Of all human relationships, there is none more mysterious, intense and scrutinized than the one between mother and child. We all know that motherhood brings profound joy and extreme exhaustion. What is discussed far less is the extreme fear that can creep in alongside those other, more palatable emotions. And this base terror – […]
Category Archives: Blog Article
Ten Contemporary “Thriller” Novels That Highlight the Natural World
Ten Contemporary “Thriller” Novels That Highlight the Natural World You don’t have to be a nature lover to appreciate a well-written novel scene that incorporates the natural world. Especially during a time of twin global threats brought by pandemic and climate change, it seems like more and more people are paying closer attention to […]
5 Women of Color in Mystery on the Complex Histories of LA
5 Women of Color in Mystery on the Complex Histories of LA By Nancy Jooyoun Kim Often depicted as a playground for the rich, a city of movie and sports stars, muscle, and palm trees against spectacular sunsets, Los Angeles as a setting has long fascinated mystery readers with seedy and sensational stories that […]
Book Review: The Potato Masher Murder
Book Review: The Potato Masher Murder Decades after the fact, it’s disturbing to discover that a member of your family was murdered. It’s even more shocking to discover that another family member was responsible for that violent death. This scenario actually happened to Gary Sosniecki, a journalist who discovered that in 1906, his great-grandmother Cecilia […]
Small town, small crime?
By Vanessa Savage I love setting my books in small towns because the smallest crime, which might go unnoticed in a city, is shockingly huge in a village. For a writer, it can be challenging – it is so much harder for the perpetrator to hide his or her crime in such a close-knit […]
BOOK REVIEW: Further MX Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
BOOK REVIEW: Further MX Adventures of Sherlock Holmes MX Publishing continues to release new Sherlock Holmes stories, bringing new perspectives and approaches to familiar figures and settings. The Last Confession of Sherlock Holmes by Kieran Lyne is a new edition to a popular subgenre of Sherlock Holmes literature: Holmes’ investigation of the Jack […]
Seven Mystery Writing Tips
Seven Mystery Writing Tips Peter Abrahams aka Spencer Quinn 1. In plotting a mystery it’s good to know at least the bare bone sequential details of the actual crime. For example, Jenny hires hit man Tommy to kill her cheating husband Robby but unknown to her Tommy subcontracts the hit out to his drunken buddy […]
An Exclusive with Colleen Coble
Strand Magazine Interview – Colleen Coble Best-selling romantic suspense author Colleen Coble’s novels have won or finaled in awards ranging from the Best Books of Indiana, the ACFW Carol Award, the Romance Writers of America RITA, the Holt Medallion, the Daphne du Maurier, National Readers’ Choice, and the Booksellers Best. She has nearly 4 million books […]
Historical Figures in Our Shared Collective Memories we Should Never Forget
Historical Figures in Our Shared Collective Memories We Should Never Forget…. If you are a historian (which I am not) or an amateur historian in the form of an alternative-history novelist (which I seem to have become), and if you set your tale deep enough in the past, you spend quite a lot of time […]
Ten Thrilling Mothers
Ten Thrilling Mothers by Jenny Milchman Some of our oldest stories have mothers behind them—think Jocasta from Oedipus Rex or even Eve, mother of two very troubled brothers. This may be attributable to the fact that as disparate as the human experience is, we all have a mother, she’s part of our origin stories, […]
Five Thrillers with Riveting Mother-Daughter Dynamics
“A Freudian slip is when you say one thing but mean your mother.” As a clinical psychologist (as well as both a daughter and a mom), I appreciate a good mother joke. Fortunately, we’re (mostly) past the days when all psychological quirks and ills are blamed on the lady who birthed us. Nonetheless, from […]
Five Debut Writers Making a Splash in the Thriller World
Five Debut Writers Making a Splash in the Thriller World By Amy Stuart The past few months have been a difficult time for authors promoting books, with all in-person events cancelled in favour of Zoom readings. But many debut writers have made the best of it, finding creative and unique ways to connect […]