What Fiction are you reading this week, February 12, 2023?

[yellowdogintexas]

18. Back from convention and returned to my reading habit

I am reading right now a book that has been lying around in my Kindle for a long time.

Divine Hotel: Time Travel by Nicole Loughan

Time Travel/Historical Fiction/Mystery

When two street-wise children make the ruins of the once majestic Divine Hotel their playground they find themselves in big trouble. After they go missing the social worker tasked with their retrieval learns that their lives, and the lives of the other inhabitants of the hotel, are hopelessly intertwined with the fate of the famed preacher who founded the hotel, Father Divine. The only way to save the children is to go back to 1964, to the heart of the battle between Father Divine and the notorious cult leader Jim Jones to see where it all went wrong.

I am about 20% into it and so far it's pretty good.

Last week I read The Lost Man of Bombay by Vaseem Khan. First off, I
really like this author (he also wrote the Baby Ganesh Mysteries) . This book is the third in a series featuring Detective Persis Wadia, the first female detective in the Bombay Constabulary.

Bombay, 1950
When the body of a white man is found frozen in the Himalayan foothills near Dehra Dun, he is christened the Ice Man by the national media. Who is he? How long has he been there? Why was he killed?

As Inspector Persis Wadia and Metropolitan Police criminalist Archie Blackfinch investigate the case in Bombay, they uncover a trail left behind by the enigmatic Ice Man - a trail leading directly into the dark heart of conspiracy.

Meanwhile, two new murders grip the city. Is there a serial killer on the loose, targeting Europeans?

Rich in atmosphere, the thrilling third chapter in the CWA Historical Dagger-winning Malabar House series pits Persis against a mystery from beyond the grave, unfolding against the backdrop of a turbulent post-colonial India, a nation struggling to redefine itself in the shadow of the Raj.
This is a complex story with a lot of twists and it definitely kept me up late. Highly recommend.

The second book I read is from the Florida Panhandle Mystery Series by Michaela Thompson.te
Riptide As intricate as a fisherman’s net, Riptide fairly writhes with sinister delights—family secrets, family feuds, lost family fortunes, betrayals, puzzles, sunken treasure… and murder, of course. With a bit of illicit romance and treachery thrown in for seasoning. This rife atmosphere swirls around New york artist Isabel Anders, who’s summoned home to tiny St. Elmo, Florida to deal with an emergency: the aunt who raised her has been brutally—and mysteriously—injured.

Isabel arrives to find the family mansion in ruins, her aunt living in a trailer, and, dangerous as a cottonmouth, the lover she left at sixteen just where he used to be. Waiting for her. Except now he’s got a grudge against her, a secret of his own, and some unsavory companions. Just when Isabel’s aunt seems to be getting better (but before she’s able to talk again) she dies just as mysteriously as she was injured. Suspecting murder, Isabel quickly ties her aunt’s death to another.

But to find the killer, she has to hack her way through a small-town jungle of intrigue and several generations of interrelated secrets, producing hours of pulse-pounding delight for the confirmed puzzle fan.

I pretty much read straight through this one. Sometimes insomnia comes in handy. I have one more of these in my Kindle library; saving for another insomniac night