Next book

TROTTING INTO TROUBLE

Detailed descriptions of the trials and triumphs of horse rescue mix well with a mystery that keeps you guessing.

Rescuing horses, like investigating murders, is not for the faint of heart.

Former nurse Mallory Martin is pursuing her dream of horse rescue on the family farm in Arkansas. Taking in an emaciated mare found by the sheriff as he was raiding a meth lab is just the start of yet another case. With the help of Tanner and Ashley, her dedicated, barely paid helpers, Mallory manages on a shoestring budget. A visit from Coach Douglas Griggs, a favorite high school teacher, now retired, who’s looking for a quiet horse, leaves her with a bad feeling. Exhausted from dealing with a dangerous case of colic in the new mare, Mallory, called by Sheriff Grady Sullivan to catch a loose horse, runs into a drunk who raves about a dead man. She catches the horse just as she finds the body of Coach Griggs, who’s been shot. Despite warnings from Grady and her boyfriend, lawyer Andy Hannigan, and a bad leg caused by a kick from Griggs’ horse, Mallory just can’t stop herself from sleuthing. The thumb drive she’s found attached to the horse’s tack might provide a clue if it weren’t password-protected. Blaming the horse, Griggs’ wife gives him to Mallory and asks her to pick up Griggs’ things from the school, a trip that alerts her to a possible case of grade manipulation. In addition, Griggs always wore an orange vest that’s gone missing. Discovering the hidden vest elevates the death from hunting accident to murder. The more Mallory looks, the more suspects turn up.

Detailed descriptions of the trials and triumphs of horse rescue mix well with a mystery that keeps you guessing.

Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2023

ISBN: 9781639105182

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Crooked Lane

Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023

Next book

A CONSPIRACY OF BONES

Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.

Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.

A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”

Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.

Pub Date: March 17, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Scribner

Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020

Awards & Accolades

Likes

  • Readers Vote
  • 35


Our Verdict

  • Our Verdict
  • GET IT


  • IndieBound Bestseller

Next book

THE THURSDAY MURDER CLUB

From the Thursday Murder Club series , Vol. 1

A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.

Awards & Accolades

Likes

  • Readers Vote
  • 35


Our Verdict

  • Our Verdict
  • GET IT


  • IndieBound Bestseller

Four residents of Coopers Chase, a British retirement village, compete with the police to solve a murder in this debut novel.

The Thursday Murder Club started out with a group of septuagenarians working on old murder cases culled from the files of club founder Elizabeth Best’s friend Penny Gray, a former police officer who's now comatose in the village's nursing home. Elizabeth used to have an unspecified job, possibly as a spy, that has left her with a large network of helpful sources. Joyce Meadowcroft is a former nurse who chronicles their deeds. Psychiatrist Ibrahim Arif and well-known political firebrand Ron Ritchie complete the group. They charm Police Constable Donna De Freitas, who, visiting to give a talk on safety at Coopers Chase, finds the residents sharp as tacks. Built with drug money on the grounds of a convent, Coopers Chase is a high-end development conceived by loathsome Ian Ventham and maintained by dangerous crook Tony Curran, who’s about to be fired and replaced with wary but willing Bogdan Jankowski. Ventham has big plans for the future—as soon as he’s removed the nuns' bodies from the cemetery. When Curran is murdered, DCI Chris Hudson gets the case, but Elizabeth uses her influence to get the ambitious De Freitas included, giving the Thursday Club a police source. What follows is a fascinating primer in detection as British TV personality Osman allows the members to use their diverse skills to solve a series of interconnected crimes.

A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.

Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-98-488096-3

Page Count: 368

Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking

Review Posted Online: June 30, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020

Close Quickview