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Advent of Mystery, Day 11: The Last Devil to Die
I will admit outright that I am stretching to the limit the definition of a Christmas story. Technically, Richard Osman’s latest in the Thursday Murder Club series takes place immediately after Christmas, spanning dead week and beyond. But I love The Last Devil to Die, and I think it perfectly encapsulates what I want from…
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TCO Reviews: West Heart Kill by Dann McDorman
Mystery stories exist on a spectrum. Some are adventures, masquerading as mysteries: they set up a puzzle that can’t be solved with the textual information. Others are “pure” mysteries – the only puzzle is the plot, with all the focus on figuring out whodunnit. And then a third, rare category adds another set of layers…
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TCO Reviews: Dangerous Women by Mark de Castrique
Writing senior protagonists is quite the challenge. Too often we see authors take too little advantage of the uniqueness of the elderly as characters. When written well, these characters are not “just like anyone else”. The best senior characters, in my opinion, have specializations. They know what they’re good at, and they have deep reserves…
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TCO Reviews: Last Word to the Wise
You can tell that after weeks of reading spy stories and fantasies, I’m in the mood for something cozy. So I’m delighted that the Christie sisters returned for some more bookshop-based sleuthing in Last Word to the Wise. Like any good cozy + Agatha fan, I had a great time with Dead and Gondola, the…
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TCO Reviews: The Hexologists by Josiah Bancroft
I love stories about magic. I love stories abut mystery. And I love stories of adventure. So when I came upon The Hexologists by Josiah Bancroft, I knew I had to give it a try. (Thanks to NetGalley and Orbit for the gift copy!) The Hexologists follows a wife-and-husband duo of adventurers, the Wilbys, who…
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TCO Reviews: Board to Death by CJ Connor
The exploration of the small-business cozy mystery continues, with a different “flavor” of the subgenre. We’re moving from an ode to independence in Color Me Murder to a more nuanced look at the small business experience (and some of the other beats that ride along). And Board to Death, a recent release by CJ Connor,…
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TCO Reviews: The Wishing Game by Meg Shaffer
Between my epistolary reading challenge and my love for books, I’ve been reading a lot of “books about books” lately. (So much so that I’ve added a new tag just to track all my metafictional adventures.) It should come as no surprise, then, that I’ve been excited to read Meg Shaffer’s The Wishing Game since…
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TCO Reviews: The Book that Wouldn’t Burn by Mark Lawrence
There is nothing more tantalizing to a reader than a book about a library. The setting – shelves on shelves of endless books, towering to the ceiling – is like a dream come true. If you throw a little adventure and fantasy to the mix, as Mark Lawrence promises in The Book that Wouldn’t Burn,…
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TCO Reviews: Killing Me by Michelle Gagnon
Most of my reading fare is quite earnest, but every once in a while – when I’m in the right mood – I sit down for something a little snarky. I grew up in Florida reading Carl Hiaasen and Dave Barry, so crime and comedy have always seemed connected. So I was pretty excited to…
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TCO Reviews: The Late Mrs. Willoughby by Claudia Grey
Like many an adult who used to be a teenage girl, I have a soft spot in my heart for Jane Austen and her ever-relatable stories. I’ve spent many a rainy afternoon cozied up with Eliza and Elinor and Anne and a warm mug of tea. As a mystery lover, you can imagine my delight…