The Water Keeper

Two of my book club friends highly recommended Florida-based writer Charles Martin's mysteries featuring Shepherd Murphy.  They were right!  The first in this series is The Water Keeper (#1,345), and if you decide to read these books, this is the place to start.

Shepherd Murphy lives on an island off the north Florida/Georgia border, tending a church built by slaves and its attendant graveyard and citrus grove.  One evening a beautiful young woman comes to the church off a luxurious yacht seeking a priest.  She's clearly high on drugs or alcohol or both, but Shepherd listens to her until she reboards the boat, hoping she will decide to stay on the island.

As he sets out on his own voyage to say goodbye to his past far down in Key West, he encounters another beautiful woman on a mission of her own: to save her daughter.

What follows is a taut chase after some very bad people and a gradual unraveling of secrets in Shepherd's own past.  It makes for a fascinating read.

Plus, it's always fun to read about places you visit every day in a novel!

I can't wait to read the other four books in this exciting and provocative series.

Murder Most Royal

Murder Most Royal (#1,344) is the third book in the delightful Her Majesty The Queen Investigates series by SJ Bennett.  This time Elizabeth is glad to leave Buckingham Palace behind for the rural pleasures of Christmas at her estate of Sandringham in Norfolk.  Neither she nor Prince Phillip are feeling well, so a chance to rest and recuperate amongst family is most welcome.

But of course, nothing goes as planned.  Rozie Oshodi, her Assistant Private Secretary, brings her the news from the local Chief Constable that a severed hand has been found on a nearby beach, complete with a photo.  The unique signature ring on the pinkie is recognized by Her Majesty as being that of a neighboring gentleman and acquaintance.  The hunt is on for the body itself, and for the presumed killer as well, with Her Majesty's name being discretely kept out of things.

As Rozie and Queen Elizabeth track down leads, the noose tightens, imperiling even Her Majesty herself.  The mystery is cleverly done with insights into royal life.  I look forward to more!

If I Stopped Haunting You

Colby Wilkens' novel "If I Stopped Haunting You"(#1,343) is full of such a jumble of ideas, it's hard to know exactly what type of book it wants to be.  Is it a romance?  Is it a ghost story?  Is it claiming a literary spot for indigenous writers?  And to be honest, to me, none of these angles were completely satisfactory.

Two indigenous writers are trapped by a mutual friend at a Writer's Workshop in a remote Scottish castle.  Yes, they had a "meet cute" if you can call being clipped by a book which leaves a lasting scar "cute".  He's a best-selling author of indigenous horror and she has had a sole book published, which she is proud to say represents her culture appropriately.  They wrangle, which of course leads to pages and pages of ultra steamy sex.  Not my choice for reading.  And only the two of them can see the malevolent ghost haunting the castle.  Will they escape with their lives?!  Frankly, I didn't care.  Maybe you will.

The Last Spirits of Manhattan

I heard about John A. McDermott's novel The Last Spirits of Manhattan (#1,342) from another member of my book club, so I decided to give it a shot.  It's lightly based on a true event, an extravagant party given by Alfred Hitchcock in a supposedly haunted mansion in Manhattan in the 1950s.  The family who owned that townhouse are equally real, and relatives of the author.  The 50s era niece Carolyn who attends the party is fiction, as are the host of "spirits" who also attend.  It makes for a story unlike anything I've read before.  

It's not a scary story (well, except for some of the guests attending the party who encounter the "spirits"!).  I can remember as a young girl reading some of Alfred Hitchcock's short story anthologies and being scared silly by them!  It's actually more of a love story for a time and a place which will never be again.  The spirits are given their own voices, and the editors have made clever use of a decorative element to distinguish their tales from the ordinary characters.  Who knew the afterlife could be quite so busy?

If you're in the mood for something a bit different, The Last Spirits of Manhattan could be your invitation to a beguiling evening.

Skylark

Paula McLain has finally written her World War II novel, but it's not at all what you might think.  Her latest book Skylark (#1,341) opens with a reclamation expert combing the remains of Notre Dame Cathedral after the disastrous fire of 2019.  She comes upon a small glass fragment etched with the outline of a bird.  That's the hook Ms. McLain uses to interweave two stories of Paris: one set in the 1660s and one set in the period leading up to and including the Nazi occupation in WWII.  Both use the extensive tunnels excavated below the city of Paris from Roman times to the present as an important story element.

Aloutte lives in the fetid enclave of Sant-Marcel, home to the influential dyers' guild.  Her father is obsessed with perfecting a unique shade of red.  Aloutte learns the fundamentals of dying from him, but in the own experimentation she finds her own unique color.  Both are framed for withholding their knowledge from the Guild and sentenced to imprisonment.  Aloutte must survive the infamous Salpetriere's women's prison for three years if she is to have any hope of ever being released.

Kristoff is a Dutch psychiatrist who has come to Paris to learn new methods of treating the mentally ill, especially those veterans shell-shocked from their experiences in the Great War.  He becomes friends with his neighbors living on the floor below him in his apartment building, a family who fled from the Nazis in Poland.  He also spends considerable time with one of the other residents at his hospital exploring the network of tunnels under the city.  When the Nazis begin emptying the psychiatric wards and rounding up Jewish families, Kristoff is forced to act in the only way he knows how.

How Ms. McLain binds these seemingly disparate stories together as both plot lines build to a climax keeps the reader turning the pages to find out what happens next, and if there is any hope for the future in either timeline.  Highly recommended.

Murder On The Marlow Belle

I do enjoy reading Robert Thorogood's Marlow Murder Club Mysteries, even if the actresses who play the characters on TV look nothing like their descriptions in the books.  And speaking of watching things on TV, the British Acorn TV streaming service's Canal Boat Diaries provided some welcome background for the goings-on in Murder On The Marlow Belle (#1,740).  The eponymous boat is the site of a seemingly unsolvable murder.  Too many suspects, and too many incriminating clues!

When Verity Beresford contacts Judith Potts about her missing husband, Judith cannot understand at first why she's come to her door.  A call notifying Verity that her husband's body has been found by the river confirms Judith's reputation as Marlow's premier crime solver as she's witness to the call.  But have she Suzie and Becks, her confederates, finally met their match?

Oliver was the flamboyant leader of the local amateur theatrical group.  Many people had a motive to dislike, even hate him.  But they were in the middle of staging The Importance of Being Ernest and the show must go on.  What better way for Judith to get to know the prime suspects than to become a member of the cast?

Again, Mr. Thorogood waits until almost the final page to reveal the killer, and it's good fun along the way.  The gloom and doom Suzie promised for Judith from her tarot card reading hangs over the plot, but it's the final element that will pull readers into the next book.  Can't wait!

The Baby Dragon Cafe

The Baby Dragon Cafe (#1,739) by A.T. Qureshi delivers what the title promises: adorable baby dragons hanging out with their owners in a cozy cafe with almost every possible potable plus snacks you can imagine.  It was exactly as described by fellow members of one of my book groups.  Lots of romance between incredibly good-looking people from different social classes to add a bit of tension.  And dragons.

Saphira is on her own, able to start her dream cafe after her beloved grandmother leaves her enough money to start up.  She can't possibly afford a dragon of her own, so what better way to get close to them than to open a shop that welcomes baby dragons and their owners?  It's the best of all possible worlds until she runs into Aiden.  He has a dragon, but he's not training his baby properly.  Saphira offers to take on the job for him and bonds with Sparky, all the while encouraging Aiden to participate.  Sparks fly between the pair, but Sparky won't unless Aiden bonds with him as well.  Does the course of true love ever run smoothly?  

Looking for something light and entertaining?  The Baby Dragon Cafe might just be your ticket.