The Astral Library by Kate Quinn

February 17, 2026

“Have you ever wanted to live inside a book?” Kate Quinn departs from her usual historical fiction to enter the world of magical realism, libraries and books in The Astral Library. While some of her usual readers might be disappointed, this book hit...

Small Mercies by Dennis Lehane

April 17, 2023

Dennis Lehane’s last novel, Since We Fell, came out in 2017. He smashes that silence with Small Mercies, the most powerful novel I’ve read since S.A. Cosby’s Razorblade Tears. In fact, any book group that chooses to pair these two unforgettable...

Symphony Road by Gabriel Valjan

February 17, 2021

Gabriel Valjan’s first Shane Cleary mystery, Dirty Old Town, impressed me. He took an idealistic ex-cop turned PI, put him in Boston where he struggles to make a living while dealing with cops who hate him for his integrity and his willingness to testify against...

Robert B. Parker’s Someone to Watch Over Me by Ace Atkins

January 30, 2021

As I mentioned the other day, after Robert B. Parker died I tried one of the Spenser novels by Ace Atkins, and gave up. The voice just didn’t hit me right. I’d always been a fan of Spenser, enjoying his witty, sometimes snarky comments. It’s been a...

Dirty Old Town by Gabriel Valjan

August 16, 2020

Raymond Chandler’s Marlowe is the model for how many private investigators? He defines that hero in The Simple Art of Murder. “He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of...