My Sister Is Going To Kill Me

An exciting murder mystery that takes readers on a wild rafting trip, while probing sisterhood and secrets.

 

Nina Simon’s character-driven first murder mystery probed the bonds between mothers and daughters (Mother-Daughter Murder Night). In My Sister Is Going To Kill Me, her second book, she again focuses on family dynamics, this time tackling the bond shared between two, very different adult sisters who get swept up into a murder investigation.

 

Every year, the Chisholm sisters leave their respective lives, meet up, and take a joint vacation. This year, they decide on a whitewater rafting trip down the Colorado River at the base of the Grand Canyon. But the river isn’t the only thing that needs taming. Liv--the older, more exacting and conscientious sister with a fear of heights--is challenged by her more free-spirited, fun-loving, younger sister Mandy. Together, the two join a tour of other adventure-seekers as they travel down the river, learning how to navigate the charged waterway. Initially awed by the breathtaking beauty of nature and wildlife, dark emotional undercurrents--namely personality clashes and issues of trust--shift the tide. When one of their traveling companions is found dead, along with another corpse, their idyllic trip suddenly becomes a deeper journey of dangerous survival as everyone is cast into a potential murder suspect—including Liv and Mandy.

 

Readers will need to hold on tight and buckle up as Simon’s winning, fast-paced thriller delivers red herrings and more hairpin twists and turns than the Colorado River itself!

 

My Sister is Going to Kill Me by Nina Simon

William Morrow (HarperCollins), $30.00 hardcover, 9780063478022, 352 pages

Publishing Date: August 18, 2026

To order this book on Bookshop.org, link HERE

 

Learn more about Nina Simon HERE

The Guest in Room 120

One hotel, three smart women--living 100 years apart--come together to finally give voice and testify to the truth.

The past and present overlap in The Guest in Room 120, another captivating, richly woven novel of historical fiction by Sara Ackerman.

 

Stories of strong women and the unsolved mysteries that surround them have become hallmarks of Ackerman’s work. In The Uncharted Flight of Olivia West, she explored the story of an ambitious, young female pilot from the 1920s who faced many obstacles in trying to compete in the male-dominated world of aviation. In The Guest in Room 120, Ackerman sets her sights on Jane Stanford, the co-founder of esteemed Stanford University who, in 1905, fled life-threatening dangers in California and took residence in the ritzy Moana Hotel in Honolulu, Hawaii, only to be murdered there by strychnine poisoning. The circumstances of her death were covered up and contested.

 

In 2005, the door to Stanford’s real-life story from the Gilded Age is reopened when blocked bestselling author, Zoe Finch, in search of literary inspiration, attends a writing conference at the historic Moana Hotel. While there, chilling supernatural dreams urge her to more closely examine details of Stanford’s death. Zoe’s research ultimately ties to an enigmatic woman who worked at the hotel--and kept a journal--during Stanford’s ill-fated stay.

 

Along the way, Zoe partners with Dylan Winters, a fellow mystery writer at the conference. The two are put in peril as they dig deep and uncover startling, long-buried truths.

 

Tightly wound dual timelines, burgeoning romance, and smart plotting--past and present--infuse Ackerman’s ambitious, engrossing novel riddled with nail-biting suspense.

 

The Guest in Room 120 by Sara Ackerman

Mira Books (Harlequin/HarperCollins), $18.99 paperback, 9780778387220, 326 pages

Publishing date: September 23, 2025

To order this book on Indiebound/Bookshop.org, link HERE

 

 

Learn more about author Sara Ackerman HERE

 

The Summer That Changed Everything

A passionate, sharply plotted story about a daughter’s quest to exonerate her estranged father, who is serving a life sentence for murder.

The past in its many incarnations figures prominently in The Summer That Changed Everything, an emotionally nuanced romantic suspense novel by Brenda Novak. 

Lucy Sinclair’s life hasn’t been easy. When she was just 17 years-old, Lucy’s father was found guilty of murdering three locals in their small hometown of North Hampton Beach, Virginia. 

In the aftermath, Lucy fled the town and lived a vagabond existence, ultimately becoming a professional poker player in Las Vegas. Unsettled, still traumatized and soul-searching, Lucy now feels the need to reconnect with her father, from whom she’s been estranged for 15 years. 

Her father admitted to killing an old couple who lived in a trailer park. However, he vehemently denied killing the third victim, Aurora Clark, a ‘mean girl’ peer of Lucy’s, the “most popular girl” in her high school. This always haunted Lucy, who becomes determined to finally get answers and, if true, find a way exonerate her father for Aurora’s death. 

Lucy’s quest reconnects her with Ford Wagner, an old beau whose own life is in flux. As Lucy and Ford revisit memories from the past, including the fateful murders, they ultimately unite to root out the real killer of Aurora Clark. But their investigation soon unearths surprising new details that suddenly endanger their lives. 

Novak’s (The Banned Books Club) premise hooks readers from page one. Her passionate story weaves a ratcheting, suspenseful plot that intricately braids together elements of romance and mystery.

The Summer that Changed Everything by Brenda Novak

MIRA (HarperCollins), $18.99 paperback, 9780778387688, 368 pages

Publication Date: June 3, 2025

To order this book on INDIEBOUND/Bookshop.Org, link HERE

 

Link HERE to learn more about author Brenda Novak

A Better Ending

A compulsively readable true crime story about a brother’s research into the mysterious life and death of his sister who supposedly killed herself in 1974.

With shrewd and calculating investigative skill, first time author, James Whitfield Thomson intimately explores the tragic, sudden death of his sister and how her death impacted the fate of his family and his own life in his spellbinding memoir, A Better Ending. 

Thomson’s sister Eileen, the youngest of three siblings, was 15 months younger than the author. She was always “bright and bubbly.” However, in 1974, 27-year-old, married and childless Eileen, shot herself—what was deemed a self-inflicted firearm wound to her heart. Her husband, Vic, her high school sweetheart--a policeman in San Bernardino, Calif.--was home at the time of the shooting. Due to the shattering nature of the family’s catatonic-like grief, and the fact that Vic was a police officer and his mother was also “the best friend” (of Thomson’s mother, the family took, as gospel, Vic’s version of events and official police statements regarding Eileen’s deemed suicide.

 

Decades later, after his parents and his only remaining sibling, a brother, had all died, Thomson felt supernaturally compelled to revisit Eileen’s death. (Thomson, an aspiring writer, initially set out to fictionalize Eileen’s story. But while digging for details, he unearthed unsettling discrepancies in the official narrative. Thomson decided to hire a private detective and chose to write Eileen’s story from his own personal perspective.

 

Eileen was rarely spoken of after her death, as the Thomson family was overwhelmed with sadness and guilt for not “having saved” her. But Eileen’s presence becomes palpable again when Thomson and the private investigator evaluate police and ballistic reports, cull witness testimonies, and interview relatives, friends, and coworkers of Eileen’s to gain more insight. Over the course of many years, Thomson unearths harrowing, conflicting details that reveal questionable gaps in the official story and “choppy, slipshod and misdirected” evidence collection and police reporting. All of this calls into question the actual nature of Eileen’s death while raising suspicions about Vic. Thomson’s labyrinthine quest to find the truth eerily coalesces in 2005, when he has a sit-down meeting with his now estranged, thrice-married brother-in-law.

 

Thomson’s meticulously recreated timeline perfects an emotionally intensifying chronology that probes a dark, suspenseful--chillingly sad--story. In the end, the arduous path that Thomson travels to unravel the mystery of his sister’s life and ineffable death urges him toward enlightenment, acceptance, and healing.

 

A Better Ending: A Brother’s Twenty-Year Quest to Uncover the Truth About His Sister’s Death by James Whitfield Thomson

Avid Reader Press/Simon and Schuster, $28.99 hardcover, 304 pages, 9781668062869

Publishing Date: March 25, 2025

Purchase this title on Bookshop.org

 

A condensed version of this review was published on Shelf Awareness (March 28, 2025). Link HERE to read that review.

 

Mother-Daughter Murder Night

Multi-generational family dynamics imbue this exciting well-drawn and well-plotted supersleuth whodunnit about murders in a coastal California town.

In Mother-Daughter Murder Night, first time novelist Nina Simon appealingly integrates spirited family dynamics with the intricacies of a complex whodunnit.

 

Three generations of women shack up together in a little house in Elkhorn Slough, a coastal town in Monterey Bay, Calif. This all comes about when family matriarch, Lana Rubicon--a 57-year-old, take-charge real estate mogul--faces an advanced cancer diagnosis. While undergoing treatment, her daughter, Beth, a geriatric nurse, insists that Lana, from Santa Monica, come and live with her and her daughter, Lana’s granddaughter, 15-year-old “Jack.” Lana and Beth’s contentious relationship had been riddled with angst ever since Lana became a single mother when Beth was just a rebellious teenager. Navigating the emotional minefield of Lana’s present illness and trigger points from the past, the strong, fiercely independent, mother and daughter are forced to bury the hatchet when a young man who works for a local land trust is found murdered. When the police investigation draws Jack, a kayak tour guide, into the list of suspects, Beth and Lana, who long-ago shared a passion for watching Columbo TV crime stories, put their amateur detective skills to work. They become determined to exonerate Jack and root out the real killer—but not before another murder takes place that ups the ante.

 

Simon has skillfully crafted a multi-generational study of disparate characters where surprising, immensely well-plotted crimes and clues will keep mystery readers guessing.

 

 

Mother-Daughter Murder Night: A Novel by Nina Simon

William Morrow, $30.00 hardcover, 9780063315044, 368 pages  

Publishing Date: September 5, 2023

To order this book on INDIEBOUND/Bookshop.Org, link HERE

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (September 8, 2023), link HERE

 

Out of Her Depth

A gripping romantic thriller about an idyllic summer of young love and friendship in Italy that surprisingly turned deadly.

 

Florence, Italy and the hills of Tuscany serve as the backdrop for Out of Her Depth, a menacing psychological thriller from Lizzy Barber.

 

The novel is told via the intimate, first-person narrative voice of Rachel, a Brit. At 21-years-old, Rachel travels to Italy for the summer, working as a maid in a quaint Villa in Florence. Hoping to brush up on her Italian-language skills before setting off to Cambridge in the fall, working class Rachel falls in with—and falls under the spell of—a wealthy gal, Diana, who is shrewd and manipulative…especially when it comes to Sebastian, the rich and very handsome godson of the Villa's owner, and Valentina, a new recruit to the hotel staff.  A fun, exciting summer filled with budding friendships--lust and love--suddenly shifts into dark power-plays, resentments and jealousies.

 

The story then cuts to twenty years later: Rachel, now 41-years-old, is a teacher at an exclusive, private school in England who remains traumatized and haunted by secrets from that one life-changing Italian holiday. Readers learn that the foursome never again saw each other, and Sebastian has spent 20 years in prison for a murder that played out that fateful, tragic summer. What exactly happened? What went wrong?

 

Barber (A Girl Named Anna) suspensefully rolls out details of a surprising friends-to-enemies story that probes themes of guilt and shame, secrets and regrets. Barber’s skillful storytelling elevates a traditional beach read into a stunningly deep page-turner.

Out of Her Depth: A Novel by Lizzy Barber

Mira Books (Original Edition), $16.99 paperback, 9780778386445, 400 pages

Publication Date: July 12, 2022

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

Grave Reservations

 

An energetic cozy mystery follows a travel agent as she puts her psychic tendencies to work on a police cold case.

Cherie Priest (The Toll; The Inexplicables) is a prolific author who has published across genres, including steampunk, horror and sci-fi. In Grave Reservations, a smart and sassy first cozy mystery, she dips into the paranormal, telling the story of a fledgling travel agent with often erratic psychic tendencies. 

Leda Foley of Seattle owns and operates her own travel agency--Foley's Far-Fetched Flights of Fancy--and is struggling to get it off the ground. Leda also experiences very "strong feelings" and vibes about things. For fun, she practices her supernatural skills at a local bar, where she clairvoyantly selects karaoke for customers. When Leda books a flight heading out of Orlando, Fla., for Seattle Police detective Grady Merritt, a widowed father of a 17-year-old daughter, she gets a flash of insight that he should not board the plane. It leads her to proactively change his flight plans, redirecting him into Atlanta.

Leda's hasty decision upsets Grady. However, when Leda's hunch spares the detective from a fatal plane accident, it creates a bond. When grateful Grady returns to Seattle, the two begin a secret partnership, where the detective enlists Leda's psychic ability to help solve a cold case. In the process, demons from Leda's and Grady's pasts resurface, forcing them both to tie up loose threads and reconcile respective losses.

Polished prose, steady pacing and quirky characters, including Leda's lovable and loyal, long-term best friend--along with a cast of eccentric bar patrons--add levity and wit to this suspenseful story that unravels darker themes.

Grave Reservations: Booking Agents Book One by Cherie Priest

Atria Books (Simon and Schuster), $26.00 Hardcover, 9781982168896, 304 pages

Publication Date: October 26, 2021

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (October 29, 2021), link HERE

Laughing Can Kill You

Maggie King’s astute cozy-mystery protagonist Hazel Rose of Richmond, Virginia, is thrust front and center in a murder investigation that puts her own life in jeopardy. 

Hazel Rose is a computer-programmer-turned-romance writer who burst onto the cozy literary murder-mystery scene in Murder at the Book Group. In that novel, Book One, she was swept up in solving the murder of a book club member who died after ingesting a cup of tea laced with cyanide. In Book Two, Murder at the Moonshine Inn, Hazel and her book club cronies became embroiled in solving the suspicious death of a high-powered executive found dead in the parking lot of a local watering hole. In Laughing Can Kill You, Book Three in this engaging series, poor Hazel learns that she’s been dumped by her publisher—her romance books have faced lagging sales. Ever resilient and undaunted Hazel decides to sign up for a local course in mystery writing in the hope that by switching gears, she’ll re-energize her career. The problem is, however, there is always one spoiler in every group—and writing groups are no exception.

Self-aggrandizing Randall “Randy” Zimmerman, Esquire—a lawyer-turned-thriller-writer who believes he can give “John Grisham a run for his money”--is that one annoying person in Hazel’s group. Randy is the ex-husband of a book club member. He takes confrontational pleasure in demeaning, belittling and even laughing at the work of his fellow classmates. When Hazel and her true-crime writing husband, Vince, find Randy dead, foul-play looms. Hazel--with the help of her cohorts--once again goes on a dangerous pursuit to root out the killer.  

Readers don’t need to be familiar with King’s prior books to enjoy this one, but they’ll no doubt want to after reading this well-crafted, suspenseful whodunnit augmented with a strong supporting, small-town ensemble cast and a ratcheting plot rife with shifty motives and red herrings.

Laughing Can Kill You: A Hazel Rose Book Group Mystery (Book Three) by Maggie King

Olive Lane Press, $12.99 paperback, 9798985231816, 320 pages

Publication Date: December 6, 2021

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

Read my reviews of other Hazel Rose Book Group Mysteries:

MURDER AT THE BOOK GROUP

MURDER AT THE MOONSHINE INN

Summertime Guests

A probing, suspenseful drama where strangers at a posh hotel reflect on their lives after a jarring sudden death.

 

Wendy Francis (Best Behavior) delivers a smart, probing drama that skillfully unravels the complex emotional lives of an ensemble cast in Summertime Guests, a novel set one weekend in June at a posh hotel on the North Shore of Boston.

Legendary elegance is the hallmark of The Seafarer, a famous, historic hotel. After a major renovation, the landmark destination reopens under the management of workaholic, 39-year-old Parisian, Jean-Paul, who has a wife and new baby he is woefully neglecting. There are 250 rooms at The Seafarer. However, Francis narrows her focus on only a handful of guests: Riley and Tom, a young, Midwestern couple planning a wedding at the establishment are challenged by the overbearing expectations of the mother-of-the-groom. Widowed Rhode Island journalist Claire O’Dell, age 61, checks into the hotel to take a breather. Claire wrote a provocative article about a local politician with mob ties, and her newspaper suggests she take some time off. Claire uses the opportunity to reconnect with an old flame who lives near Boston. And then there is a 30something couple: Gwen, a teaching assistant, who treats her beau, Jason, an adjunct professor, to a weekend birthday get-away in the hope of healing their fraught relationship. Emotional, personal complications abound and deepen as the lives of these strangers are affected when a woman plunges to her death from a hotel balcony. 

 

The subsequent investigation into the mysterious sudden death makes for a reflective, deeply engaging and suspenseful story with many threads sure to ensnare the attention of rapt readers.

Summertime Guests: A Novel by Wendy Francis

Graydon House, $16.99 paperback, 9781525895982, 320 pages

Publication Date: March 9, 2021

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (April 9, 2021), link HERE