Suspense – Fiction Aficionado

Top Ten Tuesday – Autumn 2021 TBR

Happy Tuesday, reading friends, and welcome to Top Ten Tuesday, thanks to That Artsy Reader Girl. It’s a new season, which is always a good reason to revisit the TBR, particularly upcoming releases that I’m looking forward to. And here in Australia, we’re two weeks into autumn already, and it’s starting to feel like it. I put on a light cardigan for the first time in months yesterday! Sounds like perfect weather to curl up and read in, doesn’t it? And I’m looking forward to doing just that with these books!

16 March 2021

Network of Deceit (Tom Threadgill) – Review

After her rescue of nearly fifty kidnapped children made international headlines, Amara Alvarez gets what she’s worked for: a transfer to San Antonio’s Homicide Division. Reality sets in quickly, though, as her first case, the suspicious death of a teenager at a crowded local water park, brings chaos to her personal life.

As the investigation moves forward and she increases the pressure on the suspects, Amara finds herself under attack by cybercriminals. Her every move is being potentially watched online, and she’s forced to resort to unconventional methods to find the killer. With few leads, she fights to keep her first murder investigation from ending up in the cold case files.

Tom Threadgill is back with another riveting page-turner featuring the detective who is willing to put everything on the line to see that justice is served and lives are protected.

1 March 2021

First Line Friday – Network of Deceit (Tom Threadgill)

Happy Friday and welcome to First Line Friday, hosted by Hoarding Books. If you love suspense novels, you’re going to love the book I’m featuring today: Network of Deceit by Tom Threadgill. I’ve only just discovered this author, but I’ll definitely be keeping a lookout for his next novel, especially if it features Detective Amara Alvarez. I’ll have a review up in the next few days, but in the meantime, check out the first line!

19 February 2021

Cast the First Stone (David James Warren) – Review

One case haunts him. One chance to fix the past. One mistake could cost him everything.

Ex-Minneapolis Police Detective Rembrandt Stone walked away from a career he loved—just the price of being sure he can come home to the wife and daughter he cherishes. But he can’t shake the deep regret over a case left behind.

When his mentor, the former Chief of Homicide dies and leaves Rembrandt with a box of cold cases and a mysterious watch, he finds himself thrust into a world he recognizes—a world from twenty years ago—the same world he’s woken from in a cold sweat a hundred times. But is it a dream, or some kind of twisted reality?

If he solves the case that plagues him, and justice is finally served, will it destroy the life he loves?

17 February 2021

The Red Canary (Rachel Scott McDaniel) – Review

Music sparks her world, but can love ignite her heart?

In 1928, soot from the local mills and music from speakeasies linger in the Pittsburgh air. When the manager of The Kelly Club is found dead, nightclub singer Vera Pembroke is thrust into peril. As the only witness to the crime, she’s sentenced to hide away in the Allegheny Forest with a stuffy police sergeant as her guardian.

Sergeant Mick Dinelo harbors a burning hatred for Pittsburgh’s underworld after the devastation it left on his life—and heart. He should be out exposing culpable gangsters rather than tending to the impetuous woman who defies his every effort to keep her safe.

Mick and Vera must set aside their differences to solve the murder that someone wants to keep buried beneath the soot of Steel City.

4 January 2021

First Line Friday – The Red Canary (Rachel Scott McDaniel)

Happy Friday and happy new year! Welcome to First Line Friday, hosted by Hoarding Books. I’m heading back to the late 1920s this week with a historical romance that has a heaped side-serving of suspense. If you enjoy reading books in this time period, I encourage you to check out Rachel Scott McDaniel’s newest release, The Red Canary.

1 January 2021

Best of 2020 – Emoji Files Part III: The WOW Awards

Hello again, reader friends! Welcome to Part III of my annual Emoji Files celebrating my best reads of 2020. If you’ve missed either of the previous posts to date, make sure you check out The Swoony Awards and Got Me in the Feels.

Normally, the WOW Awards go to those books that kept me riveted with high-intensity action, pumping adrenaline, plot twists, or just some good old-fashioned suspense. And most of the books in this list did exactly that. This year, however, I’ve included two books that don’t necessary meet that criteria: Lu. by Beth Troy and Heartless by Tamara Leigh, both of which WOWed me in their own ways…

31 December 2020

Burying Daisy Doe Blog Tour + Giveaway

No cold case is more important than the one that destroyed her own family

Every small town has one unsolved case that haunts its memory, festering for generations below the surface with the truth of humanity’s darkness. Star Cavanaugh is obsessed with the one that tore her family apart.

Over sixty years ago, Daisy Doe was murdered and discarded outside Pineville, Alabama, buried without a name or anyone to mourn her loss. When Star’s father tried to solve the case, he was also killed. Now a cold-case detective with resources of her own, Star is determined to get to the bottom of both crimes. But she’ll have to face an entire town locked in corruption, silence, and fear–and the same danger that took two other lives. The only people in the town she can trust are her grandmother and the charming Mike Luinetti, and both of them trust a God Star isn’t sure she believes in. Can Christians so focused on the good really help her track down this evil?

10 December 2020

The power of fiction, the beauty of words, and the God who made us to wield them for His glory.