4+ day, 2+ hour ago  (354+ words) Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. "The novel is rife with action and quick-witted humor from smooth-talking Dix and cynical Lila. It's a hoot." "Publishers Weekly "Valeri exhibits a formidable control of tone…...

2+ week, 6+ day ago  (545+ words) You never forget your first betrayal. I remember rereading the final pages, the words blurring together while my mind tried to reassemble the story in light of what I now knew. It felt less like a "whodunit" and more like…...

1+ mon, 2+ week ago  (686+ words) Everybody loves a haunted house story: The Haunting of Hill House, The Turn of the Screw, House of Leaves. But the haunted house story is only one example of a much vaster, darker subgenre. Ghosts, murderers, evil mushrooms'these malevolent entities…...

1+ mon, 3+ week ago  (230+ words) The best reviewed crime fiction, nonfiction, mystery, and thrillers of the month, via Bookmarks. Tana French, The Keeper" (Viking) "Intoxicating " Shocking, surprising, slyly funny and also deadly serious " French has remained one of the most consistently exciting mystery writers around…...

1+ mon, 3+ week ago  (619+ words) At first glance, a Jane Austen cozy crime retelling may seem like a strange, hybrid monster, but look around and you'll find plenty of examples. From Amelia Blackwell's time-travelling Miss Georgiana Darcy to Tirzah Price's wannabe-lawyer Elizabeth Bennet, the Austen…...

2+ mon, 2+ day ago  (787+ words) Crime Reads...

2+ mon, 4+ day ago  (1012+ words) Why do writers always want to place murders in our little town?" This was a real question asked to me by the owner of the real bookstore in Bainbridge Island when I went to promote the first in my new…...

2+ mon, 2+ week ago  (542+ words) Douglas Preston and Aletheia Preston The building was a crap-shack, a deed-restricted townhome in Five Points tucked between the abandoned Motel Regis and a cracked-asphalt vacant lot. There were a lot of nice neighborhoods in Denver, but Five Points wasn't…...

2+ mon, 2+ week ago  (455+ words) Before I joined the CIA, I carried an image of espionage in my mind: rain-slicked alleyways gleaming beneath streetlamps, encrypted phones designed to self-destruct, brush passes executed in crowded train stations, figures silhouetted against rooftops at dusk. Never had I…...

2+ mon, 2+ week ago  (722+ words) But despite frequently reaching into my past for inspiration, until now, I have never revisited the 1980s. I was a teenager in the 1980s, my adolescence essentially a John Hughes film but with a Casey Kasem's American Top 40 soundtrack. It is steeped…...