June's new releases, book reviews, and more!
Crime Cafe podcast starts its Eleventh Season!
In case you haven’t noticed, the Crime Cafe podcast has started its Eleventh Season! I still have to set that page up, but in the meantime, check out all the episodes from Season Ten!
Here’s a link to the first video episode for this season with crime writer and entrepreneur Clay Stafford.
Enjoy!
Excerpts from and more about featured releases
The English Masterpiece by Katherine Reay.
Excerpted from The English Masterpiece, by Katherine Reay. Harper Muse, 2025. Reprinted with permission.
With my first circle of the room complete, I start again. It’s time to take in the art. Since we first devised this exhibition, I’ve thought of nothing but these seventeen paintings. I’ve worked with museums across the world organizing their transport, I’ve sent cables and telexes to secure insurance coverage, and I’ve organized the printer, the caterer, the rental company, the invitations, the . . . everything. Yes, I’ve worked twelve-hour-long days overseeing every minute detail for this morning, and I’ve anticipated taking in the installation as it’s meant to be viewed.
I catch Diana’s eye as I start my second tour of the room. Something flickers within her glance, and I know it’s my dress. It certainly defies her call for demure delicacy, and I make a mental note to explain—and apologize—later.
For now I take another sip of my champagne and begin at the beginning . . .
PABLO PICASSO
25 October 1881–8 April 1973
The Old Guitarist, 1903
Oil on Panel
On loan, courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago
While Diana eschewed Picasso’s most famous works, the ones made into the posters and prints that grace every office and schoolroom, she wanted this one to open our show. It’s the iconic work of his Blue Period, but also a very personal work. Picasso painted it just as he emerged from a year of poverty and pain, still struggling to make ends meet and wrestling with the death of his close friend Carles Casagemas. The Old Guitarist embodies Picasso’s trials as the man arches over and strums his large guitar with almost skeletal fingers. There’s an intimacy to the work, as if Picasso himself invites the viewer into his heart. His trials become ours.
The Old Guitarist is also one of the great artist’s only works that so clearly pays homage to another—in this case, the famous Greek painter El Greco. That, in and of itself, is a peek into Picasso’s heart. Yes, it is truly a masterpiece and, at thirty-two by forty-eight inches, one of the largest paintings in our show.
Next to the huge and iconic The Old Guitarist, Diana instructed the installation team to hang a series of sketches. It was a brilliant decision. After such an impressive beginning, the exhibition instantly turns more personal. It’s almost as if the viewer can discern Picasso’s choices, witness his process, and share in his emotions.
I take in each sketch and step into Picasso’s love life, for each is a drawing of a woman in varying states of dishabille. Knowing Picasso, and I feel I do now, I sense what he felt for each as a lover or what he felt for the woman he hoped would soon become one.
As I walk on, some of the works feel like old friends. Some I am truly meeting for the first time. My pulse quickens with one here, slows with another there. My gaze sweeps to the painting Edward Davies and Director Browning bullied Diana into accepting for the exhibit just two days ago. Woman Laughing, 1930.
Diana was furious, but I’m not sure why. The painting fits in size, structure, and subject matter. I pause. Is this woman Dora Maar or Olga Khokhlova? Picasso loved both in 1930. And this woman is interesting, she’s dynamic, she’s . . .
I tilt my head to study her better. In form, Woman Laughing is a perfect execution of Picasso’s surrealist period. But something feels off. I take a sip of my champagne and move on. The next offering, Bullfight, 1934, is also stun—
I gulp and choke, straining to control the spasms in my throat. Champagne sticks to my tongue and cloys. Sticky and sweet. Warm and wrong. I cough again and turn.
A few steps back and I again examine Woman in an Armchair, 1929. Diana instructed the installation team to hang this one right before Woman Laughing. It’s the shocking two-dimensional portrayal of Picasso’s wife, Olga Khokhlova, just as their relationship was warping, disintegrating, and ending. That means the more peaceful Woman Laughing can’t be Olga. His emotions towards her had already soured.
I step forward and study Woman Laughing again, painted just a year later. I see the development of Picasso’s style, his comfort in the midst of the grotesque and frenzied, and yet . . . I look beyond it to Bullfight, painted a few years after that.
I clamp my hand over my mouth, shocked at the obvious truth before me as I center myself before Woman Laughing once more. I can’t pull my eyes from it. My mind reels. Then, unable to think, hold back, or move forward, I call out, “That’s a forgery.”
The world around me stops.
*****
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Katherine Reay is a national bestselling and award-winning author who has enjoyed a lifelong affair with books. She publishes both fiction and nonfiction, holds a BA and MS from Northwestern University, and currently lives outside Bozeman, MT, with her husband and three children.
Follow Katherine on Instagram, Facebook, X, and her personal website here.
Amazon book page: https://www.amazon.com/English-Masterpiece-Novel-Katherine-Reay/dp/1400347270
Publisher’s book page: https://www.harpercollinsfocus.com/harpermuse/9781400347278/
Author’s website: https://katherinereay.com/
Bald-Faced Liar by Victoria Helen Stone.
CHAPTER 1
The woman on the other side of the privacy fence is sobbing in great, wrenching coughs. The cries emerge half-muffled as if she’s making an attempt to hide the noise with a hand, but it’s a hopeless gesture. She sounds like a dying animal.
I lean closer, pressing my forehead to the rough gray wood to get a better angle even as splinters brush my nose. When my eye finds the widest space of the gap, I finally see her. Julia. I heard her introducing herself on a phone call yesterday.
I’m behind her, a stalker peering down at the arms she’s curled around her legs as she presses her pretty face against the bones of her knees. Above her shoulder, my hand is splayed wide on the fence, and less than an inch of wood separates my fingers from her spine and the smooth, tan skin stretched over her back. Dappled sunlight shifts against her shoulder blades as her body heaves with the stress of holding in sobs.
She is one of the beautiful people, thin and fit, her blond hair always tousled by the breeze as if God’s own hand had styled it. They’d arrived at the beach bungalow four days earlier, Julia and her husband and little baby Sheila.
Sheila. Isn’t that an odd name for a baby? But I guess every Sheila, Roger, and Bernice started out as an infant with an adult name.
Baby Sheila was born four or five months ago, but Julia’s belly is flat as a pancake already. Just this morning I’d still been sprawled in bed when I heard a quick, steady jog carry the young mother past my window and back to her rental at half past seven. She’s dedicated to fitness or maybe just to appearance, I’m not sure.
My own stomach is curved and soft even though I’ve never had kids. Granted I’m almost forty, but I imagine this woman separated from me by a bit of wood plank will have the same body in ten years, whether through sheer force of will or surgery or both.
But her life isn’t perfect. No one’s is. I’ve come to learn that here in my little beach hideaway, and it’s why I stay. This hiding place is the best medicine for what ails me. I can be involved in others’ lives even while I stay safely invisible.
A door squeaks open on the other side of the fence. The crying woman gulps down a gasp and goes quiet, but it’s too late. Her husband is already there, his face a jumble of confusion and annoyance under a backward-facing ball cap. He’d fit in perfectly on the set of The Bachelorette, one of those white men I can’t keep track of, hard-jawed handsome, with blue eyes balanced over a respectably masculine nose.
“Babe?” he ventures. “You okay? What are you doing out here?”
“I’m good!” she croaks, the words scraped from her strangling throat, and I see in his uncertain smile that he’s desperate to accept the lie. He wants to give her a thumbs-up and escape back to the soccer match blaring inside.
His chin dips in a nod. His hand curls around the handle of the door.
But he pauses, then after one quick glance back toward the screen of the huge TV mounted on the wall of the bungalow, he pushes the door wider and steps out. “Hey,” he croons. “What’s wrong, babe?”
“Nothing.” She tries to offer a laugh, but it bubbles with snot.
“Nothing. I’m sorry. It’s the hormones.”
“Aw. My poor girl.”
Before I can think to draw back, he’s only two feet from me, crouched down in front of his wife, and I’m staring directly into his face. I’m afraid to even blink for fear he’ll see the movement between the slats and glance up to lock eyes.
Shit. My back twinges with the realization that I’m twisted awkwardly in my chair and I’ll have to hold this pose for a long while.
“Tell me what’s going on,” he says, reaching out to hold her hands when she tries to hide her face again. He’s so close I can see a stripe of scruff on his chiseled jaw where he missed a spot shaving. I have no idea what his name is. Julia only refers to him as “sweetie” when she’s talking to him and “Daddy” when she speaks to her daughter.
“I’m just overwhelmed,” she squeaks out before her voice breaks again. “With . . . you know . . . everything.”
“Your doctor said it’s totally normal to feel that way, right?” I assume he’s dismissing her, but then he hunkers down a little lower and kisses her knuckles. “You’ve gone through a lot. The C-section, the mastitis.”
He looks like such a bro I’m surprised by his soft understanding.
Surprised, but relieved for her sake.
“And hey . . .” He nudges her knee with his. “Sheila will be fine. She won’t even know she started out life as a dork.”
Julia manages a mucousy laugh. Their daughter wears a cranial helmet to reshape her skull. An alarming look for a baby, but the kid will be fine in no time at all. I wonder if she needed it or if her head just looked a bit bulbous for Instagram photos.
The husband is even closer to me now, and my eyes are dry and burning as I try not to blink. Imagine if he looks up and realizes there’s a stranger’s eyeball staring right through a crack in the fence. So creepy.
I breathe out as softly as I can, focusing on a small scar at the bottom of his chin. I imagine a childhood trampoline accident. “You’re taking your meds?” he asks.
She nods.
“And . . .” When he hesitates, she dips her head down as if she knows which words are coming. I hold my breath and wait as his face twists into discomfort. He clears his throat. “And you haven’t been talking to her?”
Her? I accidentally blink in surprise, but it doesn’t draw hisattention.
“No!” she declares. “I promised I wouldn’t. I’m not.”
“She’s not good for you. Or us.”
“I know. I said I’m not talking to her. It’s over.”
It’s over? What’s over? A muscle I didn’t even know I had begins to cramp in my waist, but I’m not backing off now that stuff is getting deep.
“Babe,” he says, “I’m not saying never. But not her.”
At first I’d thought he might be referring to a toxic mother, but now? Is this an open marriage? Accommodation for her sexuality? Or just some intense friendship drama?
I desperately need to know more, but the cramp is getting worse, so when he leans in to press his forehead against Julia’s, I break free from the trap and ease back into my chair. After muting my phone,
I open the security app and tap the patio camera to watch the couple from above.
Don’t worry. I’m allowed. The external cameras are written into the rental contract whether they noticed it or not.
Now I can see the outdoor dining set and the husband’s broad back, but Julia is nearly hidden from view. A bird’s-eye view isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Disappointing.
“You miss her,” the husband says, the words flat and weary, and my skin prickles with anticipation.
“No!” Julia protests. “No, I’m just tired. It’s not like that at all.”
“Right.” We can all hear the resignation in his voice, poor guy.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers so softly I find my ear brushing the wood again. Then disaster strikes. My foot slips against the brick patio, and I swear to God, not only has the soccer game gone quiet, but the constant road noise in front of the house has dipped into silence at that exact moment too.
I freeze, they freeze. My mouth twisting in a horrified grimace, I watch the husband’s tiny head ease up on the screen of my phone. He looks around. I grimace harder.
But it’s my patio. I have a right to sit out here in a chair pulled too close to the fence. It’s not my fault they decided to have this conver- sation six inches from my favorite spot. They might be creeped out if they peer over the fence and discover that they’ve assumed a privacy they don’t have, but I haven’t done anything wrong.
Still, I take precautions and slip in my favorite camouflage: earbuds. If I see him stand to look over the fence, I’ll lean back, close my eyes, and bop my head along to nonexistent music. Get your shit together, Julia and Company. You’re staying in a crowded area!
But I’m saved by the bell of little Sheila’s sudden, piercing cry. The tension breaks. The husband looks back at his wife. “She’s awake,” he says, prompting a laugh from Julia.
“She certainly is.”
“I’ll get her. You take a break.”
“No, I’m fine. And I’m already leaking.”
I watch as he helps her to her feet. She dusts off her shorts, then presses her hands to both breasts to hold in milk as she follows him inside.
My relief over not getting caught trips quickly into sinking disappointment. I need to know who this other woman is. Julia and her husband shared a bottle of wine on the patio the night before, so hopefully they’ll do the same tonight and spill more details. I’ve heard them discuss their departure tomorrow, so it’s now or never.
In the meantime I open Instagram to check once more for recent posts to #SantaCruz. And finally, finally, there she is. Julia MacAttack, clearly not her real name, but that’s her real face. The husband, it turns out, is named Jamie. Jamie and Julia. How perfect. I’m surprised they didn’t pick a J name for baby Sheila, but maybe that trend isn’t cute anymore.
Ignoring that I should have started work an hour ago, I stretch out my legs and begin to pick my way through Julia’s camera-ready universe.
No one is as careful about privacy as they should be, and that means I’m never lonely no matter how alone I am.
*****
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Wall Street Journal bestselling author Victoria Helen Stone, author of the runaway hit Jane Doe, writes critically acclaimed novels of dark intrigue and emotional suspense. Her work includes Follow Her Down, At the Quiet Edge, The Last One Home, Problem Child, Half Past, The Hook, and the chart-toppers False Step and Evelyn, After.
Victoria writes in her home office high in the Wasatch Mountains of Utah, far from her origins in the flattest plains of Minnesota, Texas, and Oklahoma. She enjoys gorgeous summer trail hikes in the mountains almost as much as she enjoys staying inside by the fire during winter. Victoria is passionate about dessert, true crime, and her terror of mosquitoes, which have targeted her in a diabolical conspiracy to hunt her down no matter the season.
An Interview with Wendy Gee
How did you get involved with the Charleston Fire Department?
Back in the day, my neighbor was the CFD Fire Marshal, and he was practically a celebrity—always in the news. Curious about his division’s many challenges and adventures, I offered to help out as a volunteer. Little did I know, I’d end up writing about their tales. I didn’t think of myself as a writer back then, but those stories were so colorful, I had to put them on paper.
What was the inspiration behind Fleet Landing?
The story is loosely based on an actual series of unsolved fires and the true story of a man released after spending more than four decades in prison for a fire he didn't commit. When those narratives were woven together, the combination resulted in what I hope is a compelling story.
What is your writing process like?
I start with the crime I’ll be working through–which is tangential to the “murder(s).” That leads me to researching, headline ripping, then mashing things all together into an amalgam that I hope will capture people’s imagination.
What drew you to the mystery genre? What writers inspire you?
I have always enjoyed the twists and turns of a well-conceived story. I try to figure things out ahead of the story’s investigator, but am completely satisfied when the author makes a final tug of the rug. I love Robert Crais, Janet Evonovich, Karin Slaughter–just to name a few of the brightest stars.
What’s next? Can readers expect to see more of ATF Special Agent Coop in the future?
Coop will reappear. But TV reporter Sydney takes the lead in Book 2 solving a high-stakes cybercrime. And Dino takes charge of Book 3 as we delve into his origins as a police officer.
*****
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
After a successful career in the U.S. Navy, Wendy Gee now channels her boundless energy into community volunteering, leaving no stone unturned—or unpainted—at the Charleston Fire Department, Friends of the Lewes Public Library Board of Directors, and Sussex County Habitat for Humanity. A proud graduate of the University of Michigan, University of Arizona, Naval War College, and Old Dominion University, Wendy combines her academic prowess and life experiences into her writing. Her work has been shortlisted with Killer Nashville and the Writer’s League of Texas. And as a lifetime member of Sisters in Crime, Wendy’s passion for the mystery genre is no secret—though she might leave a few clues lying around just for fun. Fleet Landing is her first novel. Learn more at: www.wendygeeauthor.com
More new releases in June
A Case of Mice and Murder by Sally Smith.
A Most Puzzling Murder by Bianca Marais.
A Murder for Miss Hortense by Mel Pennant.
American Scare by Robert W. Fieseler.
Beach Reads and Deadly Deeds by Allison Brennan.
Best of All Worlds by Kenneth Oppel.
Cooler Than Cool: The Life and Work of Elmore Leonard by C. M. Kushins.
El Dorado Drive by Megan Abbott.
Gone Dark by Ryan Steck.
I Bet You’d Look Good in a Coffin by Katy Brent.
In the Fangs of Jackals by E.S. Ramirez.
Kill Your Darlings by Peter Swanson.
Murder Takes a Vacation by Laura Lippman.
Sister, Butcher, Sister by K.D. Aldyn.
Stop All the Clocks by Noah Kumin.
The Black Highway by Simon Toyne.
The Black Swan Mystery by Tetsuya Ayukawa.
The Circus of Satan by Jeffrey Konvitz.
The Ex-Girlfriend Murder Club by Gloria Chao.
The Expat Affair by Kimberly Belle.
The Ghostwriter by Julie Clark.
The Homemade God by Rachel Joyce. (available for pre-order)
The House on Buzzards Bay by Dwyer Murphy.
My book reviews in June
My Review of ‘The Father She Went to Find’
My Book Review of ‘Ambition Monster’
And My Podcasts
Crime Cafe - Interview with Clay Stafford – S. 11, Ep. 1
Dark & Twisted Alleys - Episode 16: ‘Marlowe’ (2022)
The Story from X to Y
(A short story told backwards)
When we last left off …
*****
Chapter O
Five minutes before that
I lay shaking where I’d dropped to the ground. Despite every impulse not to do so, I lifted my head and surveyed my surroundings.
Of all the aspects of New York I’ve come to love, Central Park comes close to topping the list. Now, I was being stalked and shot at here.
Whatever I did to piss someone off enough to put me through all this, I’d love to know what it was. And who it was. And why me?
So, what now? Can’t lie here forever.
Gathering my wits, I rose and sprinted toward the nearest exit, left the park, and bolted down the stairs of the nearest subway station.
Chapter N
Five minutes before that
I made my way to Central Park, just to catch my breath. It was always my place of refuge, along with the public library. And the multitude of bookstores.
I wandered through the park, until I found my favorite spot, a small, grassy rise near a stone bridge. A small piece of nature tucked into the bowels of the city. I breathed a sigh of relief. It soothed my frazzled nerves a touch.
Even so, my gaze darted about me. And there he was. Mr. Suave in his houndstooth jacket.
I’d hoped to lose him back in Brooklyn.
And why was I passed out in that abandoned building? I’d met someone in Manhattan. But that’s the last thing I can remember.
My relief was cut short by the sound of a gunshot and the ricochet of a bullet near me.
Chapter M
Five minutes before that
As I emerged from the subway, I had no particular destination in mind. No plans, other than to walk about a bit and try to regain my bearings. Perhaps it would help jog my memories.
Heading toward Fifth Avenue, I spotted him again. The Man in the Houndstooth Jacket. Was I being followed or was I just paranoid?
Don’t panic. Good advice in any situation.
I ducked into a nearby Thai restaurant and took a seat at a table near the hall to the rest rooms. Through the picture front window, I saw the man pause, then cross the street and enter the restaurant.
He sat on the far side, near the window.
I made like I was perusing the menu and when the server approached, I adopted a wry expression and told her the man by the window was stalking me.
She nodded. “Rest rooms that way,” she said, in a normal, if slightly emphatic, manner, cocking her head toward the hall.
“Thank you.” I handed her the menu. “You know what I want.”
I got up and made for the rest room.
Around a corner, I found an open exit door.
The server stood at the door.
“Go,” she said. She pointed down the alley that led to a street.
Chapter L
Five minutes before that
I figured mid-town was a good place to start, though I’d be damned if I could recall which bar or coffee shop we’d met in. Or exactly who I’d met. Or why.
All I knew was that someone from a law firm had arranged me to meet someone. And the man with the gun knew about him. Barnwell. That was the name.
I grasped the pole and swayed with the pack of commuters, pondering the circumstances leading to my current predicament.
My gazę swept around the subway car. My fellow denizens of the Big Apple were either absorbed in the pages of a book or in the throes of a device. If I were stabbed to death here, would anyone notice? The events of the day were clearly getting under my skin.
But there was one guy slouched onto one of the bench seats, facing away from the side of the car. He was alert, but his eyes were unfocused, as if he were either deep in thought or stoned. As I moved toward the door as my stop approached, he raised his eyes to me and murmured a few words I couldn’t make out.
I raised my hand to my ear, and he leaned closer and said, “Don’t panic, and you’ll be fine.”
Chapter K
Five minutes before that
As bullets peppered the car, I cowered, facedown on the pavement. Surrounded by exploded fragments of broken glass.
“Jesus Fucking Christ,” I muttered.
The subway entrance was a short sprint from where I lay. But I was frozen with fear, indecision.
The gunfire had stopped, but the gunslinger could be reloading.
I couldn’t lie there forever. I raised my head just enough to perform a brief scan. Thought I caught a quick glimpse of Mr. Houndstooth, but I don’t think he was the shooter. Not from that angle.
Finally, I rose and ran like I was being chased by zombies toward the subway entrance. Getting the hell outta Brooklyn.
*****
More to come.
