KRL reviewed a lot of really good and great books in 2013, but we decided to give our best shot at choosing our top 5 of the year--some of us cheated a little, but here are our choices! And if you are an author who is not on the list, take heart--like I said, they were all good books!
This week we are celebrating Christmas with Penguin mystery authors and three Penguin Christmas mystery novels-Merry Market Murder by Paige Shelton, Mulled Murder By Kate Kingsbury, and Home for the Homicide: A Do-It Yourself Mystery By Jennie Bentley. Details at the end of this post on how to win copies of all three.
Near the Appalachian foothills lies Hitching Post, wedding capital of the South, where Southerners embrace crazy and cellphones are useless. It is also where Carly Bell Hartwell happens to be a practicing hoodoo healing witch and is the owner of the Little Shop of Potions. When her neighbor Mr. Dunwoody, makes one of his never-wrong predictions of divorce the townspeople hunt down Carly, not to burn the witch at the stake, but to request preventative love potions to save their marriages.
Yes, You Will Crave Chinese Food–but craving Chinese food is hardly a bad thing! Welcome to the Big Apple, home of some of the best Chinese restaurants on the planet and where we always find ourselves in Esther Diamond’s urban fantasy adventures. As you read, even if you don’t live in New York, go ahead, call in to order soup dumplings–Esther’s favorite–from your local Chinese takeout and brace yourself for a breakneck romp.
It was a perfectly overcast night for a ghost hunt, and ghost tour guide Lorna Collins was hoping to please her ghost hunters at the Wilkinson House, a long-vacant Bear Creek home built in the 1900s and still up for sale. Unfortunately, the dead entity they discover on site is pretty corporal, as it is the body of a teenaged “Goth” boy with, very suspiciously, two puncture wounds on his neck. Ghosts are one thing, but a vampire–that is something even these spiritualists can’t believe actually exists.
Penguin continues to release a lot of great cozies for our mystery reading fun! Here are a few more reviews of books that came out in October and September of 2013! This week we have food, clothing, supernatural and Amish country. A Finder’s Fee: A Missing Pieces Mystery by Joyce and Jim Lavene, Postcards from the Dead by Laura Childs, Bran New Death by Victoria Hamilton, Going Through the Notions by Cate Price, and Murder, Plain and Simple by Isabella Alan. Details on how to win all 5 of these fun mysteries at the end of this post.
In 2013, Mystery Writers of America considered six finalists in the Edgar competition for Best First Novel. The novelists, just like their books, are all vastly different. But, all now have one shared experience they will never forget: the honor of being nominated for one of the highest awards in the mystery genre.
Life is great for Haley Randolph. Sure, she's about to hit twenty-five, that over-the-hill cusp on the way to thirty that she’s totally not concerned about, and yes, she just broke up with the most devastingly handsome, rich and loving boyfriend, Ty Cameron. She did just lose the perfect job as a corporate event planner that she held for five minutes, with the result being that she is still working for eight dollars an hour as a part-time sales clerk at the Holt Department Store owned by her ex-boyfriend's family.
Marc Gonzalez has been creating quite the chatter in the Fresno/Visalia theatre community with his quest to see and review 1000 shows on his blog. We sat down and chatted with Marc to get to know a little more about his background and his quest.
This week we are reviewing several new Penguin mysteries with similar themes-Fashion or Food! Murder after a Fashion: An Accessories Mystery by Grace Carroll, Thread and Buried By Janet Bolin, Close Knit Killer: A Knitting Mystery By Maggie Sefton, Mayhem at the Orient Express By Kylie Logan and Steamed to Death: A Gourmet De-Lite Mystery By Peg Cochran. Details on how to win all five at the end of this post.
