Murder on the Red River, first in this series, fires on all cylinders, as a hard as nails crime fiction novel, as women’s fiction, as an historical novel, and as Native American fiction (although that part reads pretty damn real). It’s the ‘70s and Cash, a 19-year old Chippewa survivor of the foster care (what…
Excerpt… Provins, October, 1325 “I’ve been thinking about how we get into L’Arête,” Johanna said. Most of them had made comfortable nests against and among the bales and bundles on deck, but this statement brought everyone into an upright, attentive position. She smiled a little. “It’s not that startling,” she said. “Alaric has told us…
The newest, and yes (sob) final novel in Stephanie Barron’s Jane Austen mystery series, this one set in an all-boys school, which has to be fun. Here are some thoughts on previous titles. Jane lives! And so does Byron in this tenth novel in the Jane Austen series by Stephanie Barron. On their way to…
(*See the first one here and here.) This one is the city of Prague (serendipitously, where I am now published by those wonderful people at Mystery Press. I wonder where my publisher’s building is on this puzzle. Hmmm…I might have to go find out in person.). It took us two weeks to to piece it…
Excerpt… Milano, fall, 1324 “She lied to us!” Alaric said. “We owe her nothing!” “Alaric!” Jaufre’s voice cracked like a whip. “She bargained herself for us, traded herself for our freedom. There was nothing to stop him from killing us and burying us there. No one would ever have known.” Alaric’s gaze dropped and a…
Read more “She’s his wife. She has no choice in the matter.”
Impossible to find someone who cares less about football than me, but I remembered how much I liked the first in this series (It Had to Be You), and then John Charles and Barbara Peters of The Poisoned Pen Bookstore both recommended this one to me so I succumbed to the hand sell. Not for…
Lombardy, summer, 1324 Alaric spat. “Mongols,” he said, the word itself an epithet. “Never trust them.” Jaufre thought of the Mongol Baron Ogodei, and didn’t disagree. “Yes, well, when the Mongols didn’t come, Robert told us it was over.” His smile was wry. “We didn’t believe him, of course.” “Wilmot did,” Alaric said. “But you…
A novel that is based on the life of a true-life midwife who lived and worked in post-Revolutionary War Maine. The author is well aware of Chekhov’s dictum that if there is a gun in the first act, it has to go off in the second. I had to go back and reread that earlier…
Lombardy, summer, 1324 THEY SOON DISCOVERED that travel in Europe was nothing like travel in Cathay, or in Persia for that matter. The Road was marked by steles built by the Great Khan. Each of the cities along its many routes had clean, well-maintained caravansaries for travelers and their livestock, or at the very least…
Gargantuan novel (almost 1000 pages) but don’t let that scare you. A young man has been seduced into a cult and his father hires Robin and Strike to get him out. Robin goes in undercover and Galbraith could give Jordan Peele lessons in how to creep us out. I think she’s nailed how hard it…
