Book Junkie

I think John Maddox Roberts’ ancient Rome series featuring Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger gets better and better with each novel.  I devoured Nobody Loves a Centurion (SPQR VI) in very few sittings.  Not only was it an excellent mystery, it had a sense of humor as well.Decius reluctantly repo

I enjoyed reading Candace Robb’s The Cross-legged Knight, the seventh in the Owen Archer series, more than the previous two novels, A Gift of Sanctuary and A Spy for the Redeemer. Both of those stories dealt with Owen traveling through his native Wales on a pilgrimage with his father-in-law Sir Robe

Saying something negative about Ellis Peters is tantamount to criticizing Agatha Christie. Peters’ Brother Cadfael series, set in twelfth century England, has been made into a television series featuring Derek Jacobi as the monk/sleuth, evidence of just how popular her work is.Still, the twelfth nov

I’ve always found the brief but violent history of Czar Nicholas II and his family so I’m aware of Rasputin’s macabre prophecy that if anyone from the royal family or their relatives assassinated him, the czar would die within two years. His prognostication came true.In July 1918, Nicholas, Alexandr

The beautiful and gifted Donna Summer died today at the young age of 63.  She is one of my all-time favorites since way back in high school, during the height of the disco craze.  I waited anxiously to get her album "Crayons" when it was released back in 2008.  It was like being back in high school

I started reading this series some time ago but confused and put it down. After speaking to author Sharan Newman several years ago at Bouchercon, I realized that I hadn’t read the series in the proper sequence. I decided to try again, from the beginning.Newman’s Catherine LeVendeur is very reminisce

I read Conway’s first Lord Godwin mystery Murder on Good Friday and enjoyed it enough that I didn’t hesitate when I saw her second novel, Daughters of Summer.I should’ve hesitated longer.Murder on Good Friday actually had a basis in historical fact, young boys being murdered on Good Friday to focus

The debut mystery novel, Last Rituals, by Yrsa Sigurdardottir (author of children’s books) is a bizarre and intriguing journey into medieval literature on witchcraft and modern day Iceland, a mystery surrounding scholars at the university in Reykjavik and including dark pages from Europe’s past.A co

I enjoyed Heather Graham’s Flynn brothers trilogy because although her stories are het romance/erotica, she includes a wonderful paranormal aspect to her novels. In the Flynn brothers stories, that aspect bordered on supernatural and in one case, Deadly Harvest, almost stepped across the line.In Hom

It took a long time to find a copy of The Ordeal of the Hermitage: The Siege of Leningrad 1941-1944 (text by Sergie Varshavsky and Boris Rest) at a reasonable price, but the search was well worth it, even if I had to give it away as a Christmas gift.  I have visited the Hermitage before, so the his