My new novel, The Night Gate, found its roots in the Coronavirus pandemic which has swept the world. I had planned to write a book set on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, in the Arctic Circle. My story was well-developed, the research done, and my trip to research the location booked for last May. Then…
I’m pretty sure Anna Downes’ The Safe Place will be this summer’s quintessential beach read. An intelligent page-turner featuring beautiful, flawed people in glamorous surroundings with a ripped from the headlines twist, this is the perfect novel for those on a getaway or, given the interesting times we live in, those longing for a getaway.…
Ever since I can remember, I’ve always wanted to be on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs. When I was a child, you couldn’t enter our house without catching snippets of Michael Parkinson or Sue Lawley chatting to Joanna Lumley, Eric Clapton, or Princess Michael of Kent about their most treasured pieces of music. As…
Chapter 1 We drove north, away from the coast. Through the outskirts of Béziers and deeper into the Languedoc. Vineyards heavy with fruit lined the road on both sides, ranks of low green vines marching off into the distance under a deep blue Mediterranean sky. Sean driving, his eyes hidden behind aviator shades, the kids…
Prologue When the car bypassed the main terminal building and pulled up next to a sign that said PRIVATE JET CENTER, Emily breathed in so fast she almost choked. “You’re kidding me,” she said to her driver (her very own driver!), who smiled and opened the door for her like she was Cinderella. A security…
The Killing Tide is Jean-Luc Bannalec’s fifth novel in the Brittany Mystery Series set in the small coastal community of Brittany, France. Five years ago, I read the first of the series, Death in Brittany, but I haven’t read any of the series since. In the series opener, Dupin was a recent transplant from Paris…
In The Reunion by Guillaume Musso, a glamorous prep school girl goes missing after a love affair with a teacher in this irresistible thriller from one of France’s bestselling novelists… Guillaume Musso, one of the top three bestselling authors in France for years, is finally getting translated into English with The Reunion. It is his…
The Black Jersey by Jorge Zepeda Patterson is a fast-paced mystery where Murder on the Orient Express meets the Tour de France—someone’s killing off cyclists one by one. There’s a Shakespearean quality to this tale of high drama, passion, and betrayal set in a Tour de France plagued by horrible incidents, culminating in the murder…
In Sophie Hénaff’s Stick Together, Anne Capestan is back with her squad of misfits. But with their status in trouble and a hopeless murder to solve, team morale is running low. I adored Sophie Hénaff’s debut novel, The Awkward Squad, a droll police procedural centered on a group of cast-offs that the national police could not fire…
A mystery, a love story, and a search through a shadowy past. Two strangers unite in The Last of the Stanfields, a novel of family secrets by international bestselling author Marc Levy, the most-read contemporary French author in the world. It’s very hard to be novel (excuse the pun) with a mystery plot structure these…
