fiction
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The magnanimous patriarch, the gracious widow, the glittering professional, the glamorous vamp, the girlish ingénue… Colonel Hadrian Russell is an institution in the Britannia, keeping court in the London club where he is presiding as acting club president. Almost as famous as the Colonel are his four sons’ widows, Lady Alice, forever in widow’s black,…
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A True Crime Podcast-style Book Review The year is 1952. The location is Broadhinny, England, and it is early in the morning. Mrs. McGinty gets up from her chair, rising slowly as her rheumatism is beginning to catch up with her knees now that she is 65 years old. She finishes the last of her…
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Two months ago, her life had been safe. Simple. Maybe even dull. She’d thought kale smoothies were daring. Gabriella Heart, known as Gabby, is busy sending her daughter off to graduate school when her mother is hospitalised after a bad fall. Rushing back home, Gabby is shocked to find her mother’s health is much worse…
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The first sign of trouble came disguised as gossip. Like a curl of smoke, it slipped through my bookshop’s half-open windows with meandering confidence, snaking its way through the Latin Quarter. When the rich and prominent Fournier, owner of the glamorous Maison Fournier department store in Paris, dies under very public circumstances right after having…
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Book 1 in the River Cruise Cozies series. Adelle is retired and bored, so when her friend asks her for help, she agrees to cover for her as a tour host for a small group of women going on a river cruise from Budapest to Amsterdam. She is looking forward to meeting new people, but…
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Ad/PR. My January reading was dominated by great debut novels, from Tudor-era action in A Bastard’s Bosworth to delicious Japanese food in The Kamogawa Food Detectives, gothic Holmesian mystery in the early 1900s with Strange Beasts, a character-driven crime drama in Blood Between Us, colonialism and identity in A Memory Called Empire, strong women, representation…
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“Fenway,” Nathaniel Ferris said, putting on his pontificating voice, “with me as your father, people are always going to think you’re in my pocket…” When Fenway Stevenson loses both her mother and her job, she reluctantly accepts her estranged father’s offer of an apartment and a temporary job as a coroner in Estancia, her old…
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Her mother had never visited Elkhorn Slough. And no one had ever been murdered there. But there was a first time for everything. Mother-daughter murder night, is what Beth and her mother Lana would call it when they would relax together, watching detective shows in bed all evening. Now Beth is living a quiet life…
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There was nothing safe; there were only gradations of exposure to danger. Mahit Dzmare is the newly appointed ambassador to the Teixcalaanli Empire. Coming from a small, independent mining Station, Mahit’s diplomatic mission is to try to ensure that the Empire allows the Station to continue to stay independent while still allowing for trade and travel…
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“Haven’t we always looked out for each other, Hep? Helped each other?” When Hep Anderssen’s older brother Bill unexpectedly shows up at her door one night, claiming that he has hit a deer on the road, Hep does what she always does and helps him keep his accident a secret. But when news of a…
Mostly Murders 