Whether you’re finding yourself buried under snow or in unseasonably warm weather I hope it’s with a good book in your hand! I for one am on a fantastic reading roll and am diving straight in this week because there are so many books to talk about!
Today’s newsletter is sponsored by Hades by Candice Fox.
On a dark night in a junkyard on the outskirts of Sydney, Australia, Hades Archer disposes of things other people either don’t want, or cannot face. Old machinery and dead bodies are dismembered with equally cool precision, until two children are delivered for disposal, still alive. Hades nurses them back to health and raises them as his own. They are twins, a boy and a girl, whom he names Eric and Eden.
Flash forward: the twins, now adults, are detectives in the Sydney Metro Police homicide squad, when a series of bodies turn up with vital organs missing. A serial killer is stealing organs from healthy people and selling them to the desperately ill. Eric and Eden team up with Frank Bennett, a tarnished detective fighting his own demons, as they track down a madman who lives for the kill…
A great series with rich and wonderful characters that expertly blends detective mystery with history and politics:
Among the Ruins (Rachel Getty & Esa Khattak #3) by Ausma Zehanat Khan: Getty and Khattak are back with a new mystery that they’re solving unofficially, and on different continents. Zahra Sobhani, a Canadian-Iranian filmmaker, is dead and Khattak is asked to look into her death while in Iran (on leave from Canada’s Community Policing dept.), which is unsafe for him and difficult since he can’t use his usual resources–except for Getty, back in Canada who he has helping him. I really liked the mystery (which turned out to not go in the direction I was expecting), the three points of view (Getty, Khattak, and a prisoner’s), and as always my favorite part of Khan’s series is the deep dive into politics and cultures.
I hope this is the beginning of a series:
August Snow by Stephen Mack Jones: An ex-marine, ex-cop–who won a gigantic wrongfully-dismissed lawsuit against the police department–returns to his childhood home in Mexicantown, Detroit and quickly finds himself wrapped up in a mystery. Snow may have turned down Eleanore Paget’s request to hire him to investigate her investment bank but when she dies he finds himself on the case, and in constant danger. Jones does a fantastic job of bringing Detroit to life like a character, including the racial harmony, tension, and racism. While much of the FBI, cybercrime, and shoot-’em-up scenes aren’t plausible they reminded me of my love for action movies, and I could see August Snow easily being a great television/film character.
Read an excerpt: Miss Kopp’s Midnight Confessions, Amy Stewart’s next release in the Kopp Sisters series.
Clare Mackintosh, I Let You Go, discusses I See You on Flavorwire’s ‘The Sweetest Debut.’
Awesome:
Winter of the Gods (Olympus Bound #2) by Jordanna Max Brodsky: Selene DiSilva is a goddess, living with a mortal man, in N.Y. when they’re asked to help with a murder investigation. But this isn’t what anyone at first suspects and soon DiSilva realizes that someone is hunting the gods… Let’s count all the things that make this book awesome: 1. Greek gods secretly living amongst mortals. 2. A kick-ass (literally and figuratively) goddess who is also hilarious. 3. A mystery. 4. Awesome fight scenes. 5. A modern, unique take on Greek mythology. 6. A human and goddess relationship… I need book #3 NOW!
Argentinian Agatha Christie:
Death Going Down by Maria Angélica Bosco, Lucy Greaves (Translator): Bosco is known as the Argentinian Agatha Christie and that’s a hard title to live up to so I went into this excited, but also aware that I was most likely going to be disappointed. I was not! Bosco has written a great whodunnit that starts with a woman being found dead in the elevator of an apartment building in Buenos Aires–not everyone is buying the suicide angle and there’s a building filled with suspects and secrets! At 160 pages this is a satisfying quick-ish read. I for one am hoping for more of Bosco’s work to be translated, and if not I’ll just have to brush up on my Spanish.
Now in paperback:
Perfect Days by Raphael Montes (Annie Wilkes + Norman Bates had a terrifying book baby!)
The Ex by Alafair Burke (Did he or didn’t he?!)
The Widow by Fiona Barton (Unsettling, deep dive into how spouses stay after the other is accused of a horrible crime. Great on audio! Perfect for Dateline fans.)
The Lion’s Mouth (Hanne Wilhelmsen #4) by Anne Holt (Great mystery/political thriller that works as a standalone.)
Amy Dunne has a best friend:
Dead Letters by Caite Dolan-Leach, Jorjeana Marie (Narrator): Okay, so not really but I promise you one of the characters in this book and Amy Dunne would make the perfect friends–god help everyone else. Ava returns home to her family’s failing vineyard after her identical twin sister Zelda dies in a fire. But Ava is suddenly finding herself receiving messages from Zelda which send her on an elaborate game to unravel the mystery of where Zelda might really be… Think a fractured family is forced to reunite literary novel that is held together by a mystery and sprinkled with suspense.
Teaser trailer: The Sinner: USA upcoming adaptation of the same titled novel by Petra Hammesfahr starring Jessica Biel, Christopher Abbott, and Bill Pullman. This looks sooooo good!
I have to go shopping now:
Murder, She Wrote illustrated and handmade cushion
Until next time, keep investigating! And in the meantime feel free to come talk books with me on Litsy, you can find me under Jamie Canaves.
For Mel Hannigan, bipolar disorder makes life unpredictable. Her latest struggle is balancing her growing feelings in a new relationship with her instinct to conceal her diagnosis by keeping everyone at arm’s length. But when a former friend confronts Mel with the truth about the way their relationship ended, deeply buried secrets threaten to upend her shaky equilibrium.
