This review is based on an ARC received free from the publisher.

Exhausted by her two small children, Emma isn't sure what put-together Nina sees in her. Unknown to her, Nina remembers her from the past, and is now playing a dangerous game of cat and mouse with her life. The description was intriguing, but the details and the execution were lacking.

For the first third of the book, although we learn that Nina remembers Emma from somewhere and that she orchestrated their new "meeting," Nina and Emma barely interact. Once they finally become a regular part of each other's lives, the tension does increase somewhat. But when the reader finally learns what it was that Emma did years before that makes Nina want revenge even though Emma doesn't even remember her, it's anticlimactic. It turns out that the thing Emma did wasn't deliberately cruel. She probably didn't intend to do it and it's entirely possible that she was never even aware it happened. Most of the book's chapters from Nina's perspective build suspense over how she knew Emma and why she wants revenge, and when it's finally revealed.... nothing. Then it ends abruptly without Emma apparently ever having found out what Nina was doing to her or why. This book is in need of a catharsis it's lacking.

Overall: C

Her will be available in the U.S. in January 2015.

This review is based on an advance copy received from the publisher.

On Christmas morning, Holly Judge wakes up late with the phrase "Something followed them home from Russia" gnawing at her. She thinks maybe she will find time to write again at last, but after she is left at home with her adopted daughter Tatiana while her husband goes to pick up his parents from the airport, nothing about the day goes as planned.

It's hard to say much about this book without spoiling it, as the day unfolds and the reader is left to puzzle out if there is something supernatural happening, if Tatiana is suffering from some kind of more mundane breakdown, or if it's Holly's perception that can't be trusted. At the end, there were still some details I was unsure how we were supposed to interpret, or if there was meant to be a right answer, but after the reveal on the last page I decided the author did "play fair." This is a book that will keep you wondering right to the end.

Overall: A

Mind of Winter will be available March 25.

This review is based on an advance readers' copy received from the publisher that I took my sweet time about starting to read because the book had been out for a month before they gave it to me anyway, so the boat had already sailed on the whole "advance" thing.

Since literally high school I have been disappointed that Caleb Carr only wrote one sequel to The Alienist. Fortunately, last year Alex Grecian came along with The Yard, another tale of a serial killer in the late years of the nineteenth century, when fingerprinting was new and not always accepted science. The Yard was the story of the newly formed Scotland Yard murder squad reacting to the murder of one of their own, as well as other crimes, not long after the Jack the Ripper murders. In The Black Country Inspector Day, Sgt. Hammersmith, and Dr. Kingsley trade the dirty, menacing city for a dirty, menacing, and sinking mining village, where they have two days to assist the local lawman in finding a missing couple and their youngest child. There is less focus on new investigative techniques in this book, apart from a brief discussion of blood stains, but the sense of foreboding remains. It is a sort of a nineteenth century rural noir.

Much of this book is very good. Day, Hammersmith, and Kingsley are all interesting characters to spend time with, even if we don't learn much more about any of them in this book than we already knew. And the threatening atmosphere of the village is as thick as ever. But there was quite a bit of sloppiness in the plot. Firstly, there was a murder that none of the other characters appear to have noticed by the end of the book. Second, there is a murderer who is important enough that we have several chapters from his viewpoint (though he is not behind everything) whose connection to the rest of the story remains rather loose and unexplained. The setting was strong enough to make me happy that I read it, but the story itself leaves much to be desired.

Overall Grade: B-