
Can I just say “wow”? Equal parts paranormal, historical fiction, and kick-butt thriller, The Historian is a rare thing – a “literary” novel that doesn’t read like one. What I mean by that – and I’m just being honest here – is that even though the author’s prose is sophisticated, her story complex, and the…
I really like the title of this book: The Cobra and the Concubine. The cover illustration is nice, too, and the book is action-packed and never dull. And if you’re a person who only likes to read positive things in reviews, you might want to stop there. It is the 1890s in Egypt, where the…
A young woman, left at the altar by her vanished fiancé, is forced to become a teacher when her family suffers a major financial loss. Years later, while traveling to another position, she meets up with her ex-betrothed, now a nobleman. Does this sound like any number of Regency romances you’ve read? Well, when the…
Brenda Joyce’s latest novel is a strangely compelling blend of mystery and melodrama. This is the kind of book where analyzing its pros and cons wouldn’t really describe the overall effect of reading it. For all its flaws – and there are plenty of them – it remains a compulsively readable story. Deadly Promise is…
I am not a very big mystery reader, mostly because the journey is more important to me than the end result. But Still Life with Murder, the first of a new historical mystery series by romance author Patricia Ryan, managed to engage me as a mystery and as a character study. The mystery unfolds as…
Diana Gabaldon writes in her introduction to Lord John and the Private Matter that she referred to the book as a “short story” until her agents (quite correctly) informed her that at 301 pages, a Gabaldon short story is the length of most books. That observation, I think, might be the key to understanding this…
How many authors could write a mystery series featuring a madam running a brothel and paying rent to the Catholic Church in 12th century London? And how many of those could turn around and begin a new series starring Lucrezia Borgia? And in both cases make those characters sympathetic and their stories intriguing? One of…
New-to-me authors and series are always fun to try, so I looked forward to Deadly Caress, which had the added attraction of being set in New York in 1902, a different and interesting setting. Brenda Joyce creates a world that’s easy to get sucked into, but my enthusiasm waned considerably because of problems with the…
In addition to creating the Regency sub-genre, Georgette Heyer also wrote modern mysteries, usually peopled by characters from the same upper class featured in her Regencies. Ms. Heyer did not combine the two genres into one (there are some slight mysteries contained in the Regencies, but nothing that warrants the “mystery” tag), but Kate Ross…
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