all your Reads in Here

Cora Harrison's Reverend Mother mysteries, set in Cork, Ireland in the 1920s, are certainly realistic. She doesn't sugarcoat the conditions of life at that time, or the brutality and deaths during the period of rebellion. She doesn't hesitate to injure or kill characters that the reader has grown to care for, because that's life. It's one more reason to encourage readers to start with the first book in this series,  A Shameful Murder.  Once you've read the first couple books, the repercussions of a murder in the third book, Beyond Absolution , are all the more shocking. When Reverend Mother Aquinas sees Father Dominic's body in the confessional at Holy Trinity Church, she knows he was murdered. She sends for the police doctor so he can confirm that the priest's death was not accidental. He was stabbed through the ear by someone on the other side of the confessional. The murder of a priest becomes the talk of Cork. Reverend Mother wants to find the killer...

Heather Redmond launches a new mystery series with Charles Dickens as the amateur sleuth. Dickens, who is working as a journalist, with his eye on a writing career, is a fascinating character in  A Tale of Two Murders. It appears that the series will be called "A Dickens of a Crime". Dickens is at dinner with the Hogarths, his editor's family, when they hear women screaming. Dickens, Hogarth, and the eldest Hogarth daughter, Kate, rush next door where a widow lives alone with her two children. They find Christiana Lugoson so sick that Dickens carries her to her room, and he and Kate tend the ailing young woman. But, Christiana dies within twenty-four hours. The death of a seventeen-year-old bothers Dickens, but he has no proof that something was wrong about the scene. It's only when another journalist mentions a similar death exactly a year earlier that Dickens suspects murder. With his editor's permission, he makes inquiries. He and Kate spend a lot of time toget...

Diane Freeman's debut Countess of Harleigh mystery, A Lady's Guide to Etiquette and Murder , was enchanting. It's a suspenseful story with appealing characters, and a courageous amateur sleuth. Actually, it was just fun. Frances Price was a commoner, an American who brought one million dollars to her marriage into the Wynn family. But, her husband, Reggie, wasn't at all what she expected. He really was a philandering cad.  Bed-hopping may be a sport of the aristocracy in Victorian England, but the American-born Countess of Harleigh is still horrified when her husband’s lover reports that Reggie is dead in her bed.  Reggie's death does free his widow to live her own life. After a year of mourning, she rents a house in London,despite the wishes of her brother-in-law. Frances sponsors her sister, Lily, for a Season. And the police receive an anonymous note that accuses her of murdering her husband. In the midst of all this, Frances also suspects that one of her sister’...

Following Frederick Ramsay's death in 2017, Dana Stabenow polished the manuscript for his last mystery,  Countdown . It's eight years after Jesse Sutherlin's return from the First World War, the story told in Copper Kettle. Jesse is married, with a family, working at the local sawmill. He doesn't expect another mystery in his life. Jesse and Serena have been married for eight years. As much as Jesse loved Buffalo Mountain, Serena wanted the family moved into Floyd where the four kids could go to school for twelve years. She wanted "no more bumpkins in the family." Jesse may be the head of the household, but he knows how shrewd Serena is. Together, the two will deal with the latest family situation. David Privette, the new sheriff, tells them he's found the body of Jesse's father. Jesse doesn't believe him because in 1918, a stranger told them his father died of the Spanish flu in Norfolk, Virginia. But, the body was found in a local icehouse, and h...