When an anonymous tip lands on his desk, DS Adam Tyler is intrigued in spite of himself. The disappearance of a young mother twenty-four years ago was big news, but the case was never solved – this tantalizing new lead is something he simply can’t ignore. But the letter has set in motion a dangerous chain of events, and Tyler’s search for the truth soon leaves him fighting for his life.
. . . LIVE IN THE PRESENT
With Tyler out of action, DC Mina Rabbani must step up to lead the Cold Case Review Unit in his absence, retracing Tyler’s steps and uncovering his secrets to figure out what he was working on. But as she begins to put the pieces together, the case starts to hit frighteningly close to home. Without DS Tyler to protect her, Mina realizes that now she’s the one with hard choices to make.
And this time she’s on her own.
My thoughts: I was really pleased to be reading this excellent addition to the Adam Tyler series, and for Mina to get her own book. Adam’s out of action in hospital, Mina needs to solve the case he was working on, and despite being told to stay away, she’s also looking into what happened to Tyler. On her own.
She’s a very capable and experienced detective, even if she doesn’t always believe in herself. The case will require her to finally open up conversation with her own family as well as dig into the case files and cross paths with an MP, who’d rather not find his late wife’s killer.
This was an excellent read, and a brilliant, complex, knotty case that Mina unravels while Tyler’s life hangs in the balance.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
A cold-blooded killer strikes at the hottest moment: the new head of a sauna-stove company is murdered … in the sauna. Who has turned up the temperature and burned him to death?
The evidence points in the direction of Anni Korpinen – top salesperson and the victim’s successor at Steam Devil. And as if hitting middle-age, being in a marriage that has lost its purpose, and struggling with work weren’t enough, Anni realizes that she must be quicker than both the police and the murderer to uncover who is behind it all – before it’s too late…
Finnish Antti Tuomainen was an award-winning copywriter when he made his literary debut in 2007 as a suspense author. In 2011, his third novel, The Healer, was awarded the Clue Award for Best Finnish Crime Novel and shortlisted for the Glass Key Award.
Tuomainen was one of the first to challenge the Scandinavian crime-genre formula, and his poignant, dark and hilarious The Man Who Died became an international bestseller, shortlisting for the Petrona and Last Laugh Awards and now a Finnish TV series. Palm Beach, Finland (2018) and Little Siberia (2019) have both been adapted for the screen, airing shortly, and also shortlisted for the Capital Crime/Amazon Publishing Readers Awards, the Last Laugh Award and the CWA International Dagger, and winning the Petrona Award for Best Scandinavian Crime Novel. The international bestselling Rabbit Factor trilogy is filming now for Amazon Studios, starring Steve Carell.
Antti lives in Helsinki with his wife.
My thoughts: From theme parks to sauna sales, the first in a new series from the funniest Finnish writer I’ve read is back and I am delighted.
Saunas are big business in Finland, where people have them in their back gardens and use them daily, being the best salesperson at Steam Devil, and after the murder of her boss’ heir apparent puts Anni in the police’s crosshairs, they think she’s the killer, and even more so once another one of her colleagues also dies.
There’s evidence that seems to link her to both scenes, although she insists the “bumlets” (every time I read that word, I giggle) were stolen. Then there’s her deeply weird husband who spends all his time watching old F1 races and discussing them online as well as selling related merchandise, or at least stockpiling it.
Anni’s got issues and so do the police investigating her, it’s a small place and everyone has history.
I really enjoyed this, Finland sounds like such a unique and weird place, and Antti’s books are full of utterly ridiculous and odd people. Who knew saunas would cause so much chaos!
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
Happy release week to Alli Temple! Only Mostly Dead is the perfect ghostly tale for the spooky season!Only Mostly Dead (Afterlife Incorporated Book 1) Publication Date: October 21, 2024 Genre: Urban Fantasy/ LGBTQ+
Urban fantasy
Ghost & reaper
Odd couple
Sloooooooow burn
No one tells you how much paperwork there is after you die.
I expected to wake up on a cloud where angels played harps and fed me grapes. Instead, I’m a ghost stuck in suburban Toronto. The only one who can see me is an unemployed grim reaper who’d rather play video games.
Turns out the business of dying is a train wreck. But if there was ever a girl boss who could get it back on track, it’s me. All I need is a little help from my new undead roommate, whether they want to be involved or not.
Nothing at Afterlife Incorporated moves quickly and if I don’t find a way out soon there won’t be anything left of me to cross over. They say death can be easy, but being only mostly dead sucks.
Only Mostly Dead is the first installment in the Afterlife Incorporated urban fantasy trilogy. It features a slow—so slow—burn romance that may take several books to resolve. Be patient. Death is coming…eventually. AVAILABLE ON AMAZON
My thoughts: this was a lot of fun, probably more than death really is. After dying and not being “collected” and taken to the Afterlife, anyone would be a bit frustrated. But when your life’s work was helping others get their lives sorted out – well maybe the Afterlife needs your help.
Funny, reminiscent of Dead Like Me (that was a good show) with delightful characters and a rather magnificent cat (always a good addition), there’s a lot more to the life after death! Can’t wait for book 2!
I’ve spent my entire life trying to make up for what happened that day. I was barely fifteen when I killed my mom.
Twenty years later.
I’ve turned my life around. I have a handsome, wealthy husband; two daughters who are everything to me; a stunning Connecticut beachfront home. I’m grateful for every minute that we have together.
Today I came home to find a silver-and-blue gift-wrapped box on the porch. The note inside says: Who killed Midge Lester? Midge Lester was my mom. Someone knows.
An Amazon Charts/Best Selling Author, many of McGarvey Black’s novels are also available in audiobooks and have been translated into other languages.
“I love writing twisty thrillers that keep readers guessing and hanging at the end of each chapter. Nothing makes me happier than when one of my readers tells me I kept them up all night.” —McGarvey Black
Born in New York City and raised on Long Island, McGarvey Black is married with two children and lives and writes in Florida. She loves dogs of any kind and eating ice cream with demitasse spoons to make it last longer.
My thoughts: Imagine spending years believing that only two people in the world know about the terrible thing you did, hearing that one of them was dead and knowing the other can’t tell anyone. And then finding out that that isn’t true.
Abigail doesn’t remember the death of her mother, only that she woke up holding the gun that killed her. Her boyfriend took the gun when he left town and she confessed to the local priest, which under the seal of the confessional he cannot share.
All these years later, her life is very different, but she carries her secret and her grief with her. Then a familiar face appears, one who shouldn’t be alive anymore and then another person she never thought she’d see again resurfaces in her life.
Suddenly the secret that she has kept for so long is at risk of being exposed and everything she’s built could fall apart.
Full of twists, with a likeable and sympathetic protagonist in Abigail, this was an enjoyable and intelligent thriller.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
Harriet White is no stranger to odd correspondence. Ensconced in the basement of the Baker Street building society, her job is to reply to the mail they receive on behalf of Sherlock Holmes. But while letters to the fictional sleuth may be plentiful, telegrams are rare, and so when she receives one describing the grave situation of celebrated author Philip St John, her interest is piqued. The writer describes St John as being consumed by terror, seeing ghostly apparitions on the fens, and only at ease in the company of his loyal wolfhound.
Before long, Harry finds herself in Cambridgeshire under the guise of being Holmes’ assistant. The residents of Thurmwell Manor believe their master is cursed. Harry is sure there must be a logical explanation, but inside the echoey halls of the grand gothic house, her confidence in science and reason begin to crumble…
Can Harry solve the mystery before the fens claim their next victim?
Join Harriet White in 1930’s London for another glorious Sherlock Holmes-inspired mystery, for fans of Nita Prose and Janice Hallett.
Holly Hepburn writes escapist, swoonsome fiction that sweeps her readers into idyllic locations, from her native Cornwall to the windswept beauty of Orkney. She has turned her hand to cosy crime inspired by Sherlock Holmes himself. Holly lives in leafy Hertfordshire with her adorable partner in crime, Luna the Labrador.
My thoughts: This series is so much fun, and this story, inspired by The Hound of the Baskervilles, is another excellent edition. I think Harry makes a fantastic sleuth, and Oliver a great Watson. The pair of them head off to the Cambridgeshire Fens under the guise of assisting a very old Sherlock (if he was a detective in the Victorian period, still going in the 1930s, he’d be quite an old man) who has retired to Sussex to keep bees (per Conan Doyle).
I know that people do still write to Holmes, the museum in Baker Street has them on display in his office, but I don’t know that anyone there carries out investigations, I imagine they pass anything of real concern onto the police. But Harry is willing to help where perhaps the police and in this case, doctors, cannot.
The author Philip St John lives in a manor house out in the Fens with a few staff and his nephew, who is the one who writes to Holmes. His uncle appears to be haunted by some strange apparition and is terribly ill. His huge dog is his only comfort. Harry knows there’s a logical explanation and is willing to brave unknown dangers to get to the bottom of it. And go to the library to do some research too.
She might not have Holmes’ legendary powers of deduction but she’s smart and resourceful and nothing, not even her creep of a former boss, can get in her way.
Lots of fun, a clever conundrum and a very real solution to a strange problem. Really enjoyable and I can’t wait for more!
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
Kate thought she knew her neighbors. But they’ve been keeping secrets…
Kate’s quiet evening at home is shattered when a car crashes into a neighbor’s fence. The police and emergency services are quickly on the scene.
Kate saw the crash. The neighbors saw it too. So why is everyone saying it never happened? And how is it possible that the neighbor’s fence doesn’t have a scratch?
Is Kate going crazy or is everyone lying?
Strange things start happening in Kate’s life. A man follows her home after work. An intruder tries to break into her house in the middle of the night.
Kate is convinced these events are connected to the crash. Someone wants to silence her. But why? Who was in that car on Saturday night?
And what is the deadly secret that everyone is trying to hide?
Mark Gillespie writes psychological thriller and suspense novels. He’s a former professional musician (bass player) from Glasgow, Scotland who spent ten years touring the UK and Ireland, playing sessions and having the time of his life. Don’t ask though. What happened on the road stays on the road.
He now lives in Auckland, New Zealand with his wife and a small menagerie of rescue creatures. If he’s not writing, he’s jamming with other musicians, running on the beach, watching mixed martial arts and boxing. Or devouring horror and thriller movies.
This is his third psychological thriller with Inkubator Books.
My thoughts: This is a book that will completely wrong foot you in a really good way. Reading the first section, Kate’s story makes you think one thing is happening and then that gets completely thrown up in the air and becomes a very, very different story and without spoiling it, a very interesting story.
I was totally hooked, at first I thought I knew what it was going to be about, but then, bam, it went off in another direction and it was so good, such an interesting, clever, almost a discussion about right and wrong, punishment and revenge. Absolutely cracking stuff.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
Now in paperback, just in time for Halloween, I’m re-posting my review of this book from last year.
Original and engrossing, The Fortunes of Olivia Richmondis a gothic period drama set in late 19th century Norfolk thatcentres around the “Mistcoate Witch” – the teenage mistress of Mistcoate House who is rumoured to speak with the dead. When young governess Miss Julia Pearlie takes a job as companion to the aristocratic Olivia Richmond, with strict instructions to put an end to such “teenage nonsense,” Miss Pearlie is soon inducted into the chilling world of tarot, fortune telling and the “other side.” As the winter chill wraps around the dark woods surrounding Mistcoate, and the behaviour or Olivia becomes more and more terrifying, Julia must uncover the truth and save herself – before it’s too late.
The perfect read for a dark autumn night, with chapter headings and illustrations that correspond to specific Tarot Cards, from “The Hanged Man” to “The Stuck Tower,” this atmospheric gothic page turner deftly explores Victorian attitudes to the supernatural alongside the lot of women living and working in Victorian England.
For fans of Stacey Halls and Michelle Paver.
Born in 1988, Louise Davidson grew up in Belfast during the troubles with a Catholic mother and a Protestant father. The Catholic side of her family lived on Mountcollyer Street – the street featured in Kenneth Branagh’s Oscar winning film Belfast, that was badly affected by violent protests.
Louise’s earliest memory is of her parents deciding whether they should drive past a car that was on fire in the streets of Belfast. It was only when she left Belfast to study Creative Writing at University in the UK that Louise realised it was not normal to live in a permanent state of fear and anxiety. She says the sense of dread she has had from a young age drew her to Gothic fiction and is something she has tried to channel into The Fortunes of Olivia Richmond.
Louise was introduced to the idea of tarot, mediums and fortune telling from a young age as her Aunt Pat is an intuitive, with the ability to receive messages from the dead and to predict dreams. Louise grew up watching her aunt predict dreams and pass messages from the dead to bereaved families and this helped her to create the character of Olivia Richmond.
After a career working in theatre production with theatres including Tinder Box and Ransome Theatre in Northern Ireland and Intemission,RSC and the Lyric Hammersmith in London. Louise now teaches English and drama to A-Level students and lives in West London with her husband and stepson. The Fortunes of Olivia Richmond is her first novel.
My thoughts: Set in a suitably Gothic and somewhat sinister house, buried in the woods, this is a perfect Halloween read. Unreliable narrators, characters with buckets of secrets, ghosts, a violent figure hiding in the forest, suspicious locals, and a young woman who says she can see spirits, and reads the tarot to some of the townspeople, causing friction.
Julia must make her own way in the world, having inherited nothing useful from her mother, and with a brother who doesn’t want to help. So she was working as a governess, but after a terrible incident at her last post she’s floundering.
Hired as a companion to doctor’s daughter Olivia Richmond, at Mistcoate in Norfolk, she’s fully aware this is her last chance to get a good reference and earn some money. Her employer wants her to prepare his troubled daughter for the Season in London, where he hopes to find her a husband.
But things are not right at Mistcoate, Olivia is known locally as a witch, claiming to see the dead and be able to divine the future. She’s been looked after by the housekeeper since her mother died when she was very young. But the housekeeper, Mrs Hayes, isn’t all she seems, and is bitterly jealous of Julia’s relationship with Olivia.
As events unfold and take a dark turn, Julia becomes afraid of the household, apart from old Captain Reynolds and the maid of all work Marian. She also becomes close to the local vicar Ed and his sister Alice. These friendships keep her sane as things get stranger and more volatile. Her employer, Dr Reynolds, insists on holding “examinations” of his daughter, assisted only by the housekeeper, and threatens Julia with the sack.
The book amps up the tension and you really feel for Julia, although she also has secrets and the ghosts seem to cling to her, symbols of her guilt, perhaps.
The ending is ambiguous, will Olivia be alright in her new life in London and will Julia and Ed make a go of it? Have they truly escaped the ghosts and demons of their pasts?
In the photograph Martha Benn has kept for two decades, three girls lounge on the grass during a school field trip. Beside Martha, there’s Liv, petite and wickedly funny, and Juliet, their unofficial leader, brave, kind, and effortlessly beautiful. Back then, they meant the world to each other. But when Juliet disappeared, the bond between Martha and Liv unravelled too.
Martha was the last known person to see Juliet alive, and she still has no idea what happened after the two said goodnight on a towpath beside London’s Regent’s Canal. The next day, Juliet’s abandoned bicycle was discovered, but no sign of Juliet. Without witnesses or clues, the investigation fell apart.
Martha, now a TV celebrity preparing to host a show investigating cold cases, finally has a chance to get answers. As Martha tries to piece together what happened to Juliet, she realizes that her memories of those long-ago bonds may not tell the whole story. And someone else may know more about Juliet’s fate, and their friendship, than she could ever have imagined . . .
My thoughts: Friendship is a weird thing, it changes over time, sometimes getting stronger, sometimes it just falls away. But we never forget, not really.
Martha is trying to put the pieces together about the disappearance of her friend Juliet, years after the fact. The third member of their group, Liv, might have some idea but it’s been tricky getting in touch, she’s vague over email, and Martha is desperate to meet up and compare notes.
But there seems to be more to all this, and maybe one of the few witnesses, someone always on the sidelines, in the background, knows the truth.
It’s a bit creepy, with a stalker’s perspective on the events around Juliet’s disappearance and on Martha’s attempts to figure it all out. I imagine we don’t notice those people, the ones on the fringes of our lives, very often, and that’s certainly the case here, with a controlling and manipulative person who seems incredibly innocent as well.
Isabel’s books just get better, and more sinister, this is definitely the darkest one yet I reckon. I really enjoyed reading it, she has a brilliant knack at getting you to understand the characters and their strange minds without being put off or disturbed. I felt for Martha, and for Casey, both held in place by something that happened so long ago that many people have forgotten.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
Secret femme-fatale in training Millicent Whittenburg needs to escape her unpleasant betrothal.
Taking matters into her own hands, she plans her eventual ruin! Then she can disappear from society to carry out the Queen’s deadly missions. Step 1: seduce the one man who despises marriage more than her!
However, she hugely underestimates her target. Major General Beaufort Drake. Fearsome private investigator, he’s notoriously cold and visibly battle scarred. But Millie’s scandalously public kiss awakens a deeply suppressed desire in Drake. Instead of allowing them both to succumb to shame he does the unthinkable, and offers for her hand in a convenient marriage.
Nothing prepares them for the fireworks when a fearless damsel collides with a dangerous Major General! And as their secret missions align they face their hardest test on the glittering battlefield – a week long wedding house party where there is nowhere to escape…only new and wicked lessons to be learnt!
Darcy McGuire is a high school counsellor who grew up in the wilds of New Zealand but happily settled in the Pacific Northwest. In between dodging territorial geese, gathering duck eggs, taking the dog for long walks, Darcy loves writing about fierce female protagonists who may dodge daggers and bullets but never seem to escape Cupid’s Arrow.
My thoughts: I really like this series, we’re only on book two but it’s just a lot of fun. Queen Victoria’s lady agents have to basically avoid being trapped in a marriage to some miserable sod, as they’ll have to give up their role and play domestic angel instead.
Millie’s ghastly stepmother wants to marry her off to a fossil so Millie decides to go for disgrace and being packed off away from society in order to carry on her vital work as a spy. Only she’s picked the one man who won’t back down.
Major General Beaufort Drake is an agent for the Prime Minister – and they’re investigating the same case from different angles. Can they fall in love, stop bickering and stop the trade in young women?
So much fun, a bit saucy, quite romantic (they face off against the horrible stepmother, his wet blanket of a brother and miserable sister-in-law together) and just very enjoyable. Highly recommend.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
A city burning. A revolution raging. A woman on the run.
Nadezhda has never wanted to be a witch. But the occult is in her blood. Her mother, Militza, conjured Rasputin and introduced him into the Romanov court, releasing the devil himself.
Now he is dead, but Militza still dreams of him – stalking her sleep and haunting her waking hours. As Petrograd burns and the Russian Empire crumbles, Nadezhda escapes through the capital, concealing a book of generational magic. But as danger grows closer, she may be forced to embrace her heritage to save what she loves most…
Based on a true story, The Witch’s Daughter is an epic tale of women rising from the ashes of an empire, perfect for fans of Elodie Harper’s The Wolf Den and Madeline Miller’s Circe.
Imogen Edwards-Jones studied Russian at Bristol University. Her first book, The Taming of Eagles, was about the first 100 days of the collapse of communism. A writer and journalist, she has travelled extensively within the old Soviet Union, studying in Kyiv. She is the author of twenty books including the best-selling Babylon series. Married with two children, Imogen lives in London. She is also a member of the London College of Psychic Studies and an honorary Cossack. Her latest novel, The Witch’s Daughter, is the sequel to The Witches of St Petersburg.
My thoughts: I was really excited to read this book, I am a huge Russian history nerd and have been to St Petersburg some years ago, and even been to the palace that features in the opening of this book, where Rasputin was killed. It’s very creepy, our tour guide was a descendant of the Prince who organised the murder. And behind a door on the way out is a terrifying waxwork figure of the monk himself. I think she kept it there to traumatise visitors. It worked!
This is the sequel to The Witches of St Petersburg, but you can read it as a standalone if you haven’t read the first book (but I also recommend it). Opening with the dramatic death of the monk many blamed for the Romanovs’ downfall (he was poisoned, shot and drowned) is very dramatic, winter on the river Nev, beautiful and deadly.
It’s 1916, the First World War is consuming millions of young men from across Europe, including Russia, unrest is gathering as the serfs finally have enough of their aristocratic masters, the boyars and princes of the Russian Empire, there have been poor harvests, people are starving but the Imperial Family continue to throw parties and enjoy life.
As the wartime years gather pace, so do the Bolsheviks, including Vladimir Lenin, and the tide turns against the Romanov dynasty. It can be hard to feel sorry for them but when you read about the deaths, torture and imprisonment, including children, you do, all their wealth and privilege did not stop them being horrifically murdered (the deaths of the Tsar and Tsarina’s siblings, burnt alive in a mine shaft are particularly gruesome and cruel).
I have been to Peter and Paul Fortress where the Romanovs were interred after their bodies were recovered from Ekaterinberg, they lie under huge marble blocks in an austere and silent chapel, far more fitting than the holes they were thrown into by the furious soldiers.
The family members that survived, rescued from house arrest in Crimea, by the British navy, are the ones this story focuses on, the Dowager Empress never truly believing her son the Tsar, and his family had been murdered. Terrified and traumatised the extended remaining royals stayed in their summer homes, guarded by soldiers, surrounded by their enemies, the chef is something of a hero, valiantly scrounging up meals from potatoes and a few bits and pieces in the kitchen, providing a feast from almost nothing.
Militza and Stana are survivors, but the life their children are living is tough and frightening, Nadezhda loses her first love to war, and almost loses her second to the revolution. Struggling to survive in Yalta, she finally embraces the gifts of her mother’s line, the witchcraft she has long denied.
There is tragedy and heartbreak aplenty as the Russian Revolution takes grip, it’s something when the German army are seen as heroes, arriving to relieve the house arrest of the family and negotiate their eventual release.
This was a fascinating read, seeing the Revolution from a very different angle, not that of the Bolsheviks or the Soviets but from the perspective of the extended Romanov family, those that survived the horrific deaths of so many.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
Happy release week to Alli Temple! Only Mostly Dead is the perfect ghostly tale for the spooky season!
Only Mostly Dead (Afterlife Incorporated Book 1)
ramblingmads 