Take a tough, intelligent, competent woman and have her butt heads with a handsome, rugged, maverick detective, and you get what Sandra Brown does best in her newest release, “Blood Moon.” In addition to the usual ingredients that make us devour her novels quicker than a box of handmade Belgian chocolates, she adds a time element in this thrilling novel. Another murder will happen in four days if the killer is not found.
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One might be tempted to look at the cover of “There’s Something About Mira” and think that Sonali Dev’s newest novel is a romcom. While there is plenty of romance in this very touching story that spans generations, states, continents, cultures, and social status, there are also quite a few situations that force readers to examine our own prejudices and misconceptions. Even in how we express ourselves, we often reveal our inner, often very unintentional microaggressions.
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Julia Kelly writes brilliant historical fiction. Her novels capture the essence of a bygone era, and “The Dressmakers of London,” her newest novel, brings wartime London to life through the eyes of two estranged sisters. Isabelle and Sylvia Shelton lost their father at a young age, and their mother was forced to work to ensure the family’s survival. She opened a dress shop and carefully eked out a living.
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Starting “Eddie Winston Is Looking for Love” is like diving headfirst into a warm bubble bath, knowing that heated towels are waiting for you when it’s over. The story is delightful, the characters heartfelt and real, and the ending just perfection. It’s about a nonagenarian, Eddie Winston, who we come to find out has never been kissed. It’s also about Bella, a young woman whose boyfriend, the love of her life, has died.
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Can you imagine the Loch Ness Monster a human-by-day and monster-by-night? And a male one at that? In “Under Loch and Key,” author Lana Ferguson stretches her imagination and our credulity with this delightful romp featuring not just one fantastical creature, but two.
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Beatriz Williams, Lauren WIllig, and Karen White are all accomplished authors on their own. With “The Author’s Guide to Murder,” they combine their individual talents to create a lovely murder mystery featuring three authors who travel to a remote Scottish island in winter to research a book when a murder takes place. A murder in which the three principal suspects are the three authors!
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In “All the Other Me,” author Jody Holford captures that question that many of us have pondered: are there other universes in which we live different lives because we’ve made different decisions? What if I hadn’t done that, we might wonder. How would my life have been different? In this novel, we meet Isabelle Duprees, the main character. She is an extremely successful businesswoman, one of the top one-percenters. She receives accolades, invitations to galas, the best tables at restaurants. But as extremely successful and capable as she is in business and her professional life, her personal life is anything but successful.
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“The Mirror” is the second book in “The Lost Bride” trilogy, and considering that the first book in the series, “The Inheritance,” ended on a huge cliffhanger, there are sure to be many fans who couldn’t wait for this book to be released. And sure enough, it does begin just where the first book left off, after main character Sonya and her cousin Owen had stepped through a magic mirror, which in the story serves as a portal to other times in the Poole family history.
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Brigid Kemmerer writes fabulous young adult action and fantasy novels, and her novel, “Destroy the Day,” is the last one in the “Defy the Night” trilogy. The novels in the trilogy are gripping, but we’ve had to wait two years for this last one in the series. A suggestion I would make is to reread the first two novels in the trilogy to really feel the whole emotional impact of this carefully written ending to the trilogy.
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In Sarah Beth Durst’s latest novel, “The Spellshop,” she clearly demonstrates her amazing ability to write across a variety of genres and for a variety of readers. She can write children’s middle grade fiction, young adult fantasy, or adult fantasy; and here she’s written a sweet, warm adult novel that has magic and quirky characters. It’s a love story, but not “just” a romance. When the main character, Kiela, flees the library where she has worked as a librarian for over a decade, immersed and literally living at the library, she travels to the distant island where she was born.
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In “Echoes of Us,” author Joy Jordan-Lake takes us to a small island on the coast of Georgia, where unbeknownst to most Americans, more people died during WWII from German submarines than died at Pearl Harbor from the bombing. St. Simons Island is a charming little place just north of the Florida border. The dual time line of the story, in the present day and during the war, highlights the differences and the similarities of life on the island now and all those years ago.
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Missed opportunities, mistakes, and misunderstandings all combine with marvelous characters, interesting historical context, and a bit of magic to create a novel that takes us from 1922 to 1988, through the eyes of the two main characters. Titular character Augusta Stern, whose nickname Goldie was used only by her beloved Aunt Esther and her childhood friend Irving, has finally retired from her job as a hospital pharmacist. Augusta grew up in New York, has worked there for her whole life, and had no desire to retire.
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