Taken in the Cold by Roger Stelljes Blog Tour for Booktoure

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Taken in the Cold by Roger Stelljes Synopsis: "Make sure you wrap up warm for school, honey. A blizzard is on the way." Ten-year-old Teddy rolls his eyes at his mother. But then he hears a bang... By the time police arrive, Teddy's mother is dead. His open school backpack is strewn across the hallway. And Teddy is nowhere to be found.   When gunshots ring out from an exclusive family home on the edge of Northern Pine Lake,  Agent Tori Hunter  races through the gathering snowstorm to discover that  ten-year-old Teddy Marist has disappeared . His mother and her new boyfriend are dead in the family kitchen, breakfast still cooking on the stove. And racing to track down Teddy's father,  Tori finds he is missing too.   Local police are certain this is a simple case of a jealous ex-husband turned violent over his recent divorce. But interviewing everyone she can about Teddy's father, Tori's gut has her questioning if he would really kidnap his own child?  An...
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Lady of Bones (A Sarah Booth Delaney Mystery) by Carolyn Haines

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Title: Lady of Bones
Author: Carolyn Haines
Series: Sarah Booth Delaney Mystery
Genre: Mystery & Thrillers
Format: Kindle
No. of Pages: 347
Date of Publication: June 14, 2022


Description: Carolyn Haines's Lady of Bones is the next novel in the series that Kirkus Reviews characterizes as “Stephanie Plum meets the Ya-Ya Sisterhood” featuring sassy Southern private investigator Sarah Booth Delaney.

It’s Halloween season in Mississippi as Sarah Booth and the gang gather to decorate and gush over Tinkie’s new baby, Maylin. Sarah Booth is just about to refresh the cocktails when she hears a knock on the door and opens it to find a woman named Frankie, distraught at the disappearance of her daughter Christa, a young journalist. Christa had been investigating the disappearance of young women in New Orleans over a five-year period—one every year around Halloween. Now Christa herself is missing, and Frankie fears it may be connected to a cult based in the Garden District, called People of Eternity.

People of Eternity are known to have far-reaching connections which Frankie worries may reach as high as law enforcement. Refusing to contact the authorities, she turns to Delaney Detective Agency as her only hope.

Despite initial reservations, Sarah Booth accepts the case, which takes her on a journey to a secret underworld of beguiling cult leaders, witchcraft, and potentially human sacrifice. She’ll have to keep her wits about her if she wants to crack this case…and make it home alive.

My Thoughts: I am a huge lover of Halloween and I thought this would be a book that I would really like because it combined Halloween and New Orleans together. New Orleans has always been known for its occult history.

I did enjoy this book as it has an interesting pull around the occult, cults, Halloween, and kidnapping. These are all topics that I feel set a book up for a good mystery. It was a little slow in its actual hook to pull me in though but once Sarah Booth and Frankie hit the ground in New Orleans things actually sped up.

I wasn't very fond of Jitty, Sarah Booth's ghost, in the story. I did not see how this character was relevant to the story and feel like if Jitty was removed that the story would have been fine. More often than not, I found myself scanning over the parts of Jitty. I have nothing against ghosts, I just didn't find her relevant.

There is also a lot of focus on Maylin, the new baby that was born, and I felt like there was too much focus on the baby near the beginning and at the end. Honestly, the end of the story felt very drawn out. It could have ended at least a chapter before it actually did.

Rating:  3 out of 5 because I enjoyed the actual story around the People of Earth.

About the Author: Carolyn Haines is the USA Today bestselling author of the Sarah Booth Delaney mystery series and a number of other books in mystery and crime, including the Pluto's Snitch paranormal-historical mystery series, and Trouble, the black cat detective romantic suspense books. She is the recipient of the Harper Lee Award for Distinguished Writing, the Richard Wright Award for Literary Excellence, and the Mississippi Writers Guild Lifetime Achievement Award. She is a former journalist, bartender, photographer, farmhand, and college professor and lives on a farm where she works with rescue cats, dogs, and horses.

Many thanks to St. Martin's Press, Minotaur Books and Netgalley for this review copy. This is my honest opinion.

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