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Best Hispanic and Latinx titles of 2024 (so far)

Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15 to October 15) by reading one of these excellent books by Hispanic and Latinx authors.
Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15 to October 15) by reading one of these excellent books by Hispanic and Latinx authors.
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Mystery & SuspenseMysteryHistorical Mystery

Murder on Cold Street

Review by G. Robert Frazier

Whether you are a longtime Sherlock Holmes aficionado or a fan of Victorian-era mysteries, you will be happy to know that Holmes’s sister, Charlotte, has returned for another adventure. This time, Charlotte, more affectionately known as Lady Sherlock, must prove her longtime friend Inspector Treadles innocent of a double murder in which he was found with the murder weapon inside a locked room with not one, but two, victims.

For those unfamiliar with the female Holmes—Murder on Cold Street by Sherry Thomas marks the fifth in the series—there’s something you should know: In this world, Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character and Charlotte is the true detective. She pretends that Sherlock is her bedridden brother and that she is acting on his behalf as his eyes and ears on any cases at hand. It’s the only way for a woman to do a man’s job, particularly if said job involves outwitting and outsmarting men.

It is an arrangement that Treadles isn’t entirely happy to have learned about, though he maintains a close friendship with Charlotte and keeps her secret, since she has previously helped him on several investigations. His arrest makes this case even more personal for her.

But Treadles is less than forthcoming when asked to explain himself. He won’t say where he’s been in the two weeks prior to the murder; he won’t say what he was doing in the murder room; and he won’t defend himself. So, it falls on Lady Sherlock to piece together the clues and determine the truth.

One thing she suspects, however, is that Treadle’s wife, who has turned to Lady Sherlock for help, may be lying. For starters, she knew both victims: Mr. Longstead was a bookkeeper and longtime friend of her father and Mr. Sullivan was a resentful manager at the business she inherited.

In typical Holmesian fashion, Lady Sherlock and her close friends, including Mrs. Watson, pound the pavement for clues, interview witnesses and potential suspects and visit the scene of the crime for clues Scotland Yard is too inept to see.

Thomas, who is a USA Today bestselling author and two-time winner of Romance Writers of America’s RITA Award, masterfully handles all the ins and outs of the mystery while layering the story with suspense and intrigue to keep readers guessing. There’s even some of Thomas’ trademark romance in Cold Street, as Holmes and her longtime beau Lord Ingram move closer emotionally.

The game is afoot again. Only the names have changed.

In her fifth adventure, Lady Sherlock must prove her longtime friend Inspector Treadles innocent of a double murder in which he was found with the murder weapon inside a locked room with not one, but two, victims.
Mystery & SuspenseMysteryHistorical Mystery

The Devil and the Dark Water

Review by Alice Cary

With The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, British writer Stuart Turton kept readers guessing Agatha Christie-style as they investigated a mystery with a time- and body-hopping detective named Aiden Bishop. In The Devil and the Dark Water, Turton presents readers with another cat-and-mouse game, but a vastly different setting: A galleon that sets sail from the Dutch East Indies in 1634, bound for Amsterdam.

The Devil and the Dark Water artfully combines intriguing characters, fascinating historical details and a seafaring labyrinth of twists and turns—not to mention a demon named Old Tom. There is never a dull moment in this 480-page whodunit, but readers will be thankful not to be physically aboard for the grueling journey. As passengers arrive, a leper suddenly shouts that the voyage is doomed, and then burns to death. What more could possibly go wrong? As the ship’s constable notes, the “crew is comprised of malcontents, murderers, and thieves to a man.”

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: How Stuart Turton learned to banish demons on the Internet.

One passenger may be able to get the bottom of the strange curse and ensuing foreboding events—and deaths—that follow. Unfortunately, detective Samuel Pipps is locked in the brig without knowing what crime he is accused of, leaving his loyal bodyguard, Arent Hayes, to investigate. A trio of women (the captain’s wife, daughter and mistress) are also sleuthing, adding a refreshingly feminine twist to this Sherlock Holmes-styled mystery. Turton’s characterizations dovetail nicely with his careful, clever plotting. Meanwhile, he uses history to his advantage, adding dollops of commentary on women’s rights, class privilege and capitalism that lend the novel a contemporary vibe.

As talk of Old Tom’s powers ramp up, passengers wonder whether the ship’s misfortunes may be supernatural, and which unfortunate soul will be Tom’s next target. Steadfast Hayes remains convinced that “There were only people and the stories they told themselves.” With no end of stories aboard this ill-fated galleon, and even a touch of romance, possibilities abound. Meanwhile, a ghost ship lurks in the distance, and a huge storm wreaks havoc.

History and mystery lovers alike will delight in the heart-racing escapades of The Devil and the Dark Water.

With The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, British writer Stuart Turton kept readers guessing Agatha Christie-style as they investigated a mystery with a time- and body-hopping detective named Aiden Bishop. In The Devil and the Dark Water, Turton presents readers with another cat-and-mouse game, but a vastly different setting: A galleon that sets sail from the Dutch East Indies […]
Mystery & SuspenseMystery

The Book of Lamps and Banners

Review by Heather Seggel

Cass Neary is hard-up for cash and stranded in London when she hears about a rare book deal and attends the sale out of curiosity. The meeting turns deadly, and she learns that the book may have powers beyond our understanding. In the chaos that follows, Cass explores the resurgent white nationalist movement in Europe and Scandinavia, confronts her own past trauma and relies on her keen photographer’s eye as she searches for truth. The Book of Lamps and Banners is a hair-raising, mind-bending trip.

You can definitely enjoy this book on its own terms, but if at all possible, find and devour the first in the Cass Neary series, Generation Loss. (You’ll have nightmares, but I promise it’s worth it.) Author Elizabeth Hand does not shy away from bleak, unlikable characters, including her protagonist. Cass is strung out on speed and alcohol, so when she starts ranting about an app that turns people into murderers, the people around her justifiably roll their eyes. Quinn, a boyfriend from her days as a photographer in New York’s punk demimonde, enables her destruction but tries to soften its impact.

Past and present keep smashing together, as do reality and the mind-warping effects of the sought-after book. Hand’s language tightens when Cass spies a detail nobody else notices, but we feel the dead weight of her hangovers and the cranked-up jangle of her nerves. It’s unsettling but impossible to look away as elements line up to set a grim climax in motion.

Does this sound impossibly dark? It is! It’s also exquisitely suspenseful, and the paranoia suffusing the story is very much of our present moment. The idea that any single source can make sense of everything happening around us is as alluring as it is dangerous. Half of the mystery in The Book of Lamps and Banners is wondering whether Cass Neary will save us or take us down with her.

Cass Neary is hard-up for cash and stranded in London when she hears about a rare book deal and attends the sale out of curiosity. The meeting turns deadly, and she learns that the book may have powers beyond our understanding. In the chaos that follows, Cass explores the resurgent white nationalist movement in Europe […]
Mystery & SuspenseMystery

The Devil of Nanking

Review by Bruce Tierney

Part suspense tale, part Joy Luck Club and part Sophie’s Choice, The Devil of Nanking is a lyrical novel in which secrets foreshadow the undoing of their bearers, and exposure of the secrets offers redemption. History, folklore and ancient taboos are interwoven seamlessly with the modern-day mystery, which begins when Grey, a young Englishwoman, arrives penniless in Tokyo, nursing a major obsession. Grey, of course, is not her real name. She acquired it from a bedmate at a hospital some years before: “I was grey. Thin and white and a little bit see-through. Nothing at all left alive in me. A ghost.” A ghost with an obsession, however: a scholar’s urge to acquire a rare bit of film footage from the 1937 Nanking massacre.

Before the beginning of World War II, the Imperial Japanese Army had invaded China. By winter of 1937, the army had reached Nanking. The atrocities were unspeakable; by some accounts more than 400,000 Chinese were murdered, piled in a mountain of corpses at the city’s edge. More than five decades have passed, but Grey feels that the key to her search lies with Dr. Shi Chongming, a guest lecturer at Todai University in Tokyo, who had been a resident of Nanking at the time of the massacre. In between meetings with the standoffish professor, Grey must find a way to make some quick money, so she accepts a job as a hostess at a trendy Tokyo nightspot. Here she meets an elderly yakuza, a man with a terrible secret. Grey is no stranger to terrible secrets herself, and she is about to uncover yet another with the help of the inscrutable Dr. Chongming.

By way of warning, this is a disturbing book, and there are scenes of graphic (but in no way gratuitous) violence which are necessary to portray such horrific events. By any measure, The Devil of Nanking is a novel that resonates long after the last page has been turned.

Part suspense tale, part Joy Luck Club and part Sophie’s Choice, The Devil of Nanking is a lyrical novel in which secrets foreshadow the undoing of their bearers, and exposure of the secrets offers redemption. History, folklore and ancient taboos are interwoven seamlessly with the modern-day mystery, which begins when Grey, a young Englishwoman, arrives penniless in Tokyo, nursing a […]
Mystery & SuspenseMysteryCozy Mystery

The Thursday Murder Club

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

British TV presenter, producer and director Richard Osman adds "novelist" to his resume with The Thursday Murder Club, an imaginative and witty whodunit set in the luxurious Coopers Chase Retirement Village in Kent, England.

Solving cold-case murders isn’t an activity listed in the retirement community brochure, but it’s quite popular with a quartet of whip-smart resident septuagenarians—Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron—who are dedicated to the cause. The group meets in the Jigsaw Room; the time slot is “booked under the name Japanese Opera: A Discussion, which ensured they were always left in peace.”

Little do they know that Coopers Chase developer and owner Ian Ventham has built the place with ill-gotten money, and he’s got plans to expand while, er, taking care of some criminal-underworld-related issues. When Ventham’s business partner Tony Curran, a talented builder and prolific drug dealer, is murdered, the club seizes the opportunity to work on something fresh and exciting (even if their help isn’t necessarily welcome). Not long after, there is another murder, plus the discovery of human bones that don’t belong in the cemetery where they were found. The investigation’s urgency ratchets up accordingly—and the number of viable suspects increases, many of them right there in Coopers Chase.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Richard Osman shares why he loved writing from the perspective of a 76-year-old woman.

Through some hilariously masterful manipulation, the group unearths clues and teases out witness testimony, no small thanks to Elizabeth’s impressive network (she just possibly might be a former spy) and the club members’ talent for using stereotypes about the elderly to their advantage. Joyce, the group’s newest member, chronicles the club’s hijinks in her diary with a tone of hesitant glee, and also muses on motherhood, mortality and romantic love.

Osman’s careful attention to the realities of life in a retirement village ensures that The Thursday Murder Club is a compassionate, thoughtful tribute to a segment of the population that’s often dismissed and ignored. It's also an excellent example of the ways in which a murder mystery can be great fun.

British TV presenter, producer and director Richard Osman adds "novelist" to his resume with The Thursday Murder Club, an imaginative and witty whodunit set in the luxurious Coopers Chase Retirement Village in Kent, England. Solving cold-case murders isn’t an activity listed in the retirement community brochure, but it’s quite popular with a quartet of whip-smart resident septuagenarians—Elizabeth, […]
FictionThriller

Leave the World Behind

Review by Jessica Wakeman

The phrase “worst-case scenario” calls to mind extreme situations, like being on a hijacked plane or a bridge during an earthquake. But perhaps more realistically, most worst-case scenarios are mundane. They’re quieter and less violent. They might even happen while we’re on vacation. Such is the premise of Rumaan Alam’s novel, Leave the World Behind.

White parents Clay and Amanda leave Brooklyn for a gorgeous vacation rental home far out on Long Island. Their kids are thrilled about the pool, less thrilled about being isolated in the woods with no cell service. Their respite has barely begun, however, when the house’s owners, wealthy Black couple George and Ruth, appear at the door in the middle of the night. There’s been an epic blackout in New York City. Something seems very wrong, and the older couple thought they should get out.

At first, Amanda is annoyed that their vacation has been interrupted. How bad could a blackout really be? And couldn’t this rich couple just go stay in a hotel? But then eerie occurrences begin to happen where they are, too. It’s clear something terrible is happening.

Alam’s brilliance is less in what he reveals and more in what he doesn’t. Fear of the unknown ratchets up the reader’s anxiety, and yet Leave the World Behind unfolds slowly for a thriller. The internet and TV are down, and cell phones won’t work, so information about the crisis is scarce. “I can’t do anything without my phone,” Clay laments. “I’m a useless man.” Trying to reassure the children and each other, the two couples hit the expected notes for grown-ups in a crisis: We’ll be fine. The government will have everything under control. We’re safe here. None of this turns out to be true.

Leave the World Behind is certainly timely in the era of COVID-19, but it’s also relevant for anyone who has questioned our society’s dependence on technology or our unwavering faith in the social contract. The characters second-guess their beliefs about safety and security. Readers who are safe at home—maybe?—can’t help but do the same.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Rumaan Alam reveals the personal fears at the heart of his terrifying new novel.

The phrase “worst-case scenario” calls to mind extreme situations, like being on a hijacked plane or a bridge during an earthquake. But perhaps more realistically, most worst-case scenarios are mundane. They’re quieter and less violent. They might even happen while we’re on vacation. Such is the premise of Rumaan Alam’s novel, Leave the World Behind.

Mystery & SuspenseSuspense

When No One Is Watching

Review by Carole V. Bell

A squeaky-clean honors student gets arrested for selling drugs. A gregarious old man vanishes in the middle of the night, leaving his beloved dog and his belongings behind. Longtime Black residents are disappearing from Gifford Place, and wealthy white people are moving in. Something is definitely wrong with this picture, and it’s worse than run-of-the-mill gentrification.

By now, many will have seen When No One Is Watching described as Rear Window meets Get Out. Those comparisons are shockingly apt. Alyssa Cole’s latest triumph incorporates elements of both psychological thriller and social horror. Its finale is a bit macabre, much like Get Out, and there is a romantic subplot as well, just as there was in Hitchcock’s masterpiece. But Cole’s story is also highly original. She is drawing directly from today’s turbulent social currents and grim realities, crafting a nightmare from everyday terrors, both large and small.

Through the story of one woman defending her home and her neighborhood, Cole dramatizes the economic displacement caused by racialized capitalism, as well as the petty skirmishes that take place between new settlers and old, between Black and white, on a daily basis in places like Fort Greene and Bed-Stuy in Brooklyn. There’s simply no one better equipped to distill the racial politics of this moment into intriguing and terrifying entertainment.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Alyssa Cole shares why she’s wanted to write about gentrification for years.

Perhaps the best evidence of Cole’s skill in this regard is the remarkable correspondence between a fictional event in the book and a real-life incident that occurred just miles away from where the book is set. In May, a white woman was walking her dog off-leash in Central Park (in violation of the rules). When a concerned Black birdwatcher asked her to leash her dog, she falsely accused him of threatening her and reported him to the police. The incident occurred many months after Cole had finished her manuscript, and yet the confrontation strikes a frighteningly similar chord as the one in her book.

A similar standoff occurs between the protagonist, Sydney, an African American woman who is a longtime owner of a brownstone on Gifford Place, and Kim, a “high-ponytailed,” Lululemon-wearing newcomer, who is white. Viewers of the Central Park video saw that Amy Cooper was the aggressor and that she explicitly used her racial identity to claim authority. Readers will find the same is true with Kim and Sydney. It’s all about social control. Kim has done something wrong and tries to get out of it by accusing Sydney of “making [her] feel unsafe” and, again just like Amy Cooper, saying, “I’ll call the police.” As Cole explained on Twitter, “it’s not because I’m prescient, it’s because this kind of power play happens all the time, in ways small and large, often from white people who don’t think they’re racist.”

Here, Cole actually exercises restraint. Though thrillers like Get Out tend to present heightened versions of reality until the grisly denouement, the tensions that Cole brings to life on the page are hardly exaggerated. The petty insults and indignities that occur on Gifford Place happen every day in shops and on corners throughout America. The book also includes snippets of discussions from a neighborhood forum called “OurHood,” which seems to be modeled on Nextdoor. The ending is a bit rushed, and some readers will question the need for some of the violence. Overall, though, this is a brilliant first foray into the genre. Cole leverages her strengths to great effect, incorporating history, biting social observation and even a little romance along the way.

Another element that distinguishes When No One Is Watching is its grounding in not just present-day politics but history. Cole made her name in historical romance, and it shows. The Brooklyn history she includes enriches and deepens the story, placing current events and the characters’ experience with systemic racism today firmly in context and conversation with the past. The story Cole tells is a disturbing one, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

Alyssa Cole’s latest triumph—and first mystery—incorporates elements of both psychological thriller and social horror.
Mystery & SuspenseSuspense

Winter Counts

Review by G. Robert Frazier

Virgil Wounded Horse is a man living tentatively between two worlds. On the one hand, he feels an obligation to his Lakota upbringing. On the other, the tragic deaths of his mother and sister have caused him to drift away from this heritage. But when his 14-year-old nephew, Nathan, nearly dies after a heroin overdose, Virgil’s loyalties are put to the test. A recovering alcoholic, Virgil vows to protect his family and his tribe as best he can by seeking out those bringing the drugs into his community and exacting his revenge.

The police are no help on South Dakota’s Rosebud Indian Reservation, so it falls to men like Virgil to mete out the tribe’s own brand of justice when necessary. When the trail leads off reservation, however, and into the purview of the FBI, Virgil’s hands are tied. The only way around it may be by allowing the Feds to use Nathan as a confidential informant in a pair of drug buys, or else Virgil may see his nephew imprisoned in an adult institution for distribution of narcotics.

Virgil’s quest for justice is further complicated when he is reunited with his former girlfriend, Marie, who still embraces much of their heritage. The daughter of Ben Short Bear, who is running for tribal president, she is torn by the opportunity to attend medical school off campus, which could mean leaving the reservation and Virgil behind.

On the surface, David Heska Wanbli Weiden’s debut novel, Winter Counts, is somewhat typical for its genre: Bad guys disrupt the status quo when they muscle into the community, pushing bad drugs on an unsuspecting and highly susceptible teen population, until a vigilante or detective pushes back. The difference here is the setting on the Lakota reservation, the clash of policies between the U.S. government and Native American life, and the internal conflicts of the novel’s main characters.

Weiden, who is a member of the Sicangu Lakota Nation, elevates an otherwise routine crime novel with Native American culture and traditions, political differences and organized crime. His well-rendered, emotionally charged characters do the rest.

Virgil Wounded Horse is a man living tentatively between two worlds. On the one hand, he feels an obligation to his Lakota upbringing. On the other, the tragic deaths of his mother and sister have caused him to drift away from this heritage. But when his 14-year-old nephew, Nathan, nearly dies after a heroin overdose, Virgil’s loyalties are put to the test. A recovering alcoholic, Virgil vows to protect his family and his tribe as best he can by seeking out those bringing the drugs into his community and exacting his revenge.
Mystery & SuspenseMystery

The Less Dead

Review by Elyse Discher

The Less Dead by Denise Mina opens with a personal crisis that explodes into a compelling thriller. Glasgow-based physician Margot Dunlop is facing down the chaos in her life: her adopted mother has recently passed, she’s broken up with her boyfriend, her best friend is being stalked and she has just found out she’s pregnant. Trying to make sense of her world, Margot reaches out to the agency that facilitated her adoption to get in touch with her birth mother, only to learn that she was murdered shortly after Margot’s birth.

From here we descend into the dark underbelly of Glasgow. Margot’s mother was a sex worker and heroin addict, her murder left unsolved by a police force that considered her subhuman. Margot meets her aunt Nikki, also a former sex worker and addict, and learns that her mother’s case was far more complex than a trick gone wrong. Nikki believes that her sister was killed by a corrupt cop, and has received threatening letters that provide details only the killer could know. Margot isn’t sure she wants to be involved in the case, but she isn’t given a choice when the killer begins stalking and harassing her as well.

Mina’s novel stands out in a genre that commodifies the dead bodies of women. Her characters are nuanced, complicated and never stereotypes, and her portrayal of the world of sex work isn’t lurid or voyeuristic. Furthermore, Margot is not the middle-class savior some would mistakenly believe that these women need. And although Margot’s mother was a victim of a violent crime, Mina juxtaposes her murder with the stalking of Margot’s best friend, Lilah, showing that women are the subjected to violence by the men in their life at every socioeconomic level.

As Margot seeks justice for her late mother, she’s introduced to a community of women, some still addicts, some still sex workers, who protect and care for one another, even as they are shamed and shunned by society at large. The Less Dead is at once a gripping thriller and an examination, and vindication, of a group of women who are often faceless, unsympathetic victims.

The Less Dead by Denise Mina opens with a personal crisis that explodes into a compelling thriller. Glasgow-based physician Margot Dunlop is facing down the chaos in her life: her adopted mother has recently passed, she’s broken up with her boyfriend, her best friend is being stalked and she has just found out she’s pregnant. […]
Mystery & SuspenseSuspense

The Girls Weekend

Review by Laura Hubbard

The Girls Weekend opens with an invitation. International bestselling young adult writer Sadie MacTavish is gathering her college friends for a weekend getaway in the Pacific Northwest to celebrate their friendship and her cousin Amy’s pregnancy. The reunited Fearless Five prepare for a perfect weekend organized by their perfect friend, complete with wine, kayaking and plenty of rehashing of past adventures (as well as grievances).

But the weekend takes a sour turn when their host abruptly goes missing, leaving behind a massive bloodstain, a messy house and a missing statue. None of the friends remember the night before, but all know the truth: With tensions high, any of them could be responsible for Sadie’s apparent murder. The only problem is that none of them knows who.

Jody Gehrman’s latest thriller is a locked-room mystery in which no one even knows how the room got locked in the first place. The women—possibly including the killer—dont’t know who’s responsible for Sadie’s disappearance, to the point that they think they might have all been drugged. Paranoia and claustrophobia prevail as our narrator, English professor June Moody, tries to uncover what happened to her perfect and perfectly infuriating friend. Gehrman slowly and skillfully doles out one bit of recovered memory at a time as June gets closer to the truth, and as the innocence of each character is questioned in turn.

With intimate character studies and breathtaking suspense, The Girls Weekend deals with old relationships turned brittle with age, inviting the reader to an idyllic haven and then abruptly shattering the calm.

With intimate character studies and breathtaking suspense, The Girls Weekend deals with old relationships turned brittle with age, inviting the reader to an idyllic haven in the Pacific Northwest and then abruptly shattering the calm.

Mystery & SuspenseMysteryHistorical Mystery

The Grove of the Caesars

Review by Heather Seggel

Lindsey Davis’ eighth Flavia Albia novel, Grove of the Caesars, finds modern resonance in ancient Rome.

With her husband away tending to a family emergency, Albia has her hands full just dealing with her household, perennially under renovation and thus a big draw for unscrupulous contractors. The discovery of a clutch of ancient scrolls leads to a search for their provenance, in the hope that they’ll fetch a good price at auction. This domestic fuss and bother is upended when a body is found in the sacred grove of Julius Caesar, and workmen reveal that it is not the first. To bring a serial killer to justice, Albia must work alongside Julius Karus, an arrogant member of the Vigiles (the firefighters and police of ancient Rome) who appears content to accept easy answers wherever he finds them.

There is so much to unpack in this story, which balances a truly grim series of crimes with several funny subplots, often intermingling them in surprising ways. Two young enslaved boys gifted to Albia’s household witness the killing and disappear; what starts as an odd bit of comic relief ends in a mix of tragedy and tenderness. Albia herself continues to be a treasure, grateful for her place in society because it was not always such, but willing to disobey nearly any order if her curiosity is piqued.

Davis fills her stories with meticulous research, and the details make for such rich reading, we would likely follow Albia on a day of errands and light entertainment with no crime to speak of. But it’s thrilling to watch her follow a line of inquiry and connect the dots that others fail to see, so we can be glad that she rarely fails to find trouble and charge headlong toward it.

Lindsey Davis’ eighth Flavia Albia novel, Grove of the Caesars, finds modern resonance in ancient Rome. With her husband away tending to a family emergency, Albia has her hands full just dealing with her household, perennially under renovation and thus a big draw for unscrupulous contractors. The discovery of a clutch of ancient scrolls leads to […]
Mystery & SuspenseMysteryHistorical Mystery

The Cabinets of Barnaby Mayne

Review by Heather Seggel

If The Cabinets of Barnaby Mayne doesn’t grab you with the title alone, are you sure you’re a mystery fan?

Cecily Kay has come to the London home of the titular collector, hoping to definitively identify some plants by comparing them to specimens in Barnaby Mayne’s Plant Room, by far the least exciting of his voluminous collections. When Mayne is stabbed to death and a meek man confesses, Cecily smells a rat and uses her analytical abilities to piece together the truth. To find out what really happened, she must dive into the realm of collectors, whose interests often spill over into obsession.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Elsa Hart explains why the world of Englightenment-era collectors is the perfect setting for a mystery.

This is a note-perfect whodunit, and even if Mayne went about his business unmolested it would still be a deliciously creepy novel. Author Elsa Hart (Jade Dragon Mountain) has great fun with the time period—it’s set in 1703—and the complications of science and fact running headlong into mythology and occult beliefs. For a passionate collector, having their life’s work housed in an established and esteemed collection after death conferred a kind of immortality. But some collectors sought a quicker path to power through rituals and rites. High society and the secret societies within make a terrific backdrop for a story that often hinges on the ways women are presumed unimportant, thus allowing them to explore and find evidence while going undetected.

If The Cabinets of Barnaby Mayne doesn’t grab you with the title alone, are you sure you’re a mystery fan? Cecily Kay has come to the London home of the titular collector, hoping to definitively identify some plants by comparing them to specimens in Barnaby Mayne’s Plant Room, by far the least exciting of his voluminous […]
FictionThriller

These Violent Delights

Review by Stephenie Harrison

Few novelists make an impression as quickly and effectively as Micah Nemerever does in his stirring debut, an explosively erotic and erudite thriller. Kicking off with an electrifying prologue, These Violent Delights is infused with a thick sense of dread and urgency that does not let up until the final page. 

The novel centers on two social outcasts, Paul and Julian, who first connect in their freshman ethics class in 1970s Pittsburgh. Painfully shy and awkward, Paul gravitates toward Julian’s effortless charisma and good looks like a moth to a flame. Much to the consternation of their families, the boys’ friendship soon morphs into something far more intimate and dangerously co-dependent, as each amplifies the other’s worst ideologies, insecurities and impulses. As their relationship becomes increasingly destructive, Paul begins to search for an act of fealty that will irrevocably bond him to Julian, but neither is prepared for the devastation their act of devotion will yield.

Channeling masters of suspense like Patricia Highsmith and Alfred Hitchcock, Nemerever ratchets up the narrative tension at a deliberately agonizing pace as he unspools the story of Paul and Julian’s ill-fated relationship, all leading up to the night teased in the novel’s opening pages. The two young men frequently engage in deeply cerebral conversations ranging from philosophy and psychology to entomology, and the narrative lends itself well to close reading, as often the most critical developments between the two men stem from the subtext of these weighty talks. 

Though the escalating relationship between Paul and Julian is mesmerizing in its own right, Nemerever’s novel so effectively evokes a state of unease that many readers will keep turning pages in desperate pursuit of the tension-breaking relief that can only come from seeing the story to its conclusion. Aptly titled, These Violent Delights is exhilarating, but not without pain and peril.

Few novelists make an impression as quickly and effectively as Micah Nemerever does in his stirring debut, an explosively erotic and erudite thriller.

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