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Maureen Stapleton - Editorial Expert
Maureen Stapleton, a writer and journalist, has written for The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Radio Times, Heat, and many others. She is the associate director of the Greenwich Book Festival, and is a prize manager for the Comedy Women in Print Prize. As a proud holder of both British and American citizenship, she is bilingual in hot drinks (coffee and tea).
Scottish journalist Shona Sandison grapples with shady contacts and even shadier circumstances to expose an evil government plan in her latest outing.
The Diary of Lies by Philip Miller features all the hallmarks of a good political thriller: dodgy meetings, whispered conversations, an odd computer hacker, and dead bodies. Sandison, who wins a prestigious journalism award in the novel’s opening, navigates these challenges in a post-Brexit and post-Covid world.
This novel feels like reading the corkboard of a conspiracy theorist, with many strands of red string connecting people, places and plans.
Sandison is a ... View Full Review
Locked room mysteries, as created by Edgar Allen Poe and made popular by Agatha Christie, are a classic for a reason. Someone winds up dead in a remote location and the murderer must be one of the people there. But who? And why?
The Man on the Endless Stair by Chris Barkley is a locked-room mystery with a twist. The remote location is a Scottish island accessible only by water (the ferry runs only a few days a week), the victim is successful novelist Malcolm Furnivall, and the suspects are those who he called together: family members, neighbours, staff, ... View Full Review
Where do you go when your life isn’t turning out how you expected? Home.
For aspiring West End singer and actress Lily Baxter, it’s not home to her parents, but home to her grandmother, Violet.
Lily’s life is turned upside down when she loses her voice at an important audition and soon after learns that her beloved 97-year-old grandmother has been rushed to the hospital. She rushes north to Appleton Green to move in with Violet to help her recover, while also reassessing her own life.
Second Act at Appleton Green ... View Full Review
There’s something about a romantic comedy that I find endlessly delightful. It could be that I feel comfort in the usual tropes that I know will appear. Or it could be that I feel assured from the start that the story will make me happy (and occasionally sad). Who doesn’t want to read a book that will make them happy?
Romantic tropes work for a reason. The all-knowing best friend. The meddling mother. The unsuitable boyfriend. The harrowing heartbreak. And most of all, the all-consuming love affair.
The Wedding Forecast by Nina Kenwood ticks ... View Full Review
Miranda Miller has written about topics as diverse as the eighteenth century art and Edwardian London, but she turns to her own life for inspiration in her latest fictional work.
When I Was, Miller’s ninth novel, uses her own childhood as the starting point to invent the life of the Samuell family. At the outset, they live extravagantly, by the mid-point they are all crammed into a small flat, and by the end they are living comfortably, though perhaps not as extravagantly as at the start.
It would be nice to say that the family endures their ... View Full Review
Pathologist Dr Jack Cuthbert returns to investigate a deadly political rally, this time in 1931 Glasgow, bringing with him his brilliance, intuition and shiny shoes.
To the Shades Descend is the third in the series written by Allan Gaw, a retired pathologist.
Cuthbert, who works for Scotland Yard in London, is in Glasgow for a job interview at the university. While visiting, a bomb goes off at a political rally of a right-wing politician, killing 24 people and injuring more than 50. He is called in to lead the forensic investigation and identify the victims. With body parts scattered around ... View Full Review
If you were to mention the name John Wayne Gacy to anyone in Chicago in the 1980s and 1990s, they would have shuddered.
He was known as the killer clown. The man who worked as a clown and was later convicted of killing 33 boys and young men. He buried most of them underneath his crawl space in his home near O’Hare International Airport. Everyone knew who he was. Everyone was horrified by his crimes.
John Wayne Gacy’s case is studied again in Courtney Lund O’Neil’s book, Postmortem: The Murderous Legacy ... View Full Review
Trengrose House, a beautiful estate in Cornwall, is a house with secrets.
Secrets of the Bees by Jane Johnson, spills not only the secrets of the bees, but the secrets of the people around them.
Elderly Ezra Curnow is proudly self-sufficient. He lives in the cottage in which he was born with no mod-cons (things like an inside toilet or electricity). He knows the rhythms of the nature that surrounds him, especially the bees.
When Londoners Araminta (Minty) and Toby Hardmans buy the Trengrose House estate on which the cottage sits, a battle royale begins between Ezra and ... View Full Review
Brilliant pathologist Dr Jack Cuthbert returns for his second outing in The Moon’s More Feeble Fire by Allan Gaw.
Cuthbert is called in to investigate the murders of prostitutes working in London in 1930. The brilliant but difficult pathologist begins to suspect that it is the work of a serial killer, and the chase begins.
Like the first book in the series, the novel is packed with historical and scientific detail. This novel might not be for those with a weak stomach, as the detail can get a bit gory in places. Gaw himself is a retired pathologist, and ... View Full Review
The fascination with notorious British criminal Charles Bronson knows no end. There’s been thousands of news articles, a film starring Tom Hardy and many books, including this one.
Bronson: Inside and Out tells the love story between Bronson and his ex-wife, Irene Dunroe. The book was written by three different people: Bronson, Dunroe and and ghostwriter Julie Shaw, and they tell the tale in alternating chapters. Shaw also contributes chapters in her own voice to provide context.
In many ways, their love story echoes that of many others. When they first met, Dunroe was captivated by ... View Full Review
Like Sherlock Holmes before him, Dr. Jack Cuthbert is brilliant but difficult.
Working as a pathologist for Scotland Yard in London in 1928, he is assigned a case where two bodies have been found intertwined and decomposing in a park. It will take Cuthbert’s considerable talents (and his knowledge of Virgil) to solve the case.
The Silent House of Sleep by Allen Gaw, is the first in a series featuring Cuthbert. It is a different type of crime thriller in that it focuses on the work of Cuthbert, the pathologist, rather than the police. Fair warning: ... View Full Review
Who can you believe when you’re surrounded by people whose profession is to pretend?
In Sun Trap by Rachel Wolf, the deceptions start early. Aspiring actress Ellie has agreed to go to on the trip pretending to be her friend Phoebe after she falls ill. It’s Ellie’s dream job: her first acting job in a major Hollywood film with a starry cast filming in Abu Dhabi.
Ellie doesn’t need much convincing, given the luxury hotel and all-star cast, which includes her favourite actor of all time, Elijah Hanneghan. She ... View Full Review
