fiction

…the fast-paced adventure starring Dan and Amy Cahill, two normal kids whose lives are thrown into a tailspin when their beloved grandmother dies? Their story is told in the popular 39 Clues series.

… the Scottsdale Food Festival? Jenn McKinlay’s newest book, Death by the Dozen*, has Mel, Angie, Tate and all of the DeLaura brothers back for the baking festival of the year. This one comes with a $10,000 prize and a lot of prestige.

…the Dead Detective?  Angel Interrupted is the really good second book in Chaz McGee’s series*.  Kevin Fahey was a drunk and a so-so detective in life and is now a ghost trying to help his replacement, Maggie Gunn. He can only guide Maggie in solving crimes through his thoughts, which are at times both funny and gritty.

…the stuck-in-a-time-loop orphanage that serves as a home for some very peculiar orphans? Jacob learns the truth about it in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs. When Jacob’s grandfather is brutally murdered by monsters only Jacob can see, he is determined to find answers.

… the classic novel of race and justice in Alabama? For me, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is the ultimate. It has long been the book I take with me if I am going somewhere and want to take a book. I have probably read it over 100 times. It makes me laugh, cry, think, laugh some more, wonder, get angry and everything in between.

… a pret’ near perfect murder? Well-Offed in Vermont is the first book in a new series by Amy Patricia Meade. Nick and Stella are “flatlanders” (out-of-staters) who try to move into a vintage farmhouse in a sleepy little town in Vermont. They never get moved in until the very end of the book though.

… the ghost who has to fix the mistakes he made in life?  It may sound familiar, but Desolate Angel* by Chaz McGee puts a different spin on it.  Kevin Fahey was a crummy husband and father and only a mediocre detective, who was more often drunk than sober on the job, when he was killed in a drug bust.

… the spectacularly spooky English ghost story?  The White Devil by Justin Evans follows the story of seventeen-year-old Andrew Taylor, who is sent to a British boarding school for his last year before college.  But it proves to be a tough adjustment, as Andrew’s classmates succumb to a mysterious epidemic as soon as he steps foot on campus, and Andrew begins having fri

…Vinnie Bump? In Melanie Benjamin’s The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb you’ll find out how the amazing Mercy Lavinia ‘Vinnie’ Warren Bump came to knock the Civil War off the front pages of the newspaper. This tiny, 2 ft.

… the latest cozy urban fantasy mystery that has a gobgoyle in it? The newest book by Juliet Blackwell, Hexes and Hemlines*, gives us more of a glimpse into the past of Lily Ivory, the owner of Aunt Cora’s Closet, a vintage clothing shop in the San Francisco area.