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The following day, I headed to the pub for a full Scottish breakfast and Mara’s coffee, which was tasty and known to wake the dead.

There were people who brought more to one’s life than they took.

My Review:

I am new to this series, but fell right into this crafty scribe’s engaging storytelling. The series features an American ER doctor who has moved to a small, tight-knit village in Scotland to be the village doctor/coroner. The clinic is well-equipped and kitted out in what was once an old church. She lives above her office and loves her life.

I’m a bit late to the party as I jumped in with the third book, but I am so enamored with Ms. Connelly’s clever arrangements of words that I plan to amass the entire series.

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I wasn’t a fan of self-reflection because I rarely liked what I saw.

Don’t mind me. Claire’s on a diet, which means I’m on a diet. The most unhealthy thing in our apartment right now is oat cakes that are apparently flavored with toenail clippings and abandoned dreams.

She didn’t look like what I pictured when I thought of a drug kingpin. She was too young, for one thing. I didn’t know what I was expecting. An expensive suit. Tattoos. Lots of jewelry. A flashing neon sign above her head that declared her a Bad Boss Bitch.

I wouldn’t sell them the phone number to 911 if their headquarters was on fire.

My Review:

The disparate duo has done it again! Some murders require ghostly assistance to solve, and this unlikely pair is becoming more proficient at their side job. I am thoroughly enjoying the unique and entertaining premise, as well as the imaginative, insightful, and creative take on Cordelia’s abilities and functioning within her realm of the departed while navigating among the living or “breathers.”

The storylines are fresh, original, engaging, perceptive, intriguing, and highly amusing, as well as poignant. I rarely read paranormal tales, but I’m having a blast with this wryly witty series and adore Ms. Blacke’s word craft and clever humor. I will be extremely eager for future offerings to appear on her listings before magically finding their way to my Kindle.

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Mind over matter went out the window when you’re not made of matter anymore.

He thought he was god’s gift to women. Women thought otherwise.

I looked down at my hands. They looked the same as they had when I was alive. Pale. Dry. My fingernails were short and my nail polish was chipped. If I’d known I would become a ghost, I would have painted my nails before I offed myself. Now I was doomed to spend the rest of eternity in dire need of a manicure and some hand lotion.

It was hard to tell his exact age, but I’d put him in that sweet spot between old enough to have a respectable job and his own apartment and young enough to pay full price at the movies.

I was very, very young when I first realized that life wasn’t fair. And then again, in my forties, I found out that death wasn’t very fair, either. If you died wearing uncomfortable underwear, you spent your entire afterlife wandering around with a wedgie.

My Review:

This was a clever and fresh take on the concept of an unexpected afterlife and learning the ins and outs of being dead and navigating among the living. I gleefully whizzed through this amusing and witty missive with a pleased smirk on my face. The writing was entertaining, easy to follow, wryly humorous, and kept me engaged and unwilling to put my Kindle down, until my traitorous eyes rebelliously closed on their own. I adored it so much I immediately queued up the next installment of the series.

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The old furniture was heavy and dark, as if it would stand here for all time. Three generations had passed through these rooms, fluttering around like insects, filling each floor with the sounds of life and joy.

Yes– it’s perfectly possible to see whether or not a man is happily married. I can see it a mile off. But no man with love in his life can understand how hard it is to be without it, and no happy person can truly grasp just how unhappy another might be.

So how did you die? he asks. Of dehydration, she replies. Dehydration? Yes– didn’t you know that women who live alone shrivel up? I don’t know how it is for men, but a woman gets dehydrated if she spends her life alone. You weren’t happy, then? Happy? Only mediocre people are happy.

Oh, the idiocy of having to depend on others, she said.

In his logbook, he wrote of his passenger: Beautiful people expect so much more from life than life is willing to give them.

It was the first time Nils had ever seen a dead man. He’d thought it would be more dramatic– Gerhard Myklebust looked peaceful, the life had simply trickled out of him, as if his fuel tank had run empty.

My Review:

I found this piece to be brain-rattling, confusing, haunting, heart-squeezing, brilliant, perceptive, and profoundly written. I adored it and was riveted and itchy with curiosity throughout perusal. I couldn’t settle or decide if he was hallucinating, dreaming, or in the process of dying. I alternated between deep emotions as I read with passages that occasionally made me smirk but also broke my heart before putting it back in place. Frode Grytten has mad skills and seriously powerful word voodoo.

The town of Shamrock Cove is gearing up for a grand summer festival… but the fête turns fatal when a clockmaker is killed. Can amateur sleuth Mercy McCarthy crack the case?

When Mercy McCarthy takes her beloved mother’s watch to be fixed, she’s completely charmed by the little repair store and the father-and-son duo who run it. Little does she know that the clock is ticking… when she returns, she finds the father lying unconscious amid broken glass, and her mother’s watch is missing.

The police think Mr. Flynn was attacked in a burglary gone wrong but soon suspects closer to home start coming out of the clockwork. Mercy, her sister, and their canine sidekick, master body sniffer-outer Mr. Poe, set out to gather clues and help the local detective find the killer.

Could it be the family next door to the Flynns who’ve been feuding for decades? His fiercest rival, who’s long dreamed of shutting him down? Or was his son less devoted than he seemed? As the hours tick away, another murder and the discovery of a long-buried secret changes everything…

The summer festival is fast approaching. Can Mercy solve the mystery in the nick of time, or will someone stop her clock?

A completely charming and page-turning Irish cozy mystery. Fans of Agatha Christie, Carlene O’Connor and Faith Martin will absolutely love the Mercy McCarthy series!

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“I wondered if I could speak to you about last night,” I said. “By speak to me, do you mean give me the third degree on what we’ve discovered so far?” “It’s like you know me or something.”

He gave me that stare. The one that said he wasn’t putting up with any shenanigans. But I liked shenanigans. Sometimes that was the only way to get people to be honest.

They are a daft bunch. But I can’t see them killing someone. None of them are bright enough to get away with it.

Ugh. I tried not to judge people. Honestly. But that woman was a parasite.

My Review:

This series has been a delightful treat and just keeps getting better and better. I enjoy Lucy Connelly’s wry wit, amusing storytelling, and scene-stealing dog named Mr. Poe. She has created a quaint Irish village populated with quirky characters with various family dramas that are familiar to any culture, yet authentically unique. Her writing is engaging and well-honed with an easy flow that scrolls through my gray matter like a movie reel. I am eagerly awaiting the next installment.

She glances in the rearview mirror as the stranger walks towards her broken-down car. The wicked look on his face sends a chill up her spine, and she knows he’s not here to help. She doesn’t have time to scream before she falls to the ground, and the darkening sky goes black.

When the lifeless body of a young girl is discovered at an abandoned warehouse close to Red Rose County, FBI Agent Val Costa races to investigate. Setting eyes on the victim, Val’s heart stops as she spots the jagged letter S carved into her ice-cold chest. Slowly, she runs her fingers across her own identical scar. She’s been waiting for the Bear to leave his mark again, and now he finally has.

Determined to catch the man who’s haunted her dreams for years, Val promises to end his killing spree once and for all, but when more bodies are found bearing the same deadly carving, she fears she may already be too late. And then Val receives a call that turns her blood to ice—her best friend Sally is missing, and the killer has left a note addressed to her. Follow these rules and she lives.

Desperate to find Sally, Val faces her biggest challenge yet. Will she need to defy orders and track down the Bear alone before it’s too late?

Fans of Lisa Regan, L.T. Ryan, and Mary Stone won’t be able to put down this totally heart-racing crime thriller.

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The morning air felt suddenly heavier. Damp. Drenched in dread.

I’d gone there to end him and his killing spree. I didn’t usually believe in murder, but this didn’t feel like murder. This felt like spraying pesticide to kill the parasites ravaging your crops, the crops that fed your family and kept your community alive. That’s what he was. He was a parasite that needed to be eliminated.

I didn’t have it in me to kill. But that didn’t mean I liked the fact he was still breathing.

There’s always a bogeyman lurking in the shadows. Mine just happened to have a name.

My Review:

I have bravely and eagerly devoured every flinch-worthy installment of this gripping series. The tensely written storylines kept me on edge with my shoulders in my ears while chewing my cuticles, which are now ragged and in desperate need of a manicure. Ms. Christie’s word voodoo is strong and conjures complete scenes populated with a cast of knowable yet uniquely authentic characters whom I would recognize if meeting on the street. Her serial killer was a true psychopath, brutal, deviously clever, cunning, and evil. Brady and Val struggled with the desire to end him, but the reluctance to kill. Hmm, faced with such a vile creature, I doubt that would be a struggle for me.

 

 

An up-and-coming ghostbuster and her motley crew tackle a devilish high-wire act, aided (or more often, interrupted) by her rakish ex and the sarcastic reporter she can’t seem to shake—from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Crazy Spooky Love.

Maplemead Castle is crawling with ghosts, and the new owners need them gone. When Melody Bittersweet and the Girls’ Ghostbusting Agency arrive on scene, they quickly identify the main troublemaker swinging from the chandeliers. A century ago, stunning trapeze artist Britannia Lovell plunged to her death in the castle’s grand ballroom, and has continued to haunt it ever since. But did she really just fall, or was there something more to her demise?

Forced to work with Leo Dark, her scoundrel ex, and the infuriating, irresistible reporter Fletcher Gunn, Melody’s investigative powers are under the strain of a heart pulled in two directions. She needs her team in top form, but her best friend Marina’s cake pipeline goes AWOL, her assistant Artie’s distracted by a giant sausage roll, and the pug Lestat is scared witless by a lion. Melody has her work cut out for her.

Somewhere, hidden in the castle, is a heartbreaking secret, but what will it take to find it? And is there a chance it could set Britannia free, or is she doomed to repeat her last fateful act forever?

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She really ought to have been born French. She’s a force of nature almost entirely sustained by champagne, American daytime soaps, and the occasional prawn.

If I ever meet Mother Nature in a back alley, I’m going to pin her to the wall and shout, “Why? Why did you do this to me? Why does my body insist that it wants to tangle up the sheets with Fletcher Gunn again when my head knows it’s highly likely to end up with one of us needing to emigrate or do prison time?”

She’s just one of those women who views her bra as additional on-board storage. Tissues, pens, gum, her phone— she’s got the lot stashed in there. She used to put her lipstick in there too until the day it melted all over her cleavage and her mother thought she’d been shot in the chest at point-blank range.

I mutter like a grumpy, antisocial teenager who’s been asked about her overdue homework.

She looks at me knowingly. “Men don’t get to be that arrogant unless they’re supremely confident in the trouser department.”

My Review:

This series has been gleefully entertaining and easy to fall into. I adore Josie Silver’s wry wit. She has the uncanny ability to be both cleverly amusing and perceptively emotive at the same time. Many of her characters’ histories tugged at the heartstrings, and their uniquely and authentically drawn personalities were not as vile or troublesome as they had initially seemed by the story’s conclusion, that is, except for the devilishly odd twins. Color me hooked, I’m eager to tag along on their next ghost-busting adventure.

JOSIE SILVER is an unashamed romantic who met her husband when she stepped on his foot on his twenty-first birthday. She lives with him, her two young sons, and their cats in a little town in England called Wolverhampton.

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She’s whippet-thin and eats like a bird, preferring to save her calories for the champagne she’s rarely seen without. When she dies, if she ever dies, “it’s always five o’clock somewhere” will be engraved on her tombstone.

I grab the tin of Nonna’s limoncello babas and lift the lid, inhaling the smell so deeply it’s a wonder the buns don’t levitate.

I’ve decided this is the perfect staff-bonding exercise for Artie and Marina, a getting-to-know-you over a can of turpentine instead of a bottle of vodka, because he barely drinks and she could leave a sailor for dead in a drinking competition.

“A peace offering?” I say, peeling back the layers of tissue to reveal a little silver horseshoe. “Or have you come to tell me that you’ve given up ghost-hunting in favor of being a farrier for really tiny ponies?”

I’m not the religious kind, unless there happens to be a Goddess of Sweet Things, because if there is I’ll fall down on my knees and swear allegiance right now. I’d happily swallow a holy sugar lump and beg for divine assistance.

I think I’ve just stepped closer to him. I look down at my feet in alarm and issue them a direct order: Fall back, you fools! Fall back!

My Review:

This was good fun and a total delight to read, so much so that the next book is already locked and loaded on my precious Kindle and ready for immediate perusal. I enjoyed it so much, I was loath to put my Kindle down and hissed at any interruption to my reading.

While I rarely watch or read anything in the paranormal genre, I couldn’t resist since it’s Josie Silver. I adore this wily wordsmith’s clever wit and emotive scribblings. I frequently smirked and chortled as I zipped through this lively and amusing tale featuring a superhero-loving and sugar-fueled ghosthunter who consults a Magic 8 Ball for guidance.

JOSIE SILVER is an unashamed romantic who met her husband when she stepped on his foot on his twenty-first birthday. She lives with him, her two young sons, and their cats in a little town in England called Wolverhampton.