This is a legal thriller set in the USA and is totally different to the author’s Cormac Reilly series set in Ireland. Hannah is a law student who schemes and lies to get herself into The Innocence Project at the University of Virginia. This project tries to prove innocence of wrongly-convicted prisoners but we’re not […]

Newly minted research assistant Saffron Everleigh attends a dinner party at University College London. She expects the conversations will focus on the university’s investigative expedition to the Amazon but she doesn’t expect one of the professors’ wives to be poisoned by an unknown toxin. Saffron’s mentor, Dr Maxwell, is the chief suspect. As evidence mounts […]

Oh, this is a fun read! I’m late to this book (it was published in 2020) and there’s now a sequel and a third on the way, but a little anticipation added to my keenness. In an English retirement village, four residents meet weekly to discuss unsolved crimes. They call themselves the Thursday Murder Club. […]

Frictional Characters is the sixth book in Elizabeth Spann Craig’s The Village Library Mysteries series. Set in the small town of Whitby, North Carolina, this is a classic cosy mystery. No one was excited when muckraker Jonas Merchant returned to town. He was an expert at uncovering secrets and rumours. He was also desperate for […]

In 1631, Sara de Vos was admitted as a master painter to the Guild of St. Luke’s in Holland, the first woman to be so recognised. Three hundred years later, only one work attributed to her is known to remain – a haunting winter scene, At the Edge of a Wood, which hangs over the […]

Journalist Miranda Jack (Jax) is finally attempting to move on from the death of her husband by relocating up the coast with her young daughter, Zoe. Then a single carjacking by a gun-wielding man changes everything. Forced to drive at high speed up the motorway, Jax listens to the frantic rants of Brendan Walsh, a […]

At dusk on a November evening in 2020 Kate, in the middle of a two-week quarantine period, just can’t take it anymore. She feels claustrophobic in her small house and needs to walk. Surely no one will know if she slips outside for a quick solitary walk? But her neighbour sees her leaving and her […]

This was a fun read, set in late Regency 1820s London. Enter Miss Olivia Featherstone, who is smart, adventurous, and skilled at throwing daggers at villians. When she seeks to right a slur on her family’s name, Delavel Chêne-Craven, a mysterious aristocrat with mysterious ties to both foreign and domestic governments, crosses her path. Soon […]

I am saying goodbye to ‘My book of the month’ in 2022. Instead, I’ll be adding more regular reviews of books I have read. This means you’ll see what an eclectic reader I am. There are certain types of novels I avoid (horror and fantasy – I’m looking at you) and there are certain genres […]

What an irresistible novel; a story full of stories. Start for the mystery but stay for the powerful words and the spaces between them. Jasmine is an Indigenous lawyer who takes her mother, Della, on a tour of English literary sites. Their relationship is, like those within most families, filled with unspoken thoughts. Triggered by […]