Rating: 2.5 out of 5 starsBeautiful.Rich.Mysterious.Everyone wants to be a Roanoke girl.But you won’t when you know the truth.Lane Roanoke is fifteen when she comes to live with her grandparents and fireball cousin at the Roanoke family’s rural estate following…
Review: ‘Dust and Shadow’ by Lyndsay Faye
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars As England’s greatest specialist in criminal detection, Sherlock Holmes is unwavering in his quest to capture the killer responsible for terrifying London’s East End. He hires an “unfortunate” known as Mary Ann Monk, the…
Review: ‘Mystery in White’ by Jefferson J. Farjeon
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars On Christmas Eve, heavy snowfall brings a train to a halt near the village of Hemmersby. Several passengers take shelter in a deserted country house, where the fire has been lit and the…
Review: ‘The Girl on the Train’ by Paula Hawkins
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars “To everyone else in this carriage I must look normal; I’m doing exactly what they do: commuting to work, making appointments, ticking things off lists. Just goes to show” Rachel takes the same commuter…
Review: ‘Midnight Crossroad’ by Charlaine Harris
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars Welcome to Midnight, Texas, a town with many boarded-up windows and few full-time inhabitants, located at the crossing of Witch Light Road and Davy Road. It’s a pretty standard dried-up western town. There’s a…
Review: ‘The Mangle Street Murders’ by M.R.C. Kasasian
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars Gower Street, London, 1882: Sidney Grice, London’s most famous personal detective, is expecting a visitor. He drains his fifth pot of morning tea, and glances outside, where a young, plain woman picks her way…
Review: ‘Dark Places’ by Gillian Flynn
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars Libby Day was seven when her mother and two sisters were murdered in “The Satan Sacrifice of Kinnakee, Kansas.” As her family lay dying, little Libby fled their tiny farmhouse into the freezing January…
RIP VIII Review: ‘The Never List’ by Koethi Zan
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars There were four of us down there for the first thirty-two months and eleven days of our captivity. And then, very suddenly and without warning, there were three. Even though the fourth person hadn’t…
Review: ‘The Murder of Roger Ackroyd’ by Agatha Christie
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars Roger Ackroyd knew too much. He knew that the woman he loved had poisoned her brutal first husband. He suspected also that someone had been blackmailing her. Now, tragically, came the news that she…
Steampunk Review: ‘The Osiris Ritual’ by George Mann
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars **This is the second in a loosely connected series – if you haven’t read the first, The Affinity Bridge and want to avoid minor spoilers, you can pop over to my review of that…