Auntiemwrites Crime-Mystery Author M K Graff

Gilly Macmillan takes the usual ideas related to British mystery and turns them on their unlucky heads in The Nanny.

Alternating between several main points of view while going back and forth between the events of the late 1970s and the current time, we are introduced to Jo, a grieving widow, who has just moved with her young daughter, Ruby, from their California home to Jo’s English home, Lake Hall.

Ruby is immediately smitten with her Granny, Virginia, and wants to learn all things British. Jo is worried about their closeness. She has brought Ruby here only due to the financial hardship she finds herself thrust into, not through any sense of love for her mother.

While the child Jo was fond of her father, she remembers her mother as not being able to stand the sight of her,an absent parent while her parents partied and turned her care over to her nanny, Hannah, This sets up an uncomfortable dynamic as both try to placate Ruby, who is adjusting to a new home and a new school while missing her dead father.

It doesn’t help that Jo never understood why Hannah suddenly disappeared one day when she was seven. Sent to boarding school after that, Jo became distant from the parents she already had a fraught relationship with; her current situation makes her depression deepen and she and Virginia are frequently at odds.

Then human remains are found on the small island in the middle of the lake when Jo takes Ruby kayaking. This leads to suspicions from everyone in their small town, and only increases Jo’s determination to find a job and take Ruby away from the claustrophobic atmosphere and the clutches of her mother.

But Jo’s family have grown adept at keeping secrets, and some of them revolve around the circumstances under which Hannah left. Until——suddenly——she’s back. Jo sees Hannah’s return as a rescue, bringing her the support she craves. But it sets up a struggle between Virginia and Hannah that soon has Jo questioning everything she’s believed about her mother.

It doesn’t help that the detective looking into the identity of the human remains believes the family at Lake Hall belong to a faded aristocracy he loathes.

There will be memories that resurface as the secrets become revealed, but the twists and turns keep coming in this wholly satisfying psychological thriller with an unforgettable ending.

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Never Have I Ever, the old party game, takes on a sinister meaning in Joshilyn Jackson’s new thriller.

Hiding an old secret, Amy Whey has a husband, baby and step-daughter she adores. Giving diving lessons soothes her and keeps her past compartmentalized. She has a circle of local friends who participate in a book club, run by best friend Charlotte, held at Amy’s larger home as the group has expanded.

When a renting neighbor shows up unexpectedly, everything changes in that evening. Roux is charming but has an unsettling quality that both beguiles Amy yet puts her on high alert. It’s her idea to pour the drinks more liberally and entice the women into playing “The Game.”

Roux’s ulterior motive is to blackmail Amy over the secret she knows. It will take all of Amy’s wits to challenge Roux and beat her at the game she’s playing that will ruin Amy’s life, one she’s yearned for, one she’s finally built.
And in order to do that, she must find out just what secrets Roux is keeping——because we all have secrets.

Visual and with building suspense, Jackson keeps this cat-and-mouse game between the two women on high tension as the secrets of both women’s pasts come back to haunt them. Who will be the victor? Because betrayal is rife on both sides, yet love is, too.

A complex character dissection with startling results.

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Five-time Mary Higgins Clark finalist Hallie Ephron returns with a new mystery that’s as timely as it is realistic in Careful What You Wish For.

With the influence of Marie Kondo and her little organization book and show, it’s no small surprise that people everywhere are putting more tidying in their lives. Emily Harlow has a natural bent for that, just short of OCD, and with a partner, Becca Jain, has started a business the two women call Freeze-Frame Clutter Kickers.

One caveat they use is: the client is only allowed to declutter his or her own crap. She’s learned that the hard way, keeping her marriage to a hoarder-collector lawyer by following this rule of thumb.

Emily uses videos of her own decluttering to attract new clients, and she’s in the middle of her closet reorganization when she needs to meet Becca to see a new client, an elderly woman who’s husband has died and left her a storage unit to sort through. The contents have Emily on instantly on alert.

And then her husband’s partner brings them a new client: a much-younger wife whose new husband, a pack rat, hasn’t allowed her to bring her own things from the garage into his house. Quinn Newell has decided to dump the lot and be done with it, but brings out the prosecco on her way to show Emily the garage, and soon both women has had a bit too much bubbly and are giggling about losing their hoarding husbands——for good.

It’s a line Emily never crosses, blurring professional and personal relationships, but she figures it couldn’t really hurt——until it does, in ways unexpected and dangerous.

Soon Emily is trying to figure out who to believe, and who’s exactly whose mess she needs to be clearing out. With several surprising turns, this has a nicely twisted plot and a likeable main character. Ephron adds a touch of sly humor that makes this a refreshing and enjoyable read.

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