John Staughton, Senior Reviewer

Small-town mayhem and unlikely elderly investigators make for an original whodunit in Trouble at the Buckeye Festival by Alice Kanaka. Celebrating the spirit of adventure and mystery, regardless of age, Bumfuzzle and Cattywampus are a hugely entertaining duo at the heart of this whimsical novel. As they sleuth their way from strange festival mischief to an unexpected corpse in a closet, the stakes of their investigation keep getting higher and wilder, making this character-driven conspiracy hard to put down. Though the prose occasionally leads readers by the nose to clues and revelations, this is an undeniably fun and free-wheeling start […]

Author Susan Specht Oram spins a gripping new web of terror with Cabin Eight, the latest tale in her macabre and mysterious string of pulp thrillers. A much-needed escape from the city spirals into a dead-zone nightmare for one young woman struggling to piece her life back together. Navigating a merciless escape room of painful puzzles and emotional carnage, Miranda must face her darkest secrets and fight for the embers of her life in this page-turning thriller. As with other titles in the series, the pace is relentless sometimes at the expense of emotional exploration of characters, or tension […]

Susan Specht Oram delivers the second piece of her Millersville Series with The Thieves, a gripping novel of desperate times, desperate measures, and the lengths we go to protect those we love. When an amateur thief with good intentions has her only and biggest score snatched away by con-artist crooks, she embarks on a deeply unwise mission to snatch it back. Like a long-form chase sequence with a countdown clock attached, this Pacific Northwest hunt for 500K makes for one wild road trip. The story moves fast, which keeps the energy high, but also cuts down on space for […]