Category: Reviews

Teach the Torches to Burn by Christina Dodd

Cover of Teach the Torches to Burn has a design of flowers grapes and birds with a chalice and surrounding the title, held up by skelatal hands, mimicking Elizabethan embroidery.Kensington
Published June 30, 2026
Reviewed by Meredith Frazier

Third in Christina Dodd’s series featuring the eldest daughter of Romeo and Juliet (yes, that Romeo and Juliet who didn’t die after all), Teach the Torches to Burn is set in the days leading up to Rosaline’s wedding to Prince Escalus. Although in the previous book when Escalus tricked Rosaline into becoming his betrothed she protested much and repeatedly claimed she loved another, in this novel, the biggest mystery seems to be whether or not Rosaline and Escalus will have sex before their wedding night. A couple of murders do take place early in the novel, but they are mostly ignored for about half the book. However, as the wedding draws near, it becomes clear that a serial poisoner lurks among the many revelers, and he or she may be threatening Rosaline herself. That causes Rosaline to take a bit more interest in solving the murder mystery, which is all to the good, because the mystery is intriguing.

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The Brothers McKay by Craig Johnson (audiobook)

Cover of The Brothers McKay shows a man with a rifle standing on a mountain with a fire in the valley below, the sky a smoky red color.Narrated by George Guidall
Recorded Books
Released May 26, 2026
Reviewed by Sharon Mensing

The latest in the Walt Longmire series of mysteries set in Wyoming takes good advantage of Walt’s education as an English major as Walt and his team attempt to solve the murder of Pepper McKay, the universally disliked patriarch of a huge ranch family. As it riffs on Dostoevsky’s classic, The Brothers Karamazov, it deals with issues of faith, family, and fortune. It doesn’t hurt the underlying explanations that Walt is aided in the investigation, albeit reluctantly, by the Russian ex-spy who was his arch-enemy in the prior book in the series. Their relationship and trust develop over the course of this book, providing an opportunity for Johnson’s trademark good humor.

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Fear the Reaper by David Housewright

Cover of Fear the Reaper shows a country house, its lights lit up, surrounded by an orchard against a setting sun and dark skies.Minotaur
Published June 23, 2026
Reviewed by Julie Campbell

“Rushmore” McKenzie is a former police officer, now independently wealthy, who occasionally works as a private investigator. This time, however, it isn’t a matter of someone asking for his help. He, his wife, and and friends are at a wine bar when a young man shows up, armed with an automatic rifle. Before the would-be assassin has time to fire, McKenzie disarms him. What follows is figuring out if this was a planned mass murder event, or a targeted murder hidden within multiple victims.

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Hemlock Bay by Martin Edwards

Cover of Hemlock Bay shows a blue cliff topped by a lighthouse jutting into a red bay. Poisoned Pen
Published June 16, 2026
Reviewed by Barbara Fister

Evoking the Golden Age of crime fiction that the author has so thoroughly studied, Hemlock Bay places Rachel Savenake, an amateur sleuth who is recognized as an expert, at a new upscale seaside resort where she investigates a crime that hasn’t happened. Rather, her friend Jacob Flint – a crime reporter – has clued her in to the possibility a murder might be committed, thanks to a tip from a rattled fortune teller.

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Based on a True Story by Sarah Vaughan

Cover of Based on a True Story shows some items on a chest against a dark blue wall that has a painting of a hunting scene on it and a crack in the plaster.Harper
Published June 9, 2026
Reviewed by Barbara Fister

What can be made of the fact that two novels about immensely successful children’s book authors who came from poverty and have left a troubled legacy for their adult children were published within a week of one another? Probably nothing other than strange coincidence, given the two books are utterly different in style and tone. The Children by Melissa Albert is strange and haunted, written in immensely poetic language and completely unpredictable. Based on a True Story plays with a similar concept – what is true in fiction, and how might fiction distort the truth? – but it is a much more conventional thriller that throws a stressed family into a heightened situation with a clock ticking loudly to build suspense.

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Heather by Caitlin Mullen

Cover of Heather shows pine trees in a forest with an amber bead on top of the image.Celadon
Published June 9, 2026
Reviewed by Barbara Fister

Callie Hauser had left home to work as a narcotics detective in the urban north of New Jersey until her best friend was seriously injured in a hit and run accident. She returns to her small town in the Pine Barrens to serve as police chief, where the retired chief hovers over her, the officers resent her, and she has to pitch in on patrol shifts to provide basic coverage. She’s only been on the job for a few weeks when she stops a drunken driver – who turns out to be her troubled mother. She had struggled with addiction ever since her teenage years when she made a gruesome discovery: someone had left a newborn baby to die by the side of the road. Callie’s mother attributes it to the legendary Jersey Devil, traditionally believed to haunt the pine forests. Callie doesn’t buy the folklore explanation, but wonders if the case might be connected to the disappearance of twin sixteen year olds, who lived hand-to-mouth after  their mother abandoned them and their father left to seek work. She is determined to get to the bottom of it. It turns out to be a far more complex and personally demanding investigation than she can imagine.

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The Children by Melissa Albert

William MorrowCover of The Children looks like an early 20th century children's book, showing a crescent moon over a drawing of a multi-story old house surrounded by trees, with two children and two bees in front of the house.
Published June 2, 2026
Reviewed by Barbara Fister

Guinevere and Ennis are enchanted children. Well, in the books their mother writes they are. I reality they live in a remote place, home schooled but without any adult instruction, neglected by their mother who demands isolation for her writing and a father who is charming but feckless. Left to themselves, they roam the forests around the wooden house that’s full of strange carvings, acquiring scars and scrapes, bound together by their rural isolation as their mother’s books, a fantasy series, becomes a bestselling phenomenon, their fictionalized selves celebrities. Though they host loud house parties, their father’s acting career withers and the marriage sours. It all ends abruptly when Guin is eleven years old. There’s a mysterious fire, and all of the adults perish in the fire-engulfed house while the children escape into the woods. The final book in the fantasy series is lost, too, as well as Guin and Ennis’s close relationship.

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The Brothers McKay by Craig Johnson

Cover of The Brothers McKay shows a man with a rifle standing on a mountain with a fire in the valley below, the sky a smoky red color.Viking
Published May 26, 2026
Reviewed by Julie Campbell

Pepper McKay was a horrible human being, so when he turns up dead, there is not only a plethora of suspects, but some of those suspects want to take credit for his death — at least until the real killer is caught. At the top of the list are his four sons, three legitimate and one born the “wrong side of the blanket” as they used to say.

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Some Sort of Justice by Peter Grainger

Cover of Some Sort of Justice shows a vine-covered wall with an open gate with a drained swimming pool in the foreground.Union Square
Published June 2, 2026
Reviewed by Barbara Fister

DCI Cara Freeman heads up a group of detectives at Kings Lake in Norfolk who have been handed a puzzler. An Earl drowned in a swimming pool some time ago, with another police force investigating. Ultimately, it was ruled an accident. He’d been at a party at the home of a well-known businessman known for gatherings that included a surplus of drink and drugs. Case closed – except the Earl’s sister is not satisfied. Private detectives she had hired cast doubt on the handling of the case and the evidence presented at the inquest. Freeman is asked by her superiors whether her team can look into again, though she gets the strong impression it could end up derailing her career if the wrong conclusions are drawn in a case that appears to be highly political. And she’s right: the pressure is on to answer the questions raised by a shoddy investigation before it becomes a PR disaster – or they’re shut down.

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