Getting ready to Spring Into Horror with a pack of Fearsome Females

 Spring is officially here and not just according to the calendar or newly bloomed flowers in your backyard. The sign-up for Seasons of Reading's Spring Into Horror readathon(hosted by Michelle Miller) has begun , a surer sign of warmer days to come for me.

April 1 is the start date and while all of your bookish choices don't have to be scary reads(you only need one), my TBR is pretty sinister, ranging from chilling thriller to cozy mystery, with a theme of Fearsome Females. Whether those ladies are meant to be frightening to the good guys or the Big Bads is another matter altogether....

 

Samantha Downing's My Lovely Wife focuses on a seemingly happy husband and wife who decide to liven up their fifteen year marriage with a shared hobby. 

Trouble is , their leisure activity is rather lethal for those who join them. Hubby likes to lure their potential victim in while wife Millicent is the one that dispatches of the chosen target. This tag team set-up takes a sharp turn as the body of last year's slaughter spree,Lindsay, has been found by the cops.

This puzzles Hubby as Lindsay was supposed to have been dumped in a swamp instead of being held prisoner until her untimely demise. Millicent quickly explains that she thought it would be better to have the disappearances blamed on a local and recently escaped serial killer rather than their usual murder routine.

Hubby is willing to go along with this method but things start getting out of hand and as it turns out, Millicent might be a little more into their gruesome game time than he truly is. I've heard a lot of good word about this book and very eager to see this suburban serial mom in action:

Ruth Ware is an author that I keep starting and stopping with when it comes to her books(I did finish The Woman in Cabin 10 ,which got me interested in her work in the first place.) but I'm hoping that will change with this readathon.

In a Dark,Dark Wood begins with crime writer Leonora "Nora" Shaw waking up in the hospital with no recollection of  what has happened to her or worse, what she might have done.

Nora slowly starts to remember attending a gathering at a remote location known as Glass House to celebrate the upcoming marriage of longtime friend Clare Cavendish, who she hasn't spoken to in ten years.

While she can't fully recall everything that occurred, Nora does know for a certainty that a secret from her and Clare's past came along for the ride and has risen from it's grave to haunt their present and future. Can she put all of the pieces of this mental puzzle together in time to prevent a further tragedy from taking place?

Ware is such a good writer with Agatha Christie energy to spare that I really want to reignite this storytelling spark there. I do have other books by her that I hate to see neglected. Plus, Ware seems to have great taste in subtle scares and I'm all for that:

Onward to the cozy mystery section and my first stop is the latest in Vivien Chien's Noodle Shop series, Fatal Fried Rice.

Amateur detective Lana Lee is very proud of how well she's running the Ho-Lee family restaurant despite her older sister's taunts about Lana's lack of culinary skills when it comes to Chinese food.

To prove her sister wrong, Lana secretly signs up for a community college cooking course, planning on surprising everyone with her meal prep prowess. Unfortunately, she's the one who gets the surprise by discovering her cooking teacher Margo Chan dead after class.

Being seen as a suspect is nothing new for Lana but now with her friends acting as her sleuthing squad, she is sure of finding out who really did Margo in. However, can can she come up with the killer in time to clear her name or is Lana's goose about to get cooked?

This series is such great fun that it's hard for me to wait until next month to dive into the storytelling goodness. Having Lana learn to cook is extra sweet as I'm a big fan of Worst Cooks in America but hopefully, the rest of her culinary classes aren't as hectic as the ones on the show:

Speaking of culinary clashes, I do intend to start The Cookbook Nook Mystery series by Daryl Wood Gerber(aka Avery Aames) right from the beginning with Final Sentence.

Jenna Hart is our leading lady, who decides to set up a cookbook shop with her Aunt Vera. For the grand opening, a popular celebrity chef named Desiree Divine is planned to do a signing of her newest book, which was made easier by not only Jenna's prior marketing job but Desiree being her former college roommate as well.

However, Desiree appears to be more trouble than all of the potential publicity is worth, especially when she is found dead. Due to her penchant for husband stealing among other bad habits, there's a full set of suspects to choose from and even Jenna is thrown into the mix as a possible murderer! Can she whip up a recipe to uncover the real killer or will her new career path lead Jenna right to prison?

I do have the next two books in this series(Inherit the Word and Stirring the Plot) and with any luck, might get to them as well. At the very least, I can enjoy reading more of DWG's tasty take on crime solving:

There's still plenty of time to sign up for Spring Into Horror(see link in the first paragraph of this post) and much thanks as always to Michelle Miller for making this page turning terror time possible.

As much as I do root for the good gals to save the day, it is difficult to resist savoring the sinister sassy vibes of a true villianess . It's not that I want them to win, just that some of that scary swagger can make a story all the more entertaining and a couple of books on my list should offer up just that: