For me, Stu Turton’s The Seven and a Half Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle was a revolution in detective stories. It combined science fiction with mystery in a fascinating way and earned its six stars out of five. His followup, The Devil and the Dark Water, was a disappointment. With a […]
Murder at Spindle Manor is a dark fantasy and gaslamp mystery. While mysterious elements aren’t new in gaslamp novels, this novel takes the step into true detective fiction. The setup is a classic whodunnit. A group of people have come to a “hotel” outside of a large city while taking […]
Olivia Gratehouse’s Rat King takes a familiar fantasy plot and puts the most unusual hero in the center of it—a goblin. Rat King (or RK) is a lowly guard for an elven vampiric lady. She is visited by an adventurer named Teagan who often interacts with the lady of the […]
Havok’s Remember When takes on a journey through the calendar, presenting stories set in specific times of the year. This anthology of flash fiction (1000 words or less) gives us bite-sized tales of time periods (in this case, months) and seasons. I always consider the theme when I rate a […]
Swish by Tom Carter is a paranormal romance (PNR) for young adult readers. Adopted by her uncle, Abigail Lewis is bullied at high school. With only one friend, Abby suffers mean-spirited pranks at school and physical abuse at home. Her life seems bleak until she meets a new neighborhood boy, […]
Paula Chaffee Scardamalia’s The Tempting Voice is a romance about a hidden Greek mythological world that co-exists with ours. The novel explores the tropes of forbidden love, personal achievement, the positive and negative of family, and monstrous enemies. The novel alternates point-of-view between two main characters – Nik and Marie […]
Grandfather’s Whispers, a novel by Stacy N. Elliott, examines in prose the burden that some of us bear through life. The novel is a magical realism story about Sarah, a seventeen-year-old girl, and her grandfather, Ralph. A group of raucous boys start off Sarah’s day by running her off the […]
C. Rae D’Arc’s Dead and Back Again series chronicles the life of private investigator Aeron Spade, also known as Earl Aeron Fromm, the Haunted, of Margen. He lives in the magical world of Novel where each “land” represents a literary genre. For example, on the map “Fantasy” exists across the […]
I’ve read several H.L. Burke’s novels before, including the excellent Heart of Curiosity, so I looked forward to her steampunk adventure of Nyssa Glass in the House of Mirrors. I had never read any of the other Nyssa Glass offerings and was intrigued by the title. This steampunk novella met […]
Benjamin Stevenson wins the award for most eye-catching title in recent memory for Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone. Admit that pairing this wordy title with a murder mystery has to intrigue mystery bibliophiles everywhere. But what’s in a name, or title? Does this book hold up beyond its […]