🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 This charming cozy mystery is clever, engaging and a tweak on the typical murder-in-an-exotic-location trope. With the madcap moodiness, sinister undercurrent, and dreamy gelato-soaked Italian-esque setting of the fabulous (and slyly referenced) “White Lotus”, this story is coupled with main characters who are themselves mystery authors, including (and a…
Second in the Paradise Cafe series, this is another interesting, enjoyable read, with a likable heroine, an evocative setting in Depression-era 1936 Toronto, and not one, but two mysteries to solve. When Charlotte Frayne, PI, is hired to investigate the suspicious suicide of a severely disfigured veteran, she must confront…
🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 A funny and captivating murder mystery, featuring a quartet of octogenarians who are as charming as they are quick-witted. Companions at the luxurious Coopers Chase Retirement village - Joyce, Elizabeth, Ibrahim and Ron, our main protagonists - enjoy wine, gin and tonics, gossiping, and sunshine as they contemplate life…
🌟🌟🌟 1/2 An interesting premise, - part competitive cozy-baking tv show, cleverly merged with an Agatha-Christie-like murder mystery. Like the characterizations it is based on, this book has a “folksy niceness”, a clean demarcation of the main players, (each with their idiosyncrasies, secrets, and struggles), and a twisty plot to…
🌟🌟🌟🌟1/2 A cozy, crazy tapestry of lives and loves, heartfelt friends, caring onlookers and the others, the-not-so-kind, who are willing to cross the line to make their lives that little bit of better. Based in the Yorkshire town of Thirsk, and told in the the voices of three retired primary-school…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 Mma Precious Ramotswe, Botswana-based owner of the longest established, most reputable and only local detective agency entirely run by ladies, is back in fine form in this latest installment of the always-wonderful #1LadiesDetectiveAgency series. With her gentle goodness, old-school Botswanan morality and “ability to see the whole thing as…
🌟🌟🌟🌟 An absorbing and chatty Scottish-based mix of Agatha Christie meets Emmerdale, this is the first of the Dr. Cathy Moreland series I have had the pleasure to read - a situation I would like to remedy quickly. Dr. Cathy is an earnest, sincere woman, a somewhat-frazzled GP who knows…
🌟🌟🌟🌟 A brand new mystery series - featuring an odd and endearing trio of female sleuths, together forming one of the most unlikely crime-solving agencies (code named the SeeMs) you are likely to meet between the pages. Cat Harrington : multi-lingual, very tall, 60-ish, is a “tiger-mother” of a woman,…
🌟🌟🌟🌟 1/2 Molly Gray is a charming “old soul”, someone we would likely recognize as on the autism spectrum were we to meet her, who lives her life by a closely-held moral code largely based on back-in-the-day wisdoms taught to her by her much-loved Gran. Abandoned as an infant and…
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 1/2 Set in the charming village of Thirsk, Yorkshire , when three retired primary school teachers, (Thelma, Pat and Liz), are faced with the suspicious death of a friend, Topsy, they reluctantly take up the task of uncovering the “ordinary evil” lurking beneath the unassuming facade of their quiet…