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The Hungry Dark

Jen Williams

8.0 (1 Ratings) Rate It

Book

As a child, Ashley Whitelam was haunted by ghostly figures no one else could see. Silent and...

Ghosts

Mark @ Carstairs Considers (2609 KP) rated Player Elimination in Books

Nov 13, 2025

Who Eliminated Wren’s Landlord?

Wren Winters is running the game story she and her late husband started in a small college town. Her biggest issue is her landlord, who is talking about doing something new with her building despite the fact that he uses the game store to try out new solo games himself. But one morning she arrives at the store to find the police there. Someone has murdered her landlord. But who?

I’ve gotten back into games the last couple of years, so I was hoping this would be a good cozy mystery with that theme. Sadly, it needed just a bit more. There is one character who uses they/them pronouns that I found distracting, but that’s probably mostly on me. Overall, the characters were a little flat. The mystery was uneven, although the ending was good. Even the games Wren and her friends played didn’t give us the details I was hoping to enjoy. Sadly, I don’t think I’ll continue this series.

Kudos

ClareR (6253 KP) rated The Sunshine Man in Books

Nov 23, 2025

The Sunshine Man

Emma Stonex | 2025 | Crime, Fiction & Poetry, Mystery, Thriller

8.0

(1 Ratings)

Book Rating

The Sunshine Man is set in two timelines: 1989 and 1971.

In 1989, Bridie prepares to find and shoot the man, Jimmy Maguire, that murdered her sister upon his release from prison. She follows him as he’s picked up from the prison gates by his daughter, and as she drives him to old haunts and to visit his family.

In 1971, Jimmy and Providence are good friends. Jimmy and his family are outcasts, undesirables, always in trouble with the police. Providence can see beyond this with Jimmy.

This is such a sad story of family in all its guises (good and bad), revenge and redemption.

The Sunshine Man is a slow burn, but I found it worthwhile. I really got to know the characters, whether I really wanted to or not. Some were distinctly unpleasant people, but the motivations for their actions, whilst not excusable, were explained. I certainly won’t be forgetting this book in a hurry.

Kudos

Hard Headed Woman

Howard Gimple

(0 Ratings) Rate It

Book

No one but Hannah Johansson believes her father was murdered. Not even her mother. The doctors say...

Comedy Mystery

Crying in the Chapel (Swinging Sixties Mystery, #5)

Teresa Trent

(0 Ratings) Rate It

Book

It's August 1965, and Dot Morgan is finally getting married to the dashing reporter Ben Dalton. Her...

Cozy Historical Mystery

David McK (3843 KP) rated Dead of Night in Books

Apr 24, 2023

Second entry in Simon Scarrow's now so-called 'Berlin wartime thriller series (after Blackout), again following Criminal Inspector Horst Schenke of the Kripo (criminal police) as he first investigates the murder (as the wife of the doctor believes) - or was it suicide? (been already ruled as such) - of a SS doctor, before being told in no uncertain terms to leave it alone.

He is then pulled into an investigation of a separate murder (again, is it such? The parents believe so, but the state does not) of a child which, as events transpire, seems to have more and more to do with the death of the SS doctor.

So I could see from roughly a third of the way into this where it was going. And it is horrifying that these events - well, maybe not *these* exact events, but very very similar ones - took place routinely in 1940 Nazi Germany.

Learn from history.

So it will never be repeated.