Musings on the Written Word
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Another day, another grand scheme! The thieving Fitzglen family are back in this second instalment of the spellbinding Theatre of Thieves gothic mystery series set in Victorian England.
London, 1908. The Fitzglens, one of London’s leading theatre families and part-time thieves, are plotting their next scheme when they receive terrible news about Great Uncle Montague. He’s been killed in a tragic accident at his Notting Hill home.
Montague will be much missed, not just for his talent in art forgery, but his death provides an unlooked-for opportunity: the chance to search for his infamous iron box. No one knows what it contains – if, that is, it even exists – but Jack Fitzglen is certain it has to be something highly valuable . . . or extremely dangerous. Why else would the grand master of storytelling have refused to even drop a hint?
Jack is amazed when he finds the box – and even more amazed by its contents. An unknown play by one of Ireland’s leading playwrights, entitled The Murderer Inside the Mirror. Jack reads the first few pages, and is struck by a nameless feeling of dread. But even he has no idea what kind of dangerous adventure the manuscript will take him on – one which will tangle him in revenge, madness . . . and murder.
This unsettling gothic historical mystery, following Chalice of Darkness, will appeal to fans of Daphne du Maurier, Laura Purcell, Rebecca James, Sarah Waters and Stuart Turton.
Sarah Rayne rarely disappoints and in The Murderer Inside the Mirror she has delivered another tense, clever, and engaging mystery featuring the Fitzglens, one of her series families.
Rayne is exceptionally skilled at telling stories that alternate time periods and/or have some sort of time travel or past life connection. Here, the Fitzglen clan of actors and thieves find themselves embroiled in a mystery surrounding a previously-unknown play written by a well-known author which disappears as mysteriously as it was found. The search for the manuscript reveals a complicated web of scandal, betrayal, and love spanning centuries.
Rayne’s books are always well written and this is no exception. The plot will keep readers engaged, and will appeal to fans of mysteries, romance, and history. If you’re new to this author, check out her earlier series. All are terrific reads.
Publication Date: June 4, 2024
Published By: Severn House
Thanks to Netgalley for the review copy
Amateur sleuth Flavia de Luce, along with her pestilent younger cousin, investigates the murder of a former public hangman and uncovers a secret that brings the greatest shock of her life.
Flavia de Luce has taken on the mentorship of her odious moon-faced cousin Undine, who has come to live at Buckshaw following the death of her mother. Undine’s main talent, aside from cultivating disgusting habits, seems to be raising Flavia’s hackles, although in her best moments she shows potential for trespassing, trickery, and other assorted mayhem.
When Major Greyleigh, a local recluse and former hangman, is found dead after a breakfast of poisonous mushrooms, suspicion falls on the de Luce family’s longtime cook, Mrs. Mullet. After all, wasn’t it she who’d picked the mushrooms, cooked the omelet, and served it to Greyleigh moments before his death? “I have to admit,” says Flavia, an expert in the chemical nature of poisons, “that I’d been praying to God for a jolly good old-fashioned mushroom poisoning. Not that I wanted anyone to die, but why give a girl a gift such as mine without giving her the opportunity to use it?”
But Flavia knows the beloved Mrs. Mullet is innocent. Together with Dogger, estate gardener and partner-in-crime, and the obnoxious Undine, Flavia sets out to find the real killer and clear Mrs. Mullet’s good name. Little does she know that following the case’s twists and turns will lead her to a most surprising discovery—one with the power to upend her entire life.
I was surprised and thrilled to find this new Flavia DeLuce book because I thought the author was finished with the series. I am so glad Mr. Bradley had this story to tell because it is a shocker! Flavia is older here – 14 and worrying that she’s “becoming a woman.” This opens up the opportunity for growth with the character, who has developed from a precocious, brilliant child to a young woman coming into her own power. And what power it is! There are some loose ends tied up here and even more information on the mysterious Nide, culminating in one of the best mic-drop endings I’ve read.
Flavia’s relationships are stretched here, with the odious Undine playing a greater role in Flavia’s life. Bradley’s writing is saucy and eloquent as usual, although the murder plot seemed to be a vehicle used to guide Flavia through some startling revelations about her family and her place in Bishops’ Lacy as mistress of Buckshaw. Flavia’s odd relationship with Inspector Hewitt seemed less important here, but still something she values.
If Bradley has a few more Flavia books to write, this reader will eagerly devour them.
Publication Date: September 3, 2024
Published By: Random House Publishing Group, Ballantine, Bantam
Thanks to Netgalley for the review copy
The very first thriller from Rick Riordan Presents! Drawing from the darkest corners of Caribbean mythology, acclaimed author Sarah Dass crafts a chilling tale of magic, murder, and how far we’ll go to protect what’s ours—perfect for fans of Angeline Boulley and Tiffany D. Jackson.
Unlike the other residents of the small Caribbean Island of St. Virgil, Selina DaSilva does not believe in magic. With a logical mind and a knack for botany, Selina used to dream of leaving the island to study Pharmacology—until a vicious, unsolved attack left her father dead and her mother in a coma.
Now her guilt over her mother’s condition keeps her tethered to the island, relegated to conning gullible tourists with useless talismans and phony protection rituals. But when one of those tourists ends up at the center of a string of strange murders, the truth that Selina has been denying can no longer be avoided: there is evil lurking in the forests that surround St. Virgil. Another thing that can’t be avoided? Selina’s ex-boyfriend Gabriel, newly employed at the local newspaper and eager to put his investigative skills to use.
Desperate to put an end to the killings and claim justice for Selina’s family, these two former lovers race to find answers. But evil bides its time. And as long-buried feelings and long-hidden secrets about Selina’s family’s past begin to reveal themselves, only one answer remains—and it waits in the forest.
A Rick Riordan and Sarah Dass collaboration produces a dynamite book? Shocker, I know.
This is everything I expected and more. It’s an ancient trope at the heart of the story, but Dass drapes the old “selling your soul” skeleton with plenty of modern dress. There are some great plot twists and one really terrifying underwater scene near the end that only further reinforced my irrational fear of swimming in anything but a pool with a defined bottom.
The Rick Riordan Presents series has introduced me to so many new stories from world folklore. This one is another winner.
Publication Date: May 14, 2024
Published By: Disney Publishing Worldwide
Thanks to Netgalley for the review copy
Great American novelist Julia Alvarez, bestselling author of In the Time of the Butterflies and How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, returns with a luminescent novel about storytelling that reads like an instant classic.
Alma Cruz, the celebrated writer at the heart of The Cemetery of Untold Stories, doesn’t want to end up like her friend, a novelist who fought so long and hard to finish a book that it threatened her sanity. So when Alma inherits a small plot of land in the Dominican Republic, her homeland, she has the beautiful idea of turning it into a place to bury her untold stories—literally. She creates a graveyard for the manuscript drafts and the characters whose lives she tried and failed to bring to life and who still haunt her.
Alma wants her characters to rest in peace. But they have other ideas and soon begin to defy their author: they talk back to her and talk to one another behind her back, rewriting and revising themselves. Filomena, a local woman hired as the groundskeeper, becomes a sympathetic listener to the secret tales unspooled by Alma’s characters. Among them, Bienvenida, dictator Rafael Trujillo’s abandoned wife who was erased from the official history, and Manuel Cruz, a doctor who fought in the Dominican underground and escaped to the United States.
The Cemetery of Untold Stories asks: Whose stories get to be told, and whose buried? Finally, Alma finds the meaning she and her characters yearn for in the everlasting vitality of stories. Julia Alvarez reminds us that the stories of our lives are never truly finished, even at the end.
This was a lovely palate cleanser for me between some historical romance and YA fantasy, but Julia Alvarez is so much more than a little lemon ice. The concept here may not be for everyone, but I loved the beginning of this set of stories that focus on Alma and her struggle with her father’s death and her place in the world.
A successful author, she finds her office full of unfinished stories which she feels the compulsion to bury. She regrets all the lost stories from her family, and wants to control her own unfinished and potentially lost stories by burying them where she began – in the Dominican Republic.
Alvarez explores the intricate family relationships that occur between Alma and her sisters, her parents, and even with the land in the Dominican Republic. The stories are complex and sometimes meandering, which requires attentive reading. This would make a thoughtful book club selection with discussion focusing on our own untold stories. What draws everything together is Alvarez’ beautiful prose. One of the best of the year.
Recommended.
“Only an alchemist as wise and sure as Alvarez could swirl the elements of folklore and the flavor of magical realism around her modern prose and make it all sing . . . Lively, joyous . . . often witty, occasionally somber and elegiac.” —Luis Alberto Urrea, The New York Times Book Review
“Engaging and written in a playful, crystal-clear prose, this novel explores friendship, love, sisterhood, living between cultures, and how people can be haunted by the things they don’t finish . . . Entertaining . . . Heartwarming.” —Gabino Iglesias, The Boston Globe
**Named a Most Anticipated Book by the New York Times, Washington Post, Today.com, Goodreads, B&N Reads, Literary Hub, HipLatina, BookPage, BBC.com, Zibby Mag, and more**
Publication Date: April 2, 2024
Published By: Algonquin Books
Thanks to Netgalley for the review copy
Discover a spellbinding love story in this dazzling time-travel adventure from the NYT bestselling author of The Last Tiara, M.J. Rose.
Setting aside grief from the fallout of the second World War and putting her energy into curating an upcoming show critical to her career as the Keeper of the Metalworks at London’s renowned Victoria and Albert Museum, Jeannine Maycroft stumbles upon a unique collection of jewel-framed miniature eye portraits—a brilliant romantic device and clandestine love token of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
One piece among the assembly intrigues her more than all the others: a twilight-blue man’s eye framed by opals shimmering with enchanting flashes of fiery color. But the beauty is just the beginning. Not only is the painting a self-portrait of one of her favorite Pre-Raphaelite artists, Ashe Lloyd Lewis, but the brooch itself is a portal eight decades into the past.
Despite being cast into an era she was never meant to be in, Jeannine and Ashe develop an immediate and passionate bond, complicated by the undeniable fact that she does not belong in 1867, and the disaster about to destroy her family and reputation in her time.
Striving to live a dual life and dangerously straddling two time periods, Jeannine fights to protect her career and her father from scandal in the present while desperately trying to save her lover’s life in the past.
Forgetting to Remember—richly embroidered with historical detail and heartbreaking conflict—is another luscious and thrilling masterpiece by M.J. Rose. A beautiful and compelling story of art, war, magic, and survival, wrapped in a love that defies time.
MJ Rose is one of my go-to authors when I’m looking for incredible storytelling with a pleasing blend of history and romance. As an added benefit, she throws in some time-travel here, adding yet another dimension to her already gorgeous descriptive narrative and imaginative plot.
I can’t say much more about this captivating author except go get her books and immerse yourself in her worlds. This one can be read as a stand-alone, so start here by all means, then get the rest of her work from the library.
Recommended.
Publication Date: March 26, 2024
Published By: Blue Box Press
Thanks to Netgalley for the review copy
Inspired by stories about the real-world Great Dismal Swamp, this dual POV Young Adult fantasy by Randi Pink explores alternate history, a family’s supernatural connections to the swamp, and the strength that comes in knowing your roots.
“Four thousand six hundred forty-two steps in,” Grannylou interrupted. “You remember that now, Baby. Four-thousand six hundred forty-two steps to paradise.”
On a damp night in 1722, Babylou Mac and her three siblings witness the murder of their mother at the hands of the local preacher’s son—so Babylou kills him in retaliation. With plantation dogs now on their heels, the four siblings breach the treacherous confines of the Great Dismal Swamp. Deeper and deeper into Dismal they delve, amid the biting moccasins and pitch-black waters, toward a refuge where they can live freely within the swamp’s natural—and supernatural—protection.
Three-hundred years later, college student Atlas comes home to North Carolina for the annual Bornday cookout and hog roast: a celebration of the fact that she and her three cousins were all born on the same day nineteen years ago, sharing a birthday with their Grannylou. But this Bornday, Grannylou’s usual riddles and folktales about a marvelous paradise deep in the Great Dismal Swamp start to take on a tangible quality. Change coming.
When Dismal calls, sucking Grannylou in, it’s up to Atlas and her cousins to uncover the history that the black waters hold. Centuries of family tension, with roots all over Virginia and North Carolina, are about to be dug up. Because Babylou and Grannylou are one and the same, and the power she helped cultivate hundreds of years ago—steeped in Black resistance, familial love, and the otherworldly mysteries of the Great Dismal Swamp—is bubbling back up. But so is a bitterness that runs deep as the swamp’s waters. And some are ready to take what they feel they’re owed.
This is a complex, absolutely gripping novel that crosses genres to create one of the best stories of the year. Pink introduces plenty of southern Black folklore regarding the Great Dismal Swamp, and does a fabulous job of incorporating original takes on traditional folklore to create an unusual and authentic world of magic.
However, this is also a story about family – connections, betrayals, unshakable love, protection, and redemption. It is a book that requires the reader to pay attention and be fully immersed in the story – coming eye to eye with moccasins, feeling the black water of the swamp pool over your feet and the mud squish beneath you.
Pink does some extraordinary storytelling here that will both challenge and engross the reader. If this doesn’t become a movie or series, I will be very disappointed.
Highly recommended.
Publication Date: October 15, 2024
Published By: MacMillan Children’s Publishing Group | Feiwel & Friends
Thanks to Netgalley for the review copy
As New York Times bestseller Ann Cleeves’s beloved Vera series explodes in popularity in print and on TV, this stunning eleventh book explores the web of secrets surrounding a young man’s death.
The man’s body is found in the early morning light by a local dog walker in the park outside Rosebank, a home for troubled teens in the coastal village of Longwater. The victim is Josh, a staff member, who was due to work the previous night but never showed up.
DI Vera Stanhope is called out to investigate the death, with her only clue being the disappearance of one of the home’s residents, fourteen-year-old Chloe Spence. Vera can’t bring herself to believe that a teenager is responsible for the murder, but even she can’t dismiss the possibility.
Vera, Joe and new team member Rosie Bell, are soon embroiled in the case, and when a second connected body is found near the Three Dark Wives monument in the wilds of the Northumberland countryside, superstition and folklore begin to collide with fact. Vera knows she has to find Chloe to get to the truth, and the dark secrets in their community that may be far more dangerous than she could have ever believed possible.
When an author gets to a certain number of titles in a series, the stories often get stale and the character development stalls. Not so with the latest entry in Ann Cleeves’ Vera Stanhope series. Here we find Vera and the team trying to recover from the horrific ending of the previous book, with Vera thinking more about her future and the people in it.
In past stories, Vera is often portrayed as a hard, unyielding, no-nonsense detective who can turn empathy and sympathy on and off when needed. In Dark Wives, we see a softer side of Vera as she encounters a murder outside a carehome for teens and gets an insight into that world.
As usual, the mystery is well paced and well-developed, with great characters, narrative, and dialog. Cleeves truly is one of the best writers of her generation. We see a softer, humbled Vera here who is grappling with grief she never expected, and that underlayment to the story drives everything forward to a very satisfying end.
Well done.
Publication Date: August 27, 2024
Published By: St. Martin’s Press Minotaur Books
Thanks to Netgalley for the review copy
It’s the Christmas season in the charming small town of Starport Cove, but amid shopping for gifts, decorating, baking sugar cookies, and organizing the Christmas Bazaar, the discovery of a body is not the holiday event that anyone expected. When antique store owner Milton Cenford is found dead in a suit of armor, amateur sleuth Tarsey Quinston is determined to find the killer.
As quirky visitors arrive in town and create more questions than answers, Tarsey finds herself investigating rumors of a missing historic diary penned by a First Lady from Starport Cove and looking into paranormal activity.
Will the discovery of a mysterious hidden passageway and an encounter with a ghost lead Tarsey and her intuitive cat Silver down the path to danger? Or will they finally unveil the identity of the killer?
This second entry in the Pet Momma cozy mystery series is a fun, quick read. The author has made an excellent start on developing characters that readers will want to follow as more books are written in the series.
The writing here is well-done, with a nicely paced plot, witty dialog, appealing characters, and a cracking good mystery. Fans of cozy mysteries, especially ones with a paranormal overlay, will thoroughly enjoy this one.
Publication Date: December 15, 2023
Published By: The Author
Thanks to Book Sirens for the review copy
12-year-old Alexander Buchan was once content, training as a falconer at Strathbogie Castle in Huntly. But when his Earl sends him to Edinburgh to the court of the newly arrived Mary, Queen of Scots, the boy finds himself lured into a world of intrigue, terror and treachery. Alexander knows right from wrong, but how can he hope to outwit his master’s murderous messenger? Surely no one can defy an Earl – especially one whose wife is rumored to be a witch!
Soon, more than the boy’s own life is at stake: his friend Lizzie is arrested and the angry clouds of Reformation Scotland gather around the young Queen.
It seems that Alexander must spy – or die.
Barbara Henderson has lived in Scotland since 1991, somehow acquiring an MA in English Language and Literature, a husband, three children and a shaggy dog along the way. Having tried her hand at working as a puppeteer, relief librarian and receptionist, she now teaches drama part-time at secondary school. Writing predominantly for children, Barbara is the author of the Highland Clearances novel Fir for Luck, The Crystal-Kite, the eco-thriller Wilderness Wars, the Robert Burns smuggling novella Black Water, the medieval Siege of Caerlaverock, the Viking adventure The Chessmen Thief and the Jacobite adventure The Reluctant Rebel. Her latest book is Rivet Boy, about a young Victorian breadwinner employed on the construction site of the iconic Forth Bridge. She has twice won the Historical Association’s Young Quills Award. Her only title for adults to date is the immigration memoir Scottish by Inclination. Barbara lives in Inverness in the Scottish Highlands.
This is a well-written and entertaining story that could appeal to middle grade readers, especially those fascinated by the period of history presented here. I don’t know how much young students will know about Mary, Queen of Scots and her accurate portrayal in history, but that knowledge isn’t necessary here to pique interest. Instead, we have a young male protagonist who is smart, clever, and appealing, displays extraordinary honesty and bravery, and is rewarded for it.
The action starts almost immediately and doesn’t stop until the end, which is a pace that will keep kids reading. The vocabulary is appropriate to the age level. Reading this could easily prompt kids to investigate falconry, tall ships, and even embroidery.
An more enticing cover would surely encourage kids to pick this one up.
Publication Date: April 11, 2024
Published By: Luath Press
Thanks to Book Sirens for the review copy
It's All About the Book 