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Review

The Tutor

by Henrietta Thornton

The tutor is Isabel, a young woman who’s just started her new job at a rich Florida private school. Readers know that she’s angling to meet the Caldwells, a family whose son, James, attends the school; we follow along as she visits their palatial home for the first time, snooping while there—but what’s she up to? In the meantime, we meet Evelyn, James’s mean-spirited grandmother. Her daughter-in-law Rose, the female lead here, can’t do anything right, and in Evelyn’s view is a gold digger who needs to be out of the picture. The man between these two women is too busy with his finance work to be of any help, and the situation disintegrates as Isabel reveals the reason she wants to know the Caldwells and Rose finds out that her mother-in-law is rumored to have too many mysterious deaths in her tony circle. With secrets and twists coming fast, not to mention emotional stakes that build to fever pitch, this is psychological fiction at its best.

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Review

The Dead Husband Cookbook

by Dodie Ownes

Maria and Damien Capello hit the big time when they opened their oh-so-chic restaurant Polpette della Nonna in upstate New York. Chef Damien was the darling of the foodie circuit, known for his incredible creations—until his sudden disappearance, officially ruled as a suicide. But since no body was ever found, suspicion abounds, and rumors swirl that Maria had something to do with it. Which might involve a freezer, a cookbook, and a secret ingredient. When publisher Hanes House gets one scant chapter from Maria, promising to tell the real story, junior editor Thea is shocked when she is assigned to the project and whisked off to meet Maria to flesh out the rest of the book, on an extremely tight deadline. Thea’s phone is taken away, wifi access is highly controlled, and as she is doled out one chapter at a time by the enigmatic Maria, with the mystery of the vanishing chef slowly revealed in one delicious twist after another. Nothing is as it appears in the Capello family, and their secrets will soon collide with Thea’s world. With its humor, touch of domestic angst, and possibly unreliable narrators and recipes, foodies who love a good mystery in a kitchen setting will devour this tale.

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Review

How to Talk to Your Dog About Murder

by Jeff Ayers

Nikki Jackson-Ramanathan and her husband, Jai, live in a tiny apartment and get by on his job as a coach for a collegiate mock-trial team and her role as a dog walker and pet behaviorist. She’s asked by rich widow Ruth Van Meer to learn why her dog, Reginald, seems to be less energetic than usual. The rest of the Van Meer family appears petty and vindictive and question why Nikki was hired in the first place. Nikki begins to spend quality time with Reginald, taking him on walks every day, while the family continues to resent her presence. When Mrs. Van Meer is discovered deceased in her bed, the family begins pointing fingers at Nikki after it’s learned that the dead widow left a sizeable amount of money to Nikki to continue caring for Reginald. With the police’s dogged determination to prove Nikki’s guilt, and the eccentric family keeping her on a tight leash, she can’t let sleeping dogs lie and has to solve the murder herself. This engaging cast of quirky characters launches a terrific story that is hopefully the beginning of a series. Readers will also be wondering if Reginald is available to adopt.

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Review

Poison & Pooches

by Brian Kenney

A charming novel with community at its heart. Arial Mayes Kingston has inherited a guest house in Monterey, California. Only in her mid-twenties, Arial turns to the one thing she knows how to do well: walk and sit dogs. O.K., so she is able to drum up only one client: the very handsome Golden named Monty (fans of Laurien Berenson and David Rosenfelt will enjoy meeting Monty). But she is able to make new acquaintances in the neighborhood while walking about with Monty, and Balzo spends plenty of time on character development. In fact, we’re nearly a quarter of the way through the book before a male corpse shows up, discovered, of all places, in the floorboards beneath Arial’s guest house. Fortunately Arial is in the clear—she hadn’t even moved to California when the body had been buried. But boy, talk about an incentive for gossip. Between the local book group, the vet, the neighborhood detective, and several more, we have enough speculation to keep the questions of who killed the victim and who buried him very much alive. When the murderer is finally revealed, it is truly a shock worth waiting for. Looking forward to more from Arial and Monty

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Review

The Sunshine Man

by Brian Kenney

It’s a big day for both Bridget Keller and her old family friend Jimmy Maguire. Jimmy’s being released from notorious English prison Wandsworth, having served decades for the murder of his childhood friend Providence. And Bridget, Providence’s older sister, is on her way to the prison gate to meet Jimmy and kill him. But things aren’t quite right for the attack, so Bridget puts it off…and puts it off…while she tails Jimmy as he visits old haunts, planning to kill him at every stop. As we journey with the ill-fated pair, readers look back at Bridget and Jimmy’s childhoods. Both have been abandoned by their mothers, Bridget physically when her mother took off, Jimmy emotionally as he survives life with his alcoholic mother; “the mister,” an abusive man whom Jimmy just KNOWS isn’t his father; and his small-time-criminal brothers. Nobody expects good from a Maguire. But as readers come to know Jimmy from his friendships, efforts to escape a life of crime, and sometimes-sparkling inner thoughts, it becomes harder to view him as just a criminal. Solid twists add to the emotional uncertainty to create a thought-provoking look at intersecting tough lives and longings for love.

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Review

Just Another Dead Author

by Dodie Ownes

Swedish author Bivald gives readers another delightful twisty tale (following The Murders in Great Diddling) with well-known mystery author Berit Gardner in the lead role, along with a diverse and quirky cast of characters, most of whom are writers, agents, and publishers attending a retreat outside Lyon, France. Against the backdrop of the somewhat dilapidated yet beautiful Chateau des Livres, the envy and adoration amongst the attendees begins to merge, even as they continue to workshop “Dramatic Plot Twists” and “Portrait of a Writer on Fire.” When John Wright, headliner and bestselling author, dies in the front row during Berit’s welcoming address, nearly everyone is a suspect. A series of reveals follows, including two Mrs. Wrights, a partial manuscript, and a kitchen crush. When another particularly annoying attendee is found stabbed, the stakes are raised. With the help of sharp-eyed observers and a DCI Ahmed, a friend from England, Berit and her rep Sarah, who happens to be the daughter of John Wright’s agent, start to work out whom the murderer might be, much to the chagrin of local authority Commissaire Roche. Fans of Kemper Donovan’s Ghostwriter series will eat this up. A fun romp through the publishing industry is icing on the cake!

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Review

Two Truths and a Murder

by Brian Kenney

Phyllida Bright, Agatha Christie’s long-standing housekeeper, close friend, and—with Agatha’s permission—sometime sleuth takes on a local case involving multiple murders. Invited to a dinner party, she’s been asked to help determine whether one of the husbands is guilty of infidelity (he isn’t), but instead observes as the obnoxious Genevra Blastwick, the complete opposite of her shy sister Ethel, forces everyone into playing Two Truths and a Lie, and she herself is quick to claim as one of her truths that she once witnessed a murder. Fact or fiction? In either case, her claim garners her plenty of attention—these days, Genevra would be an influencer of some sort—but it’s not necessarily the attention she wants, as the next morning, reclusive Ethel is discovered to have been run over by an automobile while walking home from the party. Has the murderer killed the wrong sister, “offing” sweet Ethel when they meant to murder big-mouthed Genevra? Set entirely in the countryside, with the supportive Agatha in the background, this novel sees Phyllida taking on an even greater role as an amateur sleuth, with many in the community, especially the service workers, turning to her for help. Add to all this a burgeoning romance that will knock Phyllida and many readers off of their feet, and you have all the makings of one of the best cozies of the year.

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Review

Dark Sisters

by Charlotte Del Vecchio

The small Southern town of Hawthorne Springs holds a dark and twisted history of witchcraft and sin, carried through generations of the women who live there. In this historical thriller, we meet three women whose fates, spanning hundreds of years, have been bound to the magic that flows from this town. Anne Bolton is a healer in 1750 fleeing with her daughter from persecution for witchcraft, placing her faith in a powerful natural entity and encouraging others to do the same. Mary Shepard is a housewife in 1953, entertaining a sapphic affair as an escape from her monotonous life in a restrictive community. Camilla Burson is the defiant daughter of a preacher in 2007, fighting against the community and the church to discover the truth behind the sinister and mysterious disease that plagues the women of Hawthorne Springs and how it connects to the Dark Sisters, a parable of two wayward women that may be all too real. Is there truly a source of magic in this town, or are the Dark Sisters simply a story preachers share to incite fear and keep women in their place? Visit three different time periods as DeMeester addresses generational trauma, cult-like religious practices, and the collective power of women who are willing to take down the patriarchy.

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Review

A Place of Secrets

by Danise Hoover

In a quiet Ontario town, days after Christmas, Evelyn Massey, over 90 years old, is found dead in her home with a note guiding Alice, a local policewoman, to a dead body buried in the basement for more than 60 years. More bodies are found, all from the same time period, with evidence suggesting Evelyn’s long dead husband as the guilty party. He is considered saintly by his daughters and granddaughter and the family friends still living, most of whom are also in their 90s, making this no easy case to investigate. Assisting Alice’s able and interesting team is Hugh Mercer, late of the NYPD, in the area doing a sort of personal penance for his career. The local chief goes so far as to suggest letting the mystery of the dead bodies slide since it all happened long ago and everyone is so old, but the serial killer emerges in a dramatic fashion, bringing all the motives to the open, including Alice’s private demons. The weather and landscape play an integral part in this somewhat bleak story that’s best read on a sunny day.

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Review

A Murder in Paris

by Henrietta Thornton

“There will be no more diaries to fill, now.” How lonely, an emotion that echoes through this book that is sure to be on end-of-year best lists. It opens in present-day London and then flits back and forth between 1945 and present-day Paris, with an opulent city of lights hotel, the Lutetia, as the main setting. The hotel is famous for a painting in the lobby that depicts a woman in rags in one of the rooms; she was one of the many Holocaust survivors housed briefly in the hotel after returning from the horrors of the camps. In the present day, the artist’s granddaughter, memory specialist Dr. Olivia Finn, must quickly head from London to Paris when the hotel calls to say that her grandmother is in the lobby, needing help that she insists only Olivia can provide. Olivia’s grandmother says that she killed a woman at the hotel during those terrible first post-war days; she has dementia, but could her confession be true? Memory and its porousness are central to the plot here. So is the turmoil and moral ambiguity of 1945 Paris: Resistance men who fraternized with Nazis are showered with honors but their women comrades branded “whores,’” while the police work to uncover collaborators attempting to pass as camp survivors. With twists to spare, a fast-moving plot, and piercing looks at what it was like to start over after the war, this is one to get on your TBR list.

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