Books

Kelly is a former librarian and a long-time blogger at STACKED. She’s the editor/author of (DON’T) CALL ME CRAZY: 33 VOICES START THE CONVERSATION ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH and the editor/author of HERE WE ARE: FEMINISM FOR THE REAL WORLD. Her next book, BODY TALK, will publish in Fall 2020. Follow her on Instagram @heykellyjensen. View

Two years ago, David McCloskey hit it big with his debut espionage novel, Damascus Station. Hordes of readers, intelligence professionals, and critics alike praised its realism and lively, timely plot. Now, he has a new book out, and it’s even better. “The new John Le Carré,” is what he’s being called by more than one

Tom Straw—the writer behind the bestselling real-life versions of TV character Richard Castle’s mystery novels—is kicking off a thrilling new espionage series with The Accidental Joe. Rockstar chef Sebastian Pike’s cooking travel show is the perfect cover for a covert CIA mission, even if Sebastian himself is less than thrilled with the idea. At least

Switching it up a bit from the usual best-of fare, Book Marks assembled a list of 10 of the best fiction books that were reviewed in 2023. The list includes books that were reviewed by over 150 publications — from the London Review of Books to The New York Times. For starters, below are five

Lee Goldberg’s latest novel is something of a head-scratcher. Just what category does it fit into? It’s a modern-day police procedural, it’s a Western, it’s historical crime fiction, it’s… like nothing you’ve ever read before! Welcome to Calico – your reading experience is never likely to be the same again. Former LAPD detective Beth McDade

Travel back in time to the Golden Age of Murder this Christmas with Joan Coggin’s fiendishly humorous Who Killed the Curate? Originally published in 1944 and set in 1937, it introduces the scatterbrained and remarkably good-natured Lady Lupin Lorimer Hastings, an unlikely amateur sleuth who goes on to solve a series of four complex conundrums,

Danger, intrigue and a hell of a lot of blood are splashed across the pages of Carissa Broadbent’s gripping fantasy romance, The Serpent & the Wings of the Night. The first entry in Broadbent’s Crowns of Nyaxia duology, The Serpent & the Wings of the Night grants more nuance than usual to vampires, casting them

In one of the most interesting takes on the “best of” lists for 2023 is the just-released list of books Goodreads staff members called their top of the year. The people asked include not only Goodreads’s Managing Editor and Senior Editor, but also their Visual Editor, Risk Manager, CEO, and more. Another aspect that makes

When we first started Crime Fiction Lover in 2011, Scandinavian crime fiction was all the rage and we dived in reading and celebrating not just Nordic noir but translated mysteries in general. It’s the perfect way to explore the world and expose yourself to different voices and perspectives – to widen your horizons without leaving

If you’re looking for a complete change of pace in a crime thriller then The Psychologist’s Shadow by Laury A Egan may be it. It has action scenes but, fittingly, most of the story unwinds in the head of psychologist Ellen Haskell. Ellen has closed her Manhattan clinical practice and opened a new office in

Lucas Maxwell has been working with youth in libraries for over fifteen years. Originally from Nova Scotia, Canada, he’s been a high school librarian in London, UK for over a decade. In 2017 he won the UK’s School Librarian of the Year award and in 2022 he was named the UK Literacy Association’s Reading For

It’s always been a bit of a mystery to me why nobody has tried to create a crime fiction version of the Choose Your Own Adventure format of the 1980s. Perhaps publishers thought the idea was a bit childish, or maybe it’s an expensive format if you involve big name authors? The innovative Aussie librarian

Kelly is a former librarian and a long-time blogger at STACKED. She’s the editor/author of (DON’T) CALL ME CRAZY: 33 VOICES START THE CONVERSATION ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH and the editor/author of HERE WE ARE: FEMINISM FOR THE REAL WORLD. Her next book, BODY TALK, will publish in Fall 2020. Follow her on Instagram @heykellyjensen. View

As crime fiction lovers, we all have different tastes. Cosy crime fiction has been resurgent in 2023 – no surprise given the chaos going on around the world, with the cost of living crisis, climate change and too many wars happening. We can escape from all that into good books where, hopefully, the do-badders receive

A couple of weeks ago, we covered the bestselling audiobooks of 2023. Now, the 30-plus-year-old bimonthly magazine AudioFile has released its annual list for the best audiobooks of 2023. This year’s list includes 53 titles spread out over nine categories: Fiction, Nonfiction & History, Biography & Memoir, Mystery & Suspense, Sci-Fi, Fantasy & Horror, Children

There have been a lot of great crime shows in 2023. It sounds like a platitude, but when we opened this category for nominations we simply couldn’t have envisaged that this shortlist would emerge. The genre is popular and with all the streaming platforms plus the existing broadcasters catering to it, there has been so

Last January, the crime show Hidden Assets was a surprise hit when it aired on BBC Four in the UK. Jointly made by Irish and Belgian production companies, it linked a criminal assets recovery investigator in Shannon with missing diamonds and a bombing in Antwerp, making for perfect viewing in BBC Four’s foreign crime slot

Happy Singh Soni is not, well, happy: He is longing for more. And, given his condition at the outset of Celina Baljeet Basra’s debut novel, why wouldn’t he be? His home, a Punjabi farming village that is being steadily encroached upon by an expanding theme park, is no place for a young man with ambition—of

The Corpse with the Opal Fingers is the 13th book in the Cait Morgan series by Cathy Ace. This series features a globe-trotting duo, Welsh-Canadian professor of criminal psychology, Cait Morgan and her husband, Bud Anderson who is a retired cop. These books are traditional whodunnits written in a style similar to Agatha Christie’s Hercule

Author Ying Chang Compestine mixes a smart, clever heroine into her own take on the Rapunzel story, inspired by Chinese culture and food as well as Compestine’s own childhood. In a world of myriad fairy-tale retellings, Ra Pu Zel and the Stinky Tofu stands out as delightful, energetic and unique: a fairy tale you will

Last week, the New York Times released its 100 Notable Books of 2023. That wasn’t their only contribution to this year’s Best Books of Year list landscape, though: today, they posted their 10 Best Books of 2023. These are the five fiction and five nonfiction books that the staff of the New York Times agree

After decades of being a largely underserved area of scientific study, fungi are finally having their moment. The phenomenon feels not unlike the overnight appearance of a mushroom; all it took were the right conditions for the right fruiting body. The conditions: a reading public amid COVID-19 lockdown in spring 2020, aching for connection. The

Yesterday, it was announced that 2023’s Booker Prize winner was Irish writer Paul Lynch. His book that won, Prophet Song, is a Dublin-set dystopian novel in which a mother struggles with her country’s totalitarianism. On writing the book, Lynch said, “This was not an easy book to write. The rational part of me believed I

If you follow us on social media, you’ll know that one of our missions here at Crime Fiction Lover is to support independent authors and publishers, so there’s no way we’d ever run an awards fest without celebrating the indies out there. These are the folks that bring fresh blood to the genre, and a

Chinese American author Jean Kwok writes not just about her cultural identity as an emigre but about her life experiences, including as a professional ballroom dancer. Kwok’s books have risen up the bestseller lists and received many accolades, and even appear in academic reading lists. So The Leftover Woman has a lot to live up

It’s Black Friday, which means there are a lot of deals to sort through! We’ve gathered up some of the best Black Friday deals on Amazon for readers, including sales on ereaders, reading lights, bookish games, reading chairs, bookshelves, headphones for audiobook listeners, and even a KitchenAid mixer to pair with a good cookbook.

Right? I mean, who knew? Could playgroup noir become a thing? We like to stay ahead of the curve but English author Katherine Faulkner might soon be appearing on literary festival panels around the world discussing this new corner of crime fiction. Her novel The Other Mothers made quite a splash on its Kindle and

Have you voted in the Crime Fiction Lover Awards 2023 yet? If not, perhaps today’s the day to make your picks. Here we look at the six books on our Book of the Year shortlist and one of the comments we keep hearing is: “It’s so hard to choose…” That’s because they’re all fantastic and

The Crime Fiction Lover Awards 2023 are underway and as a reader you’re invited to vote on which books will win the accolades this year. Here we look at the six novels nominated by readers for our Best Debut shortlist. For all the shortlists, and for information on voting, follow this link. When you’re ready

With the publication of exquisite literary gems like Foster and Small Things Like These, Irish writer Claire Keegan’s reputation among American readers is slowly, but steadily, growing. The three elegantly-crafted stories collected in So Late in the Day: Stories of Women and Men will only enhance that increasing regard. In the title story, Cathal, a