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Heather Seggel

Mystery & SuspenseSuspense

The Whispering House

Review by Heather Seggel

Freya Lyell is apprehensive about attending a wedding on the grounds of Byrne Hall; her sister Stella’s body was found not far away, and that loss still stings five years later. But when she sees a painting hanging in the main house that surely must be of Stella, her curiosity takes over. She returns to Byrne Hall alone and is rapidly absorbed into the world of Cory Byrne, his ailing mother, Diana, and the house itself, which is eerily attuned to its occupants.

The Whispering House is a gothic mystery whose ethereal tone and atmospheric detail allow it to step lightly between heavy revelations. Author Elizabeth Brooks (The Orphan of Salt Winds) establishes early on that Freya is still submerged in grief and guilt over her sister’s presumed suicide, despite the fact that many of her memories of Stella are of an impulsive young woman whose demands for attention tended to eclipse the rest of the family altogether.

Amid this grief, Freya’s numb quality makes her passive involvement with Cory, and her half-formed ideas of what their life together might be, poignant as well as also a great source of tension for the reader as more information about the house and its history come to light. It’s an odd feeling, being happy for Freya while also internally screaming for her to get out while she can.

As the story unfolds from varied points of view and different time periods, Diana’s role shifts from one at the fringes to something more central and frightening. She’s a matriarch to be reckoned with, to put it mildly. Peripheral characters—Freya’s father, a woman she meets while swimming, a man she loves but thinks she lost to Stella—are well rounded and figure into the plot in intricate ways.

Brooks’ gentle, depressive pace allows The Whispering House’s revelations to be truly shocking—the fallout from a missed phone call can feel as though the world hangs in the balance.

Freya Lyell is apprehensive about attending a wedding on the grounds of Byrne Hall; her sister Stella’s body was found not far away, and that loss still stings five years later.

Mystery & SuspenseSuspense

Bad Habits

Review by Heather Seggel

Amy Gentry’s new novel Bad Habits is so much fun to read that it feels like you’re cheating somehow. It’s got the perfect setting—a prestigious and pretentious grad school program ominously referred to as The Program, where students and professors misbehave outrageously. And the friendship at its heart detonates a series of double-crosses and revelations that are breathtaking and sometimes hilarious. How can one book be so unrelenting in its sense of unease, yet also so much fun?

Academic rock star Claire “Mac” Woods has just given a keynote address when she spies Gwen, her former best friend from grad school, at the hotel bar. It’s a prickly reunion, doused in alcohol, and Claire awakens from a blackout thinking she’s confessed a long-held secret. Said secret, and the story behind it, comes out in flashbacks as Claire hunts for Gwen (and I do mean hunts) inside the hotel. What unspools is a tale of class disparity, friendship, competition, infidelity and the variable exchange rates of sex and power. It’s a knockout.

Gentry’s light touch with such high-stakes subject matter is impressive. The program Gwen and Claire (who then went primarily by “Mac”) attended is rich in details that feel true to a university experience, even as the novel skewers how how much of that experience is artifice or make-believe. Several storylines tug at the reader’s attention, but Gentry continually reminds us of what we don’t yet know with a refrain that is jarring each time it reappears: “The accident. The farmhouse.” The misdirection pays off each time because we’re so invested in this fragile, fractured relationship.

If you liked Good as Gone, Gentry’s debut novel, Bad Habits has a theme in common with it: Sometimes the biggest surprises stem from a truth that was staring you in the face all along. Read Bad Habits for a satirically surreal take on higher education, and for an antihero you’ll lose sleep over.

Amy Gentry’s new novel Bad Habits is so much fun to read that it feels like you’re cheating somehow.

YA FictionYA

Last Night at the Telegraph Club

Review by Heather Seggel

San Francisco’s Chinatown in the mid-1950s contains two worlds folded into one another: Its tightknit community looks out for its own interests, but many of its businesses serve white tourists in search of a particular experience that the community feels obligated to deliver. At 17, Lily Hu is also living two lives. A good student and obedient daughter, she knows she likes girls and has begun to fall for her new friend, Kath. She also knows she can’t be open about their relationship, but the gay nightclub she’s been sneaking out to—full of white faces and casual racism—is hardly a safe haven either. Malinda Lo’s Last Night at the Telegraph Club is a work of historical fiction that’s as meticulously researched as it is full of raw, authentic emotion.

The book is divided into sections, with timelines that highlight historical events and situate the lives of Lily’s family members among them. Senator McCarthy’s antagonism toward Communism has made neighbors afraid of one another, and his movement also targets people who are gay and lesbian. If Lily and Kath’s relationship is discovered, the consequences for Lily’s family will be disastrous. Lily’s parents’ own stories are complicated and full of difficult choices, and they want their daughter to choose the easier path that their sacrifices have made possible. But Lily is a protagonist to be reckoned with. Her aunt’s work at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory sparks her fascination with space exploration. When her relationship with Kath leads to heartbreaking consequences, Lily is steadfast and faces them head-on.

Lo’s writing is packed with sensory details; her descriptions of midcentury San Francisco are gorgeous, and she vividly brings its lesbian subculture to life. Among these excellent details are the pulp novels Lily reads, which allowed queer people to see themselves on the page (though such representations always ended in suffering), as well as popular music that revealed how gender could be a playground, even in a period with rigid masculine and feminine roles.

Shout it from the highest hills: This is a beautiful, brave story, and Lily is a heroine that readers will love.

Malinda Lo’s Last Night at the Telegraph Club is a work of historical fiction that’s as meticulously researched as it is full of raw, authentic emotion.

Mystery & SuspenseMystery

Deep Into the Dark

Review by Heather Seggel

P.J. Tracy (the mother-daughter author team behind the Monkeewrench mysteries) begins a new series set in Los Angeles with Deep Into the Dark, a thriller that flirts with the fantastical while staying grounded in the all-too-real. Detective Margaret Nolan is working to find a serial killer who primarily attacks women, but a male murder victim leads her to Sam Easton, who may have taken revenge on the dead man for beating up his friend, Melody. Sam is an Army veteran whose tours in Afghanistan left him visibly scarred and diagnosed with PTSD. He could have committed the crime in a blacked-out rage, but Margaret sees things in Melody’s past that raise alarms as well. All the while, the killer shows no signs of slowing down.

Tracy introduces a lot of characters and story threads early in the going and then doesn’t stop adding them, which keeps the tension elevated. Sam has a series of encounters that feel like dangerous premonitions, but he’s acutely aware that combat trauma could be influencing his thinking. Stretches of downtime, in which characters just try to process what’s going on, feel very real. Sam and Melody both work at a bar; the tedium of repetitive work and their parallel efforts to build new lives and avoid attention make them a sympathetic if unreliable pair. And Tracy’s dry humor and the irony of such grim crimes occurring in sunny Los Angeles lend a grittiness to the story.

The conclusion is a neatly timed, highly visual set piece that’s going to be killer in the inevitable movie adaptation. But even this feels like it has a sly wink to it, incorporating film tropes, such as the heroine with a twisted ankle, into a fight for survival in which a screenplay figures heavily. The layered storytelling and empathy offered to every character make Deep Into the Dark not just a hard-to-put-down thriller, but one that leaves the reader with much to think on, with no easy answers in sight.

P.J. Tracy (the mother-daughter author team behind the Monkeewrench mysteries) begins a new series set in Los Angeles with Deep Into the Dark.

Mystery & SuspenseMysteryCozy Mystery

Bait and Witch

Review by Heather Seggel

Angela M. Sanders’ first book in a new cozy mystery series, Bait and Witch, balances paranormal whimsy and small-town charm.

Josie Way had her dream job in the Library of Congress but had to drop out of sight after overhearing a conversation that pointed to political corruption. She essentially creates a do-it-yourself witness protection program by taking a job in the library of rural Wilfred, Oregon, hoping to lie low until things resolve back in Washington, D.C. She’s barely unpacked her bags when a body is discovered on the library property, and her concern that she may have been the intended target prompts her to investigate. Oh, and the books on the shelves at Wilfred’s library? They’re able to talk to her—no big deal.

Sanders fills the town of Wilfred with eccentric locals and blends in a plot about the library property being sold and potentially converted into a retreat center. These elements all collide when Josie’s life back east catches up with her. However, the story’s real heart derives from Josie’s gradual discovery that she’s a witch. From becoming fast and intimate friends with a local cat to developing an ability to recommend books she’s never read or even heard of, Bait and Witch is playful yet grounded, setting up a final confrontation when the decision to refuse or embrace her powers is critical.

Sanders’ light touch leaves lots of possibilities for Josie’s future stories. There’s a potential romance simmering on a back burner, as well as Josie’s commitment to stay and help bring Wilfred’s library into the modern era without alienating any longtime patrons. Most evocatively, Bait and Witch ends with Josie receiving her grandmother’s grimoire, or book of spells, and preparing to learn more about her powers. Some of us think all librarians are at least a little witchy (in the best way), but it’s a delight to read about someone whose powers derive in part from stories and the feelings that readers attach to them. This is a fine debut that promises more bookish fun to come.

Angela M. Sanders’ first book in a new cozy mystery series balances paranormal whimsy and small-town charm.

YA FictionYA

Into the Heartless Wood

Review by Heather Seggel

At the edge of a forest that haunts his family, Owen Merrick cares for his baby sister and grieving father. The witch who took Owen’s mother has transformed the trees into sirens that lure people to violent deaths. The sirens are Owen’s sworn enemies, but when he is caught in the woods one day and a siren named Seren rescues him, a tentative trust builds between them. Into the Heartless Wood is a fantasy novel that packs an emotional punch as it explores how doing the right, kind and gentle thing can require far more courage than waging war.

Joanna Ruth Meyer’s choice to place sirens—typically associated with the sea—in a forest setting is wonderfully imaginative. Owen’s cozy home contrasts with scenes of train travel and the bustle of the city. The train runs through the forest, however, which threatens to overtake the kingdom as the witch extracts more souls.

The battle between the witch and the king—and the consequences that befall Owen’s father, an astronomer who foretells some of what’s to come by interpreting messages from constellations—are grand and violent. Seren wants to break with the witch’s destructive ways, and she goes to fantastical lengths to help defeat her and keep watch over Owen. The witch is genuinely scary, and scenes involving the removal of souls are shocking in their cruelty.

Though kingdoms rise and fall, the human soul is at the center of this invented world. Like the woods just beyond Owen’s home, Into the Heartless Wood is easy to get lost in and hard to come back from, thanks to Meyer’s excellent world building.

At the edge of a forest that haunts his family, Owen Merrick cares for his baby sister and grieving father. The witch who took Owen’s mother has transformed the trees into sirens that lure people to violent deaths.

YA FictionYA

The Cousins

Review by Heather Seggel

Karen M. McManus’ latest thriller is a layered whodunit that takes its time unpacking several generations’ worth of deceit and cruelty.

When Mildred Story invites her three grandchildren to spend the summer working at the resort she owns on Gull Cove Island, it’s a loaded proposition. Milly, Aubrey and Jonah barely know each other, and they don’t know their grandmother at all. Mildred is wealthy, and her decision to disinherit her children left the Story family fractured and alienated from one another. The Cousins at the heart of this mystery are tentatively curious to learn more about their family, and once they reach the island, secrets begin to come to light.

The story jumps around quite a bit by design, as chapters alternate from each cousin’s perspective and also flash back to their parents’ youth. The suspense ebbs and flows while each Story’s story plays out. Milly had hoped to grow close to the grandmother she’s named for, but Mildred flatly ignores her in favor of Aubrey. At first, Aubrey is flattered by the attention, until she realizes she’s being rewarded for compliance (but compliance with what, exactly?). Jonah keeps his head down, but his strategy of trying to stay in the background only takes him so far; when the spotlight finds him, it’s damaging to everyone.

McManus (One of Us Is Lying) populates the island’s atmospheric, Hitchcockian scenery with eccentric characters, many of whom have ties to the Story family, and slowly reveals the event that shattered their lives. The conclusion that follows is terrifically choreographed. A relationship predicated on false identity turns out to be clever foreshadowing; readers who enjoy a romantic storyline intertwined with their mysteries will be all in.

Curl up with The Cousins on a chilly day, and you’ll swear you can hear howling wind and crashing waves just outside your door.

Karen M. McManus’ latest thriller is a layered whodunit that takes its time unpacking several generations’ worth of deceit and cruelty.

Mystery & SuspenseMystery

Shed No Tears

Review by Heather Seggel

Serial killer Christopher Masters terrorized London in 2012 with a string of abductions and murders. His final victim, Holly Kemp, was never found, but eyewitness testimony placed her in connection with Masters. Six years later, Holly’s body is discovered near Cambridge. It should be easy work for Detective Constable Cat Kinsella and her partner to tie up this loose end and close the case once and for all. From this simple premise, the artfully paced Shed No Tears merely follows the clues, and things go from surprising to shocking.

Readers familiar with Caz Frear’s series know that Cat Kinsella comes from a family involved with organized crime. Her significant relationships are held together with a complex web of lies, so even the true-to-life scenes of normal work camaraderie are shot through with tension. Frear adds a layer of complication by introducing a Detective Chief Inspector who worked the original Masters case and takes a interest in Cat’s career trajectory. Cat wants to please her new mentor, but her dogged commitment seems to be having the opposite effect. Frear affords real respect to the dull, often repetitive nature of investigation, so each revelation feels earned and adds to the suspense.

It’s possible to read this book without having read the rest of the series, but you’ll just end up wanting to start from the beginning because these characters are a pleasure to discover; even incidental roles are fleshed out enough to feel real. Cat works hard to undo some of her family legacy but keeps making choices that tie her ever more firmly to her past. That combination allows her to empathize with victims and the accused alike, which is a real asset on the job. It forces her to keep an open mind, even to unsettling possibilities. (It also helps that she can ask her father about doings in the criminal underworld—not that she’s guaranteed a straight answer.) The story follows her calm, methodical approach, and Frear’s tight control of the reins keeps the tension high. Shed No Tears grabs the reader and doesn’t let go.

It’s possible to read this book without having read the rest of the series, but you’ll just end up wanting to start from the beginning because these characters are a pleasure to discover; even incidental roles are fleshed out enough to feel real.
Mystery & SuspenseMystery

The Book of Lamps and Banners

Review by Heather Seggel

Cass Neary is hard-up for cash and stranded in London when she hears about a rare book deal and attends the sale out of curiosity. The meeting turns deadly, and she learns that the book may have powers beyond our understanding. In the chaos that follows, Cass explores the resurgent white nationalist movement in Europe and Scandinavia, confronts her own past trauma and relies on her keen photographer’s eye as she searches for truth. The Book of Lamps and Banners is a hair-raising, mind-bending trip.

You can definitely enjoy this book on its own terms, but if at all possible, find and devour the first in the Cass Neary series, Generation Loss. (You’ll have nightmares, but I promise it’s worth it.) Author Elizabeth Hand does not shy away from bleak, unlikable characters, including her protagonist. Cass is strung out on speed and alcohol, so when she starts ranting about an app that turns people into murderers, the people around her justifiably roll their eyes. Quinn, a boyfriend from her days as a photographer in New York’s punk demimonde, enables her destruction but tries to soften its impact.

Past and present keep smashing together, as do reality and the mind-warping effects of the sought-after book. Hand’s language tightens when Cass spies a detail nobody else notices, but we feel the dead weight of her hangovers and the cranked-up jangle of her nerves. It’s unsettling but impossible to look away as elements line up to set a grim climax in motion.

Does this sound impossibly dark? It is! It’s also exquisitely suspenseful, and the paranoia suffusing the story is very much of our present moment. The idea that any single source can make sense of everything happening around us is as alluring as it is dangerous. Half of the mystery in The Book of Lamps and Banners is wondering whether Cass Neary will save us or take us down with her.

Cass Neary is hard-up for cash and stranded in London when she hears about a rare book deal and attends the sale out of curiosity. The meeting turns deadly, and she learns that the book may have powers beyond our understanding. In the chaos that follows, Cass explores the resurgent white nationalist movement in Europe […]
YA FictionYA

The Inheritance Games

Review by Heather Seggel

High school is hard enough without having to live in your car to avoid your sister’s abusive boyfriend. Avery Grambs is just gritting her teeth and getting through it one day at a time when a letter arrives that turns her life on its head. Billionaire Tobias Hawthorne has died and left his massive fortune to Avery. Of course, there’s a catch: She must spend a year living in his mansion, alongside his disinherited—and livid—descendants.

Jennifer Lynn Barnes (The Naturals series) has a rollicking good time setting the gears of her plot in motion. Avery is whisked away from her life so quickly, her life thrown into such disarray by the revelation of Hawthorne’s will, that it’s easy to overlook the critical fact that she has no idea who Hawthorne is. In fact, she’s never even heard of the man, nor does she have any idea why he would leave her his entire fortune. By the time Avery meets his family, things have already taken a turn for the sinister. Hawthorne has built puzzles into his sprawling home that alternately pit Avery and Hawthorne’s four grandsons against one another and draw them into working together.

When any wall might conceal a doorway to a secret passage and everyone around her speaks in riddles and evasions, it’s nearly impossible for Avery to decide who she can trust. Each brother warns Avery to keep her distance, but she’s powerfully drawn to two brothers in particular who once fought over a girl. Avery realizes that history might hold some answers . . . but it could also be another red herring in a story positively swimming with them.

The Inheritance Games wraps a mystery in an enigma and throws in four hot brothers for fun. The Hawthorne family, furious at their disinheritance, bring a Knives Out energy to this story, which is full of as many twists, turns and narrative trap doors as Hawthorne’s sprawling estate itself. Yet for all its intricacies and secrets, The Inheritance Games is ultimately a story about a complicated family fracturing and coming back together, only to fall apart all over again.

The Inheritance Games wraps a mystery in an enigma and throws in four hot brothers for fun. The Hawthorne family, furious at their disinheritance, bring a Knives Out energy to this story, which is full of as many twists, turns and narrative trap doors as Hawthorne’s sprawling estate itself.
Mystery & SuspenseMysteryHistorical Mystery

The Grove of the Caesars

Review by Heather Seggel

Lindsey Davis’ eighth Flavia Albia novel, Grove of the Caesars, finds modern resonance in ancient Rome.

With her husband away tending to a family emergency, Albia has her hands full just dealing with her household, perennially under renovation and thus a big draw for unscrupulous contractors. The discovery of a clutch of ancient scrolls leads to a search for their provenance, in the hope that they’ll fetch a good price at auction. This domestic fuss and bother is upended when a body is found in the sacred grove of Julius Caesar, and workmen reveal that it is not the first. To bring a serial killer to justice, Albia must work alongside Julius Karus, an arrogant member of the Vigiles (the firefighters and police of ancient Rome) who appears content to accept easy answers wherever he finds them.

There is so much to unpack in this story, which balances a truly grim series of crimes with several funny subplots, often intermingling them in surprising ways. Two young enslaved boys gifted to Albia’s household witness the killing and disappear; what starts as an odd bit of comic relief ends in a mix of tragedy and tenderness. Albia herself continues to be a treasure, grateful for her place in society because it was not always such, but willing to disobey nearly any order if her curiosity is piqued.

Davis fills her stories with meticulous research, and the details make for such rich reading, we would likely follow Albia on a day of errands and light entertainment with no crime to speak of. But it’s thrilling to watch her follow a line of inquiry and connect the dots that others fail to see, so we can be glad that she rarely fails to find trouble and charge headlong toward it.

Lindsey Davis’ eighth Flavia Albia novel, Grove of the Caesars, finds modern resonance in ancient Rome. With her husband away tending to a family emergency, Albia has her hands full just dealing with her household, perennially under renovation and thus a big draw for unscrupulous contractors. The discovery of a clutch of ancient scrolls leads to […]
Mystery & SuspenseMysteryHistorical Mystery

The Cabinets of Barnaby Mayne

Review by Heather Seggel

If The Cabinets of Barnaby Mayne doesn’t grab you with the title alone, are you sure you’re a mystery fan?

Cecily Kay has come to the London home of the titular collector, hoping to definitively identify some plants by comparing them to specimens in Barnaby Mayne’s Plant Room, by far the least exciting of his voluminous collections. When Mayne is stabbed to death and a meek man confesses, Cecily smells a rat and uses her analytical abilities to piece together the truth. To find out what really happened, she must dive into the realm of collectors, whose interests often spill over into obsession.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Elsa Hart explains why the world of Englightenment-era collectors is the perfect setting for a mystery.

This is a note-perfect whodunit, and even if Mayne went about his business unmolested it would still be a deliciously creepy novel. Author Elsa Hart (Jade Dragon Mountain) has great fun with the time period—it’s set in 1703—and the complications of science and fact running headlong into mythology and occult beliefs. For a passionate collector, having their life’s work housed in an established and esteemed collection after death conferred a kind of immortality. But some collectors sought a quicker path to power through rituals and rites. High society and the secret societies within make a terrific backdrop for a story that often hinges on the ways women are presumed unimportant, thus allowing them to explore and find evidence while going undetected.

If The Cabinets of Barnaby Mayne doesn’t grab you with the title alone, are you sure you’re a mystery fan? Cecily Kay has come to the London home of the titular collector, hoping to definitively identify some plants by comparing them to specimens in Barnaby Mayne’s Plant Room, by far the least exciting of his voluminous […]
YA FictionYA

Recommended for You

Review by Heather Seggel

Working retail during the holiday season can be brutal, but Shoshanna is more than happy to spend her time at work as a bookseller. The independent bookstore Once Upon is her happy place—at least, it used to be. A holiday hire named Jake, who is both standoffish and good-looking, is making Shoshanna’s happy place a little more complicated than usual. Laura Silverman’s Recommended for You is a whipped cream dollop of a rom-com with an irresistible bookish setup.

Silverman places several obstacles in Shoshanna’s path. Her moms are going through a rough patch in their marriage, Shoshanna is desperately trying to keep her dying car on the road, and then a competition to bring customers into Once Upon reveals the store’s poor financial state. Shoshanna charges at each problem in full attack mode, but her solo efforts are largely ineffective. Only when she leans on her friends does their collective power make waves. The bookstore staff forms a fantastic supporting cast and features in several scenes that play out hilariously. Silverman also smartly uses the bookstore’s shopping mall locale to her advantage, as her characters duke it out for table space in the overcrowded food court and draft the on-site Santa into their schemes. 

And then there’s Jake. Sigh. No sooner does Shoshanna meet a fellow Jewish person in her “midsize” Georgia town than she manages to offend him, then finds herself competing against him at work for a cash prize she desperately wants. The novel plays out over just one week, as the heightened circumstances of the holiday rush force Shoshanna and Jake to work together, at first begrudgingly, then as tentative friends and then . . . well, let’s not spoil it.

Recommended for You is equally recommended for lovers of love stories and lovers of books and bookstores, as both are represented here delightfully.

Working retail during the holiday season can be brutal, but Shoshanna is more than happy to spend her time at work as a bookseller. The independent bookstore Once Upon is her happy place—at least, it used to be. A holiday hire named Jake, who is both standoffish and good-looking, is making Shoshanna’s happy place a […]

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