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Posts by Katie H

Crime and the city

Cover of Historical Mysteries
A review of Historical Mysteries by Chris Nickson

Chris Nickson really, really loves his hometown of Leeds, England. The music journalist and mystery novelist has written, by this point, four detective series spanning two hundred years set in Yorkshire’s largest city. While each series could loosely be considered police procedurals, what makes Nickson’s series stand out is the portrait of the city itself—a place largely off the beaten path for many crime readers—as it progresses from a regional center of the wool and agricultural trade to sprawling industrial boom town bursting with late Victorian optimism.

Nov 7, 2024

Game over?

Cover of Lady Eve's Last Con
A review of Lady Eve's Last Con by Rebecca Fraimow

It seems like a perfect meet cute: wide-eyed debutante Eve Ojukwu, fresh from the hinterlands of Kepler, bumps into wealthy bachelor Esteban Mendez-Yuki of megacorp MYCorps on a half-gravity dancefloor on the ritzy satellite of New Monte. Except this is all part of a carefully orchestrated con game, hatched by Ruthi Johnson—our innocent Eve—in revenge for Mendez-Yuki’s jilting of her sister Jules, now expecting Esteban’s child back on Kepler.

Oct 23, 2024

Sweet Anticipation for November/December 2024

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New Titles

Is it November yet? While the air might be filled with anticipation about a major event on November 5, there is the anticipation that comes of finding something new to read.  With October offering an abundance of big titles and notable debuts, November and December might be a bit thin by comparison, but there’s still plenty look forward to.  The highlights:

Oct 16, 2024

Sweet Anticipation for October 2024

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October brings with it a particularly special time of year here in Madison: the return of the Wisconsin Book Festival, this October 17-20. This year’s events include authors of national standing to student writers embarking on new careers; topics of politics, poetry, science and culture to things that go bump in the night and just plain good stories that will keep you reading late into the night. And best of all, it’s all free. Check out the events page and plan your schedule—some events require advance registrations.

Sep 24, 2024

Sweet Anticipation for September 2024

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New Titles

It’s the most wonderful time of the year!  Not THE holiday season, but it’s as good as the holidays for the book lovers out there—the start of the fall publishing season. Fall sees the release of the heavy hitters of publishers’ catalogs as award season ramps up and booksellers start to build stock—and buzz—for those holiday shoppers. Here’s what to look forward to for next month:

Aug 22, 2024

Sweet Anticipation for August 2024

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New Titles

August is pretty much synonymous with vacations as people try to eke out the last of summer fun before school resumes. So it’s no surprise that the publishing industry is a bit similar, with houses holding back for the big Labor Day weekend sales push. But there are still a few notable releases heading to shelves this month for readers who might have some space in the luggage…

Aug 9, 2024

Remembering the way she was

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A review of We Keep the Dead Close: A Murder at Harvard and a Half Centurey of Silence by Becky Cooper

When Becky Cooper first heard the story as a student at Harvard, it seemed both unbelievable but still entirely feasible: in early January 1969, a Harvard professor killed a female archeology grad student after she threatened to expose their affair. After she failed to show for her general exams, she was discovered in her apartment with red ochre and necklaces arranged ritualistically over her bloodied, naked body. Harvard smothered the investigation, the murder remained unsolved, and the professor was still teaching in the same department, fully tenured.

Jul 18, 2024

Always on the bleeding edge

Cover of The Formula:  How Rogues,
A review of The Formula: How Rogues, Geniuses, and Speed Freaks Reengineered F1 into the World’s Fastest-Growing Sport by Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg

Prior to 2020, if you knew anything about Formula 1—or even knew what it was—you were a tiny minority of the population. You were also likely to be a gearhead, a motorsports obsessive or a European—probably all three, really. 2020, however, was a year to remember, and not just because of a global health crisis. It was the year Formula 1 went mainstream, all thanks to a series called Drive to Survive on Netflix.

Apr 29, 2024

The rich, they are different

Cover of The Other Half
A review of The Other Half by Charlotte Vassell

There has to be something very satisfying about killing off a rich person. The mystery genre’s very foundations rests on the corpses of the well-to-do; that any hereditary titles survived the Golden Age is astonishing. Those plump inheritances, the isolated country houses and silently judgmental domestic staff, often coupled with a victim and cadre of suspects that usually don’t generate too much sympathy (they did have a pretty comfy existence before the fatally poisoned claret, after all)—the mystery basically writes itself.

Apr 3, 2024

Chilling truths

Cover of All the Sinners Bleed
A review of All the Sinners Bleed by S. A. Cosby

When you set a book in place named Charon County, you’d better be prepared to go to some dark places. S. A. Cosby’s latest thriller, All the Sinners Bleed, does not disappoint in that respect. Mixing strong characterizations and engrossing action with stories rooted in America’s racial reckoning, Cosby again proves why he’s become a must-read among crime readers.

Mar 13, 2024

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