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The Housewife, by Natalie Barelli (REVIEW) — Beneath the Veneer of a "Perfect" Life... Is Where the Rot Hides

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A whirlwind courtship—followed by a lavish wedding in Beverly Hills, with a handsome, successful groom and his younger, beautiful blonde bride. It sounds like a fairy tale. But—as with many things that appear picture-perfect on first glance—something much darker lies just beneath the surface of this glamorous marriage... and is about to shatter the beautiful illusion, in Natalie Barelli’s twisted tale of marital bliss,  The Housewife . ____________________________________________________________________ Many women want a fabulous career... followed later by marriage and perhaps a family. Not Jodie. With chef-level culinary skills and housekeeping wizardry, she’s always longed to become a housewife... the mistress of her own carefully-curated home, adored by her doting husband and the envy of their friends. And, following a chance meet-cute with hunky Dr. Roy Davies—a psychologist, best-selling author, and esteemed resident of his tony Beverly Hills neighborhood—it seems she’s set t...
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The Break-Up Retreat, by Camilla Sten (REVIEW) — Healing Broken Hearts... or Causing Deeper Cuts?

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Breakups suck, there’s no way around it. Even if you’re the initiator, relieved to be free of a relationship that’s no longer working, there could also be some regret or bitterness mixed in.  And if you’re on the other end of a breakup—the one being left behind—it’s so much worse. Shock, loss, confusion, depression... you might feel those things, keenly. But what if you learned of a place specializing in helping people get over devastating breakups... and healing broken hearts?  Such a place is the setting for Camilla Sten’s latest thriller,  The Break-Up Retreat .   Dr. Martina Hastings is something of a Renaissance woman. Charismatic psychologist and best-selling author of multiple relationship books, she’s also the founder of an exclusive wellness clinic catering to women stuck in relationship hell. Whether someone has endured an excruciating breakup or is caught in a repetitive cycle of making terrible choices, Dr. Martina claims she can help, via her intimate, o...
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The Forty-Year Grudge, by Liza Tully (REVIEW) — A Weekend of Memories, Margaritas... and Unfinished Business

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When Olivia Blunt—assistant to the World’s Greatest Detective—spies a reunion invitation in boss Aubrey Merritt’s office mail, she’s ecstatic. Surely her stern boss will jump at the chance to hang out—and maybe even let loose a little—with the sorority sisters she hasn’t seen in four decades... right? Instead, the older woman promptly dashes Olivia’s hopes, declaring she most definitely does  not  plan to attend such annoying silliness. Several days later—after a visit from the husband of an old sorority friend—Merritt has changed her tune, though... and expects Olivia to accompany her. Why? Because the man’s wife—a retired Brigadier General who surely made many enemies during her career—is hosting the reunion at their New Mexico ranch... and has received a death threat. Handwritten, on the back of one of the invitations. And just like that, the unlikely detective and her (still frequently-disappointing) assistant are desert-bound, in Liza Tully’s follow-up to last year’s firs...
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The Chateau on Sunset, by Natasha Lester (REVIEW) — Jane Eyre Gets a Feminist Updating

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  A newly-orphaned girl finds her happy life upended when she’s unceremoniously shipped off to an irritable aunt whom she’s never met.   Both are relieved when the young woman is old enough to get a job as governess to another unwanted girl... and when she winds up falling in love with her boss, it feels like a fairy tale come true. The fairy tale takes a nasty turn, though, when she discovers that the man has been keeping a very big secret from her... and once again, she’s all alone. And it’s there, in the void, that she finally finds herself. Sound familiar?  (Hopefully that’s a rhetorical question, and you instantly recognized the plot of Charlotte Brontë’s  Jane Eyre .) But it’s also the basic premise of a clever reimagining of the Gothic classic, in Natasha Lester’s mesmerizing novel,  The Chateau on Sunset .   When young Aria Jones finds herself abruptly dumped on the sidewalk outside of an imposing hotel on L.A.’s Sunset Boulevard in 1957—so foreign ...
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Beneath a Broken Sky, by Joshua Moehling (REVIEW) — After the Twister, the Danger is Just Beginning...

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There are many “constants” in life—things you can rely on to happen or to be true.   One is that whenever there’s a widespread emergency—courtesy of either man or Mother Nature—two types of people will show up. The first are those there to help. Doesn’t matter if they’ve personally been affected or not, they want to do good. The second type are those solely there to take advantage of a bad situation.  Both play their parts in Joshua Moehling’s latest mystery,  Beneath a Broken Sky .   If you’ve ever had the terrible misfortune to be  in  a tornado—or even just to be  near  one—then you  know . You know the unbelievable sight of roofs blown off, outbuildings and lawn furniture sent pinwheeling who knows where... or whole buildings blown to smithereens. You understand the devastation of downed power lines everywhere you want to go... and of decades’—or  centuries’ —old trees, shattered and broken beyond what your heart can comprehend. When...
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Rachel West and the Fallen Starlet, by Emma Mills (REVIEW) — Big Dreams, Bigger Falls... and Finding Where You Belong

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  “Welcome to the jungle, it gets worse here every day  You learn to live like an animal in the jungle where we play  If you got hunger for what you see, you’ll take it eventually  You can have everything you want but you better not take it from me...” ~Guns N’ Roses     Everyone  who moves to L.A. comes here for  something . Hoping to make it big... or to make a fresh start where nobody knows you. Maybe just to get far away... from  whatever  was left behind. Dreams and plans rarely go the way you’ve imagined, though. Fame can take years—or forever remain out of reach. Fresh starts without any sort of network of family or friends can be incredibly lonely.  And as for what you might’ve been running from, well... who’s to say you won’t be running straight into something equally bad? Still, even if how you end up doesn’t look how you’d hoped, it’s bound to be interesting. Surprising.  And sometimes, you might discover that what y...
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The Anniversary, by Alex Finlay (REVIEW) — Terror That Returns Like Clockwork

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It might be hard to believe, but there   was   life before self-driving cars were an option. Before AI and the internet gave us split-second access to  all  manner of information.  Before cell phones were practically glued to our hands. So let’s go back to one such “before”—specifically, the early 1990s—for a few minutes.  Grunge was taking over the music scene, and the number of channels on cable TV was exploding. And although we  knew  serial killers existed... for the most part, it was still in a “ stuff-that-only-happens-somewhere-else ” kind of way. Thriller master Alex Finlay leads us into that world—a quite ordinary one... until a serial killer starts terrorizing everyone—with his latest,  The Anniversary .   It could’ve been just another day in a small Nebraska town... except on this one day of the year—May 1, 1992—folks are a little jittery. You see, terrible things have been happening on this particular day for a while, now. Yo...
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