🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 A mesmerizing Nordic mystery, uniquely premised, cleverly plotted, and impossible to put down. Agnes Glin, our third-person-POV narrator, is twenty-seven years old and has lived her entire life in California, although her heritage on her father’s side is Icelandic. Agnes, with her white-blond hair, is still reeling from a…
🌟🌟🌟💫 Both an examination of the intensity of the trials of new motherhood, and a Martha-Vineyards-based mystery, this book only partially scores on both fronts. Brynn Nelson, our third person POV (and somewhat unreliable) narrator, is in her early thirties, and has not quite felt like herself since the birth…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 An extremely well-executed thriller, riveting in parts, with a shocker of an ending this reader absolutely did not see coming. The story is told in two timelines: the first occurring in 1998 when a trio of girls, students at Southern State University in North Carolina, go missing. Our first…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 Wow. Layered with so many velvety bands of literary texture and nuance, this is an absorbing, mesmerizing, haunting read, leading the reader deep into the hidden lives of two families, — the stories untold, the fears blindly enacted, the words not spoken but festering, for years, and even decades,…
🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 If living (vicariously) on a small island community, ensconced with colorful neighbors, your local pub, a whole lot of baking, tea, and of course, whiskey, calls out to you — consider now adding a spirited mystery, an intricate and engaging plot, and a cast of characters you will want…
🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 An enthralling read by the Icelandic author Ragnar Jonasson, the first of his that this reader has experienced, but certainly not to be the last. This sequel to “The Darkness” can be read and enjoyed successfully as a standalone novel, (as I did,) with the loss of some backstory…
🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 The first I’ve read in this immensely popular series, featuring Lt Eve Dallas, — this will definitely not be the last. With an appeal that crosses genres, this story is as much about Dallas and her “tribe” - beginning with her ongoing romance with her spouse, the mega-rich and…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 A complex story of crime, revenge, and, underneath it all, love of the highest order, written by one of my all-time favorite authors, that is so slowly-building immersive it will take a mind-muddled reader a heroic effort to shift sticky gears back to “real” life. Book 2 in the…
🌟🌟🌟🌟 Written with her customary finesse, this is an author that always proves impeccable. With this, a typically densely-plotted, engrossing mystery, and #11 in the Vera series, we are back with all our favorite characters, and a new one to size up, at the same time. As DI Vera Stanhope…
🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 Peppered with the author's signature dry (and often laugh-out-loud) humour, this is PI Jackson Brodie, former cop and always wise guy, at his most unflappable. Hired to track a stolen painting, lifted from a country estate by a mysterious woman who just may have many more crimes up her…