Cozy Mysteries and a Cozy Romance Review

 Crooked Lane Books: cozy mysteries to be published this summer and fall - interesting settings for summer ARC reading

Publication September 2026; Holiday romance with a murderous twist. Kelsey is determined to not let two murders spoil the Maine town spirit. 

Food critic Darcy heads for Key West with the sheriff's deputy to solve a murder, Aug. 2026

August 2026; detective Joe Mottram is spending summer in Capri to get closer to his daughter but gets caught up in solving a murder

August 2026; newbie academics become sleuths when a fellow professor is found dead. Are they suspects?

Currently reading

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Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert, November 2019, HarperCollins

My review: Chloe has many ailments which she tries to cover up as much as possible. She often is in pain and on multiple medications. Trying to rescue a kitten from a tree one day proves too much for her. She is successful only because the building handyman, Red Morgan, saw her predicament and came to her rescue.

Will he also help her with her bucket list for rebranding her life and doing things she has always been too scared to do? 

I'm loving the character, Chloe, wealthy with loving siblings, but handicapped by her fibromyalgia, and eager to take back control of her life. Red helps Chloe with her bucket list and she also helps him get on social media to advertise the vast amount of canvas paintings he has done and continues to do. 

It's a relationship that seems to suit them both. The many pages of erotic descriptions, not only of lovemaking, but of feelings, proves how much.

A five star plot and characters.

What are you reading this week?

Memes:  The Sunday Post, It's Monday: What Are You Reading, Sunday Salon, and Stacking the Shelves, Mailbox Monday  

James by Percival Everett, 2025 Pulitzer Prize Winner

James by Percival Everett, winner of the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, March 19, 2024; Knopf, library

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Jim's story of escaping with Huckleberry Finn on a raft heading for freedom is an amazing novel of an adventure that shows almost all aspects of slavery and the south before the beginning of the Civil War - the lives of slaves, their imprisonment and harsh treatment, while being hunted if they tried to escape, subject to being sold and separated from their families at any moment, or punished at the whim of their masters.

Jim runs for personal freedom, and Huck runs from an abusive father whom he fears will kill him. Their relationship of help, trust, and humanity is an amazing part of this story, set mostly on the Mississippi River and on its banks.

The novel departs in some aspects from the original story written by Mark Twain, as it is described as a reimagining of Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Other books read

May Contain Murder by Orlando Murrin

Published Jan. 1, 2025. 

Genre: Mystery thriller, cozy mystery set on a luxury yacht in the mid-Atlantic Ocean

My rating: 4 stars

When a passenger is found dead and her valuable necklace missing, the detective on board as a guest must find the killer while he himself tries to stay alive.

Ingtriguing mystery. I never expected the culprits to be who they were, although I had wished for a more unusual motive.

When the Cranes Fly South by Lisa Ridzén

Aug. 19, 2025; Vintage, library

Genre: literary fiction, adult fiction set in Sweden

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Bo is too old to take care of himself at home, so he has caretakers who come four times a day to his house. But Bo gets upset when his son wants to take away his pet elkhound, saying that he could injure himself walking the dog in all kinds of weather and in the woods.

This is a moving story of an aging man who has lost his wife to dementia and has to live with his own infirmities, while trying to keep what he loves - his way of life and his dog, close to him.

What are you reading this week?

Memes:  The Sunday Post, It's Monday: What Are You Reading, Sunday Salon, and Stacking the Shelves, Mailbox Monday  

When Lemons Give You Life by Anna Johnston: Book Review

 

When Lemons Give You Life: A Novel by Anna Johnston

not yet published: Aug. 4, 2026; William Morrow, NetGalley
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Themes of creeping dimentia, ALS, and also polycystic kidney disease are themes in this novel involving two married men, Beau and Griff, and Griff's sister Lisa. The lengths that people will go, to protect and to be with their loved ones, is the strong message.

Beau and Griff live in an aged care facility, where Griff, pretending to be a victim of dimentia so he can live in the facility with Beau, works as Martin, the full time chef of the facility by day, and then turns into Beau's supposedly ALS husband at night. The plot is complex as the methods Griff uses to live with Beau and also to do what he loves best - cooking - are somewhat convoluted, but it works out for him.

Griff's guilt about failing to help his sick sister Lisa compounds the gravity of the situations that Griff must maneuver and manage.

A heart warming and informative novel on mental and physical illness, and one man's effort to deal with both to help his loved ones.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for this advance readers copy.

Looking forward to reading:

April 7, 2026; Penguin Press, NetGalley

"The best in short fiction from around the world, from celebrated anthologist and author John Freeman and award-winning novelist Rabih Alameddine"

July 21, 2026: Crooked Lane Books, NetGalley

A neighbor is killed in the same way as the latest read of the mystery book club. Retired librarian Neeti is on the case as more bodies pile up

June 9, 2026: Crooked Lane Books, NetGalley

New librarian Nichelle finds the dead body of her missing father on the front steps of her library. Nichelle tries to clear her brother of the crime

What are you reading this week?

Memes:  The Sunday Post, It's Monday: What Are You Reading, Sunday Salon, and Stacking the Shelves, Mailbox Monday  

Looking Forward to These Fall, Summer, Spring eBooks - 2026

 

Upcoming ARCs I chose for this spring

Adventure, magic, romance, historical fiction, a thriller, and even a parenting guide

Sept. 22, 2026; Harper Collins Childrens, NetGalley 

The secrets of the Chin family across generations - 1878, 1965, to today, Taiwan to NYC

Aug. 25, 2026; Grand Central Publishing, NetGalley

This cozy romance takes a bookseller from Manhattan to a town in Vermont

Aug. 4, 2026; William Morrow, NetGalley 

A disgraced Michelin-star chef hides out in a dementia facility, and secretly cooks for himself and the residents at night

July 14, 2026; Putnam, NetGalley

Hope Jenkins finds that a literary star has used her life story for her bestselling book 

May 19, 2026; Berkley, NetGalley

Emmie a trained chocolatier and candy maker wishes for the magic of her own shop, but love intervenes 

April 21, 2026; Workman Publishing, NetGalley

Unconditional love with unwavering rules - a memoir and parenting guide by an author raising her Japanese-American kids

April 20, 2026; Little, Brown & Company, NetGalley

Four college friends and their five daughters get together on Italy's Lake Como and discover each other's secrets

March 10, 2026; Atria, NetGalley

A state department diplomat moves to a sleepy city in New Zealand and must find a missing teenage singer-songwriter in this thriller 

What are you reading this week?

Memes:  The Sunday Post, It's Monday: What Are You Reading, Sunday Salon, and Stacking the Shelves, Mailbox Monday  

Codebreakers and Wordhunter: Mystery Novels

Wordhunter: A Novel by Stella Sands

Publication: August 6, 2024; Harper Paperbacks, NetGalley

Genre: adult fiction, police procedural

My review reprinted from Book Dilettante, Jan. 20, 2024


I was intrigued to find out how word forensics or forensic linguistics is used in crime solving, done by analyzing written evidence, papers, letters, email, etc. to find the authors suspected of being criminals. A genius with words, Maggie Moore has always been fascinated by words, and as a college student she was recommended by her prof to help the police track down a cyber stalker, by analyzing his emails and letters.

Paying attention to word choice, dialect, syntax, spelling, use or misuse of punctuation, writing style, and more, Maggie pored over his emails to find traits leading to the stalker and, with Detective Jackson, goes on to tackle another case - finding the kidnapper of the mayor's missing daughter, through his correspondence.

I liked how the relationship between the detective and insecure Maggie develops into one of trust and reliance during the events, some of them life threatening.

An interesting read with an unusual, quirky character Maggie, who also inally learns to stand up for herself with both a predatory boss and with in her personal life.

I'm not finding Codebreakers (Aug. 11, 2026; NetGalley) as exciting a novel as I did Wordhunter. But then I'm less of a numbers, symbol, or math person. In this book, Maggie and a detective "decode clues embedded in words and symbols" to uncover a criminal

The Lost Wife by Alyson Richman

Published Sept. 6, 2011, Berkley

Genre: historical novel, romance, WWII

I came across this book at a little free library and it's one of the best finds I've had. An historical novel set in Prague during WWII, it is excellently written. It's hard to realize this is a fictionalized history, as so much of it is based on the actual facts of the Nazis in Prague and their notorious Terezin ghetto there.

In the novel, a young art student, Lenka, falls in love with a medical student, Josef, and they marry, only to part when Josef's family leaves with him on a boat heading to Canada. Josef promises to send for Lenka and her family as soon as he can. When Josef's ship is torpedoed, however, many died and

Lenka thinks Josef was among those who didn't survive the boat trip.

She later lands up in the Terezin ghetto built by the Nazis, surviviving there while others, including her mother, were removed and sent to death camps like Auschwitz.

The book takes you inside the ghetto in Prague, every shocking detail of what daily life was like described in this novel, their lives and deaths searing into the reader's consciousness.

At a chance encounter at a wedding years later in New York City, Josef recognizes Lenka. 

"Lenka, it's me. Josef. Your husband."

They realize they had lived all these years not knowing they had both survived the war and moved to America. The meeting brings an astonishing conclusion to their fateful life and romance.

What are you reading this week?

Memes:  The Sunday Post, It's Monday: What Are You Reading, Sunday Salon, and Stacking the Shelves, Mailbox Monday