Before I review this title, I have a plea: can we just make the alphabet a teensy bit longer? Because I don’t think I am ready for this series to end, and it’s getting perilously close. But meanwhile, thank you to Net Galley and Putnam-Penguin Publishers for the free DRC, an unexpected treat, especially since it was such a clean galley. The title goes up for sale August 25, but you can order it in advance, too.

As often happens, our story isn’t just about one mystery. There’s an official investigation that goes bad; an unofficial investigation that goes worse; and then there’s a big pile of trouble that drops itself into the neighborhood where Kinsey and Henry (who is ten percent Kinsey’s landlord and ninety percent her surrogate father) live. As always, taut suspense is intermingled brilliantly with silly, naughty, impulsive things that Kinsey Millhone, our intrepid but mischievous…

Sophie Littlefield, author of the Bad Day series (A Bad Day for Sorry, etc) has hit a new level of excellence with The Guilty One. Many thanks to Net Galley and Gallery Books for the DRC! This book goes up for sale on August 11, and if you love a good novel, this one is for you.

Our chief protagonists are Maris and Ron. Maris is Calla’s mother…or she was. Calla is dead now. The court has convicted Karl of her murder, a heartbroken, enraged loss of control over a bad teenage breakup. Ron is Karl’s father, and as we open our first setting, he is considering jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. At the last minute he decides to phone Maris, and ask her whether to jump or not.

It shows a good deal about Ron’s character, weak and lacking in integrity, that he not only phones Karl’s victim’s…

A good mystery writer engages the writer at the beginning, and gets the adrenaline pumping by the 75% point in the story arc. A great mystery writer grabs us by the shirt right from the get-go, ramps us up into overdrive during the first quarter of the story, and doesn’t let us go till we turn the last page, exhausted, feeling both satisfied and bereaved because the story is over. And Sara Paretsky is a great writer, every single time. She’s only gotten better with this 17th installment of the Vic Warshawski series. Thank you and thank you again (and again, and again) to Putnam-Penguin Publishers and Net Galley for the DRC. You can buy this book July 28 if you want to. And you know you do!

Vic is a working class hero, but she’s left the mean streets of the south part of Chicago behind, and when she…

This is the most fascinating book I’ve read in a long time! Equal parts biography and American Civil War nonfiction, it details the experiences of Britain’s foremost spy, Robert Bunch, who was living in Charleston, South Carolina when the Civil War began and for its duration. I am truly grateful to Crown Publishers and Net Galley for permitting me to read the DRC in advance. And perhaps it is just as well, in a way, that my kindle fell in the potty when I was done and with it went hundreds (genuinely) of notations that I made as I wended my way through it; I had procrastinated writing this review because there was so much I wanted to say. Too much, in fact! Sometimes I have to remind myself I am writing a review for would-be readers who might want to discover a few things on their own. Part of…

I am pumped about this! I was contacted by a rep from Net Galley and offered a copy of Ballantine’s hot new mystery for a blog giveaway, which I have not done before. I hope a lot of people will enter. If you’d like to be included in the drawing, which will occur at the end of this week in a totally random manner, please go down to the bottom of the page where it says “Leave a Reply”. Type in your name (or a pseudonym for now if you prefer) and an e-mail address where I can reach you. If you win, I will send a message to your e-mail, and at that point you need to give me a real name and snail mail address, which will be released only to the Net Galley rep.

I promise not to use your e-mail address for anything else. Actually, I…

Those that love strong Civil War fiction have to get this book. It comes out in June, but thanks to the wonderful people at Net Galley and Random House/Ballantine Publishers, I was able to sneak a peek ahead of time. Although it is the fourth in a series, it also works really well as a stand-alone novel if you know the basic facts regarding Sherman’s siege of Atlanta and its subsequent burning. As we join him and his hardened veterans fighting under Howard and Slocum, “the two fists that Sherman intended to drive through the heart of the deep South”, they prepare to march to the sea.

I have read every one of Shaara’s novels, those about the Civil War as well as the American Revolution and US war against Mexico. I am a fan. The last in the series, The Smoke at Dawn, left me hovering between a four…

This newly released digital version of Garrow’s outstanding, comprehensive recounting and analysis of the famous Selma demonstrations carried out by Martin Luther King Junior, other civil rights leaders, along with masses of African-American civil rights activists could not be more timely. In 2013, the Voting Rights Act passed in 1965 after a lot of effort and sacrifice was gutted. The US criminal “justice” system has drawn the eyes of the world, and they aren’t friendly eyes. Thank you, and thank you once more to Net Galley and Open Road Media for making the DRC available for me to read, and for publishing this excellent book digitally for you to access also.
Please be aware that this is not a popular biography of the struggle, but a scholarly one, and will be most appreciated by those who, like your reviewer, have a strong interest in the topic, or who are doing…

Janet Shore is the book fairy, a librarian gifted with the supernatural ability to send another person into literature in a literal fashion. She sends them in to enjoy a specific episode, guesses at the time it will take for the event to unfold, and then brings them back. This 75 page long story is interesting, but was mislabeled as a mystery, which is the author’s principal genre; it’s really more a fantasy story. I was waiting for the mystery until toward the end, when I realized there really wasn’t one, apart perhaps from final moment, and even then, it isn’t a mystery to us. And where are my manners? Thank you to Net Galley and Open Road Integrated Media for allowing me a glimpse in advance. This story goes up for sale digitally June 16.
All is going well as long as Janet’s supernatural power is kept under wraps…

  Romance is not my genre, generally speaking. But for every generalization, there is an exception, and Ann Weisgarber’s The Promise is an exceptional novel. Set primarily in Galveston, Texas in 1900, it’s beautifully voiced. Other reviewers mentioned Willa Cather, and I could see some of that. My first thought was the similarity in tone to Helen Hooven Santmeyer’s epic And Ladies of the Club, one of my favorites.

Right about now I am required to tell you that I received this luscious hardcover novel absolutely free via the Goodreads.com first reads program. I hate doing that, because it implies that this is the source of my high rating and compliments. But if you check my first reads record (and I recently changed my privacy settings so that anyone can do that), you will see that I don’t routinely give high ratings or praise. If the cover letter asks me…