October Book Club: The Only Way is Poison by Lou Collins
If you’ve read Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series and ever thought “this is great, but what if Stephanie lived in a small English village,” Chloe Essex is your person.
Book Club
September Book Club: Books, Betrayal & Blame by Sally Bayless
Libby Ballard is the director of the museum in the small town of Dogwood Springs, currently in the happy chaos of planning her wedding to Sam, with her golden retriever Bella as loyal sidekick and general emotional support animal. Life is good.
August Book Club: The Correspondent by Virginia Evans
I feel strange admitting this, but I don’t have time to follow celebrity book lists. Or bestseller lists. Or award lists. By the time a book like The Correspondent finds its way to my TBR, it’s usually already famous everywhere else and I’m just catching up. After reading this with my in-person book club, I now see what all the fuss was about.
July Book Club: The Framing of George Wickham by Mindy Killgrove
If you wondered what became of Lydia and Wickham after the elopement in Pride and Prejudice, this book has ideas. Spoiler: it is not a happily ever after.
June Book Club: Murder at Merivale Manor by Ella Strike
If you’ve ever watched a dinner party go sideways, you understand the energy of this book. Except Kitty Goring’s party goes considerably more sideways than most.
May Book Club: The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill
The premise sold me before I even turned the first page: four strangers happen to be sitting at the same table in the Boston Public Library when they hear a scream, and then find out a woman has been killed. What follows is everything that brought those four people to that table, everything they’re hiding, and a tangle of crimes that keeps expanding the longer you pull on the thread.
April Book Club: Ice Cold Murder by Michele Pariza Wacek
Charlie Kingsley agrees to be the plus-one for her friend Claire for what sounds like a cozy weekend house party. That alone already feels like a commitment, but it turns out it is not actually a party at all. It is a gathering to read Claire’s grandmother’s will, which is the kind of situation that practically guarantees tension.
March Book Club: First Night by Ember Scott
Even though I write and read a lot of cozy mysteries where the villains are more “small-town scandal” than world-domination evil, my personal TV and reading tastes sometimes wander into darker territory.
February Book Club: Dying to Go by Marcy Blesey
If you live in Illinois in the winter and someone offers you a trip to sunny Arizona, you say yes. Immediately. No questions asked.
That’s exactly what recently divorced Rosi Laruee thought she was doing — heading to Tucson Valley to “help” her parents after her dad’s knee surgery. Fresh air. Sunshine. A little reset on life.
December Book Club: Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
Friends, I feel like the last mystery reader on Earth who hasn’t picked up The Thursday Murder Club until now. With the movie out (yes, it is a Netflix production) and every publisher using it as the comparison title for anything remotely cozy, quirky, or British, I figured it was finally time to see what all the fuss was about.