Rita Mae Brown’s series featuring “Sister” Jane Arnold and her foxhunting friends in Virginia has quite a following. I’m proud to be included in that number.

Anne Perry’s works featuring William Monk and the team of Charlotte and Thomas Pitt have already firmly established her as one of the bestselling authors of today.

Readers first met Lady Dunbridge, the young widow of a British lord, in Ask Me No Questions, debut novel by Shelley Noble, when she arrived in New York ready to take the New York social scene by storm in the early 1900s. However, she immediately found herself immersed in a murder and had to …

Readers first met Lady Dunbridge, the young widow of a British lord, in Ask Me No Questions, debut novel by Shelley Noble, when she arrived in New York ready to take the New York social scene by storm in the early 1900s. However, she immediately found herself immersed in a murder and had to …

M.C. Beaton has done it again.

It’s 1929 in London, just before the Great Crash that would plunge the world into the Great Depression, when Kate Shackleton received a surprising summons to Great Scotland Yard.

Craig Shirley has made quite a name for himself as a Reagan scholar and the author of Reagan Rising, Rendezvous with Destiny, Regan’s Revolutions, Last Act, and December 1941. He was described by the London Telegraph as “the best of the Reagan biographers.”

American adventuress Beryl Helliwell and her friend, prim and proper Edwina Davenport of England teamed up as private detectives in Jessica Ellicott’s debut novel, Murder in an English Village. Last year they rose to the occasion again and sussed out a murderer in Murder Flies the Coop.

A new girl’s in town.

Victoria Thompson’s series featuring Elizabeth Miles, a former grifter and now the fiance of wealthy Gideon Bates, is set in New York City in the first part of the twentieth century. Latest in the series is City of Scoundrels, and perhaps no more timely mystery can be found on the shelves to…

Martha Grimes established herself as a premier writer of mysteries decades ago when she introduced readers to Richard Jury, a British detective, in The Man with a Load of Mischief. In the following years, over twenty additional novels in the series have followed, each with the name of a Brit…

The immigrant question echoes daily in television, radio, and newspaper reports. And did I fail to mention “Online” services?

Author Rhys Bowen introduced us to Lady Georgiana Rannoch and Darcy O’Mara several years ago and has entertained readers since with their on-again, off-again relationship, the countless bodies they find, and the changing world in which they live.

It’s the final days of America’s ill-fated Prohibition efforts when the ocean liner carrying Amory and Milo Ames to America docks in New York in A Dangerous Engagement, latest in the Amory Ames series by Ashley Weaver.

Several years ago, Alison Weir began a series of historical novels, each one focusing on one of Henry VIII’s six wives. Recently the fourth of the six volumes, Anna of Kleve: The Princess in the Portrait, was published.

Many will recall the horrible troubles which beset Northern Ireland and England in the 1960s and 1970s. Rooted deep in their history, issues included Protestant versus Catholic.

W. Caleb McDaniel teaches history at Rice University. His first book, The Problem of Democracy in the Age of Slavery, won the Merle Curti Award from the Organization of American Historians and the James Broussard Prize from the Society of Historians of the Early American Republic.

This seems to have been the season for books, both fiction and non-fiction, focusing on France during World War II.

Imagine, if you will, Hyacinth Bucket as a World War II spy.

Philippa Gregory long ago established herself as one of today’s premier novelists.

In the past few years, several writers of mysteries have adopted the practice of using famous authors of yore as their sleuths. Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and even Arthur Conan Doyle have all appeared on the scene, so it was just a matter of time before someone selected the Bronte sisters…

Sheila Connolly’s talents as a writer of captivating mysteries remind me of the circus performer who keeps dozens of china plates whirling at the same time.

The Christmas season brings many things: church plays and cantatas, the long-awaited Christmas break from school, Black Friday shopping sprees, special Christmas dishes, parades, Nativity scenes, and books.

Christmas is fast approaching in London, and while the shopping frenzy shifts into high gear, travel plans are made, and the goose is getting fat, Mrs. Jeffries and her buddies are a little unsettled.

In recent years, several well-researched works concerning resistance movements and espionage during World War II have been published.

Occasionally I’m drawn to a book simply by its title, and such was the case when I ran across The Daughters of Temperance Hobbs recently at the bookstore.

It’s hard to believe that Donna Andrews has just published the twenty-fifth mystery in the thrilling and delightful Meg Langslow series.

I’ve often thought that once I retire, I might return to school and audit some classes, but I’ll think twice after reading The Pawful Truth and learning what happened to Charlie Harris when he did that.

Susan Wittig Albert earned her place among the world’s best mystery writers several years ago. As the author who pens the Darling Dahlia series, the Cottage Tales of Beatrix Potter, and, with her husband, Bill Albert, a series of Victorian-Edwardian mysteries under the pseudonym Robin Paige,…

With the publication of The Body in the Wake, the Faith Fairchild mystery series reached a milestone. The Body in the Wake is the twenty-fifth installment featuring amateur sleuth and professional chef/caterer Faith Faithchild.

For some time now, Rita Mae Brown’s Mrs. Murphy novels have followed a structure featuring two distinct stories, one set in 18th century Virginia at the time of the American Revolution and the other in modern times. Brown’s newest work, Whiskers in the Dark continues the same pattern.

One of the most charming mystery series of today’s generation is that featuring Aunt Dimity. Penned by Nancy Atherton, they feature American-born Lori Shepherd, now a resident of Finch, a village in the beautiful Cotswolds section of England.

We first met Kate Shackleton, the indomitable sleuth featured in the Frances Brody mystery series, several years ago and have watched her grow into a successful private detective with a highly admirable record of bringing killers to justice.

Charles Finch introduced readers to London detective Charles Lenox several years ago in the series’ debut novel A Beautiful Blue Death. At the time, Lenox was already established in his work and was considered, by many, an oddity.

Dianne Freeman introduced mystery lovers to Frances Wynn, Countess of Harleigh in A Lady’s Guide to Etiquette and Murder, debut novel in a new series.

Laura Childs has once again turned out a riveting mystery set in Charleston, South Carolina, one of my favorite cities, adding to her Tea Shop Mystery series her newest work Broken Bone China.

Carlene O’Connor is a wonderful storyteller and traces her talents to a great-grandmother who emigrated from Ireland bringing with her tales of the old country.

Eva Gates’s Lighthouse Library Mystery series is a winner.

We first met Lady Phoebe Renshaw and her lady’s maid Eva Huntford several years ago. Leading characters in a series penned by Alyssa Maxwell, Lady Phoebe and Eva are an odd pair, whose friendship between the “upstairs and downstairs” worlds of aritistocratic England is increasingly enhanced …

Getting to read the first book in a new mystery series brings me great pleasure, and recently I had that opportunity.

Elizabeth Miles learned early that, contrary to the popular adage, honesty is not always the best policy, at least when it comes to finding justice.

Mystery lovers have Shelley Noble, bestselling author of Lighthouse Beach, The Beach at Painter’s Cove, and Whisper Beach, to thank for introducing us to Lady Philomena Dunbridge, Countess of Dunbridge, leading character in Ask Me No Questions, first in a new series.

One of the most powerful books to come my way recently is D-Day Girls by Sarah Rose.

Carola Dunn’s mystery series introduced readers to Lady Daisy Dalrymple several years ago. The Honourable Miss Dalrymple has never been obedient to her aristocratic background, and her marriage a few years ago to Alec Fletcher, a policeman and a widower with a daughter of his own, sealed the…

Many are we who enjoy Rhys Bowen’s mystery novels.

It’s autumn in 1888, the midst of America’s Gilded Age, and the world is agog at the shocking killings in London attributed to Jack the Ripper.

Ann B. Ross just made my reading schedule better with the release of her latest work Miss Julia Takes the Wheel.

A current popular mystery series penned by Carlene O’Connor features Siobhan O’Sullivan, one of several children orphaned when their parents were killed in a car crash by a drunk driver. Since then, Siobhan, the eldest daughter has tried her hardest to mother the brood, run the family’s bist…

Mariah Fredericks is the author of several young adult novels and has now graduated to a new genre.

We’ve all heard the opening line, “It was a dark and stormy night,” as Snoopy begins typing his soon-to-be best seller.