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Night Broken
Night Broken by Patricia Briggs is $2.99! This is book eight in the Mercy Thompson series, which is a re-reading favorite among many, including people in my house who aren’t me. This book has a 4.4 star average (wow!) on GoodReads, too. If you’re looking to fill in your Mercy collection, here’s a great opportunity.
An unexpected phone call heralds a new challenge for Mercy. Her mate Adam’s ex-wife is in trouble, on the run from a stalker. Adam isn’t the kind of man to turn away a person in need—and Mercy knows it. But with Christy holed up in Adam’s house, Mercy can’t shake the feeling that something about the situation isn’t right.
Soon, her suspicions are confirmed when she learns that Christy has the farthest thing from good intentions. She wants Adam back and she’s willing to do whatever it takes to make it happen, including turning Adam’s pack against Mercy.
Mercy isn’t about to step down without a fight, but there’s a more dangerous threat circling. Christy’s stalker is more than a bad man—in fact, he may not be human at all. As the bodies start piling up, Mercy must put her personal troubles aside to face a creature with the power to tear her whole world apart.
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Death at La Fenice
Death at La Fenice by Donna Leon is $2.99! This is book one in the Commissario Brunetti mystery series, which is now 32 books long. I’m featuring this one because I bought it because this was one of my late grandmother’s favorite mystery series. This book has a 3.8 star average, and rave reviews from Grandma H. I don’t see any price matching yet, but fingers crossed. Have you read this series?
A conductor succumbs to cyanide at the famed Venice opera house, in the first mystery in the New York Times–bestselling, award-winning series.
During intermission at the famed La Fenice opera house in Venice, Italy, a notoriously difficult and widely disliked German conductor is poisoned—and suspects abound. Guido Brunetti, a native Venetian, sets out to unravel the mystery behind the high-profile murder. To do so, he calls on his knowledge of Venice, its culture, and its dirty politics. Along the way, he finds the crime may have roots going back decades—and that revenge, corruption, and even Italian cuisine may play a role.
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The Winter Sea
The Winter Sea by Susanna Kearsley is $2.99! This is one of the most absorbing and atmospheric books I’ve ever read, and if you like time slip fiction, you’ll probably really enjoy this book. Back in 2011, it was my Sizzling Book Club pick. It has a 4.1 star average, and is book one in a three-book series. Have you read this book?
History has all but forgotten…
In the spring of 1708, an invading Jacobite fleet of French and Scottish soldiers nearly succeeded in landing the exiled James Stewart in Scotland to reclaim his crown.
Now, Carrie McClelland hopes to turn that story into her next bestselling novel. Settling herself in the shadow of Slains Castle, she creates a heroine named for one of her own ancestors and starts to write.
But when she discovers her novel is more fact than fiction, Carrie wonders if she might be dealing with ancestral memory, making her the only living person who knows the truth-the ultimate betrayal-that happened all those years ago, and that knowledge comes very close to destroying her…
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Darkfever
Darkfever by Karen Marie Moning is $1.99! This is the first in the Fever series, and during the height of Urban Fantasy/Paranormal romance popularity, I think everyone I knew had read or was reading this book and exclaiming about it. Is it fair to say that some books imprint upon a readership? If so, I think this one did. Did you read this one, too?
“My name is MacKayla, Mac for short. I’m a sidhe-seer, one who sees the Fae, a fact I accepted only recently and very reluctantly.
My philosophy is pretty simple – any day nobody’s trying to kill me is a good day in my book. I haven’t had many good days lately. Not since the walls between Man and Fae came down. But then, there’s not a sidhe-seer alive who’s had a good day since then.”
When MacKayla’s sister was murdered, she left a single clue to her death – a cryptic message on Mac’s cell phone. Journeying to Ireland in search of answers, Mac is soon faced with an even greater challenge: staying alive long enough to master a power she had no idea she possessed – a gift that allows her to see beyond the world of man, into the dangerous realm of the Fae…
As Mac delves deeper into the mystery of her sister’s death, her every move is shadowed by the dark, mysterious Jericho…while at the same time, the ruthless V’lane – an alpha Fae who makes sex an addiction for human women – closes in on her. As the boundary between worlds begins to crumble, Mac’s true mission becomes clear: to find the elusive Sinsar Dubh before someone else claims the all-powerful Dark Book – because whoever gets to it first holds nothing less than complete control both worlds in their hands…
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The Commissario Brunetti series was a favorite when I was reading exclusively mysteries. One of these days I’m going to acquire all 32 (!) and enjoy a one-woman reading marathon.
The Winter Sea: Purchased in 2013, still haven’t read.
Loved The Winter Sea!
The Winter Sea, along with my other Kearsley favorite, The Rose Garden, is the book against which I judge all other time slip books. Nothing has come close to meeting her books in atmosphere and emotional stakes for me.
I’m going to yuck a lot of peoples’ yum here, but I do NOT get all the Mercy Thompson/Alpha & Omega love. They’re full of cultural appropriation/racism and misogyny and for some reason Briggs is rarely criticized for it.
I also love Donna Leon’s Commisario Brunetti mystery series, although the first novel doesn’t come close to matching the intrigue of later novels. Be prepared to salivate over Italian food culture — this isn’t one of those cute mystery series with recipes included, but you might come to wish it was. Brunetti’s wife is a specialist in English Literature at the local university in Venice (she has a passion for Henry James) — the conversations in which they talk over his challenges over delicious food and wine are a delight.
I don’t think that you need to read the Donna Leon mysteries in any particular order — their kids get older, there are some small shifts in his relations with coworkers — but there aren’t important plot points you need to know to enjoy the mysteries. Mostly Brunetti walks and walks and walks and describes what he is seeing along his walks as he thinks about cases. If you’ve ever been to Venice you’ll love the memories, if you haven’t you’ll want to go although the recent mysteries in the series make clear the extent to which tourism is destroying the city.
Another huge fan of The Winter Sea here. Like a lot of time slip novels, one of the romances is more compelling than the other — in this case the romance set in 1708 is hugely compelling and the one set in the present while lovely gets a lot less attention to detail. But this is a gorgeous novel if you have some patience with detailed settings and historical nuances. The present-day romance also has a fabulous depiction of a male lover in total support of his love’s writing habit even when she wears pajamas all morning and barely talks to him. 🙂
I totally agree with Kat and Emily C about The Winter Sea! When it was first published here in the UK it was titled Sophia’s Secret – not such a good title imho, but it was one of the ‘gateway’ books that first got me into reading romance several years ago. I still re-read it and have always loved the sense of place. Although there are two more connected books published subsequently it works completely as a standalone. Highly recommended.
Pet peeve though: it’s recently been re-published here with the title changed back to The Winter Sea but the Amazon preview shows a mistake (missing word) in the VERY FIRST LINE of the ebook…not sure if it affects physical copies too, but you’d hope for better from a major publisher 🙁
After it was a SBTB book club pick, I got about half-way through The Winter Sea. It’s been in the half0way state for years now. I guess about a decade.
Someone in my book club at work was a fan of the Donna Leon series. This is incentive to try them out. Thank you for the alert.
Julia Whelan’s THANK YOU FOR LISTENING is $2.99 on Kindle today. One of my top reads of 2022.
Also on is Ruth Ozeki’s THE BOOK OF FORM & EMPTINESS, which is a strange inventive book of interest to those who like their fiction strange and beautiful.
@Michelle 100%!!!
Briggs said the hero of that series voted for Trump and the readers who were surprised or upset about it weren’t paying attention because he was born in the 50s and was a soldier so obviously he wouldn’t vote for a woman. Like???? “If you don’t know that alpha heroes only vote for draft dodging sex offenders then you lack reading comprehension” I’m paraphrasing but close enough to get caught on plagiarism software.
Darkfever was one of the first books I read when I first started reading romance novels. We were camping and I couldn’t put it down, and I sat at our campsite picnic table reading all weekend.
But when I finished it… I never picked up another in the series. The romance was a very slow burn, and the ending didn’t resolve much and didn’t give me enough to feel like the book was satisfying. And when I saw how many sequels there were, it kind of turned me away because it seemed like I could spend months reading them, and I wanted to read so many other things, too. I searched online to read a synopsis, and it seemed like more threads were going to be added before anything started tying up. I’m curious if anyone else read the series.
Maybe I’m grumpy over the rain today (in Minnesota, in January!), but I found THE ROSE GARDEN boring and unsatisfying (and couldn’t even finish THE SCORPIO RACES). Now, when I see “atmospheric” to describe a book, I steer clear. And I don’t like kick-ass heroine-UF or first-person, so Patricia Briggs isn’t even on my radar. Am grateful for a new-to-me mystery series though :>).
Love the Donna Leon books, definitely my pick of this group. I tend to prefer a detective who is in love with their partner, like Nick and Nora, Spenser and Susan, Brunetti and Paola. You’d think I would love the In Death series also but I find the futurism too jarring.
I am not a huge fan of Kearsley, but I think The Winter Sea was the best of the ones I read.
Never understood all the Moning fans, but there sure are a lot of them. And count me in as another one who’s utterly over the Mercy series I feel like I bitched about it here fairly recently too.
I initially liked the Mercy Thompson series, but as the series went on becam less and less happy with it until I finally got completely put off with just the precis of Night Broken. Mercy has no real female friends, and setting the evil ex up against the special one is a tedious, misogynistic trope. That was it for me.
@ Amelia I hadn’t seen that Briggs said that about Adam, but it’s slug slime, I have four brothers who were born in the fifties and, while we’re British so couldn’t vote for Trump, none of them would have done so. Just own being a MAGA Briggs.