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A Tree, Mistletoe & A Sunset
Sophie Bartow’s A Tree, Mistletoe & A Sunset is a warm and playful holiday romance set in Swan Harbor, a town where Christmas traditions, family connections, local mysteries, and a touch of the unexplained are all woven into everyday life. Professor Harper Taylor returns to the holidays carrying some hard-earned caution about love, while fellow professor Aiden Jones has his own reasons for keeping parts of himself guarded. Their relationship develops alongside a wonderfully odd mystery involving stolen underwear, Swan Harbor’s history, and the town’s habit of making the improbable feel strangely normal. The result is a story that feels busy in a good way, with romance at its center and a whole community moving around it.
Harper and Aiden are especially enjoyable together because their attraction grows through small moments. Their teasing, nervousness, misread signals, and repeated almost-kisses give the romance an easy sense of anticipation. Aiden’s habit of calling Harper “Angel,” Harper’s uncertainty about trusting what she feels, and their increasingly obvious pull toward each other make the relationship satisfying because the emotional groundwork is laid out instead of a quick whirlwind romance.
Swan Harbor itself gives the book much of its personality. Harper and Aiden are surrounded by parents, siblings, cousins, friends, newlyweds, grandparents, investigators, pets, and townspeople who seem to know that everybody’s business eventually becomes community business. The mystery of the stolen underwear continues throughout the story, giving readers a look at Swan Harbor’s unusual history and local legends while adding a touch of comedy. Bartow moves freely among members of the larger cast, so the book feels less like an isolated romance and more like another chapter in the town’s ongoing life. Those scenes also give the story its particular mix of silliness, sentiment, family affection, and local legend.
I recommend A Tree, Mistletoe & A Sunset most to readers who enjoy small-town romance with a large recurring cast and who like their Christmas stories sweet, funny, lightly mysterious, and a little magical. It’s especially suited to someone who enjoys watching two cautious adults gradually recognize that the person they’ve been looking for may already be standing right in front of them. More than anything, this is a story about listening when your heart finally becomes difficult to ignore, surrounded by the kind of eccentric, affectionate community that makes Swan Harbor feel lived in.
Pages: 276 | ASIN : B08NHTPB27
Kittens, Puppies & Love
Sophie Bartow’s Kittens, Puppies & Love is a small-town romance that mixes a slow-building relationship with an animal-centered mystery and a large cast of Swan Harbor regulars. Veterinarian Emma Foster arrives in town determined to build her practice and keep her life firmly under control, while detective Killian Reade has spent years relying on charm, confidence, and emotional distance. Their first encounters are prickly and funny, mostly because Emma has little patience for Killian’s practiced flirtation. What makes the story work is that their attraction doesn’t immediately erase those differences. Instead, the book lets them circle each other, misread each other, become friends, and gradually discover the people behind the defenses they’ve both learned to use.
The animals are woven surprisingly deeply into that process. The kittens, puppies, injured dogs, rescued cats, and other veterinary cases give Emma and Killian reasons to work together, but they also reveal character. Emma is at her most open when she’s caring for an animal, while Killian’s awkward attempts to learn scientific animal names, handle tiny kittens, and understand veterinary life show a softer side of him long before he’s comfortable talking about his past. At the same time, a series of suspicious incidents involving dogs develops into the book’s mystery. That plot becomes increasingly serious as Killian searches for a connection between the cases, and its eventual resolution brings the book’s recurring interest in identity, masks, and hidden pain into sharper focus. The solution is deliberately dramatic, so readers who prefer their mysteries grounded in quieter realism may find that portion of the story more heightened than the romance surrounding it.
Bartow’s approach reminded me of Robyn Carr’s Virgin River books, especially in the way the town itself becomes part of the love story. Like Carr, Bartow surrounds the central couple with friends, relatives, coworkers, local businesses, weddings, dinners, and people who have opinions about everybody else’s romantic life. Swan Harbor feels less like scenery and more like an ongoing community that Emma has to decide whether she wants to belong to. Bartow’s version is lighter and more openly playful, with recurring animal jokes, flirtatious banter, pop-culture references, and Killian’s increasingly enthusiastic education in all things feline and canine. There’s also a strong series feel to the supporting cast, since many side characters arrive with histories and relationships of their own, giving the sense that Emma and Killian’s romance is one chapter in a much larger Swan Harbor story.
The book is interested in letting people revise the stories they’ve told themselves. Emma begins with a life organized around goals because goals feel safe, while Killian has convinced himself that charm without attachment is enough. Their relationship gradually asks both of them to make room for something less controllable. Family relationships receive similar attention, particularly as Emma reconsiders her complicated history with her parents and Killian confronts the experiences that shaped the man he became. By the time the romance reaches its payoff, the engagement feels connected to more than attraction. It represents Emma choosing community and emotional risk, and Killian choosing commitment over performance. Kittens, Puppies & Love is a warm, busy, affectionate romance about two guarded people discovering that love can grow through friendship, trust, shared responsibility, and, apparently, an impressive number of kittens.
Pages: 354 | ASIN : B08CQGFY8F
Quirky Characters
Mancini Blue follows a grieving widower as he investigates a murder marked by his late wife’s signature blue paint, uncovering secrets in Savannah’s art world involving a missing painting, forged prescriptions, and suspicious shipments. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
This story world grew organically from real-life circumstances and my imagination. As it happens, I live in a rural community that has no bookstores in the entire county. However, several ladies dedicated to the arts got a sweet deal to restore our old jail to become an art center. One of my sisters, a quilter, got in on the ground floor. She arranged for me to do a talk for the art center, and from that moment on, my life was entangled and enriched by the Old Jail Art Center and beautiful art. In time, I became a member of the organization (and they stock my books!) and work one day a month in the art center, surrounded by beautiful art.
I also had a mother-in-law who was a very talented artist. One of the treasures I rescued as we were going through her things was her palette. I framed it and hung it with her other works in watercolor, pastels, and oils. The bold colors in her oils became the color scheme of all my décor.
When I reach the end of a series, I take time off before I start in a new direction. My muse often wanders in its own lane, and I knew I needed something different from my last work. In addition, I wanted to have several points of view, so I landed on third-person POV. I began with these characters: a misunderstood and flawed male protagonist, a female police chief with a chip on her shoulder, and a villain ruled by deceit, jealousy, revenge, and anger.
Then, before I decided anything about the story world, my muse let me know in no uncertain terms that we were writing in the art world about the death of a famous artist. By this time, I had many experiences in the art world with artists, their families, and patrons. Framing this story in the world of art suited me fine because when I ignored my muse in the past, the story never got anywhere. We were both on board for this odyssey.
Did the mystery or the character of Bob come to you first?
I have come to the story world process in many different ways. No matter which order the process happens, it is organic, with one element building on the other. Sometimes it can be as little as an overheard remark that sparks my creativity. To answer the question, Bob came first this time. Sometimes I am lucky, and a character comes to me fully hatched. Bob came to me in steady waves, like ocean breakers rolling into the shore. He was all Southern man despite his veneer of civility. He’d had every opportunity-the best education, money to start his own investment business, and a wife who adored him. His two sons were a credit to the family.
Then Bob’s world fell apart. His wife died. Suicide, the cops said, when there was no sign of foul play in her locked studio. No way, Bob said. He railed against everything, drank too much, and got in bar fights. Nothing could drag him out of his despair. His sons presented him with the option of a treatment center or jail time for his outrageous behavior.
Feeling he had no choice, Bob went with the therapy option, and he liked it so much that he dallied there a while, unready to face the world again. When he left the center, he didn’t want his old life, his family home on a downtown Savannah square, or his company. So he moved an hour south and set up an art gallery there. This is the starting point of Mancini Blue because his life is about to change again.
How did you balance emotional heaviness with the novel’s lighter moments?
One of the longstanding comments about my body of work is that I have quirky characters. That comes naturally to me because I’m a bit quirky myself. I know innately what it is like to be different from others, but I’ve never seen that as a hardship. In my author life, it has been a gold mine because I’m all about the lighter and tender moments. But giving characters darkness and having them stay in it is not something I want to write about. My lane is cozy mysteries, albeit I write on the darker side of cozies.
Showing Bob’s tenderness and care for his niece, her daughter, and Sophie’s ancient dog reveals that he’s not a bad guy. Bob has a caretaker personality, and when his wife died, he lost his tether to reality for a while. Grief takes many forms and varies in emotional depth and circumstance. Bob didn’t know how to process his grief, and being a Southern man, he lost himself in drinking and fighting for a while. All of that happened in the days and weeks following Sophie’s death. The book opens a year later, but his backstory helps everyone know that Bob has deep emotions, that he is more than a stock character. He can manage life now, but his heart is still bruised.
Getting back to the question, I’ve found that having lighter elements offset emotional heaviness makes for a great story. As both authors and readers know, conflict is the engine that drives a story. In addition, I used those moments to redeem Bob in the readers’ eyes. I always knew he was a complex, likeable guy who acted out only because no one would listen to him, let alone believe him when he said his beloved Sophie was murdered. Where the story begins is the moment of change for Bob. To shed his darkness, he must get justice for his late wife. So, he puts on the hat of an amateur sleuth.
If you could ask readers one question after they finish the book, what would it be?
I’d ask readers what their favorite part was. I’m always curious about responses to the world I’ve cobbled together, word by word. For other books I’ve written, readers have fallen in love with one of the characters, or one of the pets, and yet for others, it’s the laid-back vibe of a Southern small town where everyone knows everyone else. As a person raised this way and who moved back to their hometown later in life, I run into people all the time in the grocery store who know my family or me. It is very centering, and even though I am admittedly quirky, I belong here.
Thanks for your interest. I hope you’ll pick up Mancini Blue, and it will be your cup of tea!
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He is certain the cops got his wife’s means of death wrong. When he left her in the studio that fateful evening to paint overnight, her door locked behind him. She wouldn’t unlock her door for a stranger. To get justice for Sophie, Bob delves into her murder using his hidden ability to help find solid evidence.
When he unsuccessfully searches his old Savannah haunts for leads, he returns to St. James to discover a bizarre murder occurred near his shop. Despite his alibi, he is questioned by the local cops. He’s stunned when many aspects of this new case are identical to Sophie’s death. Thus, solving his wife’s murder will most likely shed light on the recent case.
Bob’s suspect list includes family members, neighbors, friends, and Sophie’s art associates. He discovers people are rarely what they seem and believes this deadly foe kills to protect secrets. Can he identify his wife’s murderer before the killer strikes again?
A Good, Hard Slap
A Good, Hard Slap, by Catherine Bator, drops readers into 1930 Hollywood at exactly the right moment for trouble. Talking pictures are changing the industry, studio publicity departments are manufacturing reality, and movie star Garland Westover is dead. Seven women connected to the studio stenography pool know more about his death than anyone should, and they’re determined to keep that knowledge buried. At the center is Gracie Perkins, a sharp, ambitious stenographer who wants to write movies and has a much more complicated relationship with Garland than her friends realize. Bator uses that setup to create an engaging blend of historical fiction, mystery, and early Hollywood fiction, with suspense driven by secrets, loyalty, and the frightening ease with which a powerful studio can decide what the public will believe.
Gracie and her supervisor, Madeleine Singer, give the novel its emotional backbone. Both women are intelligent and capable, but they’ve learned different ways to survive a workplace where men hold nearly all the authority. Madeleine has spent years teaching her stenographers to remain professional, make no waves, and deliver a “good, hard slap” when a man crosses the line. Gracie, meanwhile, prides herself on being modern, independent, and harder to fool than everyone around her. Watching those beliefs unravel gives this women’s historical fiction story much of its force. As buried experiences finally get talked about, Gracie begins reconsidering what she thought she knew about Garland, while Madeleine confronts the cost of treating silence as protection. The book handles those realizations gradually, allowing the characters to recognize uncomfortable truths at the same pace the reader sees the larger pattern taking shape.
The Hollywood setting is also a major pleasure. Bator fills the story with studio lots, stenography offices, costume departments, publicity schemes, Prohibition-era restaurants, jazz clubs, movie premieres, temperamental writers, ambitious actresses, and the chaotic shift from silent pictures to talkies. The details make Kaplan Talking Pictures feel like an actual workplace. There’s plenty of humor in the daily absurdities, particularly when Gracie finds herself doing much of the real writing while highly paid men argue over who deserves the credit. That wit keeps the darker material from flattening the novel into a single mood. The early Hollywood historical mystery elements are strongest because they’re rooted in this working world, where a murder cover-up feels disturbingly compatible with an industry already accustomed to transforming scandals into carefully polished publicity stories.
What stayed with me most about A Good, Hard Slap is its interest in the stories people tell, both publicly and privately, and what happens when those stories stop being believable. Gracie’s dream of becoming a writer turns out to be especially fitting because she spends much of the novel sorting through competing versions of her own past before she’s ready to write one for herself. Her relationship with Detective Nick Zingarelli adds warmth and provides another way for her to reconsider ideas she’s treated as settled facts, while the final chapters give her choices about work, love, honesty, and ambition room to feel earned. As historical fiction set in Old Hollywood, the novel has glamour, crime, studio intrigue, and period detail, but its strongest current comes from the women behind the stars, the ones typing the scripts, keeping the secrets, and eventually deciding which stories deserve to be told.
Pages: 281 | ASIN : B0H7T3BNQ6
Mystery at the Hidden River
J. Clifford Barnes’s Mystery at the Hidden River is a warm, engaging mystery built around an unusual kind of amateur detective. Jace Carter is a retired civil engineer in his mid-60s who’d be perfectly content tending his garden, drinking good coffee, and enjoying a quiet life on the Northern California coast. Instead, the suspicious death of fellow engineer Dustin Macky draws him into an investigation where his professional knowledge becomes every bit as valuable as traditional police work. Hydrology calculations, engineering files, building permits, geological hazards, and development plans all become clues, giving the story a personality that feels grounded in the way real people actually solve complicated problems.
Jace is the heart of the book. He’s practical, observant, good-humored, and refreshingly comfortable with who he is. His narration makes room for sandwiches, fishing trips, gardening, coffee, storm preparation, and the everyday inconveniences of retirement alongside murder and criminal conspiracy. Those details give Inglesee, Seacrest, and the Hidden River area the comfortable familiarity of places the reader can picture living in. They also make the danger more effective when it arrives. An enormous atmospheric river, a threatened harbor, an escaped suspect, a firebombing, and a corporate scheme all become more immediate because they’re happening to someone who’d really rather be repairing a planter box or reading in his easy chair.
The mystery itself grows naturally from Dustin Macky’s engineering work. What begins with a dead man and a disordered stack of hydrologic calculations expands into the threat posed by the Buck Starr Landslide, an illegal growing operation, a powerful development company with designs on Hidden River Harbor, and a suspicious harbor board member with connections that run deeper than anyone first realizes. Barnes keeps these threads moving through Jace’s particular way of thinking. He notices inconsistencies, understands what technical information means in practical terms, and often finds solutions because he knows how government agencies, contractors, engineers, and local institutions actually function. That gives the investigation an appealing nuts-and-bolts quality while still leaving room for danger, misdirection, and a satisfying escalation toward the solution.
What makes Mystery at the Hidden River especially enjoyable is the combination of small-town mystery, procedural problem-solving, coastal atmosphere, and an older protagonist who discovers that retirement hasn’t made him any less useful. Jace doesn’t become a different person in order to solve the case. His experience, patience, curiosity, and accumulated knowledge are exactly what make him effective. By the end, the investigation has pushed him into serious danger, exposed a much larger criminal operation, and even forced him to rethink how he can keep helping law enforcement without making himself an easy target. His resulting notion of becoming an “undercover volunteer sleuth” feels like both a satisfying conclusion and an inviting promise of more adventures ahead. Mystery at the Hidden River turns the practical wisdom of a retired engineer into the secret weapon of a smart, personable mystery you’ll want to follow wherever Jace Carter goes next.
Pages: 88 | ASIN : B0HBT7SK9Y
Loyalty Becomes Something Dangerous
Vanished Twin follows a Tampa detective as he investigates a ritualistic serial killer whose gruesome crimes reveal dark secrets of childhood abuse, family trauma, and twisted sibling loyalty. What inspired you to write the second Detective Alex Archer novel?
When I started writing Vanished Twin, I wanted to challenge Detective Alex Archer with a case that was darker, more personal, and emotionally comlex than anything he had faced before. I was inspired by true crime stories that reveal how deeply childhood experiences can influence adult behavior. The concept of ritualistic murders connected to long-buried family trauma gave me an opportunity to create a mystery that was not only suspenseful but also psychologically layered. At its heart, the novel asks how far someone might go to protect the people they love and what happens when loyalty becomes something dangerous.
What did you want to do differently in this book compared with the first Alex Archer novel?
One of my biggest goals with Vanished Twin was to make the story darker and more emotionally complex than the first Alex Archer novel. While the first book, The Devil ‘s Snow, focused primarily on solving a crime, this novel dives deeper into the psychological motivations behind violence and the lasting impact of childhood trauma. I wanted the mystery to be more than a hunt for a killer. I wanted it to become an exploration of family bonds, buried secrets, and the ways people are shaped by their past. I also wanted to challenge Alex Archer on a more personal level. In Vanished Twin, the investigation forces him to confront difficult moral questions and navigate the emotional fallout experienced by victims, families, and even perpetrators. The result is a story that balances suspense and action with a deper examination of human relationships and the consequences of long-hidden wounds.
Why did you choose Catholic imagery and Satanism as elements of the killer’s ritual?
I chose Catholic imaagery and Satanism because they provided a powerful way to explore the novel’s themes of faith, corruption, and trauma. The killer twists religious symbols to reflect his damaged worldview, turning what should represent hope and redemption into something dark and terrifying. It also gave Alex Archer a deeper mystery to unravel beyond the murders themselves.
What did writing this second installment teach you that you did not know while writing the first?
Writing Vanished Twin taught me that the most compelling mysteries are driven by character as much as plot. While writing the first Alex Archer novel, The Devil’s Snow, I focused on the investigation itself, In the second book, I learned how much more powerful a story becomes when the emotional journeys of the detective, victims, and even the killer are woven into the mystery. That deeper character focus made the suspense more meaningful and the stakes more personal.
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Trying to rebuild his life, Archer joins the Tampa Police Department, where his instincts quickly reawaken. A relentless investigator willing to bend protocol when necessary, Archer soon becomes the department’s go-to detective for high-risk cases.
What begins as a series of gun-store robberies soon uncovers a far more dangerous threat: the activation of a Taliban sleeper cell determined to unleash terror on American soil. As the investigation deepens, Archer becomes the personal target of Saif Abdulla, an Afghan national haunted by his own trauma after losing his village during Operation Enduring Freedom.
As disturbing personalized clues draw Archer deeper into the conspiracy, the terror cell launches escalating attacks designed to spread fear and chaos across the country—all leading toward a catastrophic event promising devastation far beyond 9/11.
Fast-paced, gritty, and emotionally charged, The Devil’s Snow blends police procedural realism with psychological suspense and post-9/11 terrorism thriller intensity.
Mancini Blue
Maggie Toussaint’s Mancini Blue is a paranormal cozy mystery built around grief, art, and a distinctly Southern sense of community. Sixty-year-old Bob Calloway has moved to a Georgia barrier island after the supposed suicide of his wife, celebrated painter Sophie Mancini. When another woman is found dead and covered in Sophie’s signature shade of blue, Bob becomes both a suspect and an amateur investigator. The case soon reaches back into Savannah’s art scene, where a missing painting, falsified prescriptions, and suspicious exhibition shipments suggest that Sophie’s death was part of something much larger.
Bob gives the novel its personality. He’s stubborn, protective, occasionally exasperating, and still learning how to live after a breakdown fueled by alcohol and grief. His ability to sense emotional energy from people and objects adds a supernatural element, but it also works as an extension of his empathy. The family material is equally important. Bob’s strained relationships with his sons, his concern for his grandniece Gussie, and his lingering guilt over Sophie make solving the murder feel like a step toward rebuilding his life.
The mystery develops through an appealing mixture of police work, family conversations, art-world intrigue, and short passages from the killer’s perspective. Toussaint plants useful clues, especially around Sophie’s paintings and the people responsible for transporting them, while keeping several credible suspects in circulation. Some information is repeated as Bob reviews the case, and the broad humor occasionally bumps against the darker material involving addiction, sexual violence, and murder. Still, the coastal setting, colorful supporting cast, and unusual older male lead give the story a warm, eccentric character. Its most satisfying thread is Bob’s gradual movement from fixation and self-blame toward renewed trust in his family and in himself.
I’d recommend Mancini Blue to readers who enjoy character-driven cozy mysteries with a light psychic element and a slightly darker crime underneath the friendly small-town surface. It should particularly suit fans of mature protagonists, Southern settings, complicated families, and mysteries rooted in creative communities. Readers who like watching an amateur sleuth collaborate, and sometimes spar, with a capable police chief will also find plenty to enjoy. The book closes its central case while giving Bob a convincing emotional fresh start and leaving room for his intuition, his art studio, and his promising relationship with Chief Darlene Smiley to carry future stories.
Pages: 263 | ASIN : B0HCHW5JGT
Vanished Twin
Vanished Twin, the second book in the Detective Alex Archer series, is a crime thriller centered on Tampa detective Alex Archer and a serial killer dubbed Satan on the Hillsborough River. The killer’s ritual blends Catholic imagery, Satanism, freezing, and dismemberment, giving the investigation a grotesque signature that’s hard to forget. Hoffman reveals the apparent murderer early, so the suspense comes from watching Archer and his team assemble the evidence while the full meaning of the title remains hidden. The eventual explanation adds a second layer involving childhood abuse, family trauma, and a deeply distorted idea of sibling loyalty.
Archer gives the book most of its personality. He’s sarcastic, stubborn, emotionally bruised, and frequently funny, even when the humor gets crude. His exchanges with Vazquez, Reyes, Sarconie, and Sergeant Karr make the detectives feel like colleagues who’ve spent years learning exactly how to annoy one another. Those lighter scenes also counter the novel’s extreme violence, though the transitions between comedy and horror can be abrupt. Archer’s relationship with Giana brings welcome emotional weight, especially as his drinking, memories of 9/11, and instinct to push away anyone who loves him begin to catch up with him.
The novel shares some DNA with Thomas Harris’s Red Dragon. Both stories combine a police procedural with an intimate look at a killer whose identity has fractured under severe trauma. Like Harris, Hoffman is interested in the mechanics of an investigation, the psychology behind ritualized violence, and the personal cost paid by the investigator. Hoffman’s approach is more direct and talkative, with characters frequently explaining medical conditions, forensic procedures, police technology, and occult symbolism in considerable detail. That information gives the story a researched quality, although some scenes read more like briefings than natural conversations.
Vanished Twin is about damaged people trying to divide themselves into acceptable and unacceptable halves. The religious imagery, covered mirrors, contrasting red and white rooms, and multiple sibling revelations all reinforce that idea. Its strongest moments arrive when the case and Archer’s private life reflect each other: the killer hides behind invented identities, while Archer hides his grief behind alcohol and jokes. The closing scene wisely leaves Archer’s emotional struggle unresolved, ending the investigation while showing that his more personal reckoning has only begun.
Pages: 260
