Happy Friday, all!

I’m just back from a Team W writing retreat in Newport, Rhode Island, where we finished up the latest Team W collaborative novel!  We can’t share the title with you yet, but I am thrilled to inform you that the manuscript is all done and the book will be heading your way in autumn 2022.

One of the perks of going on retreat?  Two long train rides!  On the way out, I read the second book in Elly Griffiths’s Brighton mystery series (okay, I may be a little obsessed with this now– but who doesn’t love a book that channels the atmosphere of Foyle’s War and Endeavour?), Smoke and Mirrors, in which the murder of two teenagers may or may not have something to do with the production of a pantomime.

On the way home, I had the great privilege of getting an early look at the latest in Stephanie Barron’s Jane Austen mystery series, Jane and the Year Without a Summer.  On a personal note– back in my grad school days, I used to haunt the paperback display at the now defunct Wordsworth Books in Harvard Square, hoping on the off chance that there might be a new Stephanie Barron Jane Austen mystery out.  It is such joy to me that the series is not only still going, but is still just as sharp as it was in the beginning, brilliantly combining an Austen-esque wry wit, impeccable research, and well-plotted whodunnits.  I have no idea how she manages to get that tone right– it’s so hard to do– but I’m so glad she does.  If you haven’t read these yet, go back and start with Book I, Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor.

What have you been reading this week?