Books

I’ve always been an indoorsy person. Holed up in my bedroom with a pile of books instead of wandering around the neighborhood with friends. Scared that the outdoors — all bugs and blaring sun and ocean waves — would swallow me up. As an adult, I am a full-on Scrooge. My husband takes our 6-year-old

With Wales’ first international crime writing festival approaching, it’s time to discover the burgeoning community of crime writers in the principality. Wales is not just a country of song, rugby and coal, it’s a land of crime stories – books, TV and film. We all know Scottish crime writing is a ‘thing’ and while perhaps

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Crime fiction protagonists don’t need to blow the doors off like Jack Reacher, or come with brilliant minds and complex issues like just about half the detectives you can name. As Robert Goddard proves with The Fine Art of Invisible Detection, they can be utterly unremarkable. So unremarkable that they pass through life almost unnoticed

Larry McMurtry, the novelist who put the American West on the literary map through his works, best known for his Pulitzer Prize–winning novel Lonesome Dove, has died at the age of 84. The death was confirmed by Amanda Lundberg, a spokeswoman for the family. No cause was specified. Spanning a career of over five decades,

Or maybe it is. It hardly ever happens, but all the crime novels here in our new books column this week come with a pinch of humour. Whether you’re riding the Bullet Train with a bunch of psychos in the latest crime novel from Japan, tracing in the footsteps of a former CIA agent or

Outside of Canada, it feels like current Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and, by extension, his government, have a reputation for being cool and progressive. Trudeau’s Liberal government often talk the talk about equity and inclusion. Sadly and frustratingly, they keep making decisions that are far from walking the walk, like a recent funding cut

This list of space horror books was originally published in our science fiction and fantasy newsletter, Swords & Spaceships. Sign up for it here to get science fiction and fantasy news, reviews, deals, and more! I’ve noticed that the Halloween-themed Free Association Fridays have all been rather weighted toward the fantasy side of things (aside: sci-fi authors,

It’s not a news week in the book world without some headline about censorship. Whether it’s about a book deal getting dropped after the author was racist on Twitter or a trans kids’ book getting banned from storytime, there’s always someone claiming cancel culture, censorship, or first amendment violations. So who’s right? What counts as

Former CNN journalist Sarah Sultoon has won awards for covering major stories across the globe. But in her first foray into crime fiction writing she sticks closer to home, with a tale centred firmly in the British establishment that’s set in the late 20th century and the start of the 21st. Marie is an assistant

We were hanging around the virtual Book Riot water cooler the other day and someone mentioned they’d love to see a post featuring literary cinnamon rolls. I, as a consumer of growing quantities of manga and manhua (and a few American comics that have learned of the differences from their brethren) immediately asked, “Okay, but

Kate Quinn’s engrossing new espionage thriller takes place in two time periods. Most of it happens in December 1939, when three young women converge on Bletchley Park. They’ve been recruited for jobs that haven’t been well-defined—though we readers know the challenges they’ll face—and arrive displaying a mixture of youthful high spirits, enthusiasm, and uncertainty. Chapters

Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley with Fierce Reads The groundbreaking thriller that Courtney Summers calls “gripping and unforgettable” centers on Daunis, a biracial unenrolled tribal member and the product of a scandal who’s never quite fit in. After Daunis witnesses a shocking murder that thrusts her into a criminal investigation, she agrees to go undercover

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Scottish crime fiction is booming, Wales is getting its own national crime fiction festival and this week we’re kicking off our news column with a new novel by one of Ireland’s finest and most respected crime authors, Ken Bruen. So it seems as though crime fiction from the Celtic fringe is in rude health. The

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Translated by Adrian Nathan West — It’s difficult to know where to begin when discussing this short novel from Argentina. Is it a sharp piece of pulp exploitation? It is certainly full of sex, drugs and violence, and the quotes at the beginning from David Goodis and Jim Thompson suggest Ferrari is at least referencing

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Former bookseller Peter Swanson is a crime writer who is mighty hard to tie down. He’s a master of the standalone – and the only thing that his seven novels so far have in common is that they all manage to confound and wrong-foot the reader at every end and turn. The Kind Worth Killing,

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Correction – this isn’t so much a first look as a first look at a very retro reprint that Titan Comics is pulling off with Hard Case Crime. Ms Tree is a crime comic harking back to 1984, written by Max Allan Collins and with artwork by Terry Beatty. It’s ideal for anyone who loves

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Sarah Sultoon’s work as an international news executive at CNN has taken her all over the world, from the seats of power in both Westminster and Washington to the frontlines of Iraq and Afghanistan. She won three Peabody awards for her work on the war in Syria, an Emmy for her contribution to the coverage

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High up in the Swiss Alps perches Le Sommet, a luxury hotel which used to be a sanatorium for tuberculosis patients. In the late-19th and early-20th centuries Switzerland had numerous sanatoria where people with long-term illnesses were sent to recover in the clean, crisp mountain air. It is in this remote setting that British police

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A dark deed, a tragedy, the thing best left buried – unresolved secrets from the past that rock the present are a major trope of crime fiction. It rears its head again this week as we feature two of America’s biggest crime and thriller authors – Dean Koontz and Harlan Coben – in our weekly