Deadly Animals, Marie Tierney’s brilliantly plotted debut mystery, introduces readers to Ava Bonney: a 14-year-old English girl obsessed with decomposing bodies.
Deadly Animals, Marie Tierney’s brilliantly plotted debut mystery, introduces readers to Ava Bonney: a 14-year-old English girl obsessed with decomposing bodies.
We sometimes forget that the descent in Dante’s Divine Comedy is a journey toward God. Jesmyn Ward’s portrayal of slavery is the profound manifestation of
In Black Girl You Are Atlas, renowned poet, novelist and Newbery Honoree Renee Watson offers high-impact, widely accessible poems that address universal topics, accompanied by joyous artwork from Caldecott winner Ekua Holmes
With its seamless integration of gardening principles with advanced design ideas, Garden Wonderland is the perfect gift for new gardeners—or anyone in need of a little inspiration.
Rob Sheffield’s kaleidoscopic, wildly enthusiastic biography, Heartbreak Is the National Anthem, will satisfy both superfans and those less familiar with the prolific phenom Taylor Swift.
Juicy and dark, Rosemary Hennigan’s The Favorites is a standout dark academia thriller, with shades of Donna Tartt’s modern classic The Secret History and Emerald Fennell’s revenge fantasy film Promising Young Woman. Set at a Philadelphia law school in the days before and after the 2016 presidential election, The Favorites follows a bright young student dead set on avenging her older sister’s demise.
Jessica Mooney-Flynn enters Franklin University with one goal: ruin professor Jay Crane. As “Jessie Mooney,” the liberal Dublin native is accepted to Crane’s extremely select Law and Literature course and immediately begins her quest to become one of his infamous “favorites”: a status that is traditionally a gateway to prestigious clerkships, job opportunities and, if Jessica’s beloved older sister Audrey is any indication, a passionate affair. Back in Dublin, Audrey was the visiting professor’s favorite right before she dropped out of law school, self-isolated from her family and set out traveling, only to perish in a bus accident. Armed with text and email exchanges between the two—the last of which was Audrey’s missive “You know what you did”—Jessica seeks to entrap Crane. But what will happen when she too falls under his spell?
Hennigan knows the cloistered, clannish law school world firsthand: She studied the subject at both Trinity College, Dublin and the University of Pennsylvania. Jessica is a firecracker of a protagonist, intent on vigilante justice while still mourning the loss of her sister and fighting her growing attraction to an undeniably charismatic predator. Thanks to Hennigan’s strong voice and full embrace of the bumpy, twisty nature of retribution and revenge, The Favorites positively sings.
With its strong authorial voice and full embrace of the bumpy, twisty nature of retribution and revenge, The Favorites is a standout dark academia thriller.
Against the Currant transports readers to the Little Caribbean neighborhood in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, where Lyndsay Murray is ready to open her own bakery. She just needs to clear her name first.
Lyndsay and her family have worked hard on Spice Isle Bakery. But on opening day, another local business owner, Claudio Fabrizi, visits the bakery and threatens Lindsay. He wants her store shut down before it can eat into his profits. Shaken but ready to fight for her business and family, Lyndsay kicks Claudio out. When he is found murdered the next day, police believe Lyndsay may be involved. To clear her name and ensure Spice Isle Bakery can stay open for business, Lyndsay begins investigating Claudio’s murder.
Readers will enjoy following Lyndsay as she navigates an increasingly dangerous situation. She’s smart, funny and hardworking, but it’s her dedication to her family and bakery that make her truly shine. The Murray family opened Spice Isle Bakery to celebrate their life and success in America, while also honoring their Grenadian heritage. Lyndsay knows all too well how her family poured everything they have—time, resources and money—into Spice Isle Bakery. She’s committed to clearing her name so that her parents, grandmother and brother won’t suffer. Lyndsay’s grandmother is a particularly memorable character: Fashionable Granny is equal parts wise and witty, and unconditionally supportive of her granddaughter’s dreams.
One of the most enjoyable aspects of Against the Currant is how author Olivia Matthews brings Brooklyn’s Little Caribbean to life, immersing readers in the tightknit, bustling community. Matthews is a pen name for romance author Patricia Sargeant, who grew up in Little Caribbean herself and whose family history inspired Spice Isle Bakery.
Cozy mystery fans will devour the fast-paced and exciting Against the Currant.
Cozy mystery fans will devour Against the Currant, which is set in a bakery in Brooklyn’s Little Caribbean neighborhood.
In the midst of a messy divorce and plagued by writer’s block, Emily accepts an invitation from her longtime best friend, Chess (now a lifestyle guru), to spend the summer at a luxurious Italian villa. It turns out, however, that the villa has a sordid history: Nearly 50 years earlier, in the mid-1970s, it was the site of a scandalous celebrity murder that in turn inspired a bestselling feminist horror novel. Emily’s growing obsession with the villa’s history inspires her to write at long last—but investigating that long-ago crime and its aftermath opens up old fissures in her relationship with Chess. Will the villa’s dark history repeat itself?
Rachel Hawkins’ gothic novel The Villa (8 hours) has a wonderfully complicated narrative: Inspired by everything from Fleetwood Mac and Mary Shelley to the Manson murders, it includes not only two separate narratives with two sets of characters but also a novel-within-a-novel, podcast episodes, blog posts and more. Aided in some moments by music, the talented narrators—Shiromi Arserio, Julia Whelan and Kimberly M. Wetherell—prove more than up to the task of guiding listeners through the emotional atmosphere that Hawkins has so superbly created.
Three talented narrators guide listeners through the complicated emotional atmosphere that Rachel Hawkins has so superbly created in The Villa.
All good things must come to an end, and much to the chagrin of Aaron Falk fans worldwide, that includes Jane Harper’s mystery series starring the Australian federal investigator.
2017’s The Dry, set in a small drought-stricken town, launched Harper’s career as an internationally bestselling author. (It also spawned a hit film adaptation starring Eric Bana.) Next, Falk hiked into a wilderness retreat in 2018’s Force of Nature to solve another murder. And now, Harper is bringing back the talented investigator for his final turn. The cerebral, character-driven Exiles is set in South Australia’s verdant wine country, where natural beauty contrasts with psychological darkness.
Readers will relish joining godfather-to-be Falk in the fictional Marralee Valley for the christening of baby Henry, son of Falk’s good friends Greg (a police sergeant) and Rita Raco. The Raco family is staying at a vineyard run by Greg’s brother, Charlie, but their celebratory mood is overlaid with grief at what happened a year ago, when Kim Gillespie—Charlie’s ex-partner and mother of their teen daughter, Zara—disappeared from the Marralee Valley Annual Food and Wine Festival, abandoning her infant daughter, Zoe, in her stroller.
From Kim’s new husband to locals who had known her since childhood, no one has any insight about what befell Kim during the festival. Was she murdered? Did she kill herself by jumping into the nearby reservoir? Or did she decide to disappear? Kim’s body was never found, and Zara cannot accept that Kim chose to leave or take her own life. Falk and Greg can’t let it go either; although the official conclusion was suicide, something nudges at Falk’s subconscious, a “translucent shimmer of a thought hovering in the distance, dissolving and reappearing without warning.”
Another unresolved crime resurfaces as well, a fatal hit-and-run from six years earlier at the very spot Kim allegedly jumped from. The victim was the husband of Gemma, the festival’s director and a woman Falk finds captivating. In Harper’s hands, Gemma and Falk’s dynamic is a compelling mystery unto itself: Might the devoted detective actually be considering a different way of life?
Falk is nothing if not dogged, and as he ponders the reservoir’s unknowable depths, he closely observes the tightknit community, teasing out revelations about complicated relationships and long-held secrets, the tension ever building as he gets closer to important truths about the crimes—but also about himself. Harper’s lyrically written, immersive and slow-burning mystery serves as a powerful send-off for a beloved character.
Jane Harper’s lyrically written, immersive and slow-burning mystery Exiles is a powerful send-off for beloved character Aaron Falk.
Is the book always better than the movie or TV show? Better read these soon-to-be adaptations ASAP so you can decide.
The Sympathizer
By Viet Thanh Nguyen
April 14, 2024
Nguyen’s 2015 Pulitzer-Prize winning novel will be adapted as a miniseries by A24 (Everything Everywhere All at Once) and Team Downey (Sweet Tooth), set to air April 14, 2024 on HBO. Hoa Xuande will play the Captain, a North Vietnamese spy whose allegiance grows blurry after he joins a community of South Vietnamese refugees, with other by Sandra Oh and Robert Downey Jr. Read our review of Nguyen’s A Man of Two Faces.
Dark Matter
By Blake Crouch
May 8, 2024
Apple TV+ is adapting Crouch’s thriller sci-fi novel about a physicist who is sent into a parallel universe. Crouch is the creator and serves as an executive producer. Joel Edgerton (The Gift, Loving) will star. The television series will air on Apple TV+ on May 8, 2024. Read our review of Dark Matter.
Romancing Mr. Bridgerton (Bridgertons #4)
By Julia Quinn
May 16, 2024
After two incredibly successful seasons and one enchanting spinoff (Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story), Netflix’s hit TV series Bridgerton, which follows the romantic adventures of the seven Bridgerton siblings in Regency-era London, is back for a third season. Created by Chris Van Dusen and produced by Shondaland (Grey’s Anatomy), season 3 features Colin Bridgerton as he helps his friend Penelope Featherington find a husband, only to fall in love with her himself. Luke Newton and Nicola Coughlin (Derry Girls) will star. The first four episodes premiere May 16, 2024 on Netflix.
Fire and Blood
By George R.R. Martin
June 16, 2024
Fire and Blood began its journey to screens in 2022 with season one of the HBO series House of the Dragon. Set 200 years before the events of TV phenomenon Game of Thrones, this prequel traces the reign of the Targaryen family, focusing on the succession war between the children of King Viserys I. Season two of House of the Dragon will premiere June 16, 2024 on HBO. Read our interview with Martin about The World of Ice and Fire, his encyclopedic history of Westeros and beyond.
It Ends with Us (It Ends with Us #1)
By Colleen Hoover
June 21, 2024
Hoover is one of the biggest names in the romance genre. In 2022, her novel It Ends With Us topped the New York Times bestseller list and the Publishers Weekly adult list for months. Now, the fan-favorite book will be hitting theaters as a movie starring Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni. Despite some push backs in the shooting schedule due to the SAG-AFTRA strike, the film is confirmed for release on June 21, 2024. Read our interview with Colleen Hoover for her novel It Starts with Us.
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (Flavia de Luce #1)
By Alan Bradley
TBD, but soon!
Bradley’s charming Flavia de Luce mystery series has sold over 4 million copies worldwide. Susan Coyne (Daisy Jones and the Six) is adapting the first novel into a feature film, which will debut at the upcoming Cannes Film Festival. Isla Gie (The Sandman) will play the titular character, an 11-year-old amateur detective and master poisoner who gets caught up in a murder investigation, alongside Martin Freeman (Sherlock, The Hobbit). Read our review of The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie.
Viet Thanh Nguyen's The Sympathizer is the latest addition to a slate of upcoming book-to-screen adaptations you won’t want to miss.
The privileged, insular art world serves as the backdrop for a pair of engrossing whodunits from debut author Alex Kenna and veteran Jonathan Kellerman.
In Kenna’s What Meets the Eye, disgraced police officer Kate Myles, now a private investigator, tackles the death of painter Margot Starling. The police have deemed it a suicide, but Margot’s father is convinced she didn’t kill herself and enlists Kate to get to the truth.
At first reluctant to take on the case and disappoint her client (most deaths suspected to be suicides turn out to be just that), Kate is surprised when she unearths enoughevidence to suggest that foul play may have been involved after all. A litany of former lovers, jealous art students and conniving agents and art dealers lend further credence to her suspicions, leading Kate to believe that Margot was the target of individuals attempting to exploit her. But the more she digs, the more Kate realizes that Margot’s ego and pride, and not just her talent, may have created a number of potential suspects as well.
Kenna ensures that Kate is similarly complex, delving into how her addiction to painkillers led to the loss of a promising job with the police department, the dissolution of her marriage and the possible removal of custody of her daughter. The vivid portraits of both women, and the absorbing mystery that surrounds them, signal a master in the making.
Kellerman is already an accomplished artist in the medium of mystery novels. Unnatural History, the 38th installment in the author’s Alex Delaware series, finds the psychologist lending his insights to longtime partner Detective Milo Sturgis as they work to solve the murder of well-to-do photographer Donny Klement.
Donny had recently received media attention for a project titled “The Wishers,” which featured portraits of members of Los Angeles’ homeless community as the people they fantasized about being. Several critics, however, maintained that Donny was simply exploiting his subjects for his own benefit. Alex wonders if, having given people a taste of a different life and then discarding them, Donny sowed the seeds of his own destruction. But there are plenty of other suspects to go around. The wealthy son of an even wealthier father, Donny is surrounded by an eccentric family, any member of which may have had reason to kill him.
In typical Kellerman fashion, the story is painted in clear, linear fashion, with nothing left abstract. As such, the book is easily accessible to new readers of the series, who will immediately understand what loyal fans have known for years—that they are in the confident hands of a real artist.
The privileged, insular art world serves as the backdrop for a pair of engrossing mysteries from debut author Alex Kenna and veteran writer Jonathan Kellerman.
After writing a trio of books about ex-Marine sniper Bob Lee Swagger, author Stephen Hunter launched a second series featuring Bob Lee’s father, Earl Swagger, who is also a Marine and a Medal of Honor recipient to boot. It’s been 20 years since Hunter’s last installment in the senior Swagger series, but it comes roaring back this month with The Bullet Garden. The book serves as a prequel to the three Earl Swagger books that preceded it (Hot Springs, Pale Horse Coming and Havana), chronicling his adventures in France during the days immediately following D-Day. Swagger spearheads a secret mission to track down and kill German snipers who are systematically picking off Allied soldiers crossing the Normandy meadowlands (which the troops have nicknamed “bullet gardens”). A sniper himself, Swagger is a natural fit for the job at hand, but even his legendary skills will be sorely tested in this milieu. Fans of firearms history will find lots to like in The Bullet Garden, as will military strategy buffs, but there is truly something for everyone: a budding romance; layers of duplicity and intrigue; and an omnipresent sense of the importance of working together for a greater cause.
Encore in Death
J.D. Robb’s Encore in Death is the (are you ready for this?) 56th entry in the wildly popular series featuring Eve Dallas, a police detective in 2060s New York City who, by my calculations, should be celebrating her first birthday just about now. Despite being set in a Blade Runner-esque future of androids, airboards (think hoverboards) and the much-appreciated automated chefs, Robb’s mysteries don’t need to rely on sci-fi trappings to engage the reader. They are straight-up classically constructed whodunits. And this case features a time-honored murder weapon: cyanide. Just as A-list actor Eliza Lane takes the stage for an impromptu song at her latest high society Manhattan party, there is a crash of glass, and Eliza’s husband, equally famous actor Brant Fitzhugh, collapses to the floor—dead, with the smell of bitter almonds emanating from his lips. The initial thinking is that Eliza was the intended victim, as Brant sipped from a poisoned cocktail he was holding for her, but as the investigation wears on, alternative possibilities present themselves. As all of the suspects have connections to the stage, there is no shortage of drama as the case unfolds. Robb is the pen name of legendary romance author Nora Roberts, and while that’s certainly evident in her descriptions of her male leads (“Those sea-green eyes still made her heart sigh, even after a decade . . .”), the suspense is also there in spades.
The Sanctuary
Of all the awful ways to die, being vertically bisected by an industrial saw like the murder victim in Katrine Engberg’s final Kørner and Werner mystery, The Sanctuary, must rank right up there at the top. The unidentified man’s left half turns up in a partially buried leather suitcase in a public park, and Copenhagen police detective Annette Werner is on the hunt for the killer. Clues lead to the remote island of Bornholm, an insular enclave where everyone knows everyone else’s secrets, but nobody seems disposed toward sharing any of that knowledge with the police. Subplots abound: a missing young man, possibly on the lam from the law, possibly the victim in the suitcase; a zealous preacher who roundly rejects the biblical teaching of turning the other cheek; a biographer whose scholarly visit to Bornholm to examine a deceased anthropologist’s letters is stirring up some old, long-quiet ghosts; a garbage bag full of money that nobody seems to be able (or willing) to account for. The identity of the culprit is an enormous surprise, but more surprising still is the emotional closure Engberg brings to long-running storylines, resulting in a very poignant moment for fans of the series in addition to a satisfying solution to the central mystery.
★ The Twyford Code
Narrative conventions are cast to the four winds in Janice Hallett’s impressive second novel, The Twyford Code. The story consists of 200 fragmented voice transcriptions made by Steven “Smithy” Smith, a none-too-savvy mobile phone user who has only recently been released from prison in England. At loose ends, he decides to investigate the mysterious disappearance of his secondary school English teacher some 40 years back. Miss Iles (who often humorously appears in the transcriptions as “missiles”) had something of an obsession with the children’s books of one Edith Twyford, a character loosely based on real-life bestselling children’s author Enid Blyton. On a class field trip to Bournemouth to visit Twyford’s wartime home, “missiles” dropped off the map, never to be heard from again. As Smith’s belated investigation proceeds, he becomes increasingly obsessed with Twyford’s books as well, uncovering what may be hidden messages therein. State secrets, buried treasure, buried bodies? The clues are all there, but it will take a cannier puzzle-solving mind than mine to decipher them before Hallett is ready for the big reveal. The Twyford Code is easily one of the cleverest and most original mystery novels in recent memory, with an engaging main character, dialogue that grabs (and requires) your attention and more head-scratching suspense than any other three books combined.
A mystery told through voice transcriptions shouldn’t work, but The Twyford Code isn’t just this month’s best mystery—it’s one of the cleverest whodunits in recent memory.
Jane Harper’s debut novel, The Dry, immediately cemented her as one of mystery’s brightest stars and her thoughtful sleuth, Aaron Falk, as one of the genre’s most beloved characters. Exiles, Aaron’s third and final case, will be published on January 31, and to mark its release, we asked Harper a few questions about her bookstore bucket list and most cherished library memories.
What are your bookstore rituals? For example, where do you go first in a store? I am entirely at the booksellers’ mercy! I’m a complete sucker for recommendations and hot bestsellers, so put whatever you want on that most prominent display table right at the front entrance—super niche, highly commercial, everything in between—and I guarantee I’ll be tempted.
Tell us about your favorite library from when you were a child. School libraries were always a real sanctuary for me. Anytime things got a little tough, anything from heated playground politics to bad weather, the library was always somewhere quiet and peaceful to go and just get away from it all for a while.
While researching your books, has there ever been a librarian or bookseller who was especially helpful? One of my favorite librarians is a woman called Monica who works at the lovely Albert Park Library in Melbourne, Australia. Her help has been less in the name of research and more in the name of keeping my sanity while I’m writing, because she runs the most fantastic storytime sessions for toddlers. While I’m writing, it’s really hard to get quality time with my young children, so my 3-year-old son and I will go to Monica’s session every week. I love the sessions because they create early positive memories around books and reading for my little boy, and he loves them because they’re really fun and end with some parachute games. I recently discovered Monica has a side hustle in stand-up comedy, which doesn’t surprise me at all: If she can keep the attention of 30 toddlers, she can keep the attention of anyone.
Do you have a favorite bookstore or library from literature? The one that immediately comes to mind is the Hogwarts Library, complete with the tantalizing Restricted Section.
Do you have a “bucket list” of bookstores and libraries you’d love to visit but haven’t yet? What’s on it? I haven’t, but that’s a great idea! I just looked up a list of the world’s most beautiful libraries and was gratified to see Melbourne’s own State Library Victoria included. I’ve been there many times, and it is indeed gorgeous.
What’s the last thing you checked out from your library or bought at your local bookstore? Every week after library storytime, my son and I return an armful of kids’ books and replace them with a fresh stack. For my own shelf, I spontaneously borrowed a book by Australian author Wendy Harmer called Friends Like These because there was a line on the second page that caught my eye and made me laugh.
How is your own personal library organized? I find size order quite soothing to look at. I’m not overly strict about it, but I tend to put taller books at the outer edges of the shelves, tapering down to paperbacks in the center. Library books and copies of my own novels live on their own shelves, but I still like to group them by size where possible.
Bookstore cats or bookstore dogs? Our family has two very cute cats of our own—Zoe and Gingernut—so I’ll choose cats out of solidarity, although all pets are welcome.
What is your ideal bookstore-browsing snack? Oh my goodness, absolutely nothing! I’m way too paranoid of smudges and spillages to snack around books I don’t own. Wait until I get them home, and then everything’s fair game.
Photo of Jane Harper by Eugene Hyland.
The bestselling author of the Aaron Falk mysteries, which will conclude with Exiles, reveals her library habits and how she organizes her personal shelves.
The past has a way of catching up to you when you least expect it. The characters of Alex Finlay’s new thriller, What Have We Done, learn this the hard way.
A TV producer (Nico), a rock star (Donnie) and a former assassin (Jenna) all believe they left a shared secret from their childhood in the past as they forged successful lives as adults. All three of them were once residents of Saviour House, a home for abandoned teenagers, but they haven’t seen one another in 25 years.
Then each of them is suddenly targeted by a pair of ruthless twin assassins. Nico is nearly killed in a mine explosion on the set of a reality show he’s been producing, Donnie is forced overboard on a cruise ship and left to drown, and Jenna becomes the hunted when she refuses to kill an old friend. These murder attempts come on the heels of the death of another friend from Saviour House, forcing the trio to realize their past transgressions have come back to haunt them. Nico, Donnie and Jenna have a common foe set on revenge, and they’ll have to pool their talents together if they’re going to survive.
Told in short chapters from Nico’s, Donnie’s and Jenna’s alternating perspectives, the story moves at a quick-fire pace reminiscent of a James Patterson thriller (there are more than 85 chapters!), only slowing when the leads reflect on the past. Devoted more to action and plot than to personalities, the novel is a bit of a departure from Finlay’s previous, more character-driven efforts (Every Last Fear, The Night Shift). Still, he skillfully blends storylines past and present in What Have We Done, resulting in a suspense-filled romp.
Alex Finlay (Every Last Fear, The Night Shift) skillfully blends storylines past and present in this suspenseful romp.
Veronica Speedwell returns in A Sinister Revenge, the eighth mystery in a series best described as Agatha Christie in the world of Victorian science and natural history.
Natural historian and butterfly hunter Veronica has been separated from Stoker, a fellow scientist who had become her sleuthing partner and lover. But Stoker’s brother Tiberius, Lord Templeton-Vane, reunites the couple by giving them a dangerous new case to solve.
In his youth, Tiberius ran with a group of students who called themselves the Seven Sinners, but then tragedy struck at his family’s Devon estate when one member of their party died in an accidental fall while trying to claim a fossil from a cliffside. During the following years, two other members also met an early demise, and now a threatening letter has Tiberius believing that they may all have been murdered by one of their own—and that he might be the next victim. In a Christie-esque conceit, Tiberius invites the remaining members of the Seven Sinners to an elaborate house party, where he plans to confront them and, hopefully, where Veronica and Stoker will uncover the murderer.
As the house party unfolds, it becomes apparent that the history of the Seven Sinners is more complex than Tiberius let on, with secret affairs and bitter jealousies complicating the past. Even as Veronica untangles the web of complex relationships, she struggles to reconcile Stoker’s distance from their own romantic partnership. As usual, Veronica’s keen observations and sharp wit contrast with her own occasional lack of self-awareness (especially when it comes to romance), making for a delightful read. Longtime readers of the series will be pleased to see regulars such as intrepid reporter J.J. Butterworth and ingenious chef Julien d’Orlande return. But ultimately, Raybourn’s masterful entanglement of Veronica and Stoker’s love story with the mystery at hand makes A Sinister Revenge a standout entry in an already excellent series.
Deanna Raybourn’s masterful balance between romance and mystery makes A Sinister Revenge a standout entry in an already excellent series.
Flames flicker around the edges of Margot Douaihy’s Scorched Grace, casting light and revealing darkness, hinting at the sort of destruction that offers the possibility of a new beginning.
That’s what Sister Holiday Walsh was looking for a year ago when she joined the Sisters of the Sublime Blood after fleeing the wreckage of her life in Brooklyn, New York. Sister Holiday is not a typical nun: While she and her brother, Moose, were raised Catholic by her former-nun mom and police captain dad, being wholly reverent has never been her thing. Rather, she’s the self-described “first punk nun,” a heavily tattooed loner who hides her ink under scarf and gloves and conceals her trauma under a jauntily sarcastic demeanor.
Although she’s somewhat found her footing as a music teacher at Saint Sebastian’s, the New Orleans school the nuns oversee, Sister Holiday’s emotional armor cracks open when an arsonist strikes and Jack, a well-liked janitor and her confidante, is killed. Stunned at his loss and baffled as to why someone would commit such violent acts against the school, Sister Holiday turns to chain-smoking and recalling memories of her former lover Nina to soothe herself.
But it’s not enough: She mistrusts the police, she doesn’t feel safe, and the Raymond Chandler novels she escaped into as a kid are looming large in her mind. “Sleuthing and stubbornness were my gifts from God,” she thinks, and she’s sure as hell going to use those gifts to solve the mystery on her own.
Scorched Grace revels in its unreliable narrator and bounty of plausible suspects, from shifty authority figures to mercurial students to enigmatic women of God. Douaihy, a poet and professor who shares Sister Holiday’s punk sensibility, immerses the reader in her hyperlocal New Orleans setting and the murky depths of Sister Holiday’s tormented soul. Her prose is frequently lyrical and often lacerating, her characters layered and intriguing.
It’s not surprising in the slightest that this series starter is the first book published by Gillian Flynn’s eponymous new imprint. Scorched Grace is both entertaining and devastating, dominated by a queer sleuth with a clever, curious mind and a fatalistic yet somehow still hopeful heart.
Scorched Grace is an entertaining and devastating mystery that introduces Sister Holiday, a queer nun with a clever, curious mind and a fatalistic yet somehow still hopeful heart.
“The Great British Baking Show” meets Knives Out in The Golden Spoon, Jessa Maxwell’s delicious, atmospheric debut.
Celebrated baker Betsy Martin has hosted her popular show “Bake Week”from the grounds of Grafton, her Vermont family estate, for the past decade. This year, change is in the air: The network has foisted a new co-host on her, and Betsy had less input than ever before when selecting which six contestants would compete for the show’s coveted Golden Spoon award. Still, “America’s Grandmother,” as Betsy’s known among her fans, chooses to push ahead with the new season. When the competition gets underway, things start to go haywire. The contestants believe someone is sabotaging their bakes—and when a dead body is discovered, everyone in the baking tent becomes a murder suspect.
The Golden Spoon is impossible to put down, especially for fans of shows like “The Great British Baking Show.” Maxwell expertly unspools her mystery, switching among the perspectives of all six contestants, plus Betsy. The bakers’ voices and observations are a high point of the novel: Each character is distinct and well drawn, with their own motivations for joining the show and secrets to hide. There’s Stella, a former journalist and the most inexperienced baker; Hannah, the youngest contestant, who hails from a small town; Gerald, a rigid teacher who compares recipes to mathematical formulas; Pradyumna, a tech millionaire with nothing to prove; Lottie, a retired nurse with a special connection to Grafton; and Peter, who specializes in the reconstruction of historic buildings.
The novel begins with an eerie prologue from Betsy’s perspective before jumping back in time to when “Bake Week” first startedfilming. Readers know from the prologue that a gruesome discovery awaits, but most of the book—80%!—is devoted to following the characters through “Bake Week” and getting to know their motivations for competing. It’s not until the last fifth of the book that Betsy’s initial discovery is revealed, and from there, the plot quickly unfolds. Mystery genre fans may find many of the twists easy to spot, but Maxwell’s expert characterization and lyrical prose make The Golden Spoon a delight to devour.
Jessa Maxwell’s expert characterization makes her baking show-set mystery, The Golden Spoon, practically impossible to put down.
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Praised by horrormeister Stephen King, Paul Tremblay’s shocking new novel, The Cabin at the End of the World, is an often graphic account of one family’s ordeal when their vacation is shattered in a cult-like home invasion. We asked Tremblay about the book’s origins, its dark path and his inner fears that helped forge the novel.
