I’ve always enjoyed mystery and suspense stories—Agatha Christie and Mary Higgins Clark being two of my all-time favorite authors. Throw in some legends and folklore, and I’m hooked. I like well-crafted stories that keep me turning the pages. Those that stump me in figuring out the mystery are a plus for me. I love books with descriptive settings that place me, as the reader, in the heart of the action.
Tami Montgomery thought her police chief husband was going to be the only investigator in the family when she gave up her journalism career and moved with him to Madeira, New Mexico.
But after the historical society asks her to write stories for a book celebrating the town’s one-hundred-fiftieth year, she becomes embroiled in a new mystery. Her research uncovers a spate of untimely deaths of local law enforcement officials. Further digging reveals a common link—they all lived in the house she and Jason now share. Tami isn’t a superstitious person, but the circumstances are too similar for coincidence. Then, she unearths an even more disturbing pattern. And if history repeats itself, Jason will be the next to die.
After reading the first book of the Cork O’Connor series some twenty years after its initial publication date, I got hooked and quickly devoured the other books.
I’ve come to love many of Krueger’s recurring characters. Not only does he weave a good mystery but paints vivid descriptions of the Minnesota wilderness. This nineteenth book of the series is my favorite so far.
The latest in the New York Times bestselling Cork O'Connor Mystery Series from the "master storyteller" (Kristin Hannah, #1 New York Times bestselling author) follows Cork in a race against time to save his wife, a mysterious stranger, and an Ojibwe healer from bloodthirsty mercenaries.
The ancient Ojibwe healer Henry Meloux has had a vision of his death. As he walks the Northwoods in solitude, he tries to prepare himself peacefully for the end of his long life. But peace is destined to elude him as hunters fill the woods seeking a woman named Dolores Morriseau, a stranger who had…
Dual-timeline, legends, and folklore drew me to this story. While it was co-authored, the dual story blends perfectly as if written by a single person. Past and present come together, and an age-old mystery is solved.
If you enjoy stories with a bit of supernatural, this one is for you.
One founding father. One deathbed curse. A town haunted for generations.
Ward Chatham, founder of Chatham Hollow, is infamous for two things—hidden treasure and a curse upon anyone bold enough to seek it. Since his passing in 1793, no one has discovered his riches, though his legend has only grown stronger.
In 1888, charlatan Benedict Fletcher holds a séance to determine the location of Chatham’s fortune. It’s all a hoax so he can search for the gold, but he doesn’t count on two things—Victor Rowe, a true spiritualist who sees through his ruse, and Chatham’s ghost wreaking havoc on the…
My interest in stories involving Native Americans and my love of the southwest drew me to Hillerman’s Leaphorn and Chee books. Once I read the first one, I was hooked on the series.
I feel as if I’ve come to know more about the Navajo people in reading this series. It’s hard to pick a favorite, but The First Eagle is at the top of my list. Not only do we have classic Leaphorn and Chee, but the author also delves deeper into their personal lives.
Did I mention setting? I always feel as if I’m transported to the American Southwest when reading a Hillerman novel.
From a brilliant new voice comes a brilliant new epic fantasy saga of war, prophecy, betrayal, history, and destiny.
When Acting Lt. Jim Chee catches a Hopi poacher huddled over a butchered Navajo Tribal police officer, he has an open-and-shut case—until his former boss, Joe Leaphorn, blows it wide open. Now retired from the Navajo Tribal Police, Leaphorn has been hired to find a hotheaded female biologist hunting for the key to a virulent plague lurking in the Southwest. The scientist disappeared from the same area the same day the Navajo cop was murdered. Is she a suspect or another…
Real-life mysteries intrigue me, and one of the strangest unsolved cases involved a group of nine Soviet hikers in the area known as Dyatlov Pass. Preston and Child took this story, set it in the mountains of New Mexico, and weaved an enticing tale that kept me turning the pages and guessing right up to the end.
This is the fourth book of their Nora Kelly series, but it can easily be read as a stand-alone.
In 2008, nine mountaineers failed to return from a winter backpacking trip in the New Mexico mountains. At their last campsite, searchers found a bizarre scene: something had appeared at the door of their tent so terrifying that it impelled them to slash their way out and flee barefoot to certain death in a blizzard. Despite a diligent search, only six bodies were found, three violently crushed and missing eyes and tongues. The case, given the code name “Dead Mountain” by the FBI, was never solved.
Now, two more bodies from the lost expedition are unexpectedly discovered in a cave,…
With a title like Genuine Deceit, how could I not pick this book? How can deceit be genuine? The suspense begins in chapter one and doesn’t let up until the end.
The characters are well-developed, the story is perfectly paced to keep a reader’s interest, and there are plenty of red herrings, but not enough to reveal the truth until the last pages. The touch of romance between the main character and a former Navy SEAL is an added plus.
Cleo Cooper, a cross-cultural psychology professor, is living the dream on the Big Island of Hawaii. With ocean-dipping weekends, she enjoys her dog, her job, and her boyfriend Ben - until the day she’s on a research vessel and a dead body is caught in the dragline.
The police determine it is murder and set their sights on a gentle former student, Kai. It doesn’t take much urging from Kai’s auntie for Cleo to investigate. But Ben grows distant, and Cleo’s dog grows ill. A couple of accidental deaths later, and someone makes an attempt on her life.
What happened to Cleo’s life in paradise? Can she discover the true killer? Can she stop the killer before the killer stops her?
Paradise is shaken when the body of a young woman is dragged onto a university research vessel during a class outing in Hilo Bay. Cleo Cooper is shaken when she finds her favorite student is on the hook for the murder. Danger lurks on land and sea as Cleo and her friends are enticed to search for the true killer. In between paddling, swimming, and arguing with her boyfriend, Cleo discovers all is not what it seems on the Big Island of Hawaii. But will she figure out the truth before she becomes the next victim?
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