Planning to have a FrightFall time with a murder mystery tour

With spooky season almost upon us(a term that I’ve grown to like!), the time is ripe for TBR making in order to start the FrightFall readathon (hosted by Michelle Miller at Seasons of Reading) this upcoming October. Scary books of all sorts are welcome and my theme for my trio of sinister selections is murder mystery.

While I do enjoy horror reads and movies, especially around this part of the year, the news headlines  these days are terrifying enough as it is. Certainly enough to find a nice  seemingly simple whodunnit to be quite the relief from reality there. While two of them are in the cozy category, one particular title promises to be engagingly ruthless:

In Deanna Raybourn’s latest novel entitled Killers of a Certain Age, a quartet of recently retired ladies are sent off on a cruise by their former employer as a reward for all of their hard work over the years.

However, the cruise turns out to be a ruse for doing them all in. While they’re not exactly best friends, all four of these formidable women find that they have no choice but to trust each other in order to discover who exactly wants them gone for good.

I love this concept as it reminds me of a pair of action movies featuring older assassins with Helen Mirren as a rather spunky hit woman. Imagine her and a pack of gal pals facing off foes together (particularly if someone makes this book into a feature film), now how fun is that?:

Meanwhile, my next pick is The Grim Reader by Kate Carlisle, which is part of her Bibliophile Mystery series.

Bookbinder Brooklyn Wainwright decides to spend some time with husband Derek Stone and her family at the laidback town of Dharma.

As it happens, Dharma is holding their first literary festival, along with a musical production of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, making Brooklyn’s visit feel like perfect timing.

Unfortunately, that good feeling doesn’t last long as a member of the festival committee is found dead with a prime suspect being local box wine seller Jacob Banyan who was arguing with Brooklyn’s mother Becky(who is running the festival) about having a booth for his lackluster wares.

Despite how obvious he seems to be as the killer, Brooklyn soon learns that the recently departed had quite the enemies list there. Can she catch the culprit and solve a theatrical dispute to save the festival from first time failure status?

This series is a lively as well as literary one and I love how Carlisle manages to highlight a classic book into every plot. With Little Women being a personal favorite of mine, this book is a total must read indeed!:

Fittingly, my last pick is Rhys Bowen’s  The Last Mrs. Summers , a later entry in the Her Royal Spyness mysteries.

Our leading lady, Lady Georgiana is now happily married but with her new husband off on a secret mission, she’s in need of some diversion to keep from worrying about him.

An invitation from her flighty friend Belinda to visit a former beau of hers in Cornwall seems to be the thing. However, their host Tony Summers is having a bit of marital discourse with his new second wife, who is suspicious of how the first Mrs. Summers fulfilled the “death do us part” section of her wedding vows.

When someone on the household staff is murdered, Belinda is seen as the main suspect, leaving Georgiana the only one able to save her friend from an unjust fate and the rest of them from something even more deadly from beyond the grave!

The wink and nod to Daphne du Maurier’s Gothic thriller Rebecca here ought to be the perfect pumpkin spice flavor for this screwball comedy/mystery series and a chillingly charming one at that:

The FrightFall readathon starts on October 1st and ends on the 31sr, appropriately on Halloween (when my big holiday treat is going to be the latest booster shot!). Thanks as always to Michelle for giving us a reading reason for the season.

Murder mysteries seems to abound lately, with several PBS Masterpiece shows returning and movies such as the upcoming Knives Out sequel and recently released See How They Run out in theaters. Guess it’s like they say, eventually everything old does become new again!: