Cholera may have nothing on Covid-19, but it still adds a sense of dread to a mystery both complex and romantic.
A detective duo battles to overcome a scandalous past.
As a heavily pregnant Lady Kiera Darby and her husband, Sebastian Gage, await the birth of their child in Edinburgh, Kiera’s still crushed by the scandal of her abusive first husband’s association with body snatchers. Now someone has published an anonymous book about Bonnie Brock Kincaid, a hero to the poor, intimating that Kiera's child is his. Kincaid, whom they know from other cases, is furious, especially since a series of plays based on the untruthful book are being performed. When they try to discover the author’s identity, Kiera and Gage are thwarted by his publisher, who soon ends up murdered. Kiera, meanwhile, is troubled by her sister’s insistence that she give up detecting and become respectable and by her own inability to tell her husband he has a half brother. The police think Kincaid is the killer, but Kiera and Gage continue to talk to publishers, printers, and theater managers in an attempt to discover the identity of the author, who obviously hates Kincaid for reasons far more personal than his lawlessness. Each time the pair visit the more insalubrious parts of the city, they put themselves in danger from the cholera epidemic ravaging the area. The fact that Gage has a formerly unknown half brother provides a surprising clue to the killer.
Cholera may have nothing on Covid-19, but it still adds a sense of dread to a mystery both complex and romantic.Pub Date: April 6, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-19844-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2021
The heroine’s 62nd appearance is a hit-or-miss mystery best suited for readers already invested in her complicated life.
Lt. Eve Dallas is sucked into a murder that may well be overshadowed by another crime—and by the news that Roarke, her billionaire husband, is implicated in both felonies in an unexpected and troubling way.
Disturbed from her sleep, Aileen Carville arises to discover her wealthy husband, Nathan Barrister, coshed to death by a heavy amethyst from the collection of his late father, Zip Global founder Henry J. Barrister. His corpse is lying outside an open vault that everyone in the family insists they hadn’t known about until a couple of months ago, and it’s filled with priceless paintings and sculptures and jewels taken years ago from an A-list of museums, one of which—the Royal Suite, a legendary emerald setting—has evidently been stolen once again. The bombshell revelation that Henry must have commissioned the thefts himself leads to two questions—how did the thief who killed Nathan know about the vault and its contents, and what possessed Nathan’s wealthy father to steal and hide all these goodies in the first place?—that are much more interesting than whodunit, though only one of them will be satisfactorily answered. Another bombshell revelation follows: Roarke’s confession to Dallas that he stole the Royal Suite from London’s Tate Gallery when he was still a teenager, years before he turned away from a life of crime himself. Since Interpol is much more interested in the theft than the murder, there’s a real danger that they’ll decide Roarke was once again the thief. So, Dallas faces the double challenge of solving the crimes and keeping her beloved husband out of the frame.
The heroine’s 62nd appearance is a hit-or-miss mystery best suited for readers already invested in her complicated life.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781250414526
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
A surprising number of suspects for a 40-year-old killing keep the bickering cast of characters hiding secrets.
A mystery from the past threatens a farmer’s future.
Shiloh Bellamy left a lucrative job in California to rescue her family farm in Cherry Glen, Michigan, which had fallen into disrepair due to her father’s lack of interest. An unexpected inheritance helped get things back in shape and pays the salary of her farm manager, Chesney, who lives in the farmhouse with her younger sister, Whit, while Shiloh happily lives in a cabin in the woods. Thanksgiving dinner at the farmhouse brings some surprises. Whit doesn’t show up, and Chesney reveals she’s worried about her. Shiloh’s boyfriend, Sheriff Milan Penbrook, brings his acerbic mother, who suggests she should be thinking about marriage and babies. Milan isn’t happy about Shiloh’s former boyfriend Quinn Killian attending. Her father, Sully, arrives with unpleasant Connie Baskins and stuns Shiloh by announcing they’re engaged. The veiled hostilities at the table seem minor when Shiloh’s pug, Huckleberry, chases her chickens into a corner of the orchard and seizes a bone they unearthed, which is clearly human. The body it comes from is that of James Ripley, who vanished before Shiloh was born. Unfortunately, the farm is in the district of Chief Randy, who is Quinn’s father and dislikes both Shiloh and Milan. Chief Randy is also pretty lazy and closes the case, declaring the killer to be Shiloh’s grandmother, who believed Ripley murdered her daughter. Sure her adored grandmother is innocent, Shiloh investigates on her own, putting herself in danger from the real killer.
A surprising number of suspects for a 40-year-old killing keep the bickering cast of characters hiding secrets.Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2025
ISBN: 9781728273082
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
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