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SIX SWEETS UNDER

Like the included recipes, it’s all very simple and goes down easy.

A former actress returns to her small Vermont town intending to make chocolates and solves a mystery on the side.

Can you ever really go home again? wonders Rebecca Ransom, who has traded her life as an actress for the simpler pleasures of Larch Haven. Becca thinks she’s found happiness in taking over chocolate-making responsibilities at True Confections, the little shop owned by her perfectly dubbed grandparents Lolly and Pops. She’s even developed her own creation, a chocolate gondola, in celebration of the town’s boats, which are used for transportation, just as in Venice. Not that Becca would ever want to steer one of the gondolas for herself: Just the thought of it sends her into a panic. But she thinks she’s found her happy place even if her boyfriend, Justin, expresses his doubts during his visit from Hollywood. And Becca’s surrounded by other folks who think small-town life is bliss—all except for town curmudgeon Archie Smith, who never found a fight he couldn’t pick. His latest battle is with Pops over a vintage scooter, and even though Pops has 20 years on Archie, Archie still takes a swing at him. Unbelievable. When a body is found in a canal not too long after, Becca isn’t shocked to discover it’s Archie, though the fact that even a mean-spirited man like him has been murdered is a surprise in such a close-knit community. Did Archie simply choose the wrong enemy, or could his death have something to do with the disappearance 10 years ago of teen Lexi Derendorf, the only other mysterious event in Larch Haven history?

Like the included recipes, it’s all very simple and goes down easy.

Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2023

ISBN: 9780593546611

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Berkley

Review Posted Online: Nov. 28, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2022

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A CONSPIRACY OF BONES

Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.

Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.

A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”

Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.

Pub Date: March 17, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Scribner

Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020

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THE THURSDAY MURDER CLUB

From the Thursday Murder Club series , Vol. 1

A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.

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Four residents of Coopers Chase, a British retirement village, compete with the police to solve a murder in this debut novel.

The Thursday Murder Club started out with a group of septuagenarians working on old murder cases culled from the files of club founder Elizabeth Best’s friend Penny Gray, a former police officer who's now comatose in the village's nursing home. Elizabeth used to have an unspecified job, possibly as a spy, that has left her with a large network of helpful sources. Joyce Meadowcroft is a former nurse who chronicles their deeds. Psychiatrist Ibrahim Arif and well-known political firebrand Ron Ritchie complete the group. They charm Police Constable Donna De Freitas, who, visiting to give a talk on safety at Coopers Chase, finds the residents sharp as tacks. Built with drug money on the grounds of a convent, Coopers Chase is a high-end development conceived by loathsome Ian Ventham and maintained by dangerous crook Tony Curran, who’s about to be fired and replaced with wary but willing Bogdan Jankowski. Ventham has big plans for the future—as soon as he’s removed the nuns' bodies from the cemetery. When Curran is murdered, DCI Chris Hudson gets the case, but Elizabeth uses her influence to get the ambitious De Freitas included, giving the Thursday Club a police source. What follows is a fascinating primer in detection as British TV personality Osman allows the members to use their diverse skills to solve a series of interconnected crimes.

A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.

Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-98-488096-3

Page Count: 368

Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking

Review Posted Online: June 30, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020

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