A couple of caveats: this is the first book by Kingfisher I've read and I'm a sucker for fairytale retellings, even if I don't read enough of them.
In this loose retelling of the Snow White story. We have Snow White, of course, apples, and mirrors, but no dwarves. Our main character is a healer, Anya, a poisons expert who is summoned by the King to discover how Snow is being slowly poisoned. Anya, of course, has no choice but to go. Anya is essentially a spinster who has devoted her life to her studies, made possible thanks for her father being a wealthy merchant. She's smart but her discussion of poisons and poisonous plants tends to be a bit much for people in social situations. Anya is aided in her investigation by two of the royal guards, one of whom is a potential love interest, and a talking cat, who is just as haughty as you might expect. .
I...
The Fatal Flying Affair is the first in the series that I've picked up, but it worked fine without having read the previous installments. Lady Hardcastle's brother, Harry, who works for the Secret Service Bureau, stops by with an assignment. He wants Emily and her maid/best friend, Florence, to look into the death of a pilot who was testing a parachute and to find the person who is leaking top secret intelligence. Harry believes airplanes are going to have major military
I just didn't love this one. The banter felt a bit too clever, if that makes sense, and I didn't care about the solution to the mystery. The village talent show was fun, but I'm not sure I'll pick up another in the series....
Fourteen years ago Natalie Grove found her older sister, Sarah, dead in a lily pond at Castle Vyne. The murderer was never caught and now Natalie, a best-selling author, has written a book based on the mystery. She wants to find the truth about what happened to Sarah. If you've read and enjoyed Marley's other English Village Mysteries, this one, while it takes place in the same area, happens before the other book and features different characters. I thought I might find that disappointing, but I thoroughly enjoyed this one. The new characters are fully developed, if not all that likeable, and the setting still feels like a claustrophobic small town.
Natalie has certainly stirred a hornet's nest by redrawing attention to her sister's death. There are so many twists here. The town, her friends, her family are all holding on to major secrets, and just when you have some idea of what's going on, there's another surprise. It kept me...
I've read at least one other Fixer-Upper mystery and watched the Hallmark shows, but I was looking for something free to listen to and found this one. I didn't love it to be honest. Shannon goes out on a blind date that ends badly, with her kneeing him and threatening to kill him - in front of a beach of witnesses. Of course, the guy later turns up dead - in one of the houses her company is remodeling, killed with one of her distinctive pink tools. She is, of course, a suspect and decides she needs to clear her name. Unfortunately, most of the other suspects are women too. The guy was jerk.
I like Shannon in the tv show, but here she seems young. She doesn't learn and continues to threaten to kill people throughout the book (because doesn't everyone) but then is dismayed when they end up murdered, or almost murdered. She still has some kind...
This is the final installment of the Secret Bookcase Mysteries - although don't worry, we'll get a spin-off, The Novel Detectives series. This time around, Annie and Fletcher are in Santa Clara for a book fair and Liam and Pri are coming along too. It just so happens that the fair is near the company that Annie blames for her best friend, Scarlet's, death, ten years ago, and Annie has a plan to get the evidence she needs. While we do get some background info on the cold case, this one probably works better if you've read others in the series. Of course, there's also a murder at the book fair. One of the presenters is killed by his own VR device, and Annie is there when it happens.
The book fair sounds amazing and makes me want to go to a bookish event soon. The two mystery plot are balanced well. We have several suspects for the current murder...
