Reading right now:

            “Brownies and Broomsticks” by Bailey Cates. I just found this series called the Magical Bakery Mystery series which started with “Brownies and Broomsticks” (2012). After Katie Lightfoot moves from Ohio to Savannah to open a bakery with her Aunt and Uncle, she finds out that she comes from a long line of witches. As she struggles to recover from a bad breakup, open a new business, and adjust to her heritage, she must also help solve the murder of a powerful local resident who threatened to destroy their new bakery. Katie’s uncle was seen arguing with the dead women just before her death and is the number one suspect. I am really enjoying this start to this new series and am looking forward to catching up with the other three books that are available and in July the fifth book comes out called “Magic and Macaroons.” Cates also writes the Home Crafting Mystery series under the name Cricket McRae.

                   

On hold right now:

            “Winter at the Door” by Sarah Graves. Known for her Home Repair is Homicide series, Graves opens a new series with Boston homicide cop Lizzie Snow starting a new job in a small town in Maine. Her new job takes off quickly when the deaths of several of the city’s retired cops begins to look like murder. Lizzie finds that the small town has a dark side which the townspeople don’t want to talk about. Lizzie also has a dark side which involves her sister’s murder and the hope that the town holds to secret to her missing niece’s location. The book is being compared to Linda Castillo and Lisa Gardner’s books which makes it sound like a winner.

Other Mysterious Things:

           

            Covering up and keeping secrets is a common theme in mystery novels and that theme continues in Jack Fredrickson’s “Silence the Dead.” Fredrickson is known for his Dek Ekstrom mystery series, but this new novel is based on a real life murder case. When an 1948 unsolved murder victim was exhumed, someone else’s head was found in the casket. Reading about this event in the newspaper caught Fredrickson’s attention and resulted in “Silence the Dead.”

Other new books available in January:

Reading right now:

            “Ghost in the Guacamole” by Sue Ann Jaffarian. Here’s a paranormal series with down-to-earth characters that you can’t help but love. This is the fifth book in the Ghost of Granny Apples series which continues the adventures of amateur sleuth and medium Emma Whitecastle and her great-great-great grandmother the ghost of a western pioneer woman who can quote movies and TV shows with the best of them. These books are clever and funny and include a lot of California color. I really enjoy the characters, the humor, and the plots of all of these books and the current book is no exception. If you want to lighten up your mystery reading experience, you can’t go wrong with this great series.

                   

On hold right now:

            “Shark Skin Suite” by Tim Dorsey. Another mystery author who started out as a reporter, Dorsey’s darkly comic Florida noirs may not be for everyone. If you like insane oddball characters combined with grisly murders, his series may just be for you. The Serge Storms series started in 1999 with “Florida Roadkill” and continues this month with the 18^th book in this unique series. Trying to explain these books may not be possible, but just knowing that Serge Storms is a person may give you an idea that when you start reading this series you may feel that you’ve fallen down the rabbit hole. Once down there you may not want to leave so if you haven’t found these books yet start at the beginning and watch your sanity.

Other Mysterious Things:

           

            Humor is a tough recommendation. Sometimes I think something is really funny, but a friend or relative may hate it. Despite this there have been some really fun mystery movies that I have loved and maybe you might love some of them as well. “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” is a movie that I can watch over and over. I have also loved “Fletch” and all the Thin Man movies (start with “The Thin Man”), “The Last Boy Scout,” “The Trouble with Harry,”  “Arsenic and Old Lace,” and “The Truth About Charlie.” Many of Agatha Christie’s books have been made into movies, but some of the best are the ones where Margaret Rutherford played Miss Jane Marple (“Murder Ahoy,” “Murder Most Foul,” “Murder at the Gallop,” etc.). Rutherford is an hilarious Miss Marple. The six “Thin Man” movies and TV show were based on the book by Dashiell Hammett and no couple has ever been funnier than Nick and Nora Charles.

            Once you start listing them you might find that there are lots of mystery authors writing with a humorous twist. A few of these great authors include: Janet Evanovich, Claire Chilton, Victoria Laurie, Stephanie Bond, A.R. Winters, Shirley Damsgaard, Meg Cabot, Jennifer Crusie, Alice Loweecey, Susan Wittig Albert, Jill Churchill, Donna Andrews, Lawrence Block, Rhys Bowen, Dorothy Cannell, Harlan Coben, Mary Daheim, Kinky Friedman, Carolyn Hart, Joan Hess, and David Rosenfelt.

Great authors, funny books and funny movies! Try one.

Reading right now:

“Nantucket Five-spot” by Steven Axelrod. In this second book in the Henry Kennis mystery series, agents from Homeland Security come to town to try to stop the Boston Pops concert on Nantucket from being blown up by a terrorist. Henry Kennis is Nantucket’s new poetry-writing Chief of Police from California who finds himself faced with trying to save the concert in which the island’s summer economy is based on while dealing with his ex-love interest who now works for Homeland Security. Kennis unravels a bizarre conspiracy rooted in the complicated relationships of small town life. 

On hold right now:

           “Glow,” by Ned Beauman. This is the third novel by up-and-coming British author Beauman. This humorous thriller centers around the newest recreational drug called glow and its connections to missing Burmese people in London, and foxes behaving oddly. What more could you ask for? 

Other Mysterious Things:

            “Child 44” by Tom Rob Smith came out in 2008 and was the first in the Leo Demidov series and is soon to be a movie. Smith was nominated for the Anthony Award, the Man Booker Prize, and the Barry Award for “Child 44.”  Set in Russia and centering around MGB officer Leo Demidov, the novel tells the story of the killing of children in a regime where murder is not acknowledged.

LOOKING BACK:

DID YOU MISS ANY OF THESE BEST 

MYSTERIES & THRILLERS OF 2014?