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Posts by Katie H
Prior to 2020, if you knew anything about Formula 1—or even knew what it was—you were a tiny minority of the population. You were also likely to be a gearhead, a motorsports obsessive or a European—probably all three, really. 2020, however, was a year to remember, and not just because of a global health crisis. It was the year Formula 1 went mainstream, all thanks to a series called Drive to Survive on Netflix.
There has to be something very satisfying about killing off a rich person. The mystery genre’s very foundations rests on the corpses of the well-to-do; that any hereditary titles survived the Golden Age is astonishing. Those plump inheritances, the isolated country houses and silently judgmental domestic staff, often coupled with a victim and cadre of suspects that usually don’t generate too much sympathy (they did have a pretty comfy existence before the fatally poisoned claret, after all)—the mystery basically writes itself.
When you set a book in place named Charon County, you’d better be prepared to go to some dark places. S. A. Cosby’s latest thriller, All the Sinners Bleed, does not disappoint in that respect. Mixing strong characterizations and engrossing action with stories rooted in America’s racial reckoning, Cosby again proves why he’s become a must-read among crime readers.
Something is very wrong with tram car 015. Unlike the other trams that wiz above Cairo’s bustling streets powered by djinn magic, something in tram car 015 is angry, and it’s up to Agent Hamad Nasr and his new partner Onsi Youssef in The Haunting of Tram Car 015 to discover just what that something is. It’s not the easiest of propositions: in the Cairo of 1912, it’s been decades since the power of djinn has been harnessed and turned Cairo into a world power.
I’m not one who typically goes back and reads classic romance authors since I often have my hands full of newly released titles, but when a colleague extolled the virtues of Marion Chesney’s Regency-set romances, I was intrigued enough to check out the audio recording of The Banishment, the first title in Chesney’s Daughters of Mannerling series. It was short, and the audio appealed as much as the print version’s dated and ugly covers did not. Well, dear reader, I did not know what I was getting into.
“Remove my nose ring.” Geeta hasn’t heard that expression in a while, but she immediately knows what the woman before her is asking: make me a widow. Geeta has been an outcast in her small Gujarati village ever since her husband Ramesh mysteriously disappeared five years ago. While Geeta most certainly did not kill her husband, she does little to dispute the rumors that she’s a killer, since it keeps the villagers at arm’s length.
Fiji in 1914 would appear to be a perfect island paradise. For constable Akal Singh, it is at is best a purgatory, hopefully a temporary one. Far from the turmoil of the Great War, far from the desperately poor regions of the British Empire, for Singh, it is just far from everything; far from his family in the Punjab, far from his beloved billeting in Hong Kong. But one thing that is uncomfortably close is racial prejudice, particularly as Fiji is an island divided. At the top sits the small British elite, owners of the sugar cane plantations that forms the colony’s economic backbone.
David Grann is an author who doesn’t like to rush into releasing work—his last full-length book appeared in 2017—but he continually proves that whatever he writes is worth the wait. The bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon and The Lost City of Z has a knack for finding little-known but intense and compelling stories in the dustiest corners of history, and his latest is no exception.
Aphrodite Du Bell hates her name. The eponymous heroine of J. J. McAvoy’s romance Aphrodite and the Duke certainly has the beauty and bearing reminiscent of the Greek goddess, but ever since she was jilted by Evander Eagleman, Duke of Everely, she’s been reluctant to reenter society. An ultimatum from her formidable mama means she must find a husband this year, but the discovery that the now-widowed Evander will be present this season gives Aphrodite a sliver of hope she might be able to rekindle the love she knows Evander genuinely held for her.
It’s the day that many dream about, the culmination of a job well done: retirement. It’s no different for the quartet of Billie, Natalie, Mary Alice and Helen, whose employer has generously gifted a Caribbean cruise to bid them adieu after decades of service for The Museum. It’s a lavish gift, and one that might be a trip of a lifetime—or the end of life. But it’s hardly surprising, as this group of sexagenarians are highly trained hit women, and they know it can only be their former employer gunning for them. The Museum, nominally devoted to erasing deserving baddies from the earth, has s
