Tag Archives: novels

December 22

NEW RELEASE: Easy Prey (Hollywood Ghostwriter Mystery #4) by Dakota Donovan

Dakota Donovan’s fourth Hollywood Ghostwriter Mystery, EASY PREY, was released on November 20, 2023, in Kindle and Paperback editions. ABOUT THE NOVEL: When TV megastar Gabrielle Robertson learns that her mother Francine Fahey plans to write a memoir claiming credit for her success, Gabrielle hires Dakota Donovan to ghostwrite a tell-all that exposes Francine as […]

June 03

Therese Raquin: A novel of passion and crime by Emile Zola

First published in 1890, Therese Raquin — Emile Zola’s classic tale of forbidden love and murder — has served as the basis for television programs, radio plays, operas, movies (including 2013’s In Secret starring Jessica Lange and Elizabeth Olsen), and stage plays (including the 2015 Broadway production starring Keira Knightley). The story follows impoverished orphan […]

September 21

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

The story had held us, round the fire, sufficiently breathless, but except the obvious remark that it was gruesome, as, on Christmas Eve in an old house, a strange tale should essentially be, I remember no comment uttered till somebody happened to say that it was the only case he had met in which such […]

September 21

Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

“…Stevenson’s short novel, written in 1885, is one of the ancestors of the modern mystery story…not only a good ‘bogey story,’ as Stevenson exclaimed when awakening from a dream in which he had visualized it…It is also, and more importantly, a fable that lies nearer to poetry than to ordinary prose fiction, and therefore belongs […]

September 18

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

“I busied myself to think of a story…one which would speak to the mysterious fears of our nature, and awaken thrilling horror — one to make the reader dread to look round, to curdle the blood, and quicken the beatings of the heart.” MARY SHELLEY (introduction to the 1831 edition) “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a […]

September 15

Death at the Excelsior and Other Stories by P.G. Wodehouse

The title story, “Death at the Excelsior,” introduces readers to British private detective Elliot Oaks and his more experienced boss Paul Snyder in P.G. Wodehouse’s only attempt at a detective story, which he pulls off with his signature comic twists and turns. The collection also offers a selection of other classic Wodehouse tales, including those […]

September 14

The Red House Mystery by A.A. Milne

“…one of the three best mystery stories of all time.” ALEXANDER WOLCOTT “…an agreeable book, light, amusing in the Punch style, written with a deceptive smoothness that is not as easy as it looks.” RAYMOND CHANDLER ”This droll whodunit from the creator of Winnie-the-Pooh sparkles with witty dialogue, deft plotting, and an amusing cast. In […]

September 11

WINDY CITY SINNERS, a magic realism crime novel by Melanie Villines

Part crime caper à la Donald Westlake, part magic realism tale in the spirit of Gabriel García Márquez, part John Kennedy Toolesque hijinks and high comedy, Windy City Sinners offers mystery and mayhem with fun and froth mixed in for good measure. The story takes place on the Far Northwest Side of Chicago, right on the edge […]

September 11

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

“Wilde is one of the happy few who do not need the approval of the critic, nor even, sometimes, the approval of the reader for the pleasure he gives us is constant and irresistible.” JORGE LUIS BORGES “[Wilde] was a great artist…he wrote to please his own wild intellect.” G.K. CHESTERTON “Wilde was the greatest […]

September 11

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

“It is hard to conceive of a more extreme character than Sherlock Holmes…with his monomaniacal focus on crime, fits of depression, cocaine injections, clouds of tobacco smoke, melancholic violin-playing, and bursts of furious energy once the game is afoot. Holmes is a brilliant creation, but he is excessive in every way. And Holmes’ cases are […]