The second book in the Lamplight Murder Mysteries series changes the location from an inn to a train. The setup is remarkably similar. Huntress Isabeau Agarwal boards a train at the last minute, the very last minute, to ensure the safety of the passengers to their destination. She doesn’t know […]
In Transcendence, Alexis Ferelli is a widower with a normal life with a young girl, Luna, and a supportive boyfriend, Jack. She’s a masseuse in the Pacific Northwest. Her life is humming along until her sister, Linda, asks her to attend a seance. Against her better judgment, she agrees to […]
Amelia Clark is a homeschooled twelve-year-old girl who travels with her developer father when he goes on site to build a new housing project. In this case, she’s temporarily housed in a small town of Blacktree while her father builds a luxury resort on the edge of town next to […]
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 […]