The Bride Wore White by Amanda Quick

It’s been years since I read one of Amanda Quick’s romantic mysteries, and I hadn’t read any set in Burning Cove, California in the 1930s. If The Bride Wore White is an example, I should have been reading these fast-paced novels all along....

Kindred Crimes by Janet Dawson

I have a new addiction, Janet Dawson’s Jeri Howard PI novels. Kindred Crimes is the first in the series, winner of the St. Martin’s Press/Private Eye Writers of America Best First PI contest. The book came out in 1990, and went on to be nominated for the...

The Things We Keep by Janet Dawson

Janet Dawson’s The Things We Keep is the kind of private investigator novel I’m always hoping to read. I don’t know why I missed the first in the series, Kindred Crimes, when it came out in 1990. It won the St. Martin’s Press/Private Eye...

A Dangerous Business by Jane Smiley

Mrs. Parks might run a brothel in Monterey, California in 1851, but what she says about women is as true today as it was then. “Everyone knows this is a dangerous business, but, between you and me, being a woman is a dangerous business.” Eliza Ripple has...

Steeped in Secrets by Lauren Elliott

Lauren Elliott, author of the Beyond the Page Bookstore Mysteries, launches a new series with Steeped in Secrets. It features a likable heroine, an appealing supportive cast, and paranormal elements, including one of the most interesting dogs I’ve come across...