Books

The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not immediately bring World War II to an end. Bestselling author Evan Thomas (Ike’s Bluff) explains why in his superbly crafted military and diplomatic history Road to Surrender: Three Men and the Countdown to the End of World War II. “This book is a narrative of how the

“Killed my husband. I am a monster.” Never say this when detained by the French police. It’s just one of several mistakes made by Anna Viera, played by Erika Sainte, in the riveting new French crime series I Killed My Husband, arriving on More4 in the UK at 9pm on Friday 26 May. You’ll also

In When You Can Swim, readers explore the joys of swimming in various bodies of water—oceans, ponds, lakes, rivers and more—in a text set primarily in conditional statements (the “when you can swim” of the title), as spoken by a parent to a child. This phrase is a refrain that conveys the abundant possibilities and

With Pride just a few weeks away, it’s time for library workers to start thinking about the where, how, when, and what of their book displays. We know that queer books remain among the most targeted in the current book ban ~curation~ wave and we also know that Pride displays have historically been among the

At long last, a blood moon is waxing and a deadly night awaits for fans of Norwegian author Jo Nesbo and his craggy Oslo detective, Harry Hole. It’s been four years since Knife, it feels like there’s some catching up to do, and Killing Moon is our lead book this week. Alongside it, we’ll look

Geniuses seem to inhabit a world apart from mere mortals like us. But they don’t, as the irreverent and entertaining Edison’s Ghosts makes clear. Debut author and science writer Katie Spalding has mined history, biography and psychology to turn the cult of genius on its head, shining a sassy light on the idiosyncrasies of some

Is there anything more exciting than seeing a book you read and enjoyed being adapted into a film or movie? You’ve imagined all of these scenes and characters in your head. Now you get to see it all play out in front of you. Will the adaptation include all of your favorite lines or moments?

Following a career as a litigator and trial lawyer that spanned over 30 years, James Polkinghorn is turning some of his legal experience into crime fiction stories, and the Florida-based author’s debut novel, Liquid Shades of Blue, arrives next week. Inside, a lawyer turned bar owner called Jack Girard heads from Key West to Miami

Have you ever created a leaf rubbing? Or painted one side of a natural object and then pressed it to paper to make a mirror image? If so, you’ve engaged in nature printing, an ancient practice that marries scientific documentation and art. Fossils are a kind of nature print, and leaf prints were featured on

Imagine the full spectrum of crime, mystery and thriller stories. Over on the left you’d slot tidy Miss Marple and the cosies. But hang onto your hat now as we veer way off to the right where, literally at the other end of that spectrum, you’ll find Frank Bill’s crime tale, Back to the Dirt.

In this era of domestic thrillers, a novel about a functional, loving family can feel refreshing and downright unexpected. Extraordinary circumstances severely test the bonds of one such family in Laura Dave’s The Last Thing He Told Me. Hannah Hall’s adoring husband, coding genius Owen Michaels, vanishes on the same day that his company is

The advent of machine learning algorithms in publishing ushered the era of online book recommendations. First there was Goodreads, and then came Amazon. And now, there’s Tertulia, which scrapes an excessive amount of public data to recommend books to its users. There are also others out there that function similarly, be it an app or

Today, the Folio Society has launched a special edition of Faceless Killers – the first Wallander novel written by Swedish author Henning Mankell. For many fans of Scandinavian crime fiction, this is the novel that kick started the Nordic noir subgenre when it was published in 1991 in Sweden as Mördare utan ansikte. It went

How to Not Be Afraid of Everything At a reading in 2022, I heard poet Jane Wong describe her obsession with time-lapse videos of rotting fruit. Her poetry collection, How to Not Be Afraid of Everything, is full of the physicality of food, informed by Wong’s research into the Great Leap Forward, which was a

Screenwriter, filmmaker and bar owner Eryk Pruitt is no stranger to crime fiction that depicts the dark side of the American South, and has a growing reputation in rural noir storytelling. Something Bad Wrong is his third crime novel and was partly inspired by the Valentine’s Day Murders in North Carolina, a real-life case that’s

Squire is the brainy sidekick to the brawny Sir Kelton, a knight whose reputation precedes him but never quite seems to prove itself. Regardless, while Sir Kelton is heralded as a hero, Squire stands quietly by, more interested in books and knowledge than sword fighting and rescuing. When the two come across a desolate village

How is the happy ending in a romance “earned?” What sort of redemption arc or emotional growth does a main character need to go through to “deserve” love? What mistakes are “unforgivable” for romance characters to make? These kinds of questions trouble me as a romance reader because they can require the genre to provide

“When I love a song, there is almost always a moment that sounds like how I imagine truth to sound,” writes poet Amy Key in Arrangements in Blue: Notes on Loving and Living Alone. “It’s the moment in the song that touches the bruise you didn’t know you had, the aching, denied part of you.

Growing up in San Francisco’s Chinatown in the 1950s and ’60s, novelist Fae Myenne Ng (Bone) and her youngest sister accompanied their father to Portsmouth Square to visit the elderly “Orphan Bachelors” who gathered in the park “like scolds of pigeons.” Because of the United States’ exclusionary immigration laws, these men couldn’t bring their wives

As well as writing crime novels, Tim Sullivan is well known as a director and screenwriter. In fact, it’s likely you’ve watched something he’s worked on such as The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, Coronation Street or Cold Feet. Each of his DS George Cross novels so far has been titled after the victim’s profession. We’ve

Twelve-year-old Addie is still working through the aftermath of a family crisis when her dad, a futurist, decides the two of them need a change of scenery for the summer. He’ll oversee a university research lab where talented students are experimenting with using virtual reality as a tool to teach everything from nutrition to empathy.

There are dozens of censorship bills under consideration across the country. You can keep tabs on them and their status over at EveryLibrary, who have been diligently tracking them and getting people to write and show up to put an end to them. It will shock absolutely no one to see how many of those

We know that a lot of people visit our site to find out more about Scandinavian crime fiction, and this week we bring you news of an author who is famous for his crime thrillers in Denmark and is now appearing in English for the first time. That author is Michael Katz Krefeld and his

In her first memoir, Welcome to Shirley: A Memoir From an Atomic Town, Kelly McMasters chronicled her happy childhood in a small blue-collar seaside community—and her horrified realization that nearby nuclear reactor leaks were causing cancer in numerous residents. McMasters again explores the notion of something dark and poisonous lurking beneath a bright, beautiful surface

The Illinois Senate has passed HB 2789, a bill whose terms dictate that state funding from public or school libraries that remove books from circulation will be withheld. As per the bill, the $62 million of funding that goes to the state’s libraries will only be eligible for said funding if they “adopt the American Library

William Hussey’s Killing Jericho is the thrilling introduction to a detective cut from an entirely new mould. Scott Jericho is an openly gay traveller, grew up on the fairground circuit, went to Oxford to read English literature, then worked as muscle for hire in London’s criminal underworld. He is also a former cop, drummed out

Jimmy Propfield joined the army for two reasons: to get out of Mobile, Alabama, with his best friends Hank and Billy and to forget his high school sweetheart, Claire. Life in the Philippines seems like paradise—until the morning of December 8, 1941, when news comes from Manila: Imperial Japan has bombed Pearl Harbor. Within hours,

Some TV shows open a door for crime fiction, and surely the popularity of Peaky Blinders, though entirely fictional, reminds us that ganglands are as old as cities and didn’t arrive with the Krays in 1960s London. Scottish author Robbie Morrison’s 2021 debut crime novel, Edge of the Grave, brought a grounded, vivid and atmospheric

Exercise—the simple act of moving our bodies and giving our cardiovascular systems a bit of a challenge—is fraught territory in American life. This is largely because we have a fitness industry, as we have industries for everything, and industry tends to cause as many problems as it solves. “The fitness industry is filled with life-hacks

Today sees the launch of Clonk!, a humour-filled crime novel by the Baltimore author J Paul Rieger, and here at Crime Fiction Lover we’re overjoyed to bring you an interview with the man himself. Based in the Baltimore suburb of Towson, JP is a retired real estate attorney who has always been a writer only