Author 'Nathan Burgoine posted this simple, direct method of not getting paralyzed by the prospect of having to write reviews. The Three-Sentence Review is, as he notes, very helpful and also simple to achieve. I get completely unmanned at the idea of saying something trenchant about each book I read, when there often just isn't that much to say...now I can use this structure to say what I think is the most important idea I took away from the read and not try to dig for more.
Think about using it yourselves!
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The Storm by Rachel Hawkins
Rating: 3.25* of five
The Publisher Says: St. Medard's Bay, Alabama is famous for three things: the deadly hurricanes that regularly sweep into town, the Rosalie Inn, a century-old hotel that's survived every one of those storms, and Lo Bailey, the local girl infamously accused of the murder of her lover, political scion Landon Fitzroy, during Hurricane Marie in 1984.
When Geneva Corliss, the current owner of the Rosalie Inn, hears a writer is coming to town to research the crime that put St. Medard's Bay on the map, she's less interested in solving a whodunnit than in how a successful true crime book might help the struggling inn's bottom line. But to her surprise, August Fletcher doesn't come to St. Medard's Bay alone. With him is none other than Lo Bailey herself. Lo says she's returned to her hometown to clear her name once and for all, but the closer Geneva gets to both Lo and August, the more she wonders if Lo is actually back to settle old scores.
As the summer heats up and another monster storm begins twisting its way towards St. Medard's Bay, Geneva learns that some people can be just as destructive—and as deadly—as any hurricane, and that the truth of what happened to Landon Fitzroy may not be the only secret Lo is keeping...
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: Locked-room historical mystery being revisited by one of the participants in the events set in the present. The expected beats are all hit; the pace isn't consistently maintained, but the storm plot spine makes up for it by delivering excitement; the characters are pretty much who the genre demands they be.
You know Hawkins by now, so you'll make your decision based on her reputation, and this book is a solid, fun-to-read iteration of a Rachel Hawkins novel.
St. Martin's Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) charges $14.99 for an ebook. Perfect if you're in the target audience.
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99 Ways to Die: And How to Avoid Them by Ashely Alker
Rating: 3.5* of five, for absence of footnotes and endnotes and a bibliography
The Publisher Says: An illuminating, hilarious, and practical guide to 99 of the most terrifying ways to die and how to avoid them from an emergency medicine doctor.
Dr. Ashely Alker is a self-described death-escapologist—or, in more familiar terms, an emergency medicine doctor. She has seen it all, from flesh-eating bacteria to the work of a serial killer to the more mundane but no less deadly, and her work keeping people from dying (or being unable to) has uniquely prepared her to write this book.
99 Ways to Die And How to Avoid Them is an illuminating, darkly funny, and practical guide to 99 of the most terrifying ways to die and how to avoid them. Dr. Alker manages to scare readers while making them laugh, preparing them for a wide range of deadly situations and conditions. Each chapter includes stories of her patients pertaining to the chapter’s subject, as well as her related experiences in life and medicine. Sections include categories on sex, poison, drugs, biological warfare, disease, animals, crime, the elements and much more.
An Anthony Bourdain-style greatest hits tour of death, 99 Ways is entertaining while it informs. Quirky yet commercial, it will appeal to fans of everything from The Vagina Bible to Stiff to What If?, as well as the large audience of readers of bestselling medical books like How Not to Die.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: A book of disasters that befall us in our millions, with predictable risks of being involved in each; yet we continue to behave as though they're rare, freakish happenings. Dr. Alker disabuses the reader of this fallacy with facts and humor, gallows/dark of tone a lot of the time, fun and wry all the time.
If you're not inspired to take some commonsensical risk mitigation steps after reading Dr. Alker's book, it's on you when your family gathers at your dirtnap resting place before you're 80.
St. Martin's Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) asks for $15.99 to get the ebook onto your reading device.
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Moonlight Can Be Deadly (A Discount Detective Mystery #4) by Charlotte Stuart
Rating: 3* of five
The Publisher Says: In Moonlight Can Be Deadly, Cameron’s family has a fascination with the gruesome details of the death which occurred at a midnight sacrificial ritual, but are torn about the tactics by the ecofeminist group, despite their support of the group's mission.
When Cameron attends a climate change rally with her colleague, Yuri, they bring along her children. Unfortunately, when Cameron leaves Yuri and her kids to try to get her client’s niece out of harm’s way, she gets caught up in a mass arrest after an explosion occurs. Cameron and Yuri interview a number of suspects, including a handsome professor who Cameron decides is “dateworthy,” but she is alone when she confronts the person responsible for not one but two deaths.
Instinct and training kick in at the last minute to prevent her from becoming the murderer’s third victim.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: Not the place to start this series. I realize publishers hate it when you don't spread the lie that any series can work as a series of standalones, but there's just too much I could not immediately grasp in this story for me to agree you could start here without issues. Issues abounded.
I really enjoyed the humor. I might like Yuri if I'd met him properly. I'd like to be in on the joke, however, that authors establish in the first series stories they write.
Walrus Publishing (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) asks you to fork out $16.95 for a paperback. I wouldn't start here but I think series-mystery fans might not regret starting the series with #1, Survival Can Be Deadly.
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Good Intentions by Marisa Walz
Rating: 2.5* of five
The Publisher Says: A deft and immersive psychological suspense debut about a luxury party planner who becomes obsessed with a woman she encounters in a hospital waiting room.
Cady has worked hard to have a good life. She has a thriving luxury event-planning business, the man she’s loved since she was seventeen, and a social calendar she can barely keep up with. She also has Dana, her identical twin, her beyond best friend, her most trusted confidante. When Cady gets a call that Dana has been in a serious accident and arrives moments too late to say goodbye, her world falls apart.
But to Cady’s family’s growing concern and confusion, it’s not Dana’s death that consumes her. It’s Morgan, a grieving mother Cady encountered in the hospital waiting room, the day her sister died. It can’t be a coincidence, that they both experienced tragedy at the same moment, in the same place—Cady doesn't believe in coincidences. Instead, she is convinced that she must help this stranger overcome her tragedy, in order to come to terms with her own.
Or...is there more to it? Is it possible that Cady wants something else from Morgan? Something she can’t even admit to herself?
Slyly twisted and deeply provocative, Good Intentions captures the moral ambiguity that can arise in the face of impossible choices. Like the aftermath of a car accident—and against your better judgment—you won't be able to look away.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: I didn't look away. I thought seriously about it; there's a lot of really mid-level prose telling an unsurprising story with predictable twists. As a psychological thriller it falls short of top-tier execution.
It's perfectly fine as an afternoon's distraction.
St. Martin's Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) requests $14.99 for an ebook, available now.
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Black River by Nilanjana S. Roy
Rating: 3.5* of five
The Publisher Says: In the village of Teetarpur, a few hours from the capital city of Delhi, Chand’s peaceful life is shattered as he is forced into a dangerous quest for justice.
At the station house, the jurisdiction of which extends to Teetarpur and the neighbouring villages, Sub-inspector Ombir Singh, who has known Chand’s daughter Munia since she was born, wrestles with his conscience and the vagaries of his personal life as the increasingly murky case unfolds under the watchful eyes of the ‘Delhi boy’, SSP Pilania.
Meanwhile, in the rough bylanes of Bright Dairy Colony, Chand’s old companions Rabia and Badshah Miyan fight for their right to home and country as the politics of religion threaten to overwhelm their lives. Framed as a police procedural, Black River is fast-paced and relentless, yet tender and reflective, in its exploration of friendship, love and grief.
"A riveting murder mystery. A psychological thriller. A magnificent work of literary fiction. Roy brings her formidable experience as a journalist to this story of crime in modern India. Black River addresses a society unravelling in the midst of change, a brutal class divide, the terror of religious strife, relentless violence against women—but it is also suffused with tenderness for the ordinary, heroic decency of those who persist in abiding by different rules.— Kiran Desai"
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: Morally grey story of serious consequences for women in an unquestioningly patriarchal system. It's not a thriller but a literary procedural, with heavy noir overtones in its violence. Be prepared for the action to stop like a local train for you to pick up backstory on the character just introduced.
While I felt the pacing really could've used tightening, I understand why we got the backstory we did. I was always glad to pick the book back up, and finished it with the feeling I'd been to this village.
Pushkin Vertigo (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) asks you for $12.99 to add the ebook to your library, which I certainly hope you will.
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Murder Will Out: a mystery by Jennifer K. Breedlove
Rating: 3.5* of five
The Publisher Says: Minotaur Books/Mystery Writers of America First Crime Novel Award winner Jennifer K. Breedlove brings coastal Maine to life in Murder Will Out, a lighter, modern gothic mystery that's as atmospheric as it is heart-warming.
Come for the memories. Stay for the murder...
Little North Island, off the coast of Maine, is so beautiful it could be a postcard. Organist Willow Stone cherishes her memories of childhood summers spent on the island with her godmother Sue... even though her visits ended abruptly, and she hasn't seen or heard from her godmother in over fifteen years. Until a letter from Sue—and word of Sue’s death—brings Willow back to the picturesque island.
The islanders rarely mention Sue without also bringing up Cameron House, and the controversy around Sue’s unexpected inheritance of the sprawling mansion. When Willow overhears someone threatening the next heir to the property, she starts to question whether Sue’s death was really an accident, and can’t help but wonder whether someone on this sleepy island is willing to stop at nothing—even murder—to claim Cameron House for their own.
Through Willow’s eyes, as well as those of others on the island, a mystery unfolds that keeps drawing Willow back to Cameron House and the very real ghosts that walk its corridors.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: Ghosts plus forced-feeling familial relationships times genealogical puzzles that don't add up equals the debut novel of a very promising writer. Just not quite there yet because the elements don't fit together as seamlessly as I'd need them to do to whole-heartedly recommend buying one.
Debut authors need support. I hope those who love genealogy stories, who aren't unhappy with paranormal tinges to them, and who like found/made family fiction will take note.
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) needs a transfer of $14.99 before you're legally allowed to read the story. Check it out of the library, it still supports the debut author.
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The Bird Hotel: A Novel by Joyce Maynard
Rating: 3.5* of five
The Publisher Says: Enter the magical world of La Llorona with New York Times bestselling author Joyce Maynard.
After a childhood filled with heartbreak, Irene, a talented artist, finds herself in a small Central American village where she checks into a beautiful but decaying lakefront hotel called La Llorona at the base of a volcano.
The Bird Hotel tells the story of this young American who, after suffering tragedy, restores and runs La Llorona. Along the way we meet a rich assortment of characters who live in the village or come to stay at the hotel. With a mystery at its center and filled with warmth, drama, romance, humor, pop culture, and a little magical realism, The Bird Hotel has all the hallmarks of a Joyce Maynard novel that have made her a leading voice of her generation.
The Bird Hotel is a big, sweeping story spanning four decades, offering lyricism as well as whimsy. While the world New York Times bestselling author Joyce Maynard brings to life on the page is rendered from her imagination, it’s one informed by the more than twenty years of which she has spent a significant amount of her time in a small Mayan indigenous village in Guatemala.
As the New York Times said, "[Maynard] has an unswerving eye, a sharply perked ear, and the ability to keep her readers hanging on her words." People Magazine said of her: "Maynard’s spare prose packs a rich emotional punch.”
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: It's not magical realism when there's no logic to the logical lacunae in these linked microstories. Irene's not quite innocent of white-saviorism vis-à-vis the Maya people she deals with. Lovely sentences, though.
I'd check it out of the library as opposed to buying one.
Arcade Publishing (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) requests and requires you to stand and deliver $19.99 for paperback or ebook editions.
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Murder at the Black Cat Cafe (Detective Kosuke Kindaichi #2.5) by Seishi Yokomizo (tr. Bryan Karetnyk)
The Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers: Fiction For the week ending February 1, 2026
Rating: 3.5* of five
The Publisher Says: Tokyo, 1947. In order to solve this sensational stand-alone murder mystery, scruffy detective Kosuke Kindaichi will have to untangle a complex web of love, jealousy, and betrayal
The Pink Labyrinth is one of the bomb-scarred city's most shady neighbourhoods. There, in the dead of night a patrolling policeman catches a young Buddhist monk digging in the back yard of The Black Cat Cafe, a notorious brothel. In the shallow grave at his feet lie the dead body of a woman, her face disfigured beyond recognition, and the corpse of a black cat.
Who is the murdered woman, and how was she connected to the infamous establishment? And where did the dead cat come from, given that the cafe's feline mascot seems to be alive and well? The brilliant sleuth Kosuke Kindaichi investigates, but as he draws closer to the truth, he finds himself in grave danger...
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: An internal-chronology follow-on to The Inagumi Curse, this is a fix-up of a novella, of the title, and a short story, "Why did the well wheel creak?" It's outside the novel canon established for Kindaichi, so it's an optional read in his timeline; it's not really a thrillfest and I found it pretty mid-.
Completists will want it, but I can't say I think it's worth the investment.
Pushkin Vertigo (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) wants $13.99 for you to read the ebook.
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She Walks at Night (Detective Kosuke Kindaichi #3) by Seishi Yokomizo (tr. Jesse Kirkwood)
Rating: 3.5* of five
The Publisher Says: FROM JAPAN’S GREATEST CRIME WRITER: Yokomizo’s iconic detective Kosuke Kindaichi returns in this stand-alone murder mystery featuring a luxurious family estate beset by madness, scandal, and a terrifying curse
"Plenty of golden age ingredients... with a truly ingenious solution." — The Guardian, Best New Crime Fiction
In this mind-bending new addition to Seishi Yokomizo’s bestselling Kosuke Kindaichi Mysteries—translated into English for the first time—scruffy sleuth Kindaichi is called to the home of the aristocratic Furugami family, where in the midst of the Musashino countryside and enclosed on all sides by a long earthen wall, a gruesome scandal is brewing.
At the centre of the estate is the family patriarch: the drunken, sword-wielding father Tetsunoshin. His mistress, the icy, alluring Lady Oryu, is also housed in the estate along with their illegitimate daughter Yachiyo —beautiful and unstable—and the drink-ravaged Furugami heir, Naoki Sengoku. With each family member holding onto their own dark secrets, tensions between them ride high.
But this family feud turns bloody when the mutilated, headless body of Yachiyo’s fiancé is discovered in the Furugami estate. To solve the case, Kindaichi will need to pick apart the threads of the family’s carefully-woven story. But can he find the killer before the family is torn apart by its own secrets?
Perfect for fans of Knives Out and Lucy Foley, this thrilling mystery from Japan’s greatest and best-loved crime writer is rife with family drama and shocking twists that will captivate readers old and new.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: Third, in internal chronology, in the Kindaichi series; the publisher says, now, these are able to be read as stand-alones. I know y'all need to sell books but do stop lying to us.
Don't read this entry in the series first. I can't give you an eager recommendation to read the interestingly-constructed puzzle because I'm completely skeeved out by the not very hidden incestuous lust of the men in the story.
Pushkin Vertigo (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) publishes this book on 2 June 2026. Preorder for $14.99 for an ebook.
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This space is dedicated to Nancy Pearl's Rule of 50, or "the Pearl Rule" as I've always called it. After realizing five times in December 2021 alone that I'd already Pearl-Ruled a book I picked up on a whim, I realized how close my Half-heimer's is getting to the full-on article. Hence my decision to track my Pearls!
As she says:
People frequently ask me how many pages they should give a book before they give up on it. In response to that question, I came up with my “rule of fifty,” which is based on the shortness of time and the immensity of the world of books. If you’re fifty years of age or younger, give a book fifty pages before you decide to commit to reading it or give it up. If you’re over fifty, which is when time gets even shorter, subtract your age from 100—the result is the number of pages you should read before making your decision to stay with it or quit.
So this space will be each month's listing of Pearl-Ruled books. Earlier Pearl-Rule posts will be linked below the current month's crop.
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The Escapes of David George: An Odyssey of Slavery, Freedom, and the American Revolution by Gregory E. O'Malley (28%)
Rating: 3* of five
The Publisher Says: By a prize-winning historian: The dramatic story of a Black man's relentless search for freedom in Revolutionary-era America
When most Americans think of slavery, they do not picture the colonial or revolutionary eras. Yet, in fact, one of six inhabitants of the thirteen original colonies was enslaved. The Escapes of David George: an Odyssey of Slavery, Freedom, and the American Revolution reveals a remarkable, untold experience of the American revolutionary period—a Black man's quest for the freedom espoused by our Founders, but denied him and other enslaved people.
In 1762, at the age of 19, David George escaped from a plantation in Virginia. Running southwest by night, fording rivers and crossing borders, he embarked on a decades-long journey in and out of captivity that spanned multiple colonies and thousands of miles. George lived among White, Black, Creek, and Natchez settlements, fled to the British Army for the promise of liberty, founded what might have been the first Black Baptist church, helped to hack a settlement for refugees out of the Nova Scotia wilderness, and died as a leader of an experimental anti-slavery community in Sierra Leone.
Piecing together archival records and David George's own brief account of his life—the earliest written testimony by a fugitive enslaved person in North America—Gregory O'Malley presents a thrilling narrative and a unique perspective on our nation's origins, principles, and contradictions.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: There's a good book in here; or maybe it's a good book, and just did not mesh with my reading mood. Hundreds of notes, a lot of intimate and social detail, seemingly the sort of thing I batten on, yet I bailed out at this: "Indeed, the trade route on the Savannah River would play a major role in David's next attempt to tun from slavery, but that attempt would not come for many years."
Well, he'll be making it without my presence. I don't know why but it's just not the read for me.
St. Martin's Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) will let you read it for $15.99 in ebook. Maybe read a sample, then decide? Or the library, which is likely to have one?
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The Christian Past That Wasn't: Debunking the Christian Nationalist Myths That Hijack History (17%) by Warren Throckmorton
Rating: ??
The Publisher Says: Known for his work debunking bad history, author and professor Warren Throckmorton addresses the seven myths Christian nationalists use to falsely claim that America was founded as a Christian nation, in order to equip readers to counter these claims.
America was not founded as a Christian nation.
Who gains what from myths about the past? Why are many of us susceptible to their power? And how can the truth about a nation's past prevail? In this lively book, Warren Throckmorton, coauthor of Getting Jefferson Right, investigates the gloss that Christian nationalist storytellers put on history and equips readers to debunk seven myths that they propagate.
Working in the tradition of muckraking journalists, Throckmorton, whose fact-checking of David Barton's book The Jefferson Lies convinced the publisher to pull it from the shelves, picks a fight with fables told about the past by those who are trying to erase the separation of church and state. Did the Puritans actually establish a covenant with God, and were all the founders evangelical Christians? Are the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution based on the Bible, and did delegates at the constitutional convention in Philadelphia actually kneel for daily prayers? With keen attention to primary sources, Throckmorton dismantles the myths, piece by historical piece. And he asks: How are the genocide of Indigenous people and enslavement of millions of Africans not definitive repudiations of some righteous Christian past?
It's never been more important to understand why myths about the past wield so much force--and whom those myths empower. White Christian nationalism thrives on origin stories, and Throckmorton equips readers to debunk the false ones. The real heritage of America is neither as a Christian state nor pure secularism; it is a more nuanced story, he says, one of religious tolerance and pluralism. To understand Christian nationalism, we must know the power of myth. To counter it, we must know the facts.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: It's very important to wrench the US, more generally Western, religious conversation back from the control of the christofascists currently blaring their hate...and the behavior-controlling it requires...from behind the armor of the cross. It pays all of us to attend to their spreading of fallacies, lies, and evil-souled misdirections from their purported holy book to the people who look to it for guidance.
I am so very far from being the target audience that I felt seasick, repulsed, and enraged that anyone could actually buy this guff at all that I had to stop reading or risk more strokes. I had the last, sickest lurch during the discussion of David Barton's The Jefferson Lies. (If you don't know about it, maybe look it up in incognito mode.)
Broadleaf Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) brings this book out on 19 May 2026. Don't let my readerly failings dissuade you from reading it then.
