Thirty Names of Night is a heartfelt tale of two women. One is a modern NYC first-generation Syrian-American painter of birds, who feels her assigned gender is incorrect. The other, Laila, is telling the story of her life through her journal. Her story begins a century earlier in Syria. ItContinue Reading
I can always tell when I genuinely love a book. I start to read it much slower—because I don’t want it to end. That is what unexpectedly happened to me while reading Murder in Old Bombay. It’s 1892 in India. Retired Captain James Agnihotri has been invalided out of theContinue Reading
With all the mess going on right now in the world and in the White House, it is almost comforting to be hunting for a killer in 1957 Brighton, England. For three victims have been killed in an unusual way. In fact, it is Murder by Milk Bottle. Constable TwittenContinue Reading
There is a reason no one has found the mythical philosopher’s stone, a stone that can change any metal into gold. Anyone creating it goes mad. Just ask Thea, whose own mother smashed the stone and then tried to kill Thea after, almost, creating it. It truly is A GoldenContinue Reading
My Review It’s 1939 in England. You are a journalist, an amateur detective, and a part-time spy for the British government. You are chosen to join the Quaker Kindertransports of mostly Jewish children from Germany to England. Your goals? Find out who murdered the person you are replacing. Discover whoContinue Reading
The Haunting of H.G. Wells follows Wells into WWI trenches where he is looking for morale building stories for the folks back in England. What he finds are ghosts of the war dead that follow him back into his life. And what a life that is. Good ol’ HG hadContinue Reading
Atlas at War! contains 50 war comics that initially ran from 1951 to 1960. The comics are raw and violent—just like the wars they depict. They are definitely not politically correct, especially to the villains of World War II and the Korean War. However, the stories give us an opportunityContinue Reading
It’s August 1895 in London when Abigail and Daniel are called in to determine who bludgeoned an iguanodon dinosaur fossil. The remains were found with a cryptic note, “Because of he that betrayeth”. But the next morning, a man is found strangled in the same location with another note aroundContinue Reading
The Woman Before Wallis is Thelma Furness. As the book opens, Thelma is married to her second husband and is having a public affair with the soon-to-be King Edward. She is called away to America to support her identical twin sister, Gloria Vanderbilt. Gloria is in the “Trial of theContinue Reading
Arrowood, the poor man’s Sherlock Holmes, is back in his strangest case yet. Paid to catch the ruffians who were damaging Captain Moon’s ship, a string of corpses and skulls are found tied to the ship. Who they were and how they are related to the captain is the enigmaContinue Reading
My Review Lady Rosamund seems to have it all. She’s rich, twenty-four, and an aristocrat in Regency England. She also has a houseful of servants. However, she also has undiagnosed OCD plus a husband who loves, both physically and mentally, another. Of course, Rosie knew about the non-sexual match sheContinue Reading
I loved the previous books in the Mrs. Murphy series. However, Furmidable Foes made Mrs. Murphy and the other animals a side story. Front and center are St. Luke’s gardens and the historical fiction of runaway slaves in 1787. The Dorcas Guild’s events also play a role in the presentContinue Reading
It’s 1890 in Bath, England. Independent-minded Lady Amy finds her recently ex-fiancé dead in the new historic cozy mystery, A Study in Murder. “How dare St. Vincent come here uninvited and then land on the floor in her library with a knife in his chest? The whole thing was soContinue Reading
Yay! Veronica and Stoker are once again chasing Jack the Ripper in A Murderous Relation. The duo must save the royal family from the scandal of its prince giving gifts to a high-end brothel’s Madame. To do that both must investigate from within the brothel itself. Another rousing Victorian taleContinue Reading
In a 2017 C-SPAN poll, President Lincoln was found to be the best President by 91 historians and authors. But how was his personal life? In Courting Mr. Lincoln, his future wife, Mary Todd, and his best friend, Joshua Speed, tell his story during the last twenty-five years of hisContinue Reading
Victorians are enchanted by Things in Jars. As you will be, after reading this spellbinding mystery. Mrs. Bridie Devine, widow and consulting detective in Victorian London, has a personal problem. She can see dead people. Well, at least one, recently dead boxer Ruby Doyle. Bridie also has a case. SirContinue Reading