It is the year 1715, and Thomas True has arrived on old London Bridge with a dangerous secret. One night, lost amongst the squalor of London’s hidden back streets, he finds himself drawn into the outrageous underworld of the molly houses. Meanwhile, carpenter Gabriel Griffin struggles to hide his double life as Lotty, the molly’s stoic guard. When a young man is found murdered, he realises there is a rat amongst them, betraying their secrets to a pair of murderous Justices. Can Gabriel unmask the traitor before they hang? Can he save hapless Thomas from peril, and their own forbidden love? Do ..read more

A retired, reclusive woman is found on a bitter winter morning, clubbed to death in Reykjavik’s old graveyard. Detectives Guðgeir and Elsa Guðrún face one of their toughest cases yet, as they try to piece together the details of Arnhildur’s austere life in her Red House in the oldest part of the city. Why was this solitary, private woman attending séances, and why was she determined to keep her severe financial difficulties so secret? Could the truth be buried deep in her past and a long history of family enmity, or could there be something more? A stranger keeps a watchful eye on the graveyar ..read more

Henri Koskinen, intrepid insurance mathematician and adventure-park entrepreneur, firmly believes in the power of common sense and order. That is until he moves in with painter Laura Helanto and her daughter. As Henri realises he has inadvertently become part of a group of local dads, a competing adventure park is seeking to expand their operations, not always sticking to the law in the process. Is it possible to combine the increasingly dangerous world of the adventure-park business with the unpredictability of life in a blended family? At first glance, the two appear to have only one thing i ..read more

Yes, I appreciate the irony of posting my June reading round up halfway-ish through July, but just had my second ride on the Covid carousel which was way worse than the first one! Have now got past the lingering tiredness, and am firmly back in the book zone. Huzzah!  So June was an interesting one as, looking back on it now, I read bugger-all crime in comparison to other genres, which is a startling turn of events. Let’s call me, Raven Just Reads for the purposes of this round up! So, with no further ado, some of the highlights… _______________________________ In the nineties Lydia was a ..read more

May has truly been a month of bookish delight in the Raven’s nest, with a bunch of really good reads to entertain me. Took part in two blog tours- Stella Blomkvist- Murder Under The Midnight Sun  and Helga Flatland- Toxic both of which I really enjoyed, and also had a fulsome month of additional reads… Absolute stand out book of the month was Abir Mukherjee-Hunted which led to a very long, gushing review by yours truly. I was genuinely blown away by this fast paced, beautifully plotted thriller, so would implore you to seek this one out. “Hunted is fast, furious, gripping ..read more

Smart, ruthless and with a flexible moral code all of her own, razor-tongued lawyer Stella Blómkvist is also dealing with a desperate deathbed request to track down a young woman who vanished a decade ago. It looks like a dead end, but she agrees to pick up the stone-cold trail – and she never gives up, even if the police did a long time ago. Then there’s the mystery behind the arm that emerges from an ice cap, with a mysterious ruby ring on one frozen finger? How does this connect to another unexplained disappearance, and why were the police at the time so keen to write it off as a tragic acc ..read more

When Mathilde is forced to leave her teaching job in Oslo after her relationship with eighteen-year-old Jacob is exposed, she flees to the countryside for a more authentic life. Her new home is a quiet cottage on the outskirts of a dairy farm run by Andres and Johs, whose hobbies include playing the fiddle and telling folktales – many of them about female rebellion and disobedience, and seeking justice, whatever it takes. But beneath the apparently friendly and peaceful pastoral surface of life on the farm, something darker and more sinister starts to vibrate and, with Mathilde’s arrival, crac ..read more

Well, hello, hello! Something a bit different for the blog today with the announcement of the #ConnollyReadathon where you can join up with two crime bloggers, Gordon at Grab This Book  and myself , to revisit the Charlie Parker books by the brilliant John Connolly from Every Dead Thing to The Instruments Of Darkness… So how did this begin- you ask? Well, as it always does with an idle conversation on X/Twitter where I posted this:  To which Gordon replied:  So naturally I said:  And so the quest begins:  After much deliberation on the all important hashtag, which ..read more

It’s a week before the presidential elections when a bomb goes off in an LA shopping mall. In London, armed police storm Heathrow Airport and arrest Sajid Khan. His daughter Aliyah entered the USA with the suicide bomber, and now she’s missing, potentially plotting another attack. But then a woman called Carrie turns up at Sajid’s door after travelling halfway across the world. She claims Aliyah is with her son Greg, and she knows where they could be. Back in the US, Agent Shreya Mistry is closing in on the two fugitives. But the more she investigates, the more she realises there is more to th ..read more

Now for something completely different. I had only very tentatively dipped my toe into the fantasy/romantasy genre, as I like to step out of my comfort zone once in a while. Bolstered by recommendations and suggestions from bookselling colleagues and bloggers across social media, my strange, and at times downright hilarious, reading journey began, as just for larks I decided to dedicate a whole month to solely reading within this genre. I had to be careful when I posted this, as obviously one of these books I’ve had to wang on about for an entire month, making it out to be the best thing sinc ..read more