Chicagoan Gina Ricci takes care of her father, an ailing widower. Money is very tight. Palsy makes it hard for her father to repair broken appliances, a task that increasingly falls to Gina. Her schoolfriend Louise Smith, now bobbed-hair Lulu, tells her about a possible opening for a cigarette girl at The Third Door speakeasy….
Jennifer Ryan’s lovely, gristly, involving mystery about a British matron who becomes an investigator in the wake of a humiliating divorce petition, The Spies of Shilling Lane is a surprisingly cozy mystery that’s presided over by a pushy heroine who’s a touch Miss Marple, a pinch Jessica Fletcher and a whole lot of amusing. The…
Death, passion and good sleuthing combine in Death of a New American, the second instalment in Mariah Fredericks’ Jane Prescott series. It’s 1912, just after the sinking of the Titanic, and the New York-based Benchley family is trying to move on with life as best they can. Mild, plain, older daughter Louise is set to…
I love old Hollywood, its mysteries and its scandals, so The Jean Harlow Bombshell, which focuses on a biographer who was murdered for digging up a fresh secret about the beloved Hollywood star and the assistant left behind to deal with the criminal fall-out seemed a natural fit for me. But while the mystery itself…
Originally published in the UK under the title The Love Letter, Lucinda Riley’s The Royal Secret is finally available to US readers. It’s a novel that’s hard to categorize as it contains elements of romance, mystery, and a touch of historical intrigue, but whatever one chooses to call it, it’s a fast-paced read that’s sure…
Yay! A new historical mystery author with a great start to a series! Death and the Harlot, by Georgina Clarke, is book one in the new Lizzie Hardwicke series and it’s a riveting beginning. Lizzie Hardwicke is one of the luckier harlots in Georgian London; she has a roof over her head, regular meals, decent…
Amanda Quick’s slick, fun mystery series, set in the murder-laden town of Burning Cove in1930s California continues with Tightrope, a story about a former trapeze artist and the hired muscle who soon becomes the only man she can trust. When the book opens, second-generation trapeze artist Amalie Vaughn, the Flying Princess of the Ramsey Circus,…
Sometimes it’s the big picture that draws a person into a story. Combining strong fantasy elements with interesting worldbuilding and character work, The Alchemist of Lost Souls is less interesting for its telegraphed mystery than it is for the richness of its universe, but does not stand well on its own, nor does it contain…
The Lost History of Dreams, Kris Waldherr’s gothic, romantic drama is not a happy book, yet it’s strangely captivating. Former Oxford scholar Robert Highstead has an unusual occupation – photographing corpses and the dying and making them look lifelike as possible. And he has a problem that complicates that profession – he can see ghosts…
Do you love historical romance and/or historical mysteries? Then you should be reading (or listening to) the Sebastian St. Cyr series. Who Slays the Wicked, the fourteenth book in this long-running series is another compelling entry – although it isn’t quite as strong as many of the novels that precede it. As usual, Ms. Harris…