The Nero Wolfe books are the most comforting reading I can do. My family knows that if you’re ever calling
the ambulance for me, grab one! Whatever is going on in my life, however stressed
I am, I know that Wolfe will go up to the orchids each day, that Fritz will
cook dinner, Archie will seat someone in the red leather chair, and the crime
will be solved.
Rex Stout created that
world—but maybe the sweetest thing ever—Robert Goldsborough’s mother had read them all, so he wrote some
more!
I have read all of them, everyone, but I pick one up and reread as needed. Yeah, life can be rough—bless you both for helping me through!
A professor's death lures the reclusive detective and his sidekick to a bucolic crime scene: "Goldsborough does a masterly job with the Wolfe legacy" (Booklist).
An academic so conservative he thought Ronald Reagan was a pinko, Hale Markham rules Prescott University like an intellectual tyrant-until the morning he's found dead at the bottom of one of Prescott's famously beautiful ravines. Every liberal on campus hated the crotchety old crank, but which one is responsible for giving Markham his final push to the right? The case so intrigues the incomparable, reclusive master detective Nero Wolfe that he takes the unusual step…
I’ve always loved history, whether ancient or “modern.” Past societies and how humanity has changed over the years has always fascinated me. As a young mystery reader, I began with Nancy Drew and then quickly graduated to Victoria Holt. I’m not sure there’s a gothic fiction reader out there who won’t be familiar with that name. The stories are a wonderful blend of mystery, history, and a dash of the supernatural. Decades later, I’d write my fourth series, Duchess of Blackmoore Mysteries, in true gothic Victorian style.
Another entry by C.J. Archer (can you tell I like this author?) and another great blending of genres. Set in turn of the century England but including the existence of magic, the world-building is sure to immerse you and keep you reading on to the next book. Again, the “mystery” built in is not your typical, which makes the reading all the more intriguing.
A librarian with a mysterious past, a war hero with a secret, and the heist of a magic painting. THE LIBRARIAN OF CROOKED LANE is an intriguing new fantasy from C.J. Archer, the USA Today bestselling author of the Glass and Steele series.
Librarian Sylvia Ashe knows nothing about her past, having grown up without a father and a mother who refused to discuss him. When she stumbles upon a diary that suggests she’s descended from magicians, she’s skeptical. After all, magicians are special, and she’s just an ordinary girl who loves books. She seeks the truth from a member…
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
While I write Appalachian historical fiction, I’ve spent my non-writing career in marketing and fundraising. That includes a dream job in the public relations department at Biltmore Estate from 2000-2006. It was a thrill for me to spend time in America’s largest privately owned home, learning about and sharing the estate’s amazing history. And while you just can’t beat the actual history, who wouldn’t have fun building a story around a French chateau in the Appalachian mountains? In writing my own Biltmore novel, I read others set there as well and found some true gems!
When I worked at Biltmore, I was intrigued by a photograph showing the chateau under construction with a ramshackle house still standing in the foreground.
Who lived in that house? Were they still there? How did George Vanderbilt go about acquiring that property? Joy Jordan-Lake digs into a variation on that theme with this story of a young woman called home to Appalachia from the big city to help her family—one of the last hold-outs as Vanderbilt scoops up land.
I found Jordan-Lake’s exploration of the people around the construction of Biltmore fascinating and engaging.
"Crawdads meets the Crawleys...Threaded through with a meticulously researched, well-crafted mystery, this is historical fiction at its best." -Fiona Davis, nationally bestselling author of The Lions of Fifth Avenue
From the bestselling author of A Tangled Mercy comes an enthralling novel of secrets, a tumultuous war of ideas, and murder as classes collide in the shadow of Biltmore House.
Biltmore House, a palatial mansion being built by the Vanderbilts, American "royalty," is in its final stages of construction in North Carolina. The country's grandest example of privilege, it symbolizes the aspirations of its owner and the dreams of a girl,…
As a magical realism/horror author, born and reared in Ireland—I love stories that scream strange and unusual. By adding an extra dimension to a story, you can open the mind to the most wonderful places. I love to write for everyone with no exceptions, and while there are many worlds to lose yourself in while reading, I am drawn to the what ifs of magic. The worlds of witches, the dead, the unimaginable and realms beyond our own. This is why I love to write, and the reason I share my mind with those who enjoy a tale outside the norm of daily life.
A compelling story on the magical, yet dangerous world of Witches, Bess Hawksmith watches her mother swing from the Hanging Tree during 17th Century England. Turning to Warlock; Gideon Masters, who introduces her to the darker parts of the craft. This is where the story will take a turn for the worst, when Bess discovers the real price of accepting his help. It is a battle of good vs bad, love and hate.
In the spring of 1628, young Bess Hawksmith watches her mother's body swing limp from the Hanging Tree. She knows that only one man can save her from the same fate - Gideon Masters, the Warlock. She knows, too, that his help comes at a steep price. In present-day England, Elizabeth has built a quiet life for herself. She has spent the centuries in solitude, moving from place to place, surviving plagues, wars and the heartbreak that comes with immortality. Her loneliness comes to an abrupt end when she is befriended by a teenage girl called Tegan. Against her better…
As a mystery writer, I’ve always got my eye out for a great place to hide a body. I can’t help it, it’s a hazard of the job. I also love to travel, and a mix of the two has always been irresistible to me, whether I’m reading or writing. I’d say I’m not the only one who enjoys a little sightseeing with my whodunits, because my first book, Death in the Aegean, was nominated for an Agatha Best First Novel Award by the Malice Domestic community. I hope you enjoy these picks that combine some of my ideal vacation spots with entertaining whodunits.
Why stick to the present if you’re going to armchair travel in search of the perfect vacation spot to hide a dead body?
Nothing says intrigue like Renaissance Venice! It was far easier to hide a dead body back in 1610, which is when this delightful mystery takes place. Full of powerful men, intelligent women, and secrets, Nina Wachsman leads us through the gated Jewish ghetto to the salons of the rich and famous with style and subterfuge in The Gallery of Beauties.
Makes me think of a 17th-century Miss Congeniality.
Venice, 1612. Two very different women, a notorious courtesan and a Talmudic scholar, are brought together by an artist when they pose for a "Gallery of Beauties," forming a relationship neither of them anticipated.
Conflicted about her past, Belladonna finds herself drawn to Diana, the rabbi's widowed daughter, and has ambitions for her future, but only if Diana will discard her origins and her traditions. While Diana is torn by indecision, Belladonna feels threatened, as one by one, the subjects of the portraits are poisoned. The two women must rely on their wits and each other to avoid becoming the…
The Colour Stormis set in Venice in 1510, where the Renaissance’s greatest artists are competing to be the first artist to get their hands on a mysterious new pigment, which is said will transform art forever but may only exist to drive them all mad.
I have honestly never read such an unusual and beautiful book. The author’s ability to evoke colour is incredible. Add to that a brilliantly written thriller full of ambition and rivalry and a complex love story, all set against a dankly gothic Venice, and it’s an absolute winner.
Enter the world of Renaissance Venice, where the competition for fame and fortune can mean life or death…
Artists flock here, not just for wealth and fame, but for revolutionary color. Yet artist Giorgione “Zorzo” Barbarelli’s career hangs in the balance. Competition is fierce, and his debts are piling up. When Zorzo hears a rumor of a mysterious new pigment, brought to Venice by the richest man in Europe, he sets out to acquire the color and secure his name in history.
Winning a commission to paint a portrait of the man’s wife, Sybille, Zorzo thinks he has found a…
Three
friends in three different traumatic settings during WWII find the strength
they need to survive while serving others as nurses.
Not just about the horrors
of war, although there is that, this novel explores relationships and how, when
tested, they can endure. I love the different characters, each written by a
different author.
From three bestselling authors comes an interwoven tale about a trio of World War II nurses stationed in the South Pacific who wage their own battle for freedom and survival.
The Philippines, 1941. When U.S. Navy nurse Eleanor Lindstrom, U.S. Army nurse Penny Franklin, and Filipina nurse Lita Capel forge a friendship at the Army Navy Club in Manila, they believe they're living a paradise assignment. All three are seeking a way to escape their pasts, but soon the beauty and promise of their surroundings give way to the heavy mantle of war.
I’m an Australian author passionate about history. Alas, not Australian history. That would make my life so much easier. As a child, I loved tales of ancient Greece. That love took me in two directions—Ancient Egypt and Ancient Rome—Ancient Rome introduced me to Roman Britain, and the Roman Britain novels of Rosemary Sutcliff. My love of history probably explains why a childhood friend gave me a child’s book of English history for my tenth birthday. One of the book’s chapters told the story of Elizabeth I. As she wont to do in her own times, Elizabeth hooked me, keeping me captured ever since, and enslaved to writing and learning more about Tudors.
From her earliest years, Sutcliff knew firsthand what it was to live with and surmount painful disability. She understood what it was to be ‘the other’—to be looking from the outside on those able to live ‘normal’ lives. It is not surprising then that many of her stories include main characters who powerfully prove you do not need to be able-bodied to triumph over life. Set in the British Bronze age, this novel is one of those stories. Dem wants to take his place as a warrior of his tribe but must kill a wolf single-handedly to claim his warrior’s scarlet cloak. How can kill his wolf when he was born with a withered arm? With great sensitivity, skill, and prose often close to poetry, Sutcliff brings the Bronze age and its people alive in this wonderfully told story.
Drem longs for the day he will win his Warrior Scarlet. But with a withered spear arm, how will he take part in the ritual Wolf Slaying which will prove his worth as a man of the tribe?
With over forty books to her credit, Rosemary Sutcliff is now universally considered one of the finest writers of historical novels for children. Winer of the Carnegie Medal and many other honours, Rosemary was awarded a CBE in 1992 for services to children's literature.
I am a romantic who believes in love and loves poetry, yet is also fascinated by WWI. I remember watching the movie All Quiet on the Western Front on television with my grandmother on a Saturday afternoon and being completely mesmerized. Over the years since then, I’ve even traveled to Sarajevo, where the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand set the war in motion, and to Gallipoli in Turkey, where a disastrous trench battle took place for almost a year. When I read about WWI Trench Art–art made by the soldiers awaiting battle in the trenches–my fiction writer's imagination was struck by the idea for my book below.
I love this book because it is a war novel without a single battlefield or battle, except the one for Siegfried Sassoon’s sanity. I became fascinated by WWI as a teenager. I can’t say why this war caught my imagination, but it did, and that fascination has continued for my whole life.
I gobbled up books, movies, and history about the war, and I especially loved the poetry of Siegfried Sassoon, a noted poet and war hero who publicly refused to continue fighting in 1917. When I re-read his poetry fifty years later, I found a kinship with that refusal and the boys around me who were conscientious objectors to the Vietnam War.
I was a dreamy, romantic teenager, which is why Sassoon’s words pierced my heart: “Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin they think of firelit homes, clean beds, and wives.” Oh! How I cried over his poems…
"Calls to mind such early moderns as Hemingway and Fitzgerald...Some of the most powerful antiwar literature in modern English fiction."-The Boston Globe
The first book of the Regeneration Trilogy-a Booker Prize nominee and one of Entertainment Weekly's 100 All-Time Greatest Novels.
In 1917 Siegfried Sasson, noted poet and decorated war hero, publicly refused to continue serving as a British officer in World War I. His reason: the war was a senseless slaughter. He was officially classified "mentally unsound" and sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital. There a brilliant psychiatrist, Dr. William Rivers, set about restoring Sassoon's "sanity" and sending him back…
Secrets, misunderstandings, and a plethora of family conflicts abound in this historical novel set along the Brazos River in antebellum Washington County, East Texas.
It is a compelling story of two neighboring plantation families and a few of the enslaved people who serve them. These two plantations are a microcosm…
Deeply moving, this story brought me to tears several times. There is very little fanfare and yet the author was able to touch my heart, using simple prose to highlight complex characters who must find their way through difficult circumstances.
A timely reminder of our shared humanity, the message is clear: human experience and emotions are universal. We are all the same, no matter our culture, colour or creed.
In the Shadow of the Prophet is a novel set in the Middle East, during the time of transition from paganism to Islam. The novel chronicles the stories of two sisters, Noor and Sawdah, whose lives are transformed by their personal experiences and by the dramatic changes in the world around them.
San Diego Book Awards honored In the Shadow of the Prophet as its 2017 winner for both Best Unpublished Novel and Best Unpublished Entry Overall. It was the first recipient of the ChetCunningham Spur Award for Unpublished Authors.
