The Literate Kitty

Anyone who’s ever gone on a trip knows that traveling is HARD.   Whether trying to follow the rules and make it to the airport literally   hours   before your actual flight... worrying about whether or not your toiletries are “small enough” to please the TSA gods... or   knowing   you forgot something vitally essential back at home (be it turning a would-be flammable electrical thingy off, or packing the laptop you’re definitely gonna need)... the whole act of traveling is A LOT.   But one thing most of us rarely factor into that already-bonkers list of variables is... MURDER.   Jessie Garcia’s no-holds-barred debut,  The Business Trip , seems destined to add that concern to your list of OMG-what-ifs, though.     Jasmine is like plenty of women you may have met—or not, depending on how you spend your off-hours. She’s a middle-aged bartender in a low-brow tavern in Madison, Wisconsin. She lives with a boyfriend who... well, leans way more...

There’s   so much   glamorization of past eras which, frankly, were probably, all-too-frequently, anything   but .   I’ve done it, you’ve done it.   The Regency era, though, certainly wasn’t without its charms.    That showiness—of anyone who had a title, money, or was somehow positioned favorably—of the time, combined with the delicious intricacies of what was (and was not) acceptable, have made for compelling reading in more modern ages since... well,  the Regency , when Austen, and others, were penning their tales (of men with fortunes in want of wives, and whatnot).   The clothing... the manners... the balls and luncheons and teas and promenades... the rules that polite society (mostly) followed... We need look no further than the  massive  success of  Bridgerton  (both book series  and  Netflix show), to understand the widespread appeal of it all.   But what if something even more exciting than who had ...

When a fictional character is so familiar to you that they feel like an friend you’ve known forever, the author must be doing something (or, more likely, a   lot  of somethings) right. Vera Stanhope—the feisty, bull-headed, and frequently-irascible Northumberland Detective Inspector—is exactly that kind of comfortable-as-old-shoes character... and author Ann Cleeves is still doing her proud in the latest outing,   The Dark Wives .     After a young man is found dead in the wee hours one morning, Vera and her team are called to investigate. They quickly discover that the victim, Josh--found bludgeoned outside a home which houses troubled teens—was himself a worker at the home... and that one of the home’s few residents—a 14-year-old girl named Chloe—is now missing.    Nearly everyone immediately assumes the girl must’ve killed Josh—especially since the other staff members and teens all seem to agree that Chloe had been sweet on the college student—but V...

One of my college jobs was salesgirl at a shoe store.     My manager—smart, sweet, attractive, and never-behind-bars ( that’ll be relevant in a second )—was great to work with.     But, I  seriously  questioned her choice in movies.   Her favorite genre was a mashup of female empowerment and vigilante fantasies—women in jail, enduring horrible things, only to  finally  exact graphic, brutal revenge on the men that had hurt them.    Back then, I didn’t understand the appeal... but after finishing Emma C. Wells’ debut novel,  This Girl’s a Killer , I think—at long last—I’m starting to.     Cordelia Black has—from the outside—one of those enviable lives.   She’s attractive. Put-together. Healthy. Independent. Self-sufficient, with a well-paying job—Big Pharma rep—that easily funds her love of very nice things (Manolo Blahnik and Louboutin stilettos, and a collection of Louis Vuitton handbags).    She’...

One mischievous hobgoblin... on the brink of falling in love. One warrior queen... set on founding her own cult. One (former) goddess of death—now trying out life as a human—who thinks online dating is the way to go. One (seemingly) ordinary secretary who... well, is actually known as “Gladys Who Has Seen Some Shite” (although the “shite” in question remains unmentioned, so... who knows?).   And, one Glaswegian septuagenarian skilled in ink-and-sigil work (basically, magic spells made by using special inks and symbols)... whose job it is to keep the gods above, and all manner of fae creatures hiding in plain sight here in the human world down below, in line.    Together, they’re about to face what may be their greatest challenge, yet: finally figuring out who placed the twin curses on Al MacBharrais’ (the aforementioned septuagenarian) balding head... curses which killed off numerous apprentices, over the years, and caused his entire family to shun him, for no reason. ...

You can find a Grim Reaper costume in any costume shop, because everyone agrees on what it is—long cape, hood, no face, and a big ole scythe, right?   But... what if everyone is wrong?   What if sometime between the reaper’s first appearance—in the Middle Ages, when the Black Death was the COVID of its day—and now, the whole concept of the grim reaper was... updated?   The black-hood-of-death-and-harvesting-tool getup would have to go.   Maybe the Grim Reaper 2.0 would look like a regular Joe (or Jane!). Like your neighbor. Your aunt. The muscle-y dude pumping iron at the gym.   Debuting author Maxie Dara makes hay* with this idea in her delightfully-creative new mystery,  A Grim Reaper’s Guide to Catching a Killer .      You probably wouldn’t look twice at Kathy Valence, if you passed her on the street. Just another frumpy, middle-aged, nearly-divorced—and very pregnant—woman... nothing to see here, just move along.   But the badge she ...