Blog

Priscilla Royal has brought her fine historical and story-telling skills to a heartbreaking and complex period in medieval England: the treatment of Jews under Edward I. Murders, a love story, and mob violence make for a good mystery.

For Halloween: Bekka Black has retold Frankenstein in the 21st century by text, email, tweet, and web browsers, primarily for a teen audience.

Set in Tempe, AZ in 1916 this gracious mystery takes on tough themes such as anti-immigration phobias and racism while keeping you turning pages to find the murderer among movie stars, lawyers, Pancho Villa’s men, and a couple caddish ladies’ men.

This is a scary book—not in the Halloween sense but because it portrays our collective “worse nightmare” in post 9/11 America: a bomber right here “next door” as Siegel’s title says. A mysterious person, identified as “the young man” until the end, brings Chicago to its knees with fairly low-tech bombs, high-tech tools and carefully planned villainy.

Interview with Susan Elia MacNeal author of Princess Elizabeth’s Spy

Set in 191-192 AD in Roman Britannia, A Whispering of Spies features Libertus, Rowe’s “sleuth” in this series, accused of theft and murder. Seeking information about a newly arrived ex-lictor with a sinister background, Libertus’s innocent actions on behalf of his patron Marcus Aurelius become fodder for charges.

With the recent celebration of Queen Elizabeth’s Jubilee, it’s especially engaging to read a novel about her as a young Princess—set in some of England’s darkest days during the brutal bombing attacks by Germany during WWII. While the adventures of Maggie Hope, spy and mathematician, with the fourteen-year-old Princess are fictional, MacNeal’s portrayal of Elizabeth rings delightfully true.