The Castle in the Glen

An absorbing, dual-plotted mystery that resurrects a cold-case murder investigation from Scotland.

Two intricate plots encompass The Castle in the Glen, an ambitious, absorbing historical mystery by Rhys Bowen. 

The primary story is set in 1965 Scotland, where Emma Callander--an Australian writer stalled in her career--is tasked with completing the final installment in a series of mystery novels written by Iris Blackburn, a lauded Australian expat now losing her memory. Iris’s book centers on a murder that occurred in the early 1900s on the Isle of Sky: two young lovers drown under suspicious circumstances, but it’s the disappearance of another woman called “Wild Girl” who emerges front and center. 

As Emma begins to unravel the material Iris has mapped out on the page, she discovers the story might actually be true—a real-life mystery that’s remained unsolved for 50+ years. With the help of Iris’s handsome lawyer, Tony Gordon, Emma joins forces with him as they set off through the Scottish Highlands to learn more, unearthing long-buried family secrets, red herrings, and a host of suspects who might just bridge the past and the present. 

Readers are in for a real treat through atmospheric Scotland, as Bowen (Mrs. Endicott’s Splendid Adventure, From Cradle to Grave) entangles a large cast of well-drawn characters amidst two dark and dangerous plots that entwine to form a well-rendered, intriguing conclusion.

Castle in the Glen by Rhys Bowen

Lake Union Publishing, $28.99 hardcover, 9781662527210, 429 pages

Publishing Date: August 4, 2026

To order this book on Bookshop.org, link HERE

Learn more about Rhys Bowen HERE

The Dead Romantics

A refreshingly fun, energetic novel about a romantically disillusioned, blocked romance writer whose beliefs about love are transformed by a handsome ghost.

Ashley Poston’s fun, lighthearted novels for young adults offer a blend of magical realism infused with wit and romance. Geekerella is a clever send-up about what happens when a nerdy Cinderella-type attends a Sci-fi convention. In Heart of Iron, a princess in outer-space must find her way back home with the help of lovable misfits.

 

The Dead Romantics, Poston’s first book for adults, a romantic comedy, centers on Florence Minerva Day, a smart, snarky millennial who is nursing a broken heart and suffering from writer’s block. Florence is emotionally on the skids. Having published a romance novel that received a less-than-stellar reception, downtrodden Florence became an assistant-turned-ghostwriter for Ann Nichols, one of “romance’s greats”—a well-established, popular author who hasn’t left her home in Maine for the five years that Florence has been the secret source behind her writing success. In the midst of her depression, Florence is floundering, too turned off by love to write about it and meet a looming deadline--already extended three times--to finish and deliver Nichols’s next book to the new editor at her publishing house, Benji Andor. The handsome hottie is cold and no nonsense. He totally unnerves Florence by threatening legal action if the new Nichols book isn’t turned in asap.

 

Amidst Florence’s intent to finish the manuscript, she runs into her ex, also a writer, a man who stole the story of Florence’s own life—personal secrets she shared with him about her family and their funeral home business and how Florence interacts with ghosts--and turned her story into a book that sold at auction for a million dollars. Weary after seeing her successful, user-ex again and faced with the impending writing deadline, Florence’s life further tailspins when she is summoned from her home in Hoboken, N.J., back to Mairmont, South Carolina to deal with the devastating sudden death of a family member. Being back in a place she longed to escape suddenly resurrects the past and elicits the presence of a handsome ghost who wrenches Florence from her rut and upends her beliefs about love.

 

Romance, chaos and ratcheting complications are central components to Poston’s refreshingly fun, spunky romcoms—and The Dead Romantics is no exception. The beauty and charm of Poston’s storytelling continues to make miraculous happy endings out of the messes from which ordinary people often find themselves embroiled.

 

The Dead Romantics by Ashley Poston

Berkley (Penguin Books), $16.00 paperback, 368 pages, 9780593336489

Publication Date: June 28, 2022

To order this book on INDIEBOUND link HERE

 

NOTE: To read this review as published on Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade (May 3, 2022 ), link HERE

 

NOTE: To read a condensed version of this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (July 1, 2022), link HERE

Beguiling Haunted Houses

From My Shelf: Happy Halloween!

A house is normally considered a safe place. In fiction, however, when a house has creaky stairs, rattling shutters, dark attics and basements and trapped secrets that embody the shadowy essence of unnerving spirits, scary becomes even scarier--especially on Halloween.

Shirley Jackson paved the way with her terrifying 1959 novel, The Haunting of Hill House, where four people investigate an 80-year-old house filled with spirits and other unexplained events. Richard Matheson expanded that premise in Hell House (1971), where a physicist and two mediums examine a spooky shuttered house in Maine presumably haunted after serving as a domicile for decadence, drugs and alcohol.

The unifying elements of haunted house novels--past and present--seem to be long-buried secrets, demons from the past that need to be confronted and escalating suspense.

This House Is Haunted by John Boyne is set in a country estate in 1860s Norfolk. This Dickens-inspired story centers on a governess who cares for two seemingly parentless children and a malign, supernatural presence that taunts them.

An old carriage house on a sprawling estate invigorates Rebecca Makkai's The Hundred-Year House, where a young couple faces unexpected rumors of buried bodies, family mysteries and the presence of a ghost immortalized in a prominently displayed portrait.

Long-dead, lingering spirits--former residents of an old country house--jostle with an estranged, contemporary family, heirs who have come to sort through the detritus of their departed patriarch in Rooms, an imaginative, explosive story by Lauren Oliver.

In A Sudden Light, Garth Stein has crafted an atmospheric ghost story set in a rambling Pacific Northwest ancestral estate. This epic tale is part family saga and part mystery, infused with secrets, curses, dark familial legacies and a tragic love affair.

While jack-o'-lanterns, bats and witches are all symbols of Halloween, it's the haunted house, where ghosts and a fear of the unknown collide, that keeps readers bound captive to the page! 

Note: This article is a reprint and is being posted (in a slightly different form) with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this piece as published on Shelf Awareness for Readers (10/31/14), link HERE