Last fall, trapped at home and dreaming of flying far away—anywhere!—I picked up Hostage. I thoroughly enjoyed Mackintosh’s previous books, especially her first two, and was hopeful this too would be diverting. Two days later, having alienated everyone I encountered—I did not want to be disturbed about anything that wasn’t definitively urgent—I put down this…
Mysteries set in small Southern towns specialize in stripping away the idyllic image of sunshine-laden streets filled with scenes of saccharine sweetness, and showing the dark, eerie underbelly of betrayal and murder that lie beneath. We Are All the Same in the Dark is an excellent example of this sub-genre. One night changed their lives….
Chris Bohjalian explores the delicate nature of human survival in his latest novel The Red Lotus. A tale of antibiotic resistant contagions, epidemics and the horrors of biological weapons, this book will have you cheering exterminators as the greatest heroes of our time. They work in the same building but it takes a shooting for…
Completely addictive, riveting, and engaging, The Sun Down Motel is the latest supernatural thriller from Simone St. James. A dual timeline tale of two women thirty-five years apart looking for answers to a series of disappearances, it contains the eerie, haunted tone I expect from this author’s work together with an excellent, engrossing mystery which…
I love books about secret societies, so I was beyond excited to get my hands on a copy of Katie Lowe’s début novel The Furies. It takes place at an elite New England boarding school, and chronicles one girl’s quest to be accepted by the other students. Unfortunately, the execution of the story did not…
Every Stolen Breath is a tense, taut thriller about life, death and justice. Inspired by the Flash Mob violence in Chicago in 2011, this eerie whodunit examines just how far we’ll go in memory of the ones we love. She’s the least likely sleuth in the world. Suffering from both debilitating asthma and PTSD from…
A gun-slinging young woman battling magic-wielders and fellow gunman alike in a wild west setting on an altered historical timeline. Count us in, right? An Easy Death promises everything I could ever want in a book. It only kind of delivers, though. In this first entry of Charlaine Harris’ new Gunnie Rose series, Lizbeth Rose,…
I’ve heard great things about the writing of author Kate Moretti from a number of people whose reading tastes are pretty similar to my own, and I even went so far as to purchase a couple of her books. Somehow, I never got around to reading them, even though their synopses look extremely intriguing. Since…
Fans of fast paced, action-based science fiction novels will find a lot to enjoy in Obscura. The tale of a spooky ship, a creepy mystery and a stalwart heroine, this book is a quick and easy read. It begins with an accident. Gillian Ryan is in the car with her husband when the culmination of…
Earlier this year, I read and very much enjoyed Megan Miranda’s A Perfect Stranger. So when Fragments of the Lost, a psychological thriller for young adults, became available for review, I was eager to get my hands on it. I’m a huge fan of young adult literature, and the synopsis seemed interesting so I dove…