I am blown away by the positive energy of Patti Larsen, an international, multiple award-winning author with a passion for the voices in her head. With over 150 cozies, paranormal cozies and young adult books in happy publication, she lives in beautiful Prince Edward Island, Canada, with her plethora of pets.

For avid readers, she has free first-in-series offers at her website. For authors, she has a system for writing productivity called Get Your Book Done.  

Find her and all her works at https://pattilarsen.com/home

For a taste of her cozy mysteries, try: 

One of the best restatements of mystery mythology are those contained in Laurie King’s Mary Russell Sherlock Holmes series. With a female central character as smart, resourceful, and egotisical as Holmes himself, they set off on a series of adventures with mysteries to be solved. I’ve read almost all her books and the first, the Beekeeper’s Assistant is a treasure that I’m going to reread this week.  

An Indies Today finalist for Best Book of the Year 2020 with Cleopatra’s Tomb, Nellie H. Steele made the leap from science to art with her first book, The Secret of Dunhaven Castle.  

A literary split personality, Nellie’s work ranges from cozy mystery to supernatural suspense to riveting adventure. 

When she isn’t writing or engaging in animal care of her fourteen rescue animals, she enjoys teaching Statistics and Data Science in Pittsburgh. Check out Nellie’s books at:

www.anovelideapublishing.com/novels

And her most recent, Shadows of the Past

Born in Kansas, Sara Paretsky is more associated with Chicago as is her well-known protagonist, V.I. Warshawski, the independent and sarcastic private investigator. It seems incredible that when the first in the twenty-book series was published in 1982, the female P.I. was an anomaly and the usual work costume of jeans and tee-shirt was considered far from the norm.

V.I.’s cases usually start out as white-collar crimes and she gets to display her strong sense of justice in pursuing her quarry, often in a physically demanding way, and also often involving smashing cars. 

            This is the first in the series: 

            Gillian Flynn is known to readers and moviegoers alike for her vibrant, evil, female characters. In a 2015 piece entitled, “I was not a nice little girl…” she outlines her belief that women can be just as bad as men and goes on to explain the ways it manifests in real life and in her books. 

Villains are important in stories to better define what the main character is up against and the nastier the villain, the better. This story dynamic is taught early on when our children watch Disney movies featuring some of the best of the baddies: the Evil Queen in Snow White (no name needed), Ursula, the sea witch in the Little Mermaid, Cruella de Vil in the Dalmation movies and Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty. 

            Flynn refines the unreliable narrator into a fully realized person, sometimes repentant and often not which makes her novels fascinating to read. Below is her debut novel. 

Katherine Hall Page, educated on the East Coast, became a teacher and developed a program for at-risk adolescents, affording her with deep insights into family relationships. Her first mystery novel was The Body in the Belfry which won an Agatha Award for Best First Mystery Novel. It was followed by fourteen more in that series while writing the Malice Domestic X books with many awards along the way. Check out her first novel below: 

It is hard to find a more prolific and versatile author than Ruth Rendell who introduced the Inspector Wexford character and took him through an exhaustive series of cases. But then, she moved into the psychological thriller genre with more intense fare. 

As an author, I appreciate that she wrote so many stand-alone novels, creating new universes and relationships in each one, a difficult feat. Under the pen name Barbara Vine, she wrote even more complex thrillers, my favorite being A Fatal Inversion (1987) which holds up well today. 

You know that I always refer readers to the author’s first book but dig deeper into her vast reservoir. It is worth it.

This past year, I have made friends with many authors, some of who write in the mystery genre. One of them is Dineen Miller, who blends contemporary issues with mystery and mysticism for an exciting and thrilling read. She is an Amazon bestselling and award-winning author in both fiction and nonfiction books and believes in the transformative power of story and truth. 

She loves just about everything creative especially making coloring books and devising alternate identities which is why you’ll find more of her books under the pen name Neena Roth. She considers herself uber blessed every day to love her rock star of a husband, her fantastically creative kids and two furry rescues who will answer to just about any name you use as long as it includes food. For more about her books and work go to www.dineenmiller.com

Tana French, author of the Dublin Murder Squad series, was educated at Trinity College, Ireland and lives in that country but is originally from the United States. That surprising fact made clear the sensation I had that she was writing to an American audience in her choice of language although the setting is clearly Irish. Her award-winning first book, In the Woods, is the quintessential psychological police procedural introducing Rob Ryan and Cassie Maddox. With an evocative setting and mood, it proceeds deliberately building suspense towards its resolution.