Although the plot could use some pruning, McKenna’s series kickoff will warm the hearts of fans who cherish all things...
An independent-spirited American struggles to fit into the stultified lifestyle of the Edwardian British aristocracy.
Stella Kendrick is surprised when her crude, uncaring, but very wealthy father, Elijah Kendrick, brings her and her great-aunt Rachel Luckett on a trip to England’s New Forest region to deliver three of the finest thoroughbred horses he’s bred at his Kentucky estate. She’s even more surprised to hear that her father is giving Viscount Lyndhurst, son of the Earl of Atherly, the three horses in exchange for his marriage to Stella. Unaccustomed to the strict rules of British society, Stella makes many missteps that attract the disapproving eye of Lady Atherly. But Lyndy’s pleasantly surprised by her beauty and knowledge of horses. Although Stella incurs her father’s wrath by her refusal to marry Lyndy, an even darker shadow is cast by the murder of the Rev. Bullmore, the vicar who was to marry them. The whole group, including Atherly’s houseguests, Mr. and Mrs. Westwoode and their daughter Elizabeth, who’s engaged to Lyndy’s friend Lord Hugh, attend the derby, where more trouble is brewing. Orson, the stallion Kendrick brought from Kentucky, is the sire of the favorite, whose victory makes Orson even more valuable. Stella faces sly looks and gossip at the derby until King Edward VII grants her an audience. Then, of course, everyone wants to meet her. When Orson is stolen, Stella and Lyndy turn sleuths in order to solve both crimes. Can they solve the crimes and resolve their differences? It won’t be easy for feisty Stella to conform, but she proves she’s as clever as she is beautiful.
Although the plot could use some pruning, McKenna’s series kickoff will warm the hearts of fans who cherish all things Edwardian.Pub Date: May 28, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4967-1777-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be...
Box takes another break from his highly successful Joe Pickett series (Stone Cold, 2014, etc.) for a stand-alone about a police detective, a developmentally delayed boy, and a package everyone in North Dakota wants to grab.
Cassandra Dewell can’t leave Montana’s Lewis and Clark County fast enough for her new job as chief investigator for Jon Kirkbride, sheriff of Bakken County. She leaves behind no memories worth keeping: her husband is dead, her boss has made no bones about disliking her, and she’s looking forward to new responsibilities and the higher salary underwritten by North Dakota’s sudden oil boom. But Bakken County has its own issues. For one thing, it’s cold—a whole lot colder than the coldest weather Cassie’s ever imagined. For another, the job she turns out to have been hired for—leading an investigation her new boss doesn’t feel he can entrust to his own force—makes her queasy. The biggest problem, though, is one she doesn’t know about until it slaps her in the face. A fatal car accident that was anything but accidental has jarred loose a stash of methamphetamines and cash that’s become the center of a battle between the Sons of Freedom, Bakken County’s traditional drug sellers, and MS-13, the Salvadorian upstarts who are muscling in on their territory. It’s a setup that leaves scant room for law enforcement officers or for Kyle Westergaard, the 12-year-old paperboy damaged since birth by fetal alcohol syndrome, who’s walked away from the wreck with a prize all too many people would kill for.
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be welcome to return and tie up the gaping loose end Box leaves. The unrelenting cold makes this the perfect beach read.Pub Date: July 28, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-58321-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how...
A convicted killer’s list of five people he wants dead runs the gamut from the wife he’s already had murdered to franchise heroine Ali Reynolds.
Back in the day, women came from all over to consult Santa Clarita fertility specialist Dr. Edward Gilchrist. Many of them left his care happily pregnant, never dreaming that the father of the babies they carried was none other than the physician himself, who donated his own sperm rather than that of the handsome, athletic, disease-free men pictured in his scrapbook. When Alexandra Munsey’s son, Evan, is laid low by the kidney disease he’s inherited from his biological father and she returns to Gilchrist in search of the donor’s medical records, the roof begins to fall in on him. By the time it’s done falling, he’s serving a life sentence in Folsom Prison for commissioning the death of his wife, Dawn, the former nurse and sometime egg donor who’d turned on him. With nothing left to lose, Gilchrist tattoos himself with the initials of five people he blames for his fall: Dawn; Leo Manuel Aurelio, the hit man he’d hired to dispose of her; Kaitlyn Todd, the nurse/receptionist who took Dawn’s place; Alex Munsey, whose search for records upset his apple cart; and Ali Reynolds, the TV reporter who’d helped put Alex in touch with the dozen other women who formed the Progeny Project because their children looked just like hers. No matter that Ali’s been out of both California and the news business for years; Gilchrist and his enablers know that revenge can’t possibly be served too cold. Wonder how far down that list they’ll get before Ali, aided once more by Frigg, the methodical but loose-cannon AI first introduced in Duel to the Death (2018), turns on them?
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how little the boundary-challenged AI, who gets into the case more or less inadvertently, differs from your standard human sidekick with issues.Pub Date: April 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5101-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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