The Ruth Galloway Mystery series is one of the best, most endearing and fascinating mystery series I have ever read. The series follows Ruth who is a forensic archaeologist Professor at a university in Norfolk UK. She lives by the sea next to marsh lands in a lonely cottage and though that sounds grey and dull it is a homely and anchoring setting. Ruth’s character is brilliant and thoughtful with a trenchant POV and her vulnerabilities are common ones that many women can instantly relate to. Her friends are mostly quirky individualists or academics or police (long story that) and not stock sup ..read more

This mystery is fresh and original and invokes the era of victory gardens, rationing, scrap metal drives and the music, fashion, movies and values of WWII 1940’s America. Set in Progress, a prosperous town with its own local newspaper the story is told from the perspective of Irene, acting editor-in-chief replacing her dad who is serving on the Pacific front. Irene was formerly limited to the women’s page but is running the paper following local stories and war news while managing staff and editing the paper. A series of anti-Semitic attacks and vandalism against shop owner and neighbors, is b ..read more

The tart title hints at the importance of color in this 1st entry in a new series featuring a bright, enterprising interior decorator Hadley who is in town for a job interview and planning to stay at her aunt’s but instead is talked into house-sitting, pet sitting and an outdoor decorating project for a new client Kent who is leaving town for business but when he returns is throwing a surprise party for his fiancée and wants the outdoor area to be completely outfitted and decorated as part of the surprise.   Hadley is thrilled and determined to get everything accomplished in time and ..read more

 Three of my favorite cozy writers serve up a St. Patrick’s Day themed trio of mysteries set in coastal Maine and the result is a dark but slightly sweet brew with a kick, just like Irish Coffee.  Though I find holiday themed trilogies vary in quality this one delivered suspense, entertainment and solid plots without being farfetched or tired. The Leslie Meier mystery opens with Lucy Stone doing a special feature article on local teenagers who are competing in a regional Celtic Irish step dancing contest and Lucy travels to Portland to attend.  What starts out as a fun and spiri ..read more

This mystery is set in a Victorian London swathed in smoggy fog with omnibuses pulled by horses, railways clattering by, steamboats on the Thames, smoke filled pubs and posh squares lined with newly built townhouses. The London of an evolving Scotland Yard when ‘case files’ were considered a novel policing technique and women riding bicycles was considered risqué, when men routinely wore top hats and women perched small hats on their heads and wore elaborate dresses with bustles. The heroine is also a novelty a single woman journalist working on Fleet Street for a daily paper. She is strugglin ..read more

This is a mystery and a second chances story set in early 1960s rural England and tells the story of an ordinary middle aged single woman who buys a dilapidated cottage, Sixpenny Holding, hoping to finally begin living life on her terms. She dreams of writing romantic novels of suspense and this ambition is complicated when her widowed brother’s daughter’s caregiver, her aunt, dies suddenly and Marian finds herself raising an opinionated 5-year-old. Both are initially wary of each other but slowly things improve and a cousin, a withdrawn 11-year-old, temporarily joins the tiny household togeth ..read more

The seaside town of Whitby, overlooked by the ruisn of a famous medieval Abbey high on a cliff, is the setting for this new series featuring Liz, a widowed early retiree who moves to Whitby, buys the adjacent Kipper and Gull Cottages to live in and renovate. For company she rescues Nelson an English Bull terrier, and while walking one morning in the church graveyard near the ancient Abbey they find the dead body of the well-known Professor Crowby recently working on curating the Abbey museum collection. When Liz hears the corpse had drowned, her curiosity gets the better of her and when she vi ..read more

 This is a traditional mystery series with a modern heroine, Kate Shackleton, who runs a detective agency with her assistant Sykes a retired policeman, and her housekeeper who acts as a sometimes aide/secretary. What sets this series apart to me is that it captures the essence of a time as the modern era clashes and challenges the traditional in post WWI England and typically features some aspect of the new era, in this mystery it’s a pageant for North Riding Brewery queen and the use of branding as a marketing tool. Kate is hired by her friend Eleanor’s husband, William Lofthouse,  ..read more

This series is just the ticket for armchair travelers who enjoy traditional mysteries, the amateur detective, Lana, is a former investigative journalist, blacklisted after an expose turned in a career ending disaster who re-invents herself as a tour guide for Wanderlust Tours. She enjoys the travel, the people and the perks but things don’t always follow the itinerary. In this Mother and Daughter themed Mother’s Day tour to Amsterdam the first surprise is when Lana’s estranged mother joins the tour and events go downhill from there. This mystery showcases the little-known sights of Amsterdam w ..read more

This is a new series that combines two no fail cozy settings, a tea room with its fragarent brews, yummy scones, sandwiches and pastries and a Cape Cod sea side setting. To this recipe add zest with a testy, sharp tongued grandmother Rose; humor with a slightly wacky exuberant wanna be novelist friend Bernie and ground it with the steady workaholic granddaugher Lily who owns and cooks for the tea room conveniently located in a stone cottage on the adjacent grounds of her grandmother’s roomy Victorian B&B. To spice things up add a hunky English gardener and a mysterious dark haired son of t ..read more