Author: Jamie Canaves

More undercover work! A lawyer lead. And add romance! Which you can read for the current $2.99 sale price! (Review)

If you’ve been making your way through this great, completed, procedural series set in Ghana grab the fourth entry (2nd to last book) for $1.99!

If you’re craving a page-turner, psychological thriller that is fun here’s one that is currently $1.99! (Review)

This was my most anticipated book of 2021 and it’s one of my favorite books of 2021. I am SO glad that at last everyone can run to this book. Daunis Fontaine navigates between her wealthy white family’s town and the Ojibwe reservation. At 18 she loves science, plays hockey, hangs out with her best friend, and has just decided to enroll in a local college instead of the planned university since her GrandMary recently became ill.

The feeling of being between places, never fully accepted, and unsure what her future holds becomes even more complicated when she witnesses a horrific crime. Wanting to help her Ojibwe community, she agrees to work undercover with the FBI. And that just comes with its own issues, and stirs up past family secrets.

Daunis is a thoughtful character who, while trying to navigate her own feelings, trauma, and path in life, puts herself on the line to help her community while understanding a history and culture that the FBI and outsiders don’t. There’s a story about family, belonging, trauma, finding your voice, violence toward Native women–and a few other things–that all roll into one story, carried by Daunis, who you’ll cheer for from beginning to end. There are books with characters who I forever carry with me and Daunis is one.

(TW addiction, overdoses/ murder suicide scene/ past child abuse, details/ sexual assault on page, not graphic or detailed)

If you read this book knowing nothing about it you’d think you’d read a great spy novel–you’d be right about only the great part because it’s nonfiction. It is a fascinating true story about a woman who beat all the odds to survive as a spy for decades. Ursula Ruth Kuczynski became a communist as a teenager, married young, and moved to Shanghai with her architect husband where she was recruited by Richard Sorge, a Soviet military intelligence officer. From there she had quite a life!

I could not stop listening to this story (the audiobook is narrated by the author, which I very much recommend), which is filled with fascinating information (the g-spot is named after German physician Ernst Gräfenberg) and people. At the center is Ursula “Agent Sonya.” She was always willing to risk everything for her undercover work and the communist cause, which she believed was the only way to truly defeat racism and Nazis (the whole Third Reich and the Soviet Union becoming allies was a surprise to her). She went back to transcribing secret messages hours after giving birth, clearly sought danger, and somehow managed to never be betrayed even when fellow agents were captured. If you like to read about deeply layered people and history, this is a must-read. “I may not be innocent, but I’m right.”

(TW mentions past suicide, brief details/ torture/ mentions dead baby/ WWII)

I downloaded this SO fast as soon as I got access to an egalley. It’s the latest book in a great PI series set in Chicago–so if you want a mystery marathon from here until its June release start reading Broken Places (review), which is currently $2.99 in ebook!

I’m currently finishing Arsenic and Adobo (Tita Rosie’s Kitchen Mystery #1) by Mia P. Manansala which should be on all cozy mystery fans TBR, especially if you like mouth watering food descriptions, great families, and best friends.

And my streak of picking up/finishing excellent narrative nonfiction and graphic novels continues with my two latest finished books: Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker (Highly recommend the audio/ all the trigger warnings); Heartstopper (Heartstopper #1) by Alice Oseman, Lluís Delgado (Translator) (Highly recommend having the sequel on hand!)

Here’s a great coming-of-age story smashed with a mystery about a teen boy looking into the murder of his cousin, which is currently $4.99. (Review)

Want to start at the beginning of a popular procedural series set in a remote place? Here’s one currently $2.99! (Review)

This is a character-driven mystery set along the Red River, one side in Minnesota one side in North Dakota, in 1970. Nineteen-year-old Chippewa woman Renee Blackbear, known as Cash, is tough because she’s had to be. After a car accident when she was a toddler she has spent her life mistreated and abused in white foster care homes and learned to work the farms doing the jobs assigned to men as a means for money and independence. Sheriff Wheaton, who dealt with the car accident case, has always looked out for her and calls her in to help him with a murder case.

A man’s body is found stabbed to death and Cash finds herself between her time as a pool shark and working the field looking into who the man was, and who would have killed him. While she tries to figure that out, and stay alive, we also see the history of her life, her relationship with Wheaton, and his attempt to get Cash to enroll in college.

I love that Cash’s character is tough, not because a writer just wrote that adjective for a woman character but because she’s had a difficult life and this has been her way to survive, and because of her refusal to take any more crap from people. I had actually started with the sequel in this series, Girl Gone Missing, which starts just at the end of this one; I was never lost while reading it, but I am glad I got to start at the beginning. I’d really like this to be a series that continues as Cash is a character I randomly think of and wonder about how she’s doing (characters are real!). And while I’ll read any amount of pages about Cash, I like that the novels so far are just over 200 pages, letting me curl up for an afternoon and get an entire story read that completely transports me to another place and time.

(TW alcoholism/ past suicidal thoughts briefly mentioned, detail/ past child abuse)

This is one of my absolute favorite series. Is it funny? Yes! Does it have a slow burn will-they-won’t-they? Yes! Does it distract from the mysteries? No! Does it totally make it more entertaining? Yes! Does it have adventure? Yes! Sleuthing? Yes! Amusing bickering? Yes! A woman who refuses to be told what to do? Double yes!

This time around Veronica Speedwell (lepidopterist) and Stoker Templeton-Van (natural historian)–when not hilariously bickering–end up roped into a missing Princess case. Apparently, it is frowned upon in this establishment for princesses to up and disappear. And by this establishment I mean 1889 England because this is a historical mystery. The goal is to keep the disappearance a secret because clearly the princess has just taken a break and will return, but no one can know she’s missing. Plus, there are important duties to attend to and that’s how Veronica ends up being talked into pretending to be the princess until they find her. Fun! Except this is a mystery and wow does Veronica have a knack for getting herself and Stolker into life or death situations. Throw in mountain climbing, diaries, do-I-have-to-marry-him, delicious desserts, I-think-it’s-a-murder, a grump and a cheerful go-getter, and literal LOL scenes and you’re in for a fantastically fun mystery.

If you’re debating jumping in here, I’ll say that you won’t be lost because Raybourn gives you all the necessary tidbits, but so much of the delight of this series is watching characters’ secrets be revealed and Veronica and Stoker’s relationship. Plus, why only want one great read when you can have 6?

My reading took a massive hit last year (I mean my everything but ya know) and this past weekend I read three books which felt amazing to finally do again. I found my new favorite romance novel, which was my libro.fm pick: Act Your Age, Eve Brown by Talia Hibbert. If you need a bunch of good laughs run to that book. And All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries #1) by Martha Wells had been hyped so much I thought I’d be disappointed but I wasn’t: It’s as entertaining as I’d hoped a book about a murdering bot who’d rather watch TV than have to keep helping out annoying humans, would be.

I then picked up The Jigsaw Man by Nadine Matheson and have been shaking my fists at all the work I’ve had this week because I really want to get back to this British serial killer procedural! It’s one of those books that I just really liked the voice from the beginning and it’s doing a really good blend of the current case and the lead’s personal life.

I am THE most excited to have gotten my greedy little crime loving hands on the Truly Devious continuation where Stevie Bell has a new mystery not set at Ellingham Academy. I refuse to know anything else about it so I can enjoy every moment as it happens without any anticipation of what is to come.

If you’re looking for a cat and mouse thriller here’s a great one currently on sale for $4.99! (Review)

If you’re looking for a thriller with a cult here’s one currently on sale for $4.99! (Review)

Sutanto is the author of the upcoming Dial A For Aunties (Review), which has been getting a lot of attention (it’s a great crime/romcom and should!) but I’m not sure many readers realize that The Obsession is her debut. It started with You vibes and then went in its own surprising way and I really enjoyed this novel. Delilah is having a hard time after her father’s death with an abusive stepfather. And after an incident she ends up being blackmailed by her stalker classmate into having to date him. Cornered, and fed up, Delilah is going to have to figure a way out… (TW stalker/ domestic abuse/ past suicide attempt and suicide, detail/ drugging without consent)

Mosley is an extremely prolific writer, writing in most genres, and has a few well known detective series. Easy Rawlins is probably the most known since Devil in a Blue Dress starred Denzel Washington in the adaptation. And the detective is back again! The series, having aged from the ’40s, finds Rawlings in 1969, Southern California with a Vietnam veteran wanting to hire him. You can count on trouble from cases to personal life to follow our detective.

I love this series! It has a fun, unique, remote setting where basically victims to criminals have found themselves a safe place to hide, which makes for an interesting community since no one knows who is which. The lead is Detective Casey Duncan who was a homicide detective who ran with a friend to hide here, and has stayed and ended up partnering romantically and professionally with the sheriff. This time around, the mystery concerns the actual town makeup, meaning its existence may be in danger…

Summers, who wrote the 2018 hit Sadie (Review), is back with another YA crime novel! We have separated sisters again but this time it’s because of a cult. And one sister is determined to prove The Unity Project is a cult in order to get her sister back.

If you want a modern, dark take on Sherlock, IQ is the detective and series for you. Set in East Long Beach, Isaiah Quintabe, IQ, takes on the cases the police don’t/can’t, and he always ends up in danger but uses his deduction skills to survive. While I am a fan of jumping randomly into series, the progression of IQ as a character and his personal relationships (Dodson–rhymes with Watson!) are really worth starting at the beginning to watch them unfold.

If you like atmospheric crime novels, all of Jane Harper’s novels are for you. Her recent standalone is all about a past incident that a small community ocean town is trying to forget, but this is a mystery novel so it’s all going to come out. Especially after someone is murdered! (Review)

I am currently listening to the audiobook–which has an exceptional narrator, Nicole Lewis–and I can’t put it down! It follows a suburban community with a new family that doesn’t “fit in,” and after a sinkhole opens up it’s only a matter of time before something even worse happens… This literally starts with the question of how a community could conspire to kill an entire family and also asks “what if they had it coming”? And I literally said out loud “Oh really!” So, yes, I am racing through writing this so I can get back to reading–sorry, not sorry.

I am a huge fan of narrative nonfiction and Loftis wrote Code Name: Lise, which I loved (Review), so this is at the top of my TBR. Aline Griffith was “an ordinary American girl who became one of the OSS’s most daring spies in World War II before marrying into European nobility”. Sold! I love these amazing stories that are finally getting recognition.

Here’s an awesome graphic novel collection of 16 Noir stories by 40 Black creators which got funded on Kickstarter. You can check out all the creators and some awesome pages here!

This is a police procedural, fictional serial killer translation that takes you to Northern Spain. This is the sequel in the trilogy and the book starts where the first one ends so if you haven’t yet read The Silence of the White City (Review), start there! If you did, then, like me, you’ve probably been highly anticipating the continuation and it’s now here! A note that Eva García Sáenz is the name used for English publication, but her full name is Eva García Sáenz de Urturi, and so there are two Goodreads pages etc.

For true crime readers, here is a look into two girls murdered in a small community. Faleiro looks into Padma and Lalli’s 2014 disappearances and murders in a village in western Uttar Pradesh, India–which leads to a look at “political maneuvering, caste systems and codes of honor”.

If you’re looking to start a police procedural starring a detective, meet Detective Adam Tyler who in the first book Firewatching is the sole member of the South Yorkshire Cold Case Unit. The first book deals with arson cases and now Tyler finds himself with a newly promoted DC trying to solve a murder as they’re pulled away from Cold Cases–except for the personal cold case in Tyler’s life involving his father’s death, which Tyler keeps investigating…

The sequel to East Of Hounslow (the most reluctant MI5 spy ever!) is only $0.99!!! Get thee this book and the first if you’ve yet to read it.

If you’re a fan of dark crime shows like Ozarks this book is for you and it’s $1.99 and I will read anything Sharpe writes! (Review)

This is the perfect beach read to escape your winter situation. Aarav Rai is a 26-year-old bestselling crime author whose mother disappeared–with a quarter of a million of his father’s money–when he was a teenager. Was she a missing person who should be presumed dead or a woman in an abusive relationship who took money and ran?

Those have been the questions left behind in an Auckland, New Zealand, cul-de-sac. Except now Nina Rai’s car has been found with her body inside at Waitākere Ranges Regional Park adding new questions: did she die in a car accident; was she murdered? Aarav has plenty of theories from his crime writing brain, but he was recently in an accident and is having memory issues–including around what he remembers from the night of his mother’s disappearance. But he does remember her screaming.

And so we’re taken not only into Aarav’s thoughts and memories of his childhood but also into the cul-de-sac of wealthy neighbors as he tries to unravel everyone’s secrets and dirty deeds…

I love small communities and watching all the secrets being exposed, so this was already my catnip, and then it had the added bonus of a great location we rarely get to armchair travel to. Aarav is an interesting, layered, on-and-off unlikeable character forced to face his complicated feelings and memories of his childhood and parents.

I listened to the audiobook, narrated by Raj Varma, which is always my go-to format for settings I am unfamiliar with in hopes to hear proper pronunciations. I really liked Varma’s voice, accent, and that he did not do high pitched women’s voices.

(TW alcoholism/ domestic abuse/ statutory (19/16)/ dog death questioned as poisoning, no graphic details/ past suicide, detail/ past eating disorder, detail)

I love that I can count on Harper to deliver an immersive, page-turning, atmospheric mystery every single time.

I’m not going to give a lot of plot away on this one because a lot is revealed in fragments and I loved collecting the pieces as I was getting to know the characters. Kieran Elliott has returned home to a small south coast town in Tasmania. His father has dementia, being looked after by his mother, and he’s come home with his girlfriend Mia and new baby daughter to help pack up the home.

He’s not only dealing with the current situation and emotional toll of an ill parent but it’s also forcing him and the community to face a past many would rather bury. There was an accident. There may still be a missing person. There have only ever been questions and accusations. And now there is a murdered woman. Kieran is about to learn that you can’t run away from an unresolved past…

I loved watching Kieran and Mia reconnect with people they hadn’t seen in a long time and all the complexities involved, the tension of a place trying so hard to forget the past, the family dynamics, the complicated nature of grief, all playing out along the ocean coast, which can quickly turn from tranquil to violent.

(TW parent with dementia/ drowning/ suicide on page)

Did I drop everything to read Megan Abbott’s upcoming suspense novel? Yes, of course! The thing I love–there are many but here’s one–about Abbott’s books is that she envelopes readers in feelings. While many mysteries start with a crime, Abbott just starts by plunging you into the lives of characters and slowly this feeling of dread sets in because you don’t know what but you know something is certainly coming, and it’s never good.

It’s always fascinating to watch. There’s also usually an “extreme” element as the backdrop–this time dance. A ballet studio, to be exact, left to two sisters when their parents died in a car accident. They teach and live together with one of their husbands. Until one sister moves out of the house and into the dance studio. There’s a fire. A contractor. And suddenly things are unraveling… If I close my eyes and tell you the feelings: breathless, chaotic, loneliness, restless, reckless, pressure cooker, intensity, desire, regret, passion, obsession, visceral, longing… Abbott manages to make her characters’ lives so vivid and real I can smell and taste their world, all while making me uncomfortable and unable to stop turning the page. It’s a train wreck I always know is coming and can never look away from (don’t want to!) that always ends up living with me afterwards as she explores how we get to these wrecks and how we can continue after. She has an extensive backlist and here is me raving about them all. (TW disordered eating and eating disorders/ past alcoholism/ sexual abuse of teen/ suicide scene, detail/ past domestic abuse)

I got my hands on an early copy of this upcoming cozy mystery and it’s my weekend read. Look at that cover! I am already salivating, so must prepare proper snacks for reading.

And my current audiobooks which I’m really enjoying! Late to the Party by Kelly Quindlen, which is all about when you’ve had the same limited social group of friends and find yourself branching out. And Alone in the Wild by Kelley Armstrong, which is one of my favorite thriller series with an interesting setting: in a remote place where victims and predators have all been given a new chance in this community. If you need thrills, it’s an awesome series.

This is a character driven crime novel that follows the fallout from a hit-and-run as the family grieves and an investigator looks into the crime. It’s fantastic and $1.99! (Review)

This is a great breaks-the-mold thriller that is smart and deliciously wicked about a woman who is tired of cleaning up her sister’s messes (literally) and may get pushed too far when her sister sets eyes on her crush. It’s $1.99! (TW child and domestic abuse/ rape–I want to say past briefly recounted)

A great read for historical fiction fans with a murder mystery that unravels amongst the upper class while the city deals with anarchists and terrible working conditions for the lower class. It’s $2.99! (Review)

If you’re looking to start a new PI series, here’s one of my recent favorite pairings (a bounty hunter and PI) which is $4.99! (Review)

Here’s a great mystery for fans of historical mysteries, Sherlock, and Acorn TV mystery shows. Captain Jim Agnihotri, born to an Indian mother and British father, is recovering in a military hospital in 1892, Bombay. After reading Sherlock Holmes as well as a case about two young women who fell from a university’s clock tower, he ends up on the case, hired by the women’s widow and brother (one woman was his wife, the other his sister, in case you thought something gross).

For Sherlock fans: you get walked through the investigation step by step as he asks questions and digs into the story, including him wearing disguises. For history fans: you get little known history (this is based on real events you can fall down a rabbit hole looking into) and submerged into India under British rule and the Parsee community. There’s also a nice romance subplot as Captain Jim falls in love but is warned by the woman’s family that he isn’t allowed to be with her because of their culture. For Acorn TV fans: this does deal with real life history and cruelties but does not go into graphic detail beyond what you’d see in historical mystery shows.

(TW case believed suicide at first/ mentions domestic abuse, no detail/ child marriages, slavery/ child death)

This book has the comps for “The Silence of the Lambs meets Sadie” and I never say this: I can totally see it. For Silence of the Lambs you have the young woman sent in to interview the captured serial killer, and for Sadie you have a great voice of a young woman trying to survive her past, and the writing also takes care to not be graphic for the sake of it or be problematic.

This did a great job of balancing the things I like from fictional serial killer stories without being dark and graphic for the sake of it, and being catnipy like a network show without being too networky (I swear that makes sense in my head). Oh, and bonus points for being set in the ’80s! Although sadly no one gets assaulted by an Aqua Net spray can.

It starts with Emma Lewis and Travis Bell, two young adults, being recruited by the FBI to interview teen serial killers in the hopes of gaining more knowledge about them. Lewis is a serial killer survivor and Bell is a US Marshal candidate whose father died in the line of duty at the hands of a serial killer. Yes, they are being used. And they quickly realize it and go rogue every opportunity they can because there is an active serial killer and they want to help catch him.

This has all the elements of great backstory to the characters that fits perfectly with where they currently find themselves, the young “recruits” clashing with the bureaucracy, the tension of a serial killer, “you in danger!” scenes, and a great partnership unfolding between Lewis and Bell. This is definitely one of 2020’s best thrillers. And if you see the YA tag and are skipping it because you don’t read YA, I’d give this one a try, it reads adult for me, or at the very least the line between the two genres and does not have the elements I hear non-YA readers complain about.

I really enjoyed the audiobook which is narrated by Christine Lakin (you’ll know if you watched Step by Step!), Maxwell Hamilton, and Zach Villa (American Horror Story: 1984) so you get the multi voice narration, including for the serial killer’s chats with Lewis. It’s really well narrated and produced and totally worth my libro.fm credit!

(TW mentions past child abuse/ talks about serial killer cases/ briefly mentions past suicide, no details/ mentions past animal cruelty)