Murder by Design

This thriller duo is the most fun I’ve had reading in months.

A detective who can’t stop insulting people + the broke actor hired to apologize for him = chaos.

Murder by Design by Lee Goldberg grabbed me on page one.

Edison Bixby is brilliant, wealthy, and thanks to a traumatic brain injury, has zero filter. Whatever he thinks, he says. He was a decorated detective until his condition cost his department millions in lawsuits, so they pushed him out. Now he works as an insurance investigator, taking on cases where you genuinely wonder what these people were thinking.

Enter Wally Nash, a struggling actor with one job: trail Bixby around and apologize to everyone he offends. The two of them are a ridiculous pair and I had so much fun watching them work.

What sets this book apart is the angle on the crimes. Every case ties back to design: how buildings, spaces, and environments are built to shape how people behave. It’s such a fresh hook for a thriller.

Bixby’s house is basically its own character. It’s this wild architectural fever dream. And yes, there’s a treehouse in the backyard that cooks you a full hot breakfast if you pull the right vines and levers. Bizarre? Absolutely. But it works because the whole book is built around the idea that design shapes experience. Goldberg’s author’s note says the house is inspired by two real storybook-style homes in the LA area. I went down a full rabbit hole looking at photos. So cool.

The pace doesn’t quit, the twists hit, and the Sherlock-and-Watson energy between Bixby and Wally is just pure fun. If you like mysteries that are clever without being stuffy, grab this one. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Out June 1. Thank you to Megan Beattie Communications for the gifted ARC.

If you enjoyed this, you might be interested in this quirky mystery. 

About the Author

Lee Goldberg is a screenwriter, TV producer, and the author of several books, including King City, The Walk, and the bestselling Monk series of mysteries. He has earned two Edgar Award nominations and was the 2012 recipient of the Poirot Award from Malice Domestic.

For more information on Lee and his books, visit his website. 

IG Live | a Conversation with Hannah Church

 I had such a great time talking with audiobook narrator Hannah Church this afternoon on an IG Live! We talked about her most recent narration The Dead Girls Book Club by Zia Rayyan. We also talked about Hannah's process for doing a narration, the accents she loves to do, and lots of other things that goes into being an audiobook narrator. 

If you’ve ever wondered what goes into the performance side of audiobooks, this one’s for you.

You can watch the replay of our conversation here.

For more information about Hannah and her narration work, visit her website.

Book mail: Five

 

Five strangers. Five minutes. One of them is about to die and you have to decide who.

Thank you Crown Public for the gifted book! 

Happy pub day to Five by Ilona Bannister!  🎉

The publisher sent Take 5 bars with this one, which is perfect. Because everything about this book is built around five: five people, five minutes, one impossible outcome.

Here’s the setup: five strangers are waiting on a train platform. In five minutes, the 7:06 to London Victoria arrives and one of them won’t make it.

A young boy. His mother. An elderly woman. A businessman. A gambler.

You get all their stories. And the whole time, the book is pushing you to decide who deserves to survive.

It even breaks the fourth wall in a really clever way. You’re not just reading. You’re judging.

This storytelling is original and tense. It's a little unsettling in the best way. You can check out my full review of the book  here.

I’m going LIVE with Ilona this Thursday to talk all about it. Come hang out! 📅

 

I See You've Called in Dead

 

Declared dead by HR. Forced to figure out how to actually live.

I See You've Called in Dead made me laugh out loud and then cry actual tears sometimes within the same paragraph.

An obituary writer gets drunk, accidentally publishes his own obituary, and suddenly the company’s HR system thinks he’s dead. Dead people can’t be fired. So now what?

Bud Stanley writes obituaries for a living. He’s depressed, lonely, and still not over his divorce. One night he has too much to drink and does something spectacularly ill-advised. He writes and posts his own obituary to his newspaper’s online portal. By morning, the whole world thinks he’s dead.

His company’s system now has him listed as deceased, and you can’t legally fire a dead man. So Bud is suspended, unmoored, and left to figure out what to do with himself.

What he does is start showing up to the wakes and funerals of total strangers.

He meets Clara, a woman who has been doing this for years. Watching how people grieve and remember the people they loved has taught her how to actually live. Bud starts going too, and at each service, he hears stories about the deceased from the people who loved them. Slowly, something starts to shift.

His best friend Tim is one of the best characters I’ve encountered in a long time. Paralyzed in an accident as a young man, Tim fought through the grief and rage of that and came out the other side full of life, art, music, and deep friendship. He becomes the person who gently drags Bud back into the world.

This is a book about grief and loss that is also genuinely funny. Walking that line without losing either side is incredibly hard to do, and John Kenney does it beautifully. Narrator Sean Patrick Hopkins is perfectly cast. His deadpan delivery makes the humor land even perfectly, and he handles the emotional moments with real care.

This was my book club’s April pick, and every single person in the group loved it. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ I strongly recommend it.

Fans of Backman’s A Man Called Ove will feel right at home with Bud Stanley. Here’s my review. 

About the Author

John Kenney is the New York Times bestselling author of the humorous poetry collections Love Poems for Married People, Love Poems for People with Children, and Love Poems for Anxious People, and the novels Talk to Me and Truth in Advertising, which won the Thurber Prize for American Humor. He has worked for many years as a copywriter. He has also been a contributor to The New Yorker since 1999. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

To learn more about John Kenney and his other books, visit his website. 

April Reading Wrap Up

 

13 Books. All 4 Stars. Zero Regrets.

Thank you Simon Audio, Simon Maverick Audio, Harper Perennial, Macmillan Audio, The Dial Press, and Megan Beatie Communications for the gifted books. Appreciate it! 

It's my April reading wrap-up and I genuinely can’t believe every single one of these landed. 13 books. 13 four-star reads. Not one disappointment.

I grouped them by vibe because that felt more honest than just listing titles. Some were pure thriller adrenaline, some wrecked me emotionally, and some were just the kind of books I’d push into anyone’s hands without warning. It heavy audio month. Nine of these were listens.

The standout was I See You've Called in Dead by John Kennedy. An obituary writer accidentally publishes his own obit and somehow ends up learning how to live. It's funny, sad, and completely unexpected.

Interested in what I read last month? Check it out here. 

Thriller Thursday Book Mail

 

A middle-aged widow. A cleaver. A second career nobody saw coming.

Thank you Harper Perennial for the gifted book!

Korean crime fiction just delivered something truly unhinged and I am here for it. 

I was out of town for a few weeks and it was so nice to come home to find book mail waiting for me. And this one has me intrigued. 

Mrs. Shim Is a Killer by Kang Jiyoung has a wild premise.  A widowed mom loses her job at the butcher shop, answers a vague help-wanted ad, and accidentally becomes a contract killer. Turns out her knife skills translate beautifully.

It’s a darkly funny Korean thriller about survival, reinvention, and a woman who is done being everyone’s doormat. The author already has a Disney+ adaptation under her belt (Shopping Mall for Killers), so she clearly knows how to build a world that’s equal parts absurd and gripping.

This is exactly the kind of read I pick up when I need something that doesn’t take itself too seriously, but still delivers. Can’t wait to dive in.

Interested in other book mail I've gotten? Check out this post. 

Don't forget to follow me on Instagram!

About the Author

Kang Jiyoung is an established Korean writer based in Paju, near Seoul. She is the author of the story collections Goodbye Paradise, Time for Dogs to Eat and The Killer’s Shopping List. Her novels include Quarantine Station of New Culture, Elza’s Ha-yin, Circus in the Dark Forest, Frankenstein Family, Yawning is Delicious, Pheromone Boutique and Shopping Mall for Killers. Shopping Mall for Killers was adapted for television by Disney+. Mrs Shim Is a Killer will be published in over twenty languages worldwide.

The power of a recommendation

 

I’ve been recommending books for over 40 years. It started with one conversation.

I was a freshman in high school, reading something for English class, when my mom’s friend Mrs. O’Hara sat down and asked what I was reading. We started talking books and she told me I needed to read Robert Ludlum.

I had no idea what I was getting into. But I picked one up and I was completely hooked. Forty years later I’m still chasing that feeling and passing it on.

That’s what one good recommendation can do.

Check out the full story on my Instagram.