It’s the season of peace and goodwill, but a Victorian Christmas is no holiday for the world’s most popular detective in this new book from Bonnie MacBird, author of the bestselling Sherlock Holmes novel Art in the Blood.
It’s Christmastime in London, and Sherlock Holmes takes on two cases. The angelic three-year-old child of a wealthy couple is the target of a vicious kidnapper, and a country aristocrat worries that his handsome, favourite son has mysteriously vanished from his London pied à terre. Holmes and Watson, aided by the colourful Heffie O’Malley, slip slide in the ice to ensure a merry Christmas is had by nearly everybody . . .

My Review:

I wasn’t expecting to find a Sherlock Holmes story to include in my personal Ho-Ho-Ho Readathon. Not that I wasn’t willing to, considering how much I love Sherlock Holmes stories, but rather that Holmes can be a bit of a curmudgeon at the best of times.

He may not be, in any way, a miser like Ebenezer Scrooge but he’s certainly more than capable of bah-ing and humbug-ing with the best of them. Or the worst of them as the case might be.

And then I remembered that the Holmes series I just started earlier this month with Art in the Blood, included a Holmes’ Christmas tale, and to paraphrase the Great Detective himself, the game was afoot.

What Child is This? (yes, the question mark is part of the title and it’s driving me batty) connects two stories with loosely similar themes under the banner of the holiday season and runs away with them. Or sets them on fire. Or a bit of both.

The Marquis of Blandbury, Henry Weathering, comes to Holmes because his adult son Reginald hasn’t written to his mother in weeks, and the woman is beside herself because it’s so very much not like him. Even dear-old-dad, who does not seem the worrying sort, is worried – if only second hand. He’s more concerned about his wife’s peace of mind than his son’s current whereabouts but even the rather blunt instrument that is the Marquis knows that something isn’t right and he expects Holmes to find out precisely what.

The other case, the much more serious case, is one that literally drops into Holmes’ and Watson’s laps. Or at least falls right into their hands. They witness a well-to-do woman and her attendant get attacked by a crazed assailant who knocks them both over as he plucks the woman’s little boy right out of her arms. And attempts to flee with the child through the crowded streets.

With Sherlock Holmes in hot pursuit, Watson attends to the women who have been so grievously assaulted. Holmes doesn’t manage to catch his man – but he does successfully rescue the little boy and restore him to his mother’s waiting arms.

The two cases don’t have anything in common beyond the fact that both originate with potentially missing sons. Of course, Holmes, with Watson’s able assistance, solves both cases.

But neither case goes to any of the places that the reader originally believes they will, and the solutions are far from orthodox. They are both cases where Holmes displays the heart that he would claim that he does not have – with his dear friend Watson there, as always, to record that he does.

Escape Rating A: I loved this – and I think I loved it more because it feels like the characterizations of Holmes and Watson read like they owe a lot more to the screen adaptations of the past OMG 40 years, starting with Jeremy Brett, than they do to the earlier portrayals of Basil Rathbone and even the original Holmes canon itself.

Not that the two cases aren’t every bit as confounding and convoluted as any of the Holmes’ stories penned by Conan Doyle, but rather that the characters of our two protagonists have been made just that bit more human and more sympathetic than the original ‘thinking machine’ and his idiot sidekick.

Instead, this is a portrayal where Holmes is aware that he is just a bit ‘different’ from most people, and where Watson knows and understands that part of his purpose in Holmes’ life and in their long friendship is to allow Holmes to explain his deductions – even as he stinks up their apartment with his experiments.

There is a mutual respect in that friendship – a respect that would have had to have existed for Holmes to have tolerated Watson’s inability to follow his genius and for Watson to have tolerated Holmes’ frequent high-handed treatment of him. There’s also an awareness on Watson’s part that these are NEVER fair play mysteries. Holmes always keeps secrets even when that lack of knowledge might endanger Watson’s life.

The solutions to both of these cases are extremely unorthodox – which made them that much more fascinating. Something that was made even more clear to me as I listened to The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle, the canon story with which this adventure was very loosely in dialogue. THAT Holmes would never have come to either of these resolutions, but THIS Holmes is all the better for doing so.

I liked my first taste of this author’s Sherlock Holmes Adventures in Art in the Blood, but I really got into this interpretation with this Christmas story. There are three stories between Art and this one, and the events of those stories was teased just a bit in this one – more than enough to make me eager to read them.

And I’m definitely looking forward to the latest entry in the series, The Serpent Under, coming in January!

Love comes home for the challah-days in this sparkling romance.
Snow is falling, holiday lights are twinkling, and Abby Cohen is pissed. For one thing, her most annoying customer, Seth, has been coming into her café every morning with his sunshiny attitude, determined to break down her carefully constructed emotional walls. And, as the only Jew on the tourism board of her Vermont town, Abby's been charged with planning their fledgling Hanukkah festival. Unfortunately, the local vendors don’t understand that the story of Hanukkah cannot be told with light-up plastic figures from the Nativity scene, even if the Three Wise Men wear yarmulkes.
Desperate for support, Abby puts out a call for help online and discovers she was wrong about being the only Jew within a hundred miles. There's one Seth.
As it turns out, Seth’s parents have been badgering him to bring a Nice Jewish Girlfriend home to New York City for Hanukkah, and if Abby can survive his incessant, irritatingly handsome smiles, he’ll introduce her to all the vendors she needs to make the festival a success. But over latkes, doughnuts, and winter adventures in Manhattan, Abby begins to realize that her fake boyfriend and his family might just be igniting a flame in her own guarded heart.

My Review:

It may be “beginning to look a lot like Christmas” – but it’s beginning to look a lot like Hanukkah, too. Particularly this year, as Hanukkah begins on the evening of December 25, 2024 – yes, that’s Christmas Day – and ends at sunset on Thursday January 2, 2025.

Hanukkah is not “late” this year – or in any other year. It’s EXACTLY when it’s supposed to be, the 25th day of the month of Kislev according to the Hebrew calendar – which is a LUNAR calendar based on the phases of the moon with a bit of a fudge factor to keep the months in line with the seasons of the solar year. The secular calendar, otherwise known as the Gregorian calendar, is a SOLAR calendar, based on the Earth’s orbit around the sun – with its own bit of fudge factor (leap years with leap days) to keep months lined up with the seasons. They aren’t the same.

And this is just the kind of thing that Abby Cohen finds herself attempting to explain – a LOT – as the only Jewish small business owner in her tiny town in Vermont. The one who has been voluntold that she’ll be planning a Hanukkah Festival/Market in less than a month, in the hopes of helping the town to stand out a little in the midst of the more ‘traditional’ Holiday Markets – meaning Christmas – in the neighboring towns. Even though the planned date for the ‘Hanukkah Festival’ is going to miss the actual holiday by more than a bit.

Abby’s coffee/pastry/lunch place isn’t doing well, financially – and neither are any of the other shops on the town’s Main Street. They ALL need a boost. The idea for the Hanukkah Festival isn’t bad – it’s just that the head of the town’s business association is a real steamroller who really wants a traditional holiday market but recognizes the market – ahem, so to speak – is saturated.

And who both doesn’t want to do all the work involved in any festival AND is most likely planning on using Abby as a scapegoat when people complain – either that the festival is too Jewish – or much more likely considering Lorna’s plans for the Festival – not nearly Jewish enough.

A problem that Abby is already having plenty of trouble with herself. She’s disconnected herself from the Jewish community in general – and from her parents in particular – for reasons that are far from apparent as the story begins.

But it’s clear she’s running away from something – or someone, or her own feelings about one or the other – and this little town in Vermont is far enough from her native New York City to be an escape from whatever trouble she left behind. Even if she brought the trauma of it with her.

Which is where her best and possibly least favorite customer comes in – and helps her out. Seth’s not a bad or troublesome customer in any single way. It’s just that he’s an effusive, cheerful, morning person – annoying so – and Abby is neither. He seems a bit of a pollyanna, always seeing the brighter side of everything – while Abby sees all the glasses, and cups, and plates, as half full AT BEST.

A best she is never, NEVER at first thing in the morning. (As a fellow non-morning person, I feel for her. Seriously. Morning people are TERRIBLE and need to stay far, far away – and be quiet about it – until after serious applications of caffeine.)

But Seth turns out to be the only other Jewish person in town. And he has a brilliant idea. A way they can help each other. Abby needs to go to New York City – in spite of just how much the very thought of running into anyone from her past gives her the heebie-jeebies – to find vendors willing to come for the festival.

And Seth needs to bring a nice Jewish girl home to his parents for Hanukkah in just a few short days. If Abby is willing to fake a relationship for the eight days of Hanukkah, Seth will help her make all the connections she needs to make the festival a success.

What could go wrong? Everything. What could go right? EVERYTHING!

Escape Rating A-: This is the second book in my personal participation in the 2024 Ho-Ho-Ho Readathon. If you are playing along with my Holiday Bingo Challenge, Love You a Latke checks off the box for either “Other Winter Romance” or “Seasonal but not Xmas” as well as “Snow on the Cover” but you’ll have to pick just one. I was specifically looking for a holiday romance centered around Hanukkah instead of Christmas because there just aren’t as many of those as I’d like to see.

Like Abby in the story, I often get just a bit annoyed that saying “holiday” this time of year is simply a coded way of saying “Christmas” that doesn’t acknowledge any of the MANY other holidays that are celebrated this time of year.

And a part of this story is Abby pushing back against that nearly overwhelming tide. The organizer wants to have her cake and eat it too, a “Holiday” Festival that’s labeled as Hanukkah so it stands out but is really Christmas after all. I was a bit astonished that Abby never thinks that Lorna isn’t getting kickbacks or trading favors with all of the ‘friends’ she expects Abby to hire to work on the festival she doesn’t want to plan and carry out herself.

But maybe I have a more suspicious nature than Abby does.

I’ll get down off my soapbox now – or at least I’ll try. Because the heart of this story is, of course, the will they/won’t they/can they/should they fake romance between Seth and Abby. Fake relationship romances are always so much fun because of the tension between what the couple is pretending to be versus what they think they really are and how easy the fake becomes real.

And that oh-so-very-much worked between Abby and Seth. Because his mother, as much as she is meddling, is actually right. Abby and Seth belong together because they make each other better people through challenging each other to be their best and most honest selves.

But the soul of the story is Abby’s internal conflict – and did I ever feel for her in that. She grew up in a close-knit Jewish community in New York City – a community that she loved BUT that she couldn’t really trust because her parents were lying, gaslighting, abusive assholes, and they poisoned everyone against her to make themselves look like perfect parents.

So she’s lost touch with her roots because it felt like the only way to excise the cancer in her soul. She misses being a part of the community so much, of being in on the jokes and sharing the history and all of what makes it a comfort to be among one’s own people no matter how that group is defined.

And she’s afraid of it at the same time because her parents have poisoned it for her and she fears – not unreasonably – that if she trusts anyone with her true self, with her fears and weaknesses and hopes and dreams – that they will either weaponize her feelings against her or betray her to her parents and their clique – or both. Letting Seth in AT ALL, even just as a friend, is a HUGE leap for her – and it’s so understandable that she very nearly doesn’t make it.

I felt SO MUCH for Abby’s journey. Both her disconnect and her need and desire to reconnect. But I kept waiting for her confrontation with her parents. She needed it and so did I as the reader. It felt like she couldn’t really have a happy ever after until at least some of that boil got lanced – no matter how painful THAT operation might be.

But I’m not sure it did. And I’m caught on the horns of a dilemma about that because the way it went felt more real. Not satisfying, because I was hoping for a big blowup and a huge catharsis – and that’s not how life works. Which is honestly a pity, but that’s the way things go.

I think the question for readers – and it’s the one I’m still puzzling over – is whether the way it does go is enough for Abby to start healing. In the end, I think so. I hope so. But I’d still love to have seen some just desserts get served.

The magic of Christmas—and a second shot at romance—is in the air in Shelter Springs this holiday season…
Amanda Taylor isn’t a fan of Christmas, but as the owner of a local soap shop, ignoring the holiday season isn’t an option. To forget the pain of Christmases past, Amanda focuses on making the season bright for her customers at the Shelter Springs Holiday Giving Market. But when her beloved grandmother, Birdie, starts dating the dashing new resident of the Shelter Inn retirement community, Amanda smells trouble. Fortunately, Rafe Arredondo, the grandson of Birdie’s charming suitor, is equally dubious of the match. Unfortunately, he's just as fiery as his grandfather—and Amanda has zero interest in getting burned.
As a single father, paramedic and assistant fire chief, Rafe has more than enough on his plate. Sure, he and Amanda share a common goal in keeping their grandparents apart. Still, that doesn’t mean he should allow himself to feel as drawn to her as he does. Even if she is great with his young son. Even if she does help the burden of his own painful past feel a little lighter… But when their paths keep crossing at the holiday market, it starts to feel like fate, prompting them both to wonder if taking a chance on love might gift them everything they’ve been wishing for.

My Review:

This first book in my personal 2024 Ho-Ho-Ho Readathon – and the second book in the author’s Shelter Springs series of holiday romances – combines two songs that I never expected to find in the same place.

The first one that hit me was Tom Lehrer’s version of “A Christmas Carol”, the one that kind of hits me every year as we get close to Black Friday, as we are. Lehrer’s comical/satirical “Carol” is the one that includes the line, “Angels we have heard on high, tell us to go out and –buy!” As that is EXACTLY what the Shelter Springs Annual Holiday Giving Market is trying to do – while trying to make the shoppers feel virtuous about spending LOTS as the profits from the Market are going to one or more local good causes – which makes it all that much easier for the folks who come from literally miles around to get the holiday presents they are looking for for their friends and loved ones.

But the other song, that wraps around this story like tinsel around a Christmas tree, is Fleetwood Mac’s classic, “Don’t Stop (Thinking About Tomorrow)” because that’s a lesson, both in the looking forward and in its reminder that “yesterday’s gone” that both market organizer Amanda Taylor and Assistant Fire Chief Rafe Arredondo need to learn.

Which they find themselves coming around to, slowly but not always surely, when their widowed grandparents, his abuelo Paolo and her grandmother Birdie, begin dating each other. At ages 76 and 80 respectively. Because life’s too short to take a pass on happiness when it comes your way – no matter your age.

No matter how envious it might make your adult grandchild, either.

But in the beginning of this holiday romance, Amanda and Rafe are both a bit too preoccupied with the yesterday that’s gone. Both are survivors of relationships with addicts, his wife, her father and her boyfriend.

The difference is that the most damage that Caitlin Arredondo, in her addiction and her resulting death, did was to their little boy Isaac. As well as to Rafe’s willingness to pursue a relationship with any woman he might be tempted to “fix” or “save” the way he was with Caitlin. He sees shadows in Amanda’s eyes that remind him too much of his late wife – never once thinking that the person those shadows really remind him of is the one he sees in the mirror.

Amanda knows that people see shadows around her, because her father’s addiction did considerably more damage to Shelter Springs than just to her and her mother. On his final bender, he killed four people along with himself, and there are entirely too many people in town who STILL look at Amanda and see her father. As though a teenage girl could have done anything to stop a full-grown man who was determined to drive while WAY over the legal limit.

Her baggage makes his baggage gunshy. Rafe’s mother is one of many people in town who still give Amanda the cold shoulder more than ten years after her father’s last drunken spree, because one of the people her dad killed that night was Rafe’s cousin Alex.

But Rafe and Amanda are now neighbors on Hummingbird Lane, and Rafe’s little boy has already decided that Amanda is his new best friend. Isaac was already planning to ask Santa to give him a new mommy, and he’s decided that Amanda is perfect for the role.

And he’s not wrong. She’s already fallen hard for the little boy, and in spite of herself is well down that same path for his father.

The question is whether either of the adults can get past their matched set of emotional baggage to give each other AND little Isaac the Christmas present they all want this Christmas. Even if it won’t exactly fit under the tree.

Escape Rating A-: The December Market wasn’t nearly as light and fluffy as I was expecting in a holiday romance – and it was all the better for tackling a couple of very serious topics, well, seriously, as well as having more than enough light and sparkle to kick off the holiday season’s readings.

The elephant that precedes Amanda into entirely too many rooms in Shelter Springs is her father’s last and final, monstrous and criminal, act. His rage-fuelled drunk driving was all the more tragic because it was entirely preventable. He didn’t HAVE to drive drunk on that or any other night.

But it was not preventable by then-teenaged Amanda. And most of the time she knows it – even if she does occasionally still second guess herself and let a smidgeon of guilt trip in. It doesn’t help at all that she chose to brazen out life in Shelter Springs, and that there are clearly some people in town who see her father’s shadow every time they see her.

It seems as if all of her many, many good deeds – and they are indeed many – and her inability to say “no” to any volunteer commitment, comes out of that smidgeon of guilt, or out of a desire to atone for her father’s deeds in some way – even though her childhood was certainly one of his victims. Being the adult child of an alcoholic has left a deep mark on her life that she may never completely recover from.

Keeping herself overly busy all of the time rather than face her own demons is one way of dealing with that damage.

But part of that damage is that she assumes her attraction to Rafe Arredondo can’t possibly be reciprocated – no matter how often she finds him glancing her way – because his is one of the families that her father nearly destroyed. Rafe tells himself he shouldn’t act on his attraction to Amanda because he doesn’t want to get his heart – and more importantly his son’s heart – tangled up in fixing someone who might not want to be fixed.

Of course, they’ve both read each other very, very wrong. They can’t, and shouldn’t, attempt to fix each other. But they can help each other be strong in the broken places. Figuring that out provides their matchmaking grandparents a chance to say “I told you so” even as it gives Isaac the Christmas present he asked Santa for.

As I said at the top, this wasn’t quite as light and fluffy as I was expecting, although the romance between the grandparents did add plenty of sweetness . It’s always lovely to see a story that shows it’s never too late to fall in love and grab a second chance at happiness.

But the part of the story that really got me were Amanda’s and Rafe’s two-step forwards, one-step back efforts to deal with surviving a family member’s addiction – because that’s a hard road that doesn’t get acknowledged often in fiction. It was terrific, in the end, that they both reached towards a bright future together instead of trying to change, control or simply remain mired in a yesterday that’s gone. Like the song.

Ellie Gleason has protected the town of Samford, Alabama for decades. It’s not as glamours as her glory days as the WitchLight Hub, but it keeps her active during her golden years.
Life is good.
Well, it’s okay.
Fine.
It could be bloodier with a smidge more gore, but retirement is meant to be low-key. It’s not like her fragile bones could handle the strenuous hunt for monsters anymore, even if her current duties are dull as dishwater.
But when her great-nephew shows up on her doorstep in tears—or is he her great-great nephew?—begging for help, Ellie straps on her beloved shotgun, Bam-Bam, and gets the coven back together.
Sure, Betty just had a hip replacement, and Flo would rather flirt than fight, and Ida is busy with her anniversary plans, and Joan is…Joan. But Ellie is certain she can whip the girls into shape in time to defeat the creature preying on kids at a nearby summer camp. She might even have them home in time for dinner.

My Review:

Ellie Gleason isn’t, really, and neither are the rest of her friends. Well, maybe Joan is just a bit. Crazy as a loon, I mean. None of them are crazy, loony or otherwise, no matter how much Ellie might fake it by running around the tiny town of Samford, Alabama in her housecoat with ‘Bam-Bam’ strapped to her back.

Bam-Bam is her shotgun. And nope, still not crazy.

Because when you’re still patrolling as a working member of Witchlight – even if you are in your second century – it’s better to be armed as well as dangerous. Which Ellie and the rest of her coven certainly are. Even if it takes them a little longer to get to the scene of the crime.

Or, for that matter, to the point of any discussion, because they’ve been together so damn long that there are plenty of times when the pointed barbs and the old grudges take over the planning of any and every op.

It’s mostly small town stuff – because they’re not the top tier of Witchlight operators no matter how much they all still wish they were kicking ass and taking names and riding monsters to the rescue. So when this case literally crawls into their laps, they’re all a bit giddy with the adrenaline of the chase.

Even if the person at the heart of the mess is a child under their protection. Particularly because another member of their family is doing their damndest to keep it from them.

They may not be what they used to be – but when one of their cubs is threatened it brings out the mama bear in every single one of them. Even if not one of them shifts into an actual bear. That’s okay. After all, one of their sons is bear-shifter enough to handle THAT part of the job.

Escape Rating A-: I picked up this book and audiobook, in fact this whole, entire series, on a recommendation from Caffeinated Reviewer. I caught her review of the third book in the series, Free as a Bird, and had to ask myself where had this been all my life and how had I missed it?

Based on this first book, this series is an absolute hoot from beginning to end. It was also the perfect book for this week as it is a hilarious pick-me-up with a heart wrapped around found family and lifelong sisterhood.

The combination of elements got me from the opening paragraphs. Because this takes off from the same premise as one of my favorite urban fantasies, A Key, an Egg, an Unfortunate Remark, but goes about it differently.

That book, and I still mourn that it was only ever the one, took off from a question about what happens to all those young, limber, kickass urban fantasy protagonists if they survive to middle age and even older. Marley Jacob got herself a kickass sidekick and went about her own personal kickassery through negotiation and mediation once the years caught up with her.

Ellie and her coven have just kept on kicking – even as they also kick against the inevitable slowing down of age. They use magic to slow down slowing down – and then they do too much and pay the price later. But they all refuse to quit even as they are forced to change gears.

They’re a LOT like the sisterhood of retired spies turned assassins in Killers of a Certain Age – complete with the sharply pointed banter and the lifelong grudges. So if you liked that and want to give urban fantasy a try, you’ll love Ellie and her Yard Birds.

The case here, and there certainly is one, does a great job of introducing Ellie and her sisters and setting up their family situation – which is just a bit complicated – while giving them a case that is close to their hearts even as it shines a light on just what sorts of things can go wrong in a world where the paranormal exists but still has to keep itself under wraps.

And then the case managed to tie itself back into the reason they all got involved in the first place, as both the evil they fight and the reason they’re fighting it come from the same place – a mother’s love.

The story is told from inside Ellie’s snarky head – and I loved every minute of it. The narrator, Stephanie Richardson, captured the essence of Ellie perfectly, so I’m very happy that she is the narrator for the whole series so far.

I only have two quibbles about this whole experience. One is that I wish there were more. Which there is, of course, as the second and third books, Dead as a Dodo and Free as a Bird, are already out and I already have them.

But the second is that I hope those later books resolve a niggle left over from this one. They did solve the case. They absolutely did. But there was a dangling potential co-conspirator left in their midst. I may be wrong about their co-conspirator status, but there was something rotten left in the heart of the family that got a rug pulled over it. I hope that rug gets pulled back in the books ahead.

I’m certainly there for it. I definitely want to hear as much more from Ellie as I can get!

A wandering fortune teller finds an unexpected family in this warm and wonderful debut fantasy, perfect for readers of Travis Baldree and Sangu Mandanna.
Tao is an immigrant fortune teller, traveling between villages with just her trusty mule for company. She only tells "small" fortunes: whether it will hail next week; which boy the barmaid will kiss; when the cow will calve. She knows from bitter experience that big fortunes come with big consequences…
Even if it’s a lonely life, it’s better than the one she left behind. But a small fortune unexpectedly becomes something more when a (semi) reformed thief and an ex-mercenary recruit her into their desperate search for a lost child. Soon, they’re joined by a baker with a knead for adventure, and—of course—a slightly magical cat.
Tao sets down a new path with companions as big-hearted as her fortunes are small. But as she lowers her walls, the shadows of her past are closing in—and she’ll have to decide whether to risk everything to preserve the family she never thought she could have.

My Review:

Tao tells small fortunes. Only small fortunes. Just as it takes a big risk to win a big reward, it takes big magic to tell big fortunes. Which also results in big risks that Tao is simply not willing to, well, risk.

The only big fortune Tao ever told resulted in a big disaster. Her father was killed, her village was destroyed, her mother married a foreigner, took Tao away from home and raised her among strangers who could never get past her origins. And who seemingly could never forgive the girl for the turn in the family’s, well, fortunes.

So Tao took to the road, with her small cart and her small fortunes, doing her best to make enough money to keep body and soul together and on the road, touring small towns, never touching the greater magics that would foretell death and disaster and bring the empire’s witchfinders down upon her bowed head.

The rounds of Tao’s quiet and unassuming life are disrupted when she tells what she believes is a small fortune for a traveling mercenary. She sees him greet his little girl in front of what appears to be their home. A simple, everyday sort of fortune.

But the little girl has been missing for months and months, and her father and his friend – a semi-reformed thief – have themselves taken to the roads in search of the little girl’s whereabouts – or at least her fate.

This seemingly small fortune is huge. It is life-altering. Finding his little girl safe and sound will change everything for the mercenary – and he is determined to stick with Tao until that vision becomes truth.

The linking of his quest to her vision is the seed of change. As her vision leads him from clue to clue and village to village, their little band turns into a found family – a family that in turn is found by a series of small fortunes with big implications as the wheels of her cart grind their way to the fortune that Tao has been avoiding for all of her journeying.

It takes her home – to the home she never thought she could go back to – and to the one she never imagined she’d ever be able to make even for herself.

Escape Rating A+: This OMG DEBUT novel is just marvelous. I went into it expecting something light and cozy and certainly got that, but it’s just such a terrific story that hits so many excellent notes and is deeper than I was expecting by a whole lot.

It’s like every time the story takes just a bit of a twist it also digs more deeply into the heart – both Tao’s and the reader’s at the same time.

A big part of the story, and certainly the form of it, is the journey. Tao is traveling, endlessly traveling, because she’s rootless. She has no place that calls her home. So a big part of her starting out is an immigrant’s journey. Her mother brought her out of their country of Shinn to the country of their rival, Eshtera. Tao is never accepted as Eshteran because of her Shinian (read Asian) appearance, but she and her mother drifted apart so she doesn’t remember the culture of her origins. She’s lost without a true place of her own.

Her Esteran stepfather tried to forcibly graft her into Eshtera through marriage, but that was doomed to fail – so she fled. Her magic marks her as dangerous but the power of it is coveted – so she hides from the Empire.

She’s alone and feels doomed to remain so.

Her journey, that thing that keeps her isolated, is her salvation, and the story becomes Tao picking up a band of ‘strays’ much like herself and becoming the center of a found family – a family that she is willing to step WAY out of her comfort zone to protect, which in turn saves her as well as them.

And as the members of her little tribe each find their way into her heart, they all find their way into the reader’s as well.

A surprising readalike for this book is A Psalm for the Wild Built, which isn’t fantasy at all. But the journeys and the discoveries and the found family aspects are very similar, as is the way that Sibling Dex in Psalm becomes a big part of each of the places she visits even as she makes her own found family with the robot.

More than Legends and Lattes, which seems to be listed as the go-to readalike for every cozy fantasy, The Teller of Small Fortunes reminded me a whole lot more of the Mead Mishaps series. Not the romantic aspects of that series, but rather the way that both stories start out at a very light level and turn out to be important quest journeys with much larger implications and big found family elements by the time they reach their HEAs.

Very much like the other cozy fantasy series(es), however, The Teller of Small Fortunes is a story where there is not a villainous villain in sight. Instead, there are bad things that have happened to good people that get resolved through mostly human agency even as those humans make human mistakes along the way.

This isn’t a BIG story. There’s no big bad and there’s no big battle and it’s not a big contest between good and evil. Instead it’s a gentle story about people finding their way and finding that their way goes better when they go together.

It’s lovely and you’ll turn the last page with a smile and some days those are just the kind of stories we all need. When it’s your turn to need one of those kinds of stories, pick up this book. I’ll be eagerly awaiting her next.

Orpheus meets A Natural History of Dragons in a tale of death, honor and true love's embrace.
It seemed the afterlife was bustling.
Cursed by the previous practitioner in her new role, and following an... incident... with a supremely powerful dragon, High Mage Saralene visits the afterlife with a boon to beg of the Bloodless Princes who run the underworld.
But Saralene and her most trusted advisor/champion/companion, Sir Maddileh, will soon discover that there's only so much research to be done by studying the old tales, though perhaps there's enough truth in them to make a start.
Saralene will need more than just her wits to leave the underworld, alive. And Maddileh will need more than just her Fireborne Blade.
A story of love and respect that endures beyond death. And of dragons, because we all love a dragon!

My Review:

The road to hell isn’t paved with good intentions – it isn’t paved at all. Instead it’s a dropkick off of a VERY high bridge into a pit that the evil exilarch from The Fireborne Blade is trying to avoid by dragging his successor, Saralene, into the afterlife in his place.

This follow-up to The Fireborne Blade is a book that this reader never expected at all. Because at the end of The Fireborne Blade it seemed like the story was all wrapped up.

The dragon was dead, to begin with.

The dragon was dead, the disgraced knight Maddileh was redeemed, the Fireborne Blade was restored, the evil exilarch was dead, Maddileh’s betraying, body-stealing squire was dead – in exchange for Maddileh herself – and the true High Mage Saralene is back on her throne and in her office, with Maddileh as her bodyguard and captain.

All is right with their world – or would be if all of the above were as true as Maddileh and Saralene believed them to be at the end of that first book.

The adventures of this second book are necessary because those things are not true. In fact they are mostly not true. Especially the parts that have the worst potential outcomes.

The dragon is not really dead – only hibernating. The evil exilarch is dead – but he’s scheming from the afterlife to take Saralene’s body and her position and go right back to being the oppressive tyrant he was when he was alive. Because he will be. Again.

Unless Maddileh and Saralene can stop him – with the surprisingly willing assistance of the dragon they believed they killed.

All they have to do is convince the ‘Bloodless Princes’ who control the Underworld to let Saralene go – before she’s dead forever.

Escape Rating A-: The pattern of the way both books in this series are written is fascinating and more than a bit different. This story – as did The Fireborne Blade – works on two tracks that feed into each other in ways that the reader does not initially expect.

A piece of this story is told through tales that are myths and legends to Maddileh and Saralene – and then the actions they are actually performing move the story forward. Then it circles back to more legends – which inform the action to come.

What made the tales part of the action work was that those tales are told from two perspectives, the human and the dragon. Those points of view permeate these stories that talk about the same basic event but come to rather different conclusions and teach different lessons beyond the obvious one that whoever controls the recording of history sets the agenda for what history is believed to be – as opposed to what it really was.

All of which comes fully into play when Maddileh, Saralene and the dragon Mienylyth reach the Underworld, because the legends of the ‘Bloodless Princes’ have conflated order with good and chaos with evil, when in truth a LOT of time has passed, both princes’ attitudes have become set in very hard stone and either condition taken to extremes is no good for humans or other thinking creatures.

The whole, entire story kicks off with Maddileh and Saralene learning that the righteous ending they believed they’d earned at the end of their first adventure wasn’t an ending at all. This second adventure takes that fruit-basket upset and turns it into a story of adventure and upended assumptions that crosses the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice with Lady Trent’s memoir, A Natural History of Dragons (by Marie Brennan) and turns it into a romance of longing and unfulfilled hopes and dreams that can only become an HEA if all the characters hold true to their oaths and their promises.

As much as the story is told from Maddileh’s and Saralene’s perspectives – as much as their human hopes and dreams drive the narrative forward – it’s the lonely dragon Mienylyth who steals the story and the reader’s heart.

I think this is the end of this saga – but then I thought that last time. If we get to see more of Maddileh and Saralene after all, I really hope that Mienylyth flies back as well. Because she was absolutely chock full of awesome – even when she was pretending to be a cat.

When a Japanese diplomat is murdered, and Cyrus Barker is the prime suspect, Barker and sidekick Llewelyn must work against the clock to find the real killer.
In London of 1890, the first Japanese diplomatic delegation arrives in London to open an embassy in London. Cyrus Barker, private enquiry agent and occasional agent for the Foreign Service Office, is enlisted to display his personal Japanese garden to the visiting dignitaries.
Later that night, Ambassador Toda is shot and killed in his office and Cyrus Barker is discovered across the street, watching the very same office, in possession of a revolver with one spent cartridge.
Arrested by the Special Branch for the crime, Barker is vigorously interrogated and finally released due to the intervention of his assistant, Thomas Llewelyn, and his solicitor. With the London constabulary still convinced of his guilt, Barker is hired by the new Japanese ambassador to find the real murderer.
In a case that takes leads Barker and Llewelyn deep into parts of London's underworld, on paths that lead deep into Barker's own mysterious personal history, Old Scores is the finest yet in Will Thomas's critically acclaimed series.

My Review:

Nine books into the Barker & Llewelyn series, the adventures in which and of which are chronicled by the pen of Cyrus Barker’s once-apprentice and now fully licensed assistant private enquiry agent Thomas Llewelyn, it’s not a surprise to either the reader or Llewelyn that Barker has plenty of old scores to settle in this middle of his fascinating but hard-knock life.

It’s possibly even less of a surprise to Llewelyn that his ‘Guv’ has made more than enough enemies over the course of that remarkable life that there are an equal if not greater number of people who have old scores to settle with HIM.

The case in Old Scores begins seemingly innocuously, with the visit of a group of Japanese dignitaries to Barker’s authentic and beautiful Japanese garden – a sanctuary hidden behind his London townhouse.

After a frenzy of preparation, the visit itself seems to go quite well. With two notable exceptions. The British official escorting the party is a boor who displays his contempt for these prestigious guests with his every utterance. And it’s clear to Thomas Llewelyn that his Guv is already well acquainted with one member of the party – and that whatever history lies between Barker and the Japanese official is of long and painful standing.

(The treatment of the Japanese delegation by British officials is reminiscent of their contemptuous treatment of Chinese officials in the excellent The Murder of Mr. Ma by John Shen Yen Nee and SJ Rozan – in spite of the several decades that lie between the two mysteries.)

The story in Old Scores is a combination of the chance that ‘the enemy of my enemy might be my friend’ – at least temporarily – and ‘too many cooks spoil not just the soup but the whole entire meal’.

The Japanese delegation is fractured beyond repair even before the members start dropping like flies. The British are trying to gain a foothold in Japan to counter American ambitions in Asia, the Japanese want to oust the Americans from the position of power they took by force in 1853 AND they have imperial ambitions of their own, while the question of whether the future of the country lies in returning to the traditionalism and isolationism of the past or is best served by embracing the world as it is in hopes of controlling as much of it as possible. The members of the delegation display all of these possible outcomes in microcosm – and with deadly results.

And in the middle of it all is a contest between Cyrus Barker and the man who murdered his wife – back when Barker was considerably younger and possibly just a bit more naive than the implacable man he became after that terrible loss.

Escape Rating A-: It’s not really a surprise that I picked Old Scores (and also the preceding short story, An Awkward Way to Die – which was fun but there just wasn’t enough there there for a review) out of the virtually towering TBR pile over the weekend. The Barker & Llewelyn series has become a comfort read for me, portraying a world that may be more than a century gone but is easy to slip right back into thanks to the pen of author Will Thomas. I needed to get AWAY, as far as mentally possible, from the combination of anxiety and vitriol that marks this year’s U.S. election.

So I returned to the Victorian setting where Cyrus Barker always gets his man and his second in command, Thomas Llewelyn, does his best to chronicle the case, make sure the bills get paid, and support his ‘Guv’ in every way possible. Even when Barker is doing his usual damndest to keep all of his cards VERY close to his vest – up to and including the cards that Llewelyn – as his backup – really, really needs to know.

This is a case that DEFINITELY has its awkward aspects. Barker keeps entirely too many secrets about his past. Which he’s entitled to, but not if those secrets threaten to get his whole entire household killed or imprisoned. Which in this case they definitely are.

The result is that Llewelyn flails around at points when he shouldn’t have to. This is a case that hinges on things that his Guv hasn’t told him – secrets that are 20+ years old at this point. One can empathize both with Barker’s desire to let the past remain in the past AND Llewelyn’s desire not to end up dead.

We don’t expect Llewelyn to get to the solution ahead of his boss, but neither do we expect his boss to leave him quite so completely in the dark. It’s a bit of a conundrum that leaves our chronicler stumbling around in that dark more than is usual for this series. I’m here for the competence porn, and Barker made that more difficult than usual on several fronts.

But in the end, what carries the story, as always, are the characters and their ever more deeply entwined relationships. So this book did exactly what I picked it up for – it took me far, far away from the problems of today.

In the end, the story does reveal a very great deal about Cyrus Barker before he became the man that Llewelyn met in the first book in the series, Some Danger Involved. I expect to see more consequences of this book’s revelations in the following books in the series.

I’ll certainly be picking up Blood Is Blood the next time I’m looking for a comforting murder to sink my reading teeth into.

From America’s favorite government teacher, a heartfelt, inspiring portrait of twelve ordinary Americans whose courage formed the character of our country.

In The Small and the Mighty, Sharon McMahon proves that the most remarkable Americans are often ordinary people who didn’t make it into the textbooks. Not the presidents, but the telephone operators. Not the aristocrats, but the schoolteachers. Through meticulous research, she discovers history’s unsung characters and brings their rich, riveting stories to light for the first time.

You’ll meet a woman astride a white horse riding down Pennsylvania Ave, a young boy detained at a Japanese incarceration camp, a formerly enslaved woman on a mission to reunite with her daughter, a poet on a train, and a teacher who learns to work with her enemies. More than one thing is bombed, and multiple people surprisingly become rich. Some rich with money, and some wealthy with things that matter more.

This is a book about what really made America–and Americans–great. McMahon’s cast of improbable champions will become familiar friends, lighting the path we journey in our quest to make the world more just, peaceful, good, and free.

My Review:

There are more than twelve. Not just in general, but specifically, in THIS book. Because there are WAY MORE than twelve unsung heroes of American history. And that seems both unfortunate and appropriately fitting at the same time. Because the sweep of history is vast, it’s not possible for every single person who is worthy of being highlighted in history to actually receive that acknowledgement. At the same time, it’s telling that the majority of these unsung heroes are from groups that history, as written by the powers that be, deliberately sweeps to the side because by their deeds and sometimes even their very existence, they challenge the narrative those powers-that-be promote so that they may remain and retain those very powers.

What those unsung heroes were often – but not always – singing their own hearts out FOR, is what makes this book appropriate for this particular week. Because many of the people whose stories are told herein fought for not just the right to vote, as was the case of the female suffragists, but also for the practical ability to exercise that right freely, as many of the teachers and civil rights workers fought.

These are the stories of just a few – not nearly enough – of the ‘hidden figures’ in U.S. history. Each and every one of them, in their own ways, did their very best and occasionally their very damndest – and the newspapers of their time frequently claimed it was the latter and not the former – to figure out and most importantly DO – the next needful thing to make progress.

When a mountain is crested, when a challenge is overcome, when a pinnacle is reached, a few are credited with the accomplishment – no matter how long the journey or how many contributed to achieve the goal. Those are the people whose names finally do end up in the history books.

These are the stories of the unsung heroes, those giants – small but mighty – on whose shoulders those in the history books stood.

Reality Rating A+: I loved this book a whole lot. I was expecting to like it, but I was genuinely surprised by how much I really, truly loved the hell out of it. I was looking for something that had a connection to American history for this week, came across this and thought, “Why not?”

Serendipity for the win because this was marvelous from beginning to end.

This is history, but it’s not history told as a dry recitation of facts. In style, it reminded me a lot of Erik Larson’s style of narrative nonfiction, in that the research is solid but that research is pulled together into an actual STORY that draws the reader into its web.

At the same time, it’s easy to see the book’s antecedents as the author’s podcasts about these and other ‘unsung heroes’ of history, as the book reads as more of a collection of short stories that occasionally intersect rather than a single narrative of history.

The way that the individual stories worked also held shades of Paul Harvey’s radio series, The Rest of the Story, which also told stories of unsung heroes, of people on the sidelines of better known stories, and of quirky bits of history.

While it will drive some readers crazy that the stories don’t link up into a single overarching thing, I found the way that things wove in and out of each other to be a whole lot of fun. Listening to the author read her own work, it felt like she was telling me a story, and that sometimes that story went on tangents to other stories with occasional sidebars into yet another story – with more than a few forays into the author’s opinions and even a few questions about what on Earth some people were either thinking or drinking.

The use of the language of the 21st century to tell this history to a 21st century audience just made it all that much more accessible. Which was marvelous because the stories were already heart tugging, heartbreaking and heart attack inducing by turns, and just filled with crowning moments of both awesome and despair – sometimes at the same time.

Any reader – or listener – looking for true stories of American history that they may not have heard before, or who would like to take a trip down some of the historical roads less well traveled by the history books, will have a grand time with The Small and the Mighty. And may even be inspired to do something a bit ‘mighty’ of their own.

Or even just a small but needful thing. Tomorrow, November 5, 2024, is Election Day in the United States. If you are a U.S. citizen who is eligible to vote, it is your RIGHT to do so. Please exercise that right. A single vote may be a small thing, but it is also a mighty power that many of the unsung heroes in this book fought to their utmost to gain.

The 19th mystery in the #1 New York Times-bestselling Armand Gamache series.
Relentless phone calls interrupt the peace of a warm August morning in Three Pines. Though the tiny Québec village is impossible to find on any map, someone has managed to track down Armand Gamache, head of homicide at the Sûreté, as he sits with his wife in their back garden. Reine-Marie watches with increasing unease as her husband refuses to pick up, though he clearly knows who is on the other end. When he finally answers, his rage shatters the calm of their quiet Sunday morning.
That's only the first in a sequence of strange events that begin THE GREY WOLF, the nineteenth novel in Louise Penny's #1 New York Times-bestselling series. A missing coat, an intruder alarm, a note for Gamache reading "this might interest you", a puzzling scrap of paper with a mysterious list—and then a murder. All propel Chief Inspector Gamache and his team toward a terrible realization. Something much more sinister than any one murder or any one case is fast approaching.
Armand Gamache, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, his son-in-law and second in command, and Inspector Isabelle Lacoste can only trust each other, as old friends begin to act like enemies, and long-time enemies appear to be friends. Determined to track down the threat before it becomes a reality, their pursuit takes them across Québec and across borders. Their hunt grows increasingly desperate, even frantic, as the enormity of the creature they’re chasing becomes clear. If they fail the devastating consequences would reach into the largest of cities and the smallest of villages.
Including Three Pines.

My Review:

You’ve heard the parable – even if you don’t recognize it at first. It’s often attributed to the Cherokee, but occasionally to a different Native American tribe. It’s the story about the two ‘wolves’ that battle inside each soul. One wolf represents the darker parts of human nature; anger, envy, jealousy, greed, arrogance, etc. Because that wolf is the embodiment of the dark side, it is often pictured as a black wolf.

The other wolf represents the better angels of our nature; joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, empathy, truth, compassion, etc. That is the grey wolf.

As the parable goes, the wolf that wins the endless battle within each soul is the one that is fed by the thoughts and deeds of that person.

Having gotten to know Chief Inspector Armand Gamache over the course of this series, it’s all too easy to see Gamache as the embodiment of that grey wolf. At this point in his life and career, in more ways than one as he has literally become a grey wolf, older, sadder, wiser, but still fighting the good fight to do his best by his people and his province, in spite of the black wolves arrayed against him.

Including the one inside his own soul.

This particular case begins, as so many of Gamache’s cases begin, with a series of unrelated events that, on the surface have zero in common. Two murders, close together in time but remote and as far apart as they could be in the vast province of Québec, committed in precisely the same manner as a mafia hit. Even though neither victim appears to have any connections whatsoever with the ‘Sixth Family’ that controls organized crime in the province.

Someone breaks into Gamache family’s pied-à-terre in Montreal while he and his wife are at their home in Three Pines. But absolutely nothing appears to have been taken or damaged in the crime.

And last but absolutely not least, especially in Gamache’s mind and memory, a political operative that he crossed early in his career, who attempted to destroy him and his family and very nearly succeeded, calls in the middle of the night to say that she has information he should be interested in. Maybe he should be, but he’s absolutely not considering the source – with expletives.

At least, not until the unrelated incidents start coming together into a pattern that his instincts – if not the actual evidence before him –  tells him is the tip of a terrible iceberg. A pattern that tells him that there is something very, very rotten indeed in the Province de Québec, a pattern that will lead Gamache and his seconds-in-command, Isabelle Lacoste and his son-in-law Jean Guy Beauvoir, to the remotest corners of Québec, back to the scene of the lowest point and most desperate points in the relationships between Gamache and his son-by-birth Daniel as well as his son-by-adoption Beauvoir, and all the way to France, to a secure monastery keeping the secret of one of the world’s most famous recipes – and the potential application of one of the world’s deadliest poisons.

Gamache knows there is an enemy within – probably more than one. He has very few people he can trust absolutely, very little time and no authority with which to demand answers. And no faith that any of his desperate choices are the right ones. But he has to try, no matter the cost to his career or himself.

Because the nightmare he is desperate to prevent is only the beginning if he fails.

Escape Rating A: The Chief Inspector Gamache series, like many long-running series, tells each individual story on two levels. The particular work in hand, in this case, The Grey Wolf, focuses on the case that has been brought to Gamache’s attention at this moment in time, shows his team dealing with the clues and red herrings, figuring out which are which, and eventually solving the case or at least the immediate danger of it.

The other level is the one where things often get very deep, which in many ways goes all the way back to Gamache’s four things that lead to wisdom. As he explains to a group of young police officers in Still Life, “They are four sentences that we learn to say, and mean…I don’t know. I need help. I’m sorry. I was wrong.”

And he lives by those principles – even when it hurts. Especially when it hurts. And most especially when he discovers that he was wrong. Which he does, both in this story and in all the stories that have led him and his team to this point. Because the cop shop aspects of the usual mystery series have become a found family, AND Gamache has a tendency to tilt at big, important windmills that take that family into dangerous places and very fraught political circumstances.

This is one of those cases.

Which is where interesting and frustrating and really, truly frightening things happen in this story. As a criminal investigation, the reader is often caught up in Gamache’s own frustrations as the case is initially so elusive he’s not sure if there are one or several or precisely what it or they might be. Multiple people are playing multiple games, with both the best and worst of intentions, and it’s difficult for the reader to watch Gamache and his team flail around as much as this story forces them to.

It takes a lot of both investigation and speculation to pull this one together.

The frightening part, the part that makes this story a whole lot more fitting for Halloween week than I originally imagined, is the nature and scope of the vast criminal enterprise that Gamache has to stop. Because I don’t want to reveal the big secret, I’m going to do my damndest to talk around it.

The rot at the heart of this case, at first, read like some kind of supervillain shit. I mean that in all seriousness. It takes a situation that is already happening, that is already terrifying, that many people are trying to mitigate if not stop, something utterly real – and then posits that someone in a position of power is planning to deliberately cause an incident of deadly magnitude and then manipulate it to gain yet more power. Not in some wartorn country halfway around the globe, but in the heart of Canada.

And at first my mind went to Lex Luthor and some of his ilk and flew right out of my willing suspension of disbelief. But I kept thinking about it. And came to the unfortunately but truly frightening conclusion that it’s entirely too plausible. Then I started gibbering a bit because it so easily could. Not exactly this way, but threats of this magnitude are already on the horizon and people in power who would create and manipulate those threats are not merely waiting in the wings but believe they are in entirely too many ‘on-deck’ circles.

To make a very long story short, I picked this up because I simply love this series – especially its characters – very, very much indeed. Part of why I continue to read, book after book, is not just that those characters are fascinating, but that their relationships change shape over time. The way they work together is never static, and it often produces the kind of low-key bantering humor that arises in a group that knows each other well and loves each other much – and provides the light moments that this particular entry in the series definitely needed. And I love them all for it, even the crazy poet and her duck. If you’re looking for mysteries that are considerably more, and go infinitely deeper, than merely ‘whodunnit’, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is a treasure – especially when he takes us on a walk through dark places, as he does in The Grey Wolf.

He’ll never forgive her deception, or the hold she still has on his heart…

Adrian Croft’s worst fear has been realized. His wife, the sweet woman who swept past his every defense, is a cunning spy working against him. Forced to play a dangerous game where one wrong move could see him destroyed, he must unravel her secrets while hunting a far more sinister threat.
Samantha knew her decision to marry her target would come at a price. Now, having lost her husband’s trust and affection, she’ll do whatever it takes to win it all back – abandon past loyalties, spill her secrets, and catch a killer. But will it be enough to undo the damage?
-One series, one couple, and the brutal challenges they must face-
If you like What Angels Fear, Silent in the Grave, and Murder on Black Swan Lake, you’ll devour Sophie Barnes’ thrilling new series.
Buy A Tainted Heart Bleeds and continue this action-packed adventure today!

My Review:

This second book in the House of Croft series begins as the first book did, with the brutal murder of a young and seemingly innocent woman.

But the circumstances, as similar as they are to the opening of A Vengeful King Rises, are not the same – except that both women, and both murders, are shrouded in secrets. Including the motivation behind them.

The murder of Adrian Croft’s sister Evie was designed to set Adrian on a path that he did not wish to walk, but the motives were concealed in the midst of a serial killer’s spree. It wasn’t personal, although the consequences were very personal to Adrian Croft.

This time, the murder is very personal. Lady Eleanor was stabbed over 50 times, up close and very personal indeed. Her murderer believed that she had betrayed him – and perhaps she had, if only in his own eyes and twisted mind. Of course, he took those too. Her eyes. As a grisly trophy.

Croft brought his sister’s killer to justice – even if no one can prove it. Which leads Lord Orendel, Lady Eleanor’s father, to ask Croft to investigate his daughter’s death and provide him a measure of that same justice – even if it can’t be admitted aloud.

It’s not a commission that Croft wants to take. He has problems of his own to deal with – also a result of the events in the first book. The police are pursuing him for his father’s crimes – and his own. The agent they set on his trail inveigled her way into his heart, his bed and his household.

He married her, and only learned of her betrayal after that fact – just as she vowed to be his in all ways. He can’t forgive, he can’t forget, he can’t trust – but he can’t force himself to set her aside, or off to the country, or into a shallow grave. As she deserves.

He has no idea that she’s about to be the saving of him. Again. It’s only a question of whether that will be enough to finally earn his trust – and to save him from the gallows.

Escape Rating A-: I started this series because it appeared to be what you’d get if C.S. Harris’ Sebastian St. Cyr series and Andrea Penrose’s Wrexford & Sloane series had a book baby. Which is very much true, as all three are set in the same Regency period, all involve solving grisly murders and all have a significant and dark romantic enemies to lovers relationship where the enmity has the potential to turn deadly even as the romance heats to boiling.

(Some reviewers have noted a resemblance to Deanna Raybourn’s Lady Julia Grey series, which I have not read – YET – but clearly need to take a look at.)

Now that I’ve read the first two books in the House of Croft trilogy, at this point I have a really, really, strong feeling that I’m oh-so-glad this is a trilogy and doesn’t go on as long as those other series.

Why, you might ask?

The reason is that the House of Croft doesn’t read like three stories that have some overarching elements. In spite of not being the same genre – AT ALL – the House of Croft reads like The Lord of the Rings in that it is ONE story divided into three parts for publishing purposes. Which, by extension, makes A Tainted Heart Bleeds the long dark night of the soul that is The Two Towers – especially the second half of that heartbreaking middle book.

So that’s all a HUGE hint that readers can’t start with this book. I think that one has to begin at the beginning with A Vengeful King Rises – and will probably join me in the proverbial bated breath waiting for the final book in the trilogy, A Ruthless Angel Weeps, in order to see how Adrian and Samantha Croft manage to get whatever it is they truly deserve – whether that’s heaven or hell or just a quick hanging.

The reason for that anticipation and all of that bated breath is that the individual books in the series are extremely and occasionally excruciating compelling, and while they DO wrap up the murder that opens each story, they DO NOT answer any of the gigantic questions hanging over the series – and our protagonists – like a whole ceiling of Swords of Damocles.

I know there is a puppet master – but I don’t even have a hint as to who that puppet master might be. And it’s driving me crazy. I NEED to know who is responsible for the hell that Adrian Croft has been put through – and more importantly – WHY he’s been put through that hell. I also hope to see someone pay, but I’m certain that Adrian and Samantha will have that well in hand by the end.

A Ruthless Angel Weeps will be coming at the end of January – and for this reader it’s not nearly soon enough!

About the Author

USA TODAY bestselling author Sophie Barnes writes historical romance novels
in which the characters break away from social expectations in their quest
for happiness and love. Having written for Avon, an imprint of Harper
Collins, her books have been published internationally in eight languages.
With a fondness for travel, Sophie has lived in six countries, on three
continents, and speaks English, Danish, French, Spanish, and Romanian with
varying degrees of fluency. Ever the romantic, she married the same man
three times—in three different countries and in three different
dresses.

When she’s not busy dreaming up her next swoon worthy romance novel,
Sophie enjoys spending time with her family, practicing yoga, baking,
gardening, watching romantic comedies and, of course, reading.

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