There’s nothing like rediscovering an old favorite. This week, I went back to my Renaissance roots with Judith Merkle Riley’s The Master of All Desires, in which a would-be poetess with a difficult family finds herself accidentally in possession of the Undying Head of Menander, a sinister wish-granter who delights in causing doom and chaos.…

This week, I started with Carol Goodman’s River Road, a psychological thriller about a hit and run in an upstate New York university town, and all the secrets that come out in its wake. River Road was an emotionally fraught read, so, after that, I moved on to something a bit less gut-wrenching: Josephine Tey’s…

I’ve had an excellent run of new books this week, across a rather broad genre spectrum, from historical fiction, to women’s fiction, to ghost story/psychological thriller. Here’s this week’s haul: — Jennifer Ryan’s The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir, about a group of women in an English village during World War II, and the various dramas that…

Every now and then, it’s nice to revisit old books as a sort of literary palette cleanser, in this case, some of my less read books by favorite authors. This week, I dipped into Georgette Heyer’s The Unknown Ajax (which was so much better than I remembered it being!) and The Toll-Gate, and then stopped…

After a couple of books which I did not like at all (no names named), I took refuge in an old favorite: Georgette Heyer’s The Nonesuch. Her prose and her characterizations are both such a joy. What have you been reading this week?

This week, most of my reading was for a contest, which makes for a rather dull round-up, since I’m not allowed to talk about any of it. But… I am in desperate need of post-contest-reading recommendations. What have you been reading this week? And what have you read recently that you’ve loved?

The beginning of the week was dark and grim, which, of course, called for dark and grim reading: psychological thrillers with murky covers. I started with Megan Miranda’s All the Missing Girls, a murder mystery written backwards (which shouldn’t work, but somehow does), moved on to Megan Abbott’s You Will Know Me, in which a…

It’s been a mystery/suspense/thriller week for me, starting with Megan Miranda’s The Perfect Stranger, a psychological thriller set in Western Pennsylvania, where a journalist takes refuge as a schoolteacher after being disgraced and discredited back in Boston. But where has her roommate gone? And why has someone attacked a woman with (almost) her face? So…

This week, I’ve been on a binge of Elly Griffith’s Ruth Galloway series, about a forensic archaeologist who finds herself drawn into police investigations. (Many thanks to my best friend for the recommendation! And to my husband for making a large pile of the books magically appear.) It’s a little bit like reading a DCI…

It’s a funny thing. When I get down to the writing stage of a new book, I need new books to read. Not old comfort reads, but brand-new-to-me books, preferably a series, if one can be had. Laurie King’s Kate Martinelli mysteries got me through the end of That Summer, Laura Resnick’s Esther Diamond novels…