Theme Music

Twenty-five years ago Dixie’s entire family was murdered by her father with an axe. Her father then proceeded to cut his own throat leaving eighteen-month-old Dixie alive in her high chair. The Theme Music playing was Baby Blue by Badfinger, which is a break-up song about the singer’s girlfriend alsoContinue Reading

The Seekers

“Miller Tavern has always had a reputation for being haunted. Very bad things happened here, homicidal crazy people…Serial killers before that was a thing.”—from The Seekers Keri is a true crime writer hired to lend gravitas to a ghost hunter show called Truth Seekers. Carl, a young Hollywood A-lister, buysContinue Reading

Lady in the Lake

“Alive, I was Cleo Sherwood. Dead, I became the Lady in the Lake, a nasty broken thing.” Maddie is feeling unfulfilled in her life as a full-time wife and mother of one. It’s 1965, when women can dream of careers—and Maddie is a good dreamer. She leaves her husband ofContinue Reading

The Helpline

Germaine is let go from her longtime job at an insurance company. Finding herself without many prospects at her age, she takes a job at The Helpline for local senior citizens. Germaine loves numbers and is befuddled by people. While seeing herself as providing helpful input, others see her asContinue Reading

Good Girl, Bad Girl

Good Girl, Bad Girl? Which one is Evie? Evie is known in the press as Angel Face. As a young girl, she is found in a hidden room with a man long dead after being tortured. Evie claims to not remember anything from her former life—not even her name orContinue Reading

A Stranger on the Beach

Caroline Stark’s storybook life began to fall apart the night after she met a Stranger on the Beach. Caroline’s daughter, Hannah, is off to college leaving her alone at their swanky beach house. Jason, her husband of twenty years, is cheating on her and asks for a divorce. To getContinue Reading

Shamed

An Amish grandmother, Mary Yoder, is brutally killed and one of her granddaughters is kidnapped in Shamed, an Amish police procedural. Kate Burkholder is the former Amish and current police chief in small town, Painters Mill Ohio. Her first concern is locating special needs Elsie, age seven. The viciousness ofContinue Reading

Bark of Night

Bark of Night had me with the cute French Bulldog on the cover. But I stayed for the hatred of veggies and pronounced love of dogs evident in this conflicted defense lawyer protagonist’s cozy mystery. Truman, a healthy French Bulldog, is brought into a vet clinic to be euthanized. TheContinue Reading

Ten Years a Nomad

Budget travel guru Nomadic Matt turns introspective in Ten Years a Nomad. I was expecting more travel and less ruminating on why Matt is compelled to wander the world. I love his website but this book has a more internal focus. He tries, with varying success, to apply what heContinue Reading

Peach Clobbered

Peach Clobbered is a great start to Nina’s life after divorce and to the reader’s (hopefully) long journey through the Georgia B&B cozy mystery series. I’m already looking forward to the next one! Nina decides to start over after her divorce. She impulse buys a Queen Anne house in smallContinue Reading