PAID REVIEWS
116 BOOKLIFE FEBRUARY 2, 2026
MYSTERY/THRILLER Death of a Star Sandy Semerad 251p, trade paper, $18, ISBN 978-0-228-63779-0
characters. O’Connor, a widower with his own losses, mirrors Carrie Sue’s resilience, and their connection feels earned, while her banter-filled friendship with Freemont Jackson provides steadfast camaraderie— and the stray German Shepherd B.B. King injects warmth and occasional heroism. The Handley house itself emerges as a character—its history, myths, and unre- solved grief shaping the novel’s atmosphere and grounding the mystery in generational memory. Though the story grapples with weighty subplots—including a disturbed shooter and a missing publicist—the tone stays accessible. Semerad contrasts the rooted, trauma-laden world of the South with the transient, acquisitive culture of Hollywood, revealing how fame distorts morality and invites danger. In the end, the novel argues that while old ghosts may never vanish, survival—and justice—belong to those willing to face them. This is a solid pick for readers who enjoy feisty female journalists and mysteries with a distinct Southern flavor. Suspenseful, romantic murder mystery of old South ghosts and Hollywood greed. Great for fans of Attica Locke’s Bluebird, Bluebird , Melissa Ginsburg’s The House Uptown.
Semerad’s third installment in the Carrie Sue Justice series (following prequel Justice’s Journal ) deepens its mystery with the psychological weight of a survivor’s story, plunging newspaper publisher Carrie Sue Handley into a Hollywood-fueled homicide in the American South. Expecting only a minor disarray in her ancestral antebellum home—rented out for the filming of horror movie Annie’s Ghos t—Carrie Sue instead finds actress Katrina Kantrell hanging from the attic rafters
in a macabre imitation of the suicide of the home’s legendary ghost. Chief investigator Sean O’Connor swiftly identifies the scene as murder, and the case pulls Carrie Sue into a labyrinth of celebrity secrets, greed, and the lingering shadows of history. Unlike the typical amateur sleuth, Carrie Sue is not propelled by curiosity but by a lifetime marked by trauma: the deaths of her parents, an unfaithful marriage, and a previous near-fatal attack. The pacing remains taut as the investigation unfolds alongside a gently blooming romance, and Semerad excels at drawing diverse
Cover: B | Design & typography: A | Illustrations: – Editing: A- | Marketing copy: A-
MYSTERY/THRILLER Cantik Ni VB Mann | Principle Books 368p, e-book, $2.99, ISBN 979-8-9907921-8-0
Touching character-driven literary thriller of life after espionage. Great for fans of Tess Gerritsen’s The Spy Coast , Helen MacInnes’s Agent in Place.
Lewis. What pleases here, and will gratify readers of the complete series, is how Lewis and Suzanna handle these inevi- table, sometimes bloody complications. Even when caught up in the novel’s thriller elements, which involve shadowy agencies and memorable revelations, the couple never loses sight of what matters to them: importing eucalyptus saplings; securing
Unlike most espionage fiction, Mann’s Living Heavy, Traveling Light trilogy is powered by themes of longing for connection, for a true sense of home. When Lewis, agent of the Beige Group, began making moves, in the first two books, to build a life outside of international intrigue, Mann convinced readers that Lewis truly desired this—he is the rare spy-adjacent character who wouldn’t secretly prefer adventure. This touching cli- mactic entry finds Lewis fully committed to Suzanna,
an archery permit. Like Helen MacInnes, Mann favors observational prose, presenting her people in action but often letting readers work out what that action signifies. That keeps the pages turning and prevents sentimentality but also has a distancing effect. (Start with The Oxenburg Woman to feel the couple’s deep connection.) Still, Mann has forged a unique and grown-up genre synthesis and remains adept at dramatizing, with convincing detail and clarity, the step-by-step real-world work of managing complex projects and personalities. Lewis’s work has always blended spycraft with international infrastructure, and Mann wittily links the skill sets, which both demand negotiation and subterfuge.
whom he first encountered in The Oxenburg Woman , and to the promise of building something permanent together. The couple plans to purchase and upgrade a resort on the Indonesian island of Séparée, and the story picks up with Lewis and Suzanna at last free to hash out the practicalities: contractors, local politics, and the entangle- ments of the resort’s previous owners. Those entanglements involve aggrieved Russians, rigged casino equipment, and some missing men. It’s hardly a spoiler to note that Lewis and Suzanna eventually get caught up in related danger and mystery, or that Beige is not quite done with
Cover: A- | Design & typography: A | Illustrations: – Editing: A- | Marketing copy: A-
SF/FANTASY/HORROR 403 Prohibited JJ Cruz 208p, e-book, $2.99, ISBN 979-8-349-59076-4
Time-crossing, big-idea science fiction undercut by repetitive prose.
Internet. Consider Chronos, Judas, and Zale a holy trinity tasked to keep the simu- lation seamless, with Chronos’s ultimate mission involving him blowing himself up to the level of a god to convince the simu- lation’s creators to start afresh. The big ideas, however, are not grounded in rigorous worldbuilding. Cruz never lays
The world according to Cruz’s time- and space-bending novel is one in which everything and everyone is actu- ally a simulation. In his childhood, Chronos Perlman discovers surprising abilities, like the capacity to pro- gram “like a possessed computer genius” and a gift for rewiring toys into spy gadgets. Turns out these are connected to his role in this universe, which Cruz reveals early: Chronos is here to fix tears in the simula- tion and preserve the illusion of reality. To that end, he
Great for fans of Connie Willis, Blake Crouch.
bare the logic of when Chronos, Judas, and Zale are able to glitch; whims and feelings seem to be all they need. Also undercutting the work’s imaginative power: prose that often indulges in the pushy fragments and rule-of-threes declarative inversions favored by chatbots. (One of many examples: “[t]hey didn’t ask questions. They didn’t even blink. They just watched” comes just lines before “Not from the floor. Not from above. From inside” and then “Not mechanical. Not alien. It was familiar.”) Still, Cruz has conjured some heady concepts, startling twists, physics-inspired convolutions, and real surprises—surely there’s no other time- and space-travel narrative that features a character jumping into both the Mt. Vesuvius eruption and 9/11.
has the ability to “glitch,” or jump across space and time. But when, in 1993, he starts to see error codes in the simulation, 11-year-old Chronos realizes the fate of the world is at stake and enlists fellow “watchers”—Judas Stevens and Corporal Zale Roberts—to help him rewrite the entire program. 403 Prohibited follows up Cruz’s previous novel, Project Crucifix, which also featured Zale Roberts in a boldly inventive time-crossed mission. (That one involved meeting Jesus.) 403 Prohibited also shares with its predecessor a desire to find spirituality within its sci-fi tropes and blend of fact and fiction—Chronos’s parents are the real-life Tim Berners-Lee and Radia Perlman, essentially the creators of the
Cover: B | Design & typography: A- | Illustrations: – Editing: C | Marketing copy: A-
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