In The Four Winds, Elsa Wolcott is a plain and incredibly tall unmarried woman of twenty-five. Her parents hoard their love for her making her think she is unlovable. It is 1921. “By twenty-five, the die was cast. An unmarried woman was a spinster. ‘On the shelf’ they called her,Continue Reading
If you’ve read any other books by these authors, you know that you are going to learn some engrossing facts about some relatively obscure historical event. In The Scorpion’s Tale, the event is the routing of the Spaniards from New Mexico by the Apache during the Pueblo Revolt of 1680.Continue Reading
Author’s Character Guest Post My name is Nuala O’Flaherty. I arrived in America from Ireland a little more than a year before Meg. We met at a placement agency. My last employer had passed away and I was looking for another position. Meg was looking for her first placement. WeContinue Reading
I think it is important not to think of Germania as a thriller. It is a police procedural set in a historical time period. Therefore, it moves at a rather plodding pace compared to a typical thriller. There are obviously a lot of backstories to tell in the waning daysContinue Reading
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