Happy Friday, all! I’ve continued my Louise Penny-a-thon with books three to five of the Inspector Gamache series: The Cruelest Month, A Rule Against Murder, and The Brutal Telling. I’m currently on book six, Bury Your Dead, and finding it a fascinating departure from the earlier books in the series. One of the things that’s…

Happy Friday, all! For years, friends have been recommending Louise Penny’s Quebec-set Gamache books to me (some went beyond recommendation and actually mailed them to me).  Because so many discerning readers couldn’t be wrong, a few years ago I picked up the first one, Still Life— and bounced off it.  Two days ago, I picked…

Happy Friday, all! This week, after bouncing off a couple of recent releases that were perfectly fine books, but just not for me, I decided it was time to revisit some old favorites: Elizabeth Peters’s Jacqueline Kirby books. The Seventh Sinner is set among artists and archaeologists in Rome; The Murders of Richard III at…

Happy Friday, all! What with finishing proofs for the Manhattan Well Murder book (now officially titled THE WOMAN IN THE WELL, coming your way January 2025!) and a cover reveal for the latest Team W book (THE AUTHOR’S GUIDE TO MURDER, coming to a bookstore near you November 5, 2024!), it’s been a bit of…

Happy Friday, all! One of the best things historical fiction does is to bring back the stories of people who should be remembered, but aren’t.  This week, I read Allison Pataki’s latest, Finding Margaret Fuller, and marveled at the way this woman– whose story reads like fiction even though it all happened!– has been forgotten.…

Happy Friday, all! I’ve been bouncing all over as a reader recently (including bouncing off some books, but I never include those!).  This week, I’ve gone from 1990’s set ghost story to contemporary small town romance to an old (but new to me) cozy mystery. Of course, I had to read the new Simone St.…

Happy Friday, all! I’m so in arrears on my reading round-ups that it’s hard to know where to begin!  Thanks to my small people, we’ve had a few rounds of norovirus and a bunch of unspecified sinus infections, so there’s been a lot of comfort reading going on: vintage Elizabeth Peters (the stand alone mysteries),…

Happy Friday, all! It’s a rainy, tea-drinking sort of Friday here in New York.  We’ve been a household of plague, with my overachieving kindergartner bringing home both flu and strep (viral and bacterial all in one adorable, germy package!), so it’s been a week heavy on comfort reads for me, starting with the madcap joys…

Happy Friday, all! I fell down a reading rabbit hole this week.  A BookBub sale reminded me that it’s been some years since I’ve reread Mary Stewart’s This Rough Magic, which has never been my favorite Mary Stewart (that would be Nine Coaches Waiting or Thornyhold) but has always been well up there in my…

Happy Friday– and happy New Year! I know I read a great deal during the what-day-is-it-again blur of the holidays, but only two books stood out: Charlotte Vassell’s The Other Half and Emily Lloyd-Jones’s The Bone Houses. I hadn’t expected to love either of these– the back copy gave me a very different sense of…