This is a a series with an unusual theme, a cookie cutter shop.  The shop is owned by Olivia and she works there with her best friend Maddie.  The show sells new and antique cutters and demonstrates the cutters through baked and decorated cookies.  In this, book three of the series, the town is an uproar over a 250th anniversary celebration.  Renovations have been taking place on the Chatterley mansion as a centerpiece to the celebration.   Just before the big events, the long lost Chatterley heir returns to claim his family home and set the town on its head!

There are really two mysteries here, first who murdered the victim, and second where are the Chatterley Cookie Cutters (if they really exist)?   Olivia is dragged into the investigation, which threatens to uncover secrets about the Chatterley family, the mayor, and other members of the anniversary celebration committee.  But whose secrets were important enough to kill for?

Well written mystery with enough action and twists and  turns to keep the reader turning the pages.  Likeable protagonist and sidekick, just a hint of romance and an interesting setting and theme all make for a great cozy read!

   I received a free ebook of The Northern Cross from NetGalley in return for a fair review.

This is a novel set on the Northern Coast of Germany on the Baltic Sea.  Hannes is a detective and a semi-pro athlete.  He is now returning to work from a two week training session and has to face a new partner.

The case that greets him at his return is of a man, unidentified at first, found crucified  along the coast.  This case leads to another and another. All the murders are uncommon to say the least.  At the heart of them is a controversial religious group.  Are they the targets or perhaps the villians?  Is this an internal dispute of the church or something more personal?  The case leads Hannes through twists and turns, meeting a variety of characters and suspects.  It also leads Hannes to visit his old partner in prison to gain new perspective and put to rest feelings that Hannes has about his mentor being incarcerated.

The book develops a strong sense of place through scene descriptions and the isolated nature of the people’s lives.  Hannes is an interesting character, part detective part athlete.  He is the target of his new partner’s derision and yet seems determined to do his best with the cases he is assigned.    There is a romantic subplot for Hannes that adds to the novel as a whole.

I did enjoy this novel.  I just wish I had read the first book before reading this one.  I feel as though there were things I missed due to not having a complete backstory of the characters.  Nicely done mystery, with multiple twists and turns to keep the reader guessing.

  I received a free copy of The Atheist by Mike Robinson from NetGalley in exchange for a fair review.

The Atheist seemed to be a philosophical/spiritual/self-help book written as a novel.  The Atheist refers to Dr. Arthur Moore a renowned speaker and author who eschews God and religion and advocates for science and reason.  He has a near death experience and this causes him to re-examine some of his views.  Not that he specifically states he finds God, but rather that he now sees himself and everyone and everything as part of a bigger spritual entity/intelligence.  There is much discussion and introspective thoughts laid in the book.

The novel piece tells the story of Arthur the man, his strained relationship with his homosexual son and the women in his life.  His difficulty writing his current book and his interest in  current events, particularly those surround a Christian radical cult employing snipers to deal out their own brand of retribution.  His reactions to media attention and events for his books.

I did not find that the two parts (philosophical work and novel) worked well together. Arthur wasn’t  likeabe and so it was understandable that his relationships with others were awkward and strained, not because he was an atheist but rather due to poor social skills.  He acted as though he was having a mid-life crisis.  As a philospher/atheist , he came across as one of those rambling theorists who make perfect sense to themselves, but who cause everyone else’s eyes to glaze over.  I’ll admit that I ended up skimming some passages because I just  couldn’t read through it, yet felt obligated due to receiving the book from NetGalley.

I have read other philosophical leaning texts, Siddhartha, The Alchemist, Candide, etc. but I’m afraid this one was not my cup of tea.

  I received a free ebook of The Devil’s Work by Mark Edwards from Netgalley in return for a fair review.

I haven’t read anything by this author, but the cover and the description interested me and so I requested and received it from NetGalley.  I am so glad that I did!

The story concerns Sophie, a mother returning to work after taking time off to be home with her child.  She lands her dream job at Jackdaw Publishing, a company that publishes children’s and teen literature and that Sophie has an unfortunate connection  with from her university days.  The plot switches between the current day, Sophie working at Jackdaw while her life begins to implode around her, and the past, Sophie’s uni days when she was friends with Jasmine and Liam, who disappeared and are presumed dead.

The plot is intriguing, fast paced and filled me with a sense of dread.  Is Sophie being gas lighted?  Is she being set up?  What happened to her predecessor?  What really happened to Jasmine and Liam?  The questions and the impending sense of danger for Sophie and her little family kept me flying through the pages as the suspense built.  I read the entire book in one sitting.   I had an inkling towards the end of who mght be involved, but it didn’t ruin the book for me, in fact it just made sense of  some of the clues and the scenes that occurred earlier in the book.

This is a great and terrifying psychological thriller from an author new to me.  I’d highly recommend this to thriller readers.

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Vinegar Girl is part of the Hogarth Shakespear Project, the purpose of which is to take today’s novelists and have them write their modern takes on Shakespeare’s plays.   Vinegar  Girl is a modern retelling of one of my favorites, The Taming of the Shrew.

Kate is the daughter of a research scientist, who has spent his life immersed in his work barely lifting his head to acknowledge his daughters, Kate the eldest and Bunny the prettiest.  Kate lives a life of caretaking for her father and younger sister and working a dead end job that she doesn’t seem particularly well suited for after being asked to leave college.  Kate is intelligent, acerbic (hence the vinegar in the title), funny,  plain speaking and has no time for the social niceties that people expect her to observe.  After a confrontation of sorts with her father, who wants her to marry his research assistant in order to allow the assistant to stay in the country, Kate comes to the harsh realization that She. Has. No. Plan.  

The characters of Kate, Bunny and their father are well actualized.  Kate especially is excrutiatingly well drawn.  The character of Pyotr, the marriage minded assistant, falls flat to start with for me but comes into his own at the very end of the book.  This may actually have been purposeful, in order to keep the focus on Kate until the conclusion, I am not sure.  This was a very well done adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew, funny, touching, and  thoughtful.  We all know people like Kate, who get bound up in the day to day of caretaking of others until life is just happening to them, rather than them making things happen.  It is lovely to see someone like that come out the other end okay, more than okay.

Shakespeare fan or not, a lovely, quick read about how to get what you want when you don’t even know what it is.

I received a free copy of A Fatal Twist from Netgalley in return for a fair review.

I enjoy yoga and have read the first in this series and quite enjoyed it, so I requested this one from Netgalley.  This is the fourth in the series and Kate still has her yoga studio, however she is now pursuing training to be a doula to assist at her friend’s birth.  In addition, she has two foster puppies, which Michael found and brought  home. They seemed determined to destroy her home.  With her hands full, it is almost too much for her when she stumbles across a dead body and a friend/yoga studio customer fleeing the scene.

To try to unravel the mystery and find the true culprit, Kate investigates the unsavory victim’s mistresses, his wife and his business.  In addition, she is looking into the mystery surrounding the two puppies and a homeless advocate.  The mystery twists and turns and connects all the dots at the end, coming to a satisfying conclusion.

The emphasis here is less on yoga as a theme and more on childbirth and the myriad of options and the conflicting (strong) opinions about the merits of each of them.  There is also a subplot concerning puppy mills and backyard breeders and animal abuse. On a good note, there are happy endings for the humans (not the killer though) and the dogs!

  I received a copy of this book free from Netgalley in exchange for a fair review.

I was happy to see this book on Netgalley.  I had wanted to read it since it was the book of the month on Goodreads in the Kindle English Mystery Club under the title Locked In.

At the beginning, we meet recently promoted to  Detective Sergeant, Jessica Daniel.  By luck of the draw or the fact her colleagues were tied up on other cases, Jessica lands the murder case of a divorced woman, Yvonne Christensen. She was found locked in her home strangled to death.   As Jess investigates, we meet others in her team, a smarmy defense lawyer, and  a novice journalist hoping for the case to be his big break and a way out of his dead end job.

This police procedural starts off quickly and maintains the pace throughout, definitely a thriller!  As more murders occur, DS Daniel and the journalist, Garry, look for connections, trying to unmask the killer.  The stories of the victim’s families unfold showing the after effects of the brutal crimes.  There is a strong sense of building tension that leads naturally to the exposure of previous crimes and the reveal of the killer.

Even though it is fast paced, we do get some background details of Jessica to flesh out her character and help the reader understand who she is as a person and a detective. There are subplots involving her retired ex-partner and her flatmate/best friend, which are important and add to the  main plot line.

An exciting, fast paced, police procedural with an engaging new DS to follow.  This is one I would definitely recommend!

  I received a Kindle edition of A Summer at Sea from NetGalley in exchange for a fair review.

I was so excited to see that I actually got approved for Katie Fforde’s A Summer at Sea!  I have read several of her other books and really enjoyed them all.

First a brief synopsis, Emily is a former nurse and current midwife performing home births.  She begins to feel burned out after  a confrontation with a local GP and takes a sabbatical.  Her friend Rebecca owns a former cargo ship which has been transformed into a floating hotel, the Puffer.  Emily goes to Scotland to work in the galley and sets her whole life on its head.  From discovering a new interest in working with the elderly, to a new love interest, to  changes that occur with the maternity clinic while she is away, to forming an attachment to Rebecca’s family, the changes are overwhelming and keep the story floating along quite charmingly.

The characters are interesting and have depth to them.  Katie Fforde writes females in a state of flux so well and I love the fact that her characters are so relatable.  I also feel that the sense of community that flourishes in out-of-the-way places is  well demonstrated here.    The book exudes a strong sense of place and lets the reader immerse themselves in the Emily’s world.  Emily is a midwife and as such, has strong opinions on women’s health care and in particular maternity care.  This brought a sense of realism to the character.  I have known a few midwives and in my experience they have all been passionate about their careers.  Emily displays this passion through her words and actions.

The story of Emily and how she handles everything that is thrown at her and finds her own happily every after is lovely.  A message to be taken away here is to take chances, you never know what opportunities will come your way.    A great summer read to provide an afternoon’s escape from real life.

  This is the second in a series, I was mislead by the tagline on the front saying “a delightful new series”   and thought it was a first.  There were some references to events from the first book, but nothing that inhibited me from enjoying this one.

I loved this book. The heroine was great, a woman trying to recover from the total upheaval of her life which was caused by an unwanted and unexpected divorce after 30 some years of marriage.  There are shades of Agatha Raisin in her and I adore that. The English village and Oxford  were fun settings, as others have pointed out there are some discrepancies, so perhaps not 100% authentic but not enough to distract me.

The mystery was well plotted with twists and turns even after a seeming resolution.  Catherine is drawn into the murder investigation when her son in law is accused with some very persuasive evidence.  She investigates because others seemed just convinced that the evidence is overwhelming.  She is also navigating the mine field of dealing with her ex-husband and “the other woman”.  In the end, the threads are neatly tied up and then there is a hint of the book to come.

I would highly recommend this one and I am going to buy the first to read from this series,  Arson and Old Lace.  Unfortunately, after this book the publisher would not publish the third and so there are only 2 books in the series.  I also believe that the author has since passed away in 2015.  It is sad to see that there will be no further visits to Far Wychwood.

  Still staying in Oxford, I also read The Dead of Jericho last night, book 5 in Colin Dexter’s Morse series.  I love Morse, as bull headed and antagonistic, as he is, there is just something about him that I really enjoy in these books.  The Jericho in the title refers to an area of Oxford, in which the murder takes place.  Morse finds himself somewhat personally involved with this murder because he knew the victim and had in fact been recently to the house.   Morse walks a delicate line trying to solve the case without implicating himself.  There is a nice complexity to the plot here, with some mistake in identity, red herrings, and the victim’s actions in life adding to the mix.  Another good outing in the Morse series, which is on my shortlist of series to finish this year.

In case you’re curious the list also includes:  P.D. James  Dagliesh series,  Deborah Crombie’s Duncan Kincaid series, & Veronica Heley’s Ellie Quick series.