historical mysteries

  • Black History in Fiction

    Each February, many readers come to the library to check out the latest titles on Black history. Don’t read history books? No worries! Whether you enjoy historical or literary fiction, thrillers or fantasy, romance or mysteries, here are some recent books that immerse us in the lived experiences of Black Americans throughout our history. By… Continue reading

  • Mixing History with Mystery

    Fellow readers, there are few things I love more than crossover titles – books with footing in multiple genres. I am a huge mystery reader, and I will follow mystery plots into many other genres. Today, let’s talk about some new mysteries that are also quite good historical fiction titles. The Cabinets of Barnaby Mayne… Continue reading

  • Nightstand Reads: Confessions of a re-reader

    Today’s guest blogger is mystery author Bernadette Pajer, who shares what she’s been reading — and rereading. I confess. I’m a rereader. Although my to-be-read pile is a teetering stack of intriguing new titles by talented authors, and although I’m sure in that pile are a few “keepers,” books that I will cherish and reread,… Continue reading

  • Richard III, part deux: Return of the Return of the King!

    My friends and colleagues will tell you I’m a bit of a bone nut – osteophile? – witness the lifelike replica of a Roman Gladiator’s skull that grins on my desk. Plus I’m a Shakespeare fan, so I was totally jazzed over the recent revelation that a skeleton found under a Leicester car park had… Continue reading

  • Crime: Beneath the Antimacassars

    I like a dark, creepy Victorian crime novel — the real doozies – stories so strange and bizarre, nobody’s thought of them yet. The Thing about Thugs by Tabish Khair is a doozy. The Victorian mystery as we know it is turned on its head, so to speak, with a “normal” scientist, Captain William T.… Continue reading

  • Murder at the Olympic Games

    I foolishly tried to resist getting caught up in the fervor, but it’s no use: once again my attention has been totally dominated by the Olympic Games. Such is the case for many of our patrons if the small talk at our service desk is any indication. There’s also been a run on all of our books about the Games,… Continue reading

  • A Dream of Summer

    A Dream of Summer, because we are all dreaming of summer… Here we are in the heady rush of summer, where busy summer plans are making themselves felt regardless of the on-again, off-again weather. In the midst of all the hurry, I find myself longing for quiet dreaming reads – the ones that speak of… Continue reading

  • Crime: Imagining Jack the Ripper

    Whitechapel, London, 1888 Would Sherlock Holmes identify Jack the Ripper using his astute powers of deduction? Arthur Conan Doyle never put Holmes on the Whitechapel set, but Lyndsay Faye pits the pipe-smoking, cognitively-advanced detective against the Ripper with disastrous results in her novel Dust and Shadow: An Account of the Ripper Killings by Dr. John… Continue reading

  • Too good to miss: Josephine Tey

    I recently discovered classic mystery author Josephine Tey. A patron and a colleague had told me about her years ago, and I filed the name away until Nancy Pearl mentioned Tey as well. And like many other readers in Seattle, when Nancy Pearl says something is good, you move that book or author to the front… Continue reading

  • New Mystery, Suspense and Thrillers, and Horror

    2010 is a great year for mysteries! Several well-known and beloved mystery writers are publishing new series titles: Barbara Cleverly (Joe Sandilands), Frank Tallis (Max Liebermann), Donna Leon (Commissario Guido Brunetti), Jacqueline Winspear (Maisie Dobbs), Elizabeth George (Thomas Lynley) and Elizabeth Peters (Amelia Peabody), to name a few. If you haven’t yet discovered Alan Gordon’s 13th… Continue reading