Blog Archives
The Runaway Girl
Andrea Barton’s The Runaway Girl, the fourth book in the Jade Riley Mysteries, takes readers into the bustling, unpredictable streets of Lagos, Nigeria, where a journalist’s determination to help three missing teenage girls draws her into a dangerous world of corruption, exploitation and organised crime. Australian expat Jade Riley is struggling to reclaim her professional identity while juggling motherhood, marriage and life in a foreign country. When she learns that two girls from a remote fishing village have disappeared after taking jobs in Lagos, she agrees to investigate. Her search leads her to a charismatic nightclub owner, a powerful criminal figure known as Gardi and a network of people whose loyalties are difficult to untangle. As the threats escalate and Jade’s own family becomes a target, her commitment to finding the girls is tested in ways she could never have anticipated.
Running alongside Jade’s investigation is the story of Yinka, a fourteen-year-old girl who leaves her impoverished village hoping to earn enough money to support her family and eventually fulfil her dream of becoming a doctor. Instead, she finds herself trapped in a succession of increasingly dangerous situations. Yinka’s chapters are among the novel’s most affecting, bringing readers close to a young woman whose resourcefulness, fierce loyalty and determination to survive are extraordinary. The alternating storylines build suspense while offering two very different perspectives on the same world. Jade has the resources and freedom to investigate injustice, while Yinka must find a way to survive it. Their eventual meeting gives the novel some of its most powerful moments, particularly as the balance between rescuer and rescued begins to shift.
Barton brings Lagos vividly to life, from its chaotic traffic, colourful markets and luxurious expatriate compounds to its lively nightclubs and remote coastal communities. The city feels wonderfully immediate, alive with music, food, humour and the daily negotiations that shape its residents’ lives. Barton’s personal experience of living in Nigeria lends authenticity to these details, while her background in dance adds an unexpected pleasure to the story. Jade’s salsa lessons become both an avenue for her investigation and a means of rediscovering a part of herself she’s neglected since becoming a mother. Her relationships with her husband, children and Nigerian friends add warmth and complexity, grounding the escalating danger in the ordinary concerns of family life. Throughout, Barton explores the circumstances that leave vulnerable young people exposed to trafficking, alongside the courage and solidarity of those determined to help them.
The Runaway Girl combines the tension of a crime thriller with the emotional depth of a story about survival, friendship and finding the courage to act. Barton handles the difficult subject of child trafficking with compassion, giving the girls individual voices, ambitions and an essential role in their own fight for freedom. Jade is an engaging protagonist whose stubbornness, compassion and occasional recklessness make her thoroughly human, while Yinka’s journey provides an emotional center that lingers beyond the final chapter. There’s plenty of danger, a satisfying mystery and some exhilarating action, but the novel’s greatest strength lies in the connections forged between women whose lives might otherwise never have crossed. Barton gives courage two unforgettable faces: a mother who refuses to look away and a girl determined to fight her way home.
Pages: 306 | ASIN : B0GTQ32H63
The Silent Retreat
The Silent Retreat, the first Nora Bly mystery, is a quietly observant murder mystery built around a protagonist whose greatest investigative skill is attention. Nora Bly, a fifty-three-year-old widow accustomed to making herself useful and noticing what others overlook, takes a housekeeping position at Wyldemere Hall, home to the Harmony Site, a residential community devoted to meditation and silence. The setting gives the novel an unusual tension from the beginning. The house is filled with people trained to sit quietly with their thoughts, yet it also contains financial uncertainty, private resentments, concealed expectations, and a wealthy elderly woman whose plans may determine everyone’s future. When Iris Calloway dies after drinking her nightly cocoa, the mystery grows naturally from details Nora has already been observing: an interrupted ledger, an impending will, anxious residents, and, most importantly, a missing cup.
Nora is an effective central character because her method of investigation is inseparable from her personality. She doesn’t suddenly become a conventional detective after the death. Instead, she continues doing what she has done throughout her adult life: reading rooms, listening to pauses, remembering habits, and recognizing when an ordinary object is in the wrong place. Her practical intelligence gives the mystery its structure. A washed cocoa cup becomes important because Nora understands the household well enough to know when and where it should have been washed. Her thinking gradually develops from the obvious question of who benefited from Iris’s death to the more revealing question of who believed they were about to lose something. That shift gives the investigation psychological depth. Nora’s approach is summed up particularly well in the observation that “the cup asked nothing of you except to notice.” The line captures both the mechanics of the mystery and the quality that defines Nora herself.
The novel’s prose is controlled, reflective, and closely attuned to small changes in behavior. Silence functions as more than atmosphere. It becomes a way of examining how people reveal themselves when they aren’t filling every moment with explanation. Conversations frequently turn on hesitation, repetition, or what a character nearly says, and Nora pays as much attention to those spaces as she does to spoken facts. The meditation practice at Wyldemere also develops one of the novel’s central ideas: the distinction between a thing and the story a person tells about it. Devin explains that people often live in “the commentary” rather than in the thing itself, an idea that applies equally well to grief, suspicion, fear, and the murder investigation. The result is a mystery in which observation becomes both an investigative technique and a larger question about certainty. Nora must learn that careful seeing doesn’t mean assuming she already understands what she has seen.
The ensemble surrounding Nora gives that idea practical consequences. Julian Crane’s investment in Wyldemere’s future, Gerald Calloway’s inheritance, the Hartleys’ dependence on the community, Frances’s decades of service, and the residents’ fear of losing the life they have built all create motives rooted in attachment. Frances becomes especially compelling because her devotion to Iris, her certainty about Iris’s intentions, and her intimate knowledge of the household place love, fear, and responsibility uncomfortably close together. Nora’s growing recognition that certainty itself can mislead is one of the book’s strongest developments. Her investigation is therefore not simply a process of collecting clues, but of revising what those clues mean as she understands the people around them more fully. The Silent Retreat combines a traditional closed-community mystery with a thoughtful study of attention, grief, habit, and the stories people construct around what they fear losing.
Pages: 137 | ASIN : B0H5M4QTBJ
Inherited Death
Inherited Death, by Jeanne Rietzke, is a family-centered mystery novel with a strong Southern Gothic flavor, set largely in New Orleans. The story follows Melissa Fairmont after her mother’s death, which pulls her back into a messy family inheritance dispute involving her two sisters, an old family home, a beloved pub, suspicious money, and a mysterious painting tied to Bonnard, wartime France, jealousy, and possible murder. What begins as grief and sibling resentment slowly turns into an art mystery wrapped in secrets, curses, old wounds, and real danger.
The book is most engaging when it leans into Melissa’s voice. She’s blunt, wounded, funny, and often exhausted, which makes her feel human rather than polished. Her grief isn’t tidy. One minute she’s mourning her mother, the next she’s furious at her sisters, and then she’s craving beignets, wine, or a moment of peace with Ben. That felt honest to me. Family loss rarely arrives alone. It brings boxes, old insults, unpaid emotional debts, and the strange smell of childhood rooms you thought you had left behind. Rietzke captures that well. The New Orleans setting also gives the mystery texture without turning the city into wallpaper. The hotel, the pub, the Irish Channel, Mardi Gras memories, and the family’s history all feel tied to the story’s bones.
The author makes a big, entertaining choice by blending domestic family drama with art-world intrigue and hints of voodoo lore. That mix pulls readers into a world that feels authentic. I enjoyed the ambition of it. The painting isn’t just an object to appraise. It becomes a pressure point, exposing greed, jealousy, family mythology, and the lies people tell when money and pride are involved. The dialogue can be very direct, and some emotional turns arrive with a soap-opera punch, but there is also a lot of energy in that directness. The book knows what kind of story it is. It’s a lively mystery with family knives out, secrets in the walls, and a past that refuses to stay framed.
I would recommend Inherited Death to readers who enjoy inheritance mysteries, art-centered suspense, and family dramas with sharp edges. Fans of cozy-adjacent mysteries who like more bite, more wine, and more emotional baggage will probably have the best time with it. It is especially suited for readers who enjoy stories where the real mystery is not only who did what, but why a family has been hurting each other for so long.
Pages: 242 | ASIN : B0FCG2X757
Murder on the Set: An Amanda Pennyworth Mystery
James Gilbert’s Murder on the Set drops Amanda Pennyworth, American consul, amateur sleuth, and increasingly conflicted woman, into a Puerto Vallarta movie production that begins as a logistical nuisance and turns into a double-murder investigation. A Hollywood crew arrives to film a glossy romance on location, Amanda is pulled in to smooth relations between studio egos and local authorities, and the novel steadily tightens from social comedy into a mystery about performance, authorship, and the things people will do to protect an invented version of themselves. The setup is clever on its face, but what gave it lift for me was the way the book makes the film set feel both seductive and faintly toxic, all bright surfaces and hairline cracks.
What I liked most was the book’s sense of place. Puerto Vallarta is not a pasted-on backdrop here; it has weather, texture, sidewalks, petty irritations, good coffee, bureaucracy, sea air, gossip, and the faint shimmer of a life Amanda may not want to leave. That local fullness gives the novel ballast. I also liked Amanda herself. She is observant without turning brittle, competent without becoming superhuman, and her interior conflict about duty, desire, and departure gives the mystery a second pulse. The book is at its best when it lets the investigation move through social nuance, class signals, artistic vanity, diplomatic tact, and expat performance. There is a pleasingly old-fashioned intelligence to that.
The novel unfolds with a deliberate, almost courtly pace that lets the tension gather naturally, and I found that measured rhythm one of its strengths. Rather than chasing constant shocks, it rewards patience with richer atmosphere, sharper character work, and a deeper satisfaction as the story gradually comes into focus. Gilbert writes in a way that is more measured than trendy, and the book’s pleasures come from the sharpened dialogue, the sly observations, the metafictional wrinkle in the case itself, and the growing realization that this is a murder story about fabrication in more than one sense. By the end, I felt the book had earned its composure.
I’d hand this to readers of traditional mystery, cozy-adjacent mystery, international mystery, and murder mystery with literary elements, especially anyone who enjoys sleuthing mixed with atmosphere and character rather than nonstop mayhem. It reminded me a little of Donna Leon, if she wandered onto a film set in coastal Mexico, and readers who like Louise Penny’s interest in psychology over pyrotechnics may also find something to admire. This is a polished, sea-breezed mystery that knows glamour is just another kind of disguise.
Pages: 272 | ASIN : B0G87FDWB6
Death of a Dream Seller
Death of a Dream Seller is a cozy murder mystery set in a sham New York acting school that is taking its last bow. Former staffer Paloma Pennington comes back to the Gramercy Theatrical Arts Academy for a bittersweet “grand finale” party after the school declares bankruptcy, even though the building is nowhere near Gramercy Park and the whole operation has always felt a bit fake. She once sold spots in the pricey program and knows the place charges eye-watering tuition for cramped dorm rooms in Chinatown and dream-of-stardom promises that rarely come true. During the party, she and co-worker Sterling discover the body of their boss, Edwin Everett Asher, stabbed on the empty fifth-floor stage with what looks like a theatrical dagger, his corpse propped under a Florentine mask. A blizzard keeps everyone trapped while the police lock down the building and question a lively group of teachers, board members, and ex-students, many tangled up in a Broadway show called Monte Carlo Autumn that made huge profits yet never paid back its investors and hid behind an anonymous company called Fair Day Partners. As Paloma pieces together that fishy show, a nearby art-gallery robbery, and Edwin’s phony bankruptcy, the story moves toward a shocking reveal.
I enjoyed the narrative voice a lot. Paloma tells the story in a dry, funny first person, and I liked how she mixes straight talk with little flashes of drama. She is the granddaughter of a cop and the daughter of two criminal justice professors, and she thinks like it, so her running commentary on how people should behave around a crime scene feels sharp and oddly believable. I smiled at the way she reacts to the school’s fake glamour, the tacky Wizard of Oz decorations in the hallway, and the students who still think Edwin can “make them stars” even though he is just a small-time acting teacher. The supporting cast leans big and broad, and that worked for me as a cozy. Clementine is loud and unfiltered. Levi cracks jokes at all the wrong times. Goldie is pure theater queen. Their voices bounce off each other and give the party scenes a lot of movement. Sometimes the humor leans a bit cartoonish, and a few side characters feel more like types than people, yet I still had fun watching them crowd into the room and snipe about lawsuits and flop shows while a dead man lies two floors below.
On the mystery side, I liked the bones of the plot. The idea of a “dream seller” who milks both students and investors, then pretends his school is broke while he quietly hoards millions, hits hard and feels sadly believable. I also liked the way the story keeps looping back to money and empty promises. The art gallery robbery next door to the school, the missing Tibetan-style paintings, the secret link between those paintings and Edwin, and the later discovery that some of the stolen art sits in an accomplice’s apartment all give the murder a bigger web and make the title feel earned. A lot of the solution comes to Paloma in texts and recaps, and the reveal is almost too clean. I still liked the logic of it, yet I wanted more time in the room when the truth finally blows up, more heat between suspect and sleuth.
What stayed with me most were the ideas under the whodunit. The book takes real aim at people who package dreams as products, whether that is bogus acting programs with glossy brochures and terrible dorms, or big Broadway shows that treat their backers as prey. The author’s note at the end spells out that she drew on real experiences in show-business offices that went bust, and I could feel that lived-in detail in the empty corridors, the half-cleared props, the sad little “grand finale” spread complete with caviar at a bankruptcy party. The book does not excuse the killer. It just points out that when you build a life on lying to desperate people, you stack the powder, and someone will eventually light the match.
All in all I had a good time with Death of a Dream Seller. The voice is warm, the setting feels lived in, and the mystery ties money, art, and ambition together in a way that kept me turning pages. I would recommend this book to readers who enjoy cozy or light mysteries, who like theater or art-world gossip, and who appreciate a heroine who is smart, slightly jaded, yet still kind. If you want a fast, entertaining read with a bit of bite about the cost of chasing fame, this one fits the bill.
Pages: 146 | ASIN : B0GJYYX4FK
Defusing Theories
In Serial Obsession, a journalist-turned-cold case investigator discovers new information in the case of a serial killer and sets out to uncover the truth behind a wrongful accusation. How were you able to strike a balance between suspense and romance?
I always want my novels to be plot-heavy and use the sex and intimacy as just a part of what’s really going on. I want there to be purpose for the relationship, and that purpose will usually be that the main characters find it more advantageous and a lot more fun to work as a duo. Naturally, this arrangement creates depth in the relationship and helps it develop into something almost surreal. The danger and the unknown seem to pull the lovers in even closer, making their connection not only fiery but also a testament to mutual respect and loyalty. Serial Obsession is a great example of how a story creates the relationship, and the lovers’ romance enhances the story.
What do you find to be the most challenging aspect of writing a series? The most rewarding?
The Map Dot Series is different than most book series because the books are actually stand-alones. We call it a series because every book has a common thread—the action takes place in a little Midwestern map dot town. The town is real, and even the locations such as Whittle’s Pub and Grub from Serial Obsession are real, but the story and the characters are entirely from my overactive imagination. These books have no reading order and are only numbered to show the order of release. So, in this case, my challenges were minimal.
Honestly, I spend a lot of time defusing theories about who’s who because everyone thinks there’s a little truth woven into the plot and characters. But that’s just not the case. I just like to build my stories around the places I know best because it helps me visualize and keeps me from taking too many liberties with the flexibility of fiction. Most definitely, the most rewarding aspect of creating this series is going to the little towns, talking with the people there, and getting feedback on the books.
Can you give us a glimpse inside Book 3 of the Map Dot series? Where will it take readers?
Desperate Measures, Book 3 in the Map Dot Series, comes out this spring. This time, the unassuming little map dot town is Argenta, Illinois, and the location is partially the town pub, Bargenta. This book was inspired by my upcoming participation as an attending author on the Love Lit Cruise in February 2026. The main character is a romance novelist who suffers tremendously with the details of her own love life. And, yes, she is embarking on an adventure on the high seas aboard the Love Lit Cruise early in the book. But let me remind you, my characters are not based on anyone real, despite the fact that everyone will assume I am Poppy Wallcroft (sigh). This superficial description of the book might seem like I’m venturing into a more traditional romance subgenre; however, Desperate Measures contains my signature female power character, plot twists that will have your head spinning, and thrilling danger that makes you gasp. Words Matter Publishing and I are shooting for an April release.
Author Links: GoodReads | Amazon
“I’m so sorry, I just came out here half-dressed like I owned the place.”
“…please don’t apologize for making my day,” he said, flashing her a look from those sexy blue eyes. “I never knew that old t-shirt could look so good.”
Camille Hargrove is a serious cold case investigator. When a tip leads her to Lake of the Ozarks to reopen the Kelcee Meyer rape and murder case, Camille vows to find justice for Kelcee and her family. In the process, she encounters Ross Paine, the innocent man framed for the crime. The investigation heats up when Camille and Ross give in to their fiery attraction and become partners in more ways than one. When they expose Shane Simpson, the real killer, Camille becomes his target, and they discover that Shane’s connection to Ross is more complicated than they ever suspected. Unravel the mystery and catch a killer with this sexy duo in Serial Obsession, Marcy Bialeschki’s second stand-alone novel in the Map Dot Series.
Serial Obsession
Serial Obsession is a romantic suspense novel set around the Lake of the Ozarks, and it opens with a chilling hook. A serial killer named Shane Simpson hunts a young woman, Kelcee Meyer, and frames an innocent man, Ross Paine. When journalist turned cold-case investigator Camille Hargrove stumbles onto new information, she heads into the small Midwestern “map dot” towns to uncover the truth. The story weaves between a murder mystery, a wrongful accusation, and a slow-building connection between Camille and Ross, all against the backdrop of a community shaken by fear and rumor.
I felt pulled in by how grounded the world was. The lake towns feel authentic. People work long shifts, drive beaten-up cars, and deal with messy families. The author leans heavily into the genre’s blend of romantic suspense, giving us both danger and desire, and she doesn’t shy away from intensity in either direction. Sometimes the scenes get gritty, sometimes tender, and sometimes downright chaotic, but that unevenness actually made it feel more like real life. I liked that Camille isn’t a perfect detective. She’s passionate, stubborn, and occasionally a hot mess, and that combination kept her relatable.
The book moves quickly from plot to plot: murder, investigation, flirtation, danger, repeat. I realized the speed mirrors Camille’s own momentum. She throws herself into things whether she’s ready or not, and the narrative matches her energy. Ross, meanwhile, is written with this quiet heaviness that lingers. You feel the injustice hanging over him. The contrast between his guarded calm and Camille’s spark gives their scenes a natural tension. Even the villain gets space to be more than a shadow. We see the twisted logic behind his actions, which made the thriller element feel more unsettling.
By the end, what stayed with me wasn’t only the mystery but the themes simmering under it: how communities rush to judgment, how a rumor can ruin a life, and how hard it is to rebuild trust once it’s been shattered. The romance adds warmth, and the suspense keeps the pages turning, but there’s also this thread of “fairness” running through the story that gives it more weight than your typical thriller.
If you like romantic suspense that leans into both sides of the genre, with small-town atmosphere and characters who feel bruised but determined, I think you’ll enjoy Serial Obsession. Readers who want a gritty mystery wrapped in a relationship-driven plot will probably get the most out of it.
Pages: 356 | ISBN : 978-1968542061
Out Of the Drawer
Stupid Gravity follows a sharp but disgraced software engineer who is on probation, witnesses the abduction of a girl from a homeless shelter, and has to find a way to save her without breaking her parole. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
I created Alex/Liliane as a secondary character in my first attempt at writing a novel. That particular Not Ready for Primetime manuscript went into a drawer and never came back out, but the rocky backstory of the strange little hacker girl with the gray-fendered Mustang stuck with me. A few years later, I brought her back in a NaNoWriMo project that morphed into a full first draft, Shadow Girl. A discussion with Hank Phillipi Ryan at a writer’s conference led me to realize that what I had really written was the second book in the series and that I needed to go back and develop the origin story. The result was Stupid Gravity.
Alex can’t seem to catch a break and just wants to get her life back on track, but the universe seems to have other plans for her. What was your inspiration for their characters’ interactions and backstories?
Back in the Nineties and Aughts, I used to hang out at a carriage house on Capitol Hill where first one and then another of my friends lived and sold weed. I’ve sometimes reflected on the irony of that little business operating comfortably and profitably for over twenty years while hundreds of more technically legitimate Denver businesses came and went. Visitors stopping in for pot or just a cup of coffee and conversation included lawyers, college professors, two dominatrixes who lived next door, one published poet, a former Penthouse pet, numerous players in the local recreational pharmaceuticals scene, a PO stopping in to buy weed from his probationer, and many more unique Capitol Hill specimens. The incidents and people from that carriage house still provide a wealth of inspiration.
Do you think there’s a single moment in everyone’s life, maybe not as traumatic, that is life-changing?
I think many people have dramatic changes in their life path due to some personal or shared tragedy. We certainly hear about individuals driven to careers in medicine, law enforcement, religion, etc., by such events. In recent years, it would be hard to calculate how many lives were drastically altered by 9/11. For most of us, though, I think life is a little more like billiard balls caroming about on a pool table. I know I’ve frequently thought back on the way seemingly innocuous decisions changed my life—a college course taken, a chance encounter in a bar, a job offer accepted or turned down, etc.
Can you tell us what the second book will be about and when it will be available for fans to purchase?
Set two years after the series opener, Shadow Girl is in the final stage of beta reads and should be released in early 2026. Still the employee-from-hell at HappyMart, still rooming with Cici, and still on probation, Alex/Liliane has developed a side gig doing what she likes to call street-level detective work. That knife-edge balance of an existence comes under threat when a stalker threatens to expose her litany of probation violations. His price for keeping quiet is a hacking job as liable to land her in prison as keep her out.
Author Links: GoodReads | Website
Disgraced software engineer Liliane Dupuis is genius-level smart, wise in the way of sarcasm, and incurably socially inept. She’s also living in her car, a forty-year-old blue Mustang fastback with one primer gray fender. She’s on probation, having allowed a manipulative ex-boyfriend to drag her into a failed ATM hacking scheme. And she’s unemployed in 2010 when finding a job is tough even for those unburdened with a felony conviction. When Liliane witnesses the abduction of a little girl from a homeless shelter, she doesn’t figure her new bottom-rung reality carries the risk tolerance for getting involved.
With funds dwindling to desperation level, she uses a fake ID to land a job at a convenience store on a seamy stretch of Denver’s Colfax Avenue. Less than a week into her new salesclerk career, Liliane watches as the shelter kidnapper walks into her store. It’s not a coincidence, she knows. Just karma continuing to mess with her. A call to the police might or might not get the abductor locked up, but the exposure of Liliane’s parole violation will absoluely land her on a Sheriff’s bus headed for the state pen. Instead, she must use her resourcefulness, hacking skills, and ruthlessly logical gray matter to track down the kidnapper and rescue the little girl.
