A girl accused of killing a famous wolf must solve his murder while on the run, in this twist on Little Red Riding Hood!
At twelve years old, Ruby Calvino is the youngest human player in the Tooth & Claw championships. It’s her fast legs and even faster mind that leaves her as the last player left during the final game, and she’s ready to claim victory. But when the undefeated Alarick— the wolf player hunting her— is finally upon her, he…drops dead?
With poison found in Ruby’s bag, all fingers (and paws!) point to her. Desperate to prove her innocence, she teams up with a young wolf accused of helping her commit the crime. But figuring out who killed Alarick certainly won’t be easy while on the run from cops and another vicious wolf.
Luckily, Ruby’s Tooth & Claw training just might come in handy!
My Review
This is the first I’ve read of P. G. Bell’s books, but I will absolutely read more. I loved this mystery-laced twist on Little Red Riding Hood and the game the characters compete in during the book. The Tooth & Claw Championship is a little bit like capture the flag. One team’s goal is to cross the field without being captured and to raise their flags, while the other team (made up of anthropomorphic wolves) wins by capturing all players. Alarick’s murder interrupts Ruby’s team’s potential championship win.
The elements of the championship and the game were easy to understand and very well integrated into the story. In order to track down Alarick’s murderer, Ruby even had to use some of her best Tooth & Claw moves. I also enjoyed Ruby and Fillan as a team. They have very different backgrounds and personalities, and it takes them some time to learn to trust one another. Once they do, though, they make a powerful team.
At 224 pages, this fast-paced story is easy to read. Give this to readers who enjoyed The Great Texas Dragon Race by Kacy Ritter or who enjoy stories where fantasy and sports themes or mysteries intersect.
Content Notes
Recommended for Ages 8 to 12.
Profanity/Crude Language Content None.
Romance/Sexual Content None.
Spiritual Content None.
Violent Content Situations of peril. Ruby witnesses a wolf dying from poisoning. A wolf bites a girl in an attempted robbery. A wolf hunts Ruby and Fillan, clearly intending to kill them. Ruby and Fillan face other potentially fatal threats.
Drug Content None.
Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use but help support this blog. I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.
Marvelous Middle-Grade Monday
I’m sharing this post as a part of a weekly round-up of middle-grade posts called Marvelous Middle-Grade Monday. Check out other blogs with posts about middle-grade books today on Marvelous Middle-Grade Mondays at Always in the Middle.
Beth March’s sisters will stop at nothing to track down her killer—until they begin to suspect each other—in this debut thriller that’s also a bold, contemporary reimagining of the beloved classic Little Women.
When Beth March is found dead in the woods on New Year’s Day, her sisters vow to uncover her murderer.
Suspects abound. There’s the neighbor who has feelings for not one but two of the girls. Meg’s manipulative best friend. Amy’s flirtatious mentor. And Beth’s lionhearted first love. But it doesn’t take the surviving sisters much digging to uncover motives each one of the March girls had for doing the unthinkable.
Jo, an aspiring author with a huge following on social media, would do anything to hook readers. Would she kill her sister for the story? Amy dreams of studying art in Europe, but she’ll need money from her aunt—money that’s always been earmarked for Beth. And Meg wouldn’t dream of hurting her sister…but her boyfriend might have, and she’ll protect him at all costs.
Despite the growing suspicion within the family, it’s hard to know for sure if the crime was committed by someone close to home. After all, the March sisters were dragged into the spotlight months ago when their father published a controversial bestseller about his own daughters. Beth could have been killed by anyone.
Beth’s perspective, told in flashback, unfolds next to Meg, Jo, and Amy’s increasingly fraught investigation as the tragedy threatens to rip the Marches apart.
My Review
This is such an interesting way to reimagine this story. I’ve read the “Jane Austen Murder Mysteries” series by Tirzah Price, which reimagines some of Austen’s novels as murder mysteries set in the time period in which the originals took place. Beth is Dead takes that idea a step further by reimagining the story in a modern setting.
The story contains many subtle and overt nods to the original, as well as some elements that seemed to reference Alcott’s real life. (I haven’t seen the author state that as an intention, so it could be a coincidence.) As events unfolded and I connected the dots from this novel to the original, I found myself nodding along or celebrating the parallel’s inventiveness.
I will admit that the modern setting and the way that some components from the original story were stretched to heighten the suspicion about potential culprits challenged me a bit as a fan of the original. For instance, Laurie and Amy hooking up while Amy was fifteen was a lot for me. Yikes.
I will say that I appreciate a lot of how Bernet modernized the March sisters. Jo, in the original, is always getting in trouble for using slang, so it’s not hard for me to imagine her swearing today or posting personal essays online and cultivating a social media following. That feels like a reasonable parallel to the kinds of short stories she published in the original novel.
I have mixed feelings about the fact that, in this book, her dad has written a novel called Little Women. It’s a novel about the girls, which has started a lot of drama. The story does interrogate whether he had any right to novelize the girls’ lives without their permission. It certainly picks apart his choice to write Beth’s (fictional) death in his novel. I think I would have preferred the novel be written by Jo rather than draw to much focus and attention to her dad’s character and whether or not he’s a good person because of this choice. It felt like it drew the story away from the sisters a lot.
Conclusion
On the whole, I am really glad I read the book. I like the clever way that the original elements reappear here. For the most part, I appreciated the modernized versions of the characters, too. I think fans of Belittled Women by Amanda Sellet will not want to miss this clever reimagining of Little Women.
Content Notes
Recommended for Ages 16 up.
Profanity/Crude Language Content Strong profanity used somewhat frequently.
Romance/Sexual Content Reference to two people (a fifteen-year-old and a seventeen-year-old) who kissed, undressed, and got into bed together before stopping. Another couple makes out in a couple of scenes.
Spiritual Content None.
Violent Content Brief descriptions of a dead body.
Drug Content Reference to teens drinking alcohol at a New Year’s Eve party. Several teens wake up with awful hangovers. A girl drinks alcohol at school and is suspended. She continues drinking at home, where an adult serves her another glass of wine.
Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use but help support this blog. I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.
The thrilling conclusion to the Lizzie & Darcy Mysteries duology, following Lizzie Bennet and Mr. Darcy from the Jane Austen Murder Mysteries series!
A Bingley family curse looms over Lizzie’s sister and Darcy’s best friend—but are the dark forces at work supernatural or human?
Lizzie Bennet’s beloved sister Jane has just married Darcy’s best friend, Bingley, and the Bennet family and Darcy are paying the newlyweds a visit at Bingley’s family home, Netherfield Park. It doesn’t take long for their country retreat to turn into an investigation, though, when a long-dead body is discovered stuffed up the parlor chimney.
The locals are convinced that Netherfield is cursed, but Lizzie and Darcy know better than to believe in such nonsense and are determined to uncover the truth about what happened to the mysterious man in the chimney. But as they dig deeper into the history of Netherfield Park, they find that danger is waiting for them around every corner. Soon enough, they’re forced to consider if the curse might have some merit to it, or if there’s something—or someone—far more sinister behind their near brushes with death….
This duology closer is a daring and delightful conclusion to the chronicles of supersleuths Lizzie Bennet and Mr. Darcy!
My Review
More cozy mysteries featuring Jane Austen characters! Yet again, I find that this book arrived in my life at just the right moment. It was a joy to read this. The writing is smooth, so I flew through the pages. The characters are engaging, and the setting enjoyable.
If you’re a stickler for your historical fiction *sounding* like historical fiction… the writing here might feel too modern for you, especially if you are looking for something written more like the original work. But if you simply need more adventures with Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy at the helm, you definitely want to check out this series.
This is the second book in the “Lizzie and Darcy Murder Mysteries” duology, so if you’re new to this story universe, start with Pride and Premeditation by Tirzah Price, which is part of her “Jane Austen Murder Mysteries” series. (Sense and Second-degree Murder is still my favorite!) From there, you’ll want to pick up In Want of a Suspect, which is book one in the spin-off duology.
I especially love that the author offers Charlotte Lucas, who is a biracial woman in this reimagining of the story, an alternate, happier romance. I will always love the original story and respect Charlotte’s pragmatism, but I love that this story offers her the happiness she deserves.
Content Notes
Recommended for Ages 12 up.
Profanity/Crude Language Content Mild profanity a few times. I love Georgiana Darcy’s response to this.
Romance/Sexual Content Kissing.
Spiritual Content References to attending Anglican church services. At one point, a character wonders whether another is. *gasp* a Catholic.
Violent Content Mr. Darcy discovers a body (sort of a mummified skeleton) in the fireplace flue. He examines the clothes and personal items the murder victim carried as well as noting evidence of a head injury. (Later, characters briefly recount a recap of what happened to this person.) A heavy object falls from above, seriously injuring someone. Someone kidnaps a character and holds two people hostage in exchange for another’s cooperation. Someone fires a handgun at another person. References to someone being sentenced to hanging. (Not shown on scene.)
Drug Content Adult characters drink alcohol occasionally. One character appears drunk at a funeral.
Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use but help support this blog. I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.
After high school graduation, Piper Sail isn’t quite sure what her future holds—until a possible murder case lands in her lap. Filled with both the glitz and glamor of high society and the dark mafia underbelly of 1920s Chicago, The Secret Investigator of Astor Street is perfect for fans of Agatha Christie and Maureen Johnson.
Piper Sail knows what she to become a detective. After all, she already solved the case of her missing best friend, and there’s no shortage of crime in 1920s Chicago. But for an eighteen-year-old society girl—even one who’s currently dating a police investigator—it simply isn’t done.
That is, until a girl asks her to dig into her brother’s recent death. The police ruled it a suicide, but she’s convinced it was murder. And she wants Piper to help her prove it.
In this companion to The Lost Girl of Astor Street, Piper once again grabs her notebook and plunges into the underworld of mafia-controlled Chicago. But she’ll need all her wits and courage if she wants to become The Secret Investigator of Astor Street.
My Review
I really enjoy Stephanie Morrill’s writing, so it was a no-brainer for me to read this book. If Piper Sail and Astor Street seem familiar to you, it’s because of The Lost Girl of Astor Street, the first book in which we meet Piper and follow her as she unravels the mystery of her best friend’s disappearance. That book was published in 2017, so it’s very possible you hadn’t heard of or remembered the book, either. (If so, the good news is that now you have two new mysteries to read.)
This story is set in 1920s Chicago. Piper has graduated from school, and her family expects her to enroll in college and/or find a prospective husband and start a family. The last thing Piper wants to do is have children, and she’s not ready to settle down. She has some doubts about the direction of her current relationship with Mariano, a detective who helped her in the first book.
I loved the way the story explored Piper’s questions about her direction for her life. She knows she doesn’t want to have kids. She isn’t ready to get married. But how can a young woman work as a private investigator? It’s not something that’s done. Whose permission does she need? How will anyone ever take her seriously?
The story makes space for Piper to explore these questions as her investigation into a supposed suicide unfolds. The balance between this theme and the mystery is perfectly done. We get a deeper understanding of Piper and follow her character development, but it never slows down the narrative.
Conclusion
If you enjoy historical mysteries, put this one on your list. I hope that this book marks a revival of the Piper Sail Mysteries as a series. The ending definitely leaves room for a new story.
Content Notes
Recommended for Ages 12 up.
Profanity/Crude Language Content None.
Romance/Sexual Content Kissing.
Spiritual Content Reference to last rites (based on Catholic beliefs). I think there’s a brief reference to Piper noting that Mariano is Catholic, though she attends a different church.
Violent Content Situations of peril. References to suicide. (Not shown on scene.) References to murder.
Drug Content None.
Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use but help support this blog. I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.
You might remember the short story, “The Lady or the Tiger” from your reading in school, but this YA author brings a fresh take on that concept. Lady or the Tiger author Heather M. Herrman is here via Q&A to talk about what inspired her to create this gritty, Wild West murder mystery.
We’ll talk about misconceptions about the Wild West time period and why we need stories beyond romance in YA. We’ll also discuss the importance of telling stories with complex heroines and challenging tropes. It’s awesome stuff!
Let’s get right into it, shall we? Here are some details about the book for some context before we get into the Q&A.
A twisty, darkly seductive murder mystery, starring a teenage killer whose trial in the Wild West is upended when her first victim, her husband, arrives alive with a story to tell.
When nineteen-year-old Belle King turns herself in for murder, the last thing she expects to see is her abusive husband standing outside her Dodge City jail cell. He was the first man she ever meant to kill (but certainly not the last!). Somehow, though, her husband is there, hale and hearty, and very much not dead. With his arrival her plans in jail are jeopardized, and she’ll be forced to resort to all the tricks in her arsenal to prevent him from ever being in control of her again. But as a girl in the 1880s Wild West, the last thing anyone will believe is a woman—even when she confesses to her own crimes.
This story—of how Alice Springer, a mountain girl from Kentucky, became the infamous Belle King, of how she found the tiger in her heart, becoming the wickedest woman in the Wild West—is a love story that cuts through time and patriarchal ties.
Q&A with Heather M. Herrman
1. Is there a particular idea that inspired you to write Lady or the Tiger?
First of all, thank you so much for including me on The Story Sanctuary. I really love and respect the important work you’re doing on your site. And thank you so much for reading Lady or the Tiger!
In terms of this particular story, I started with the germ of an idea about a possibly possessed young woman in the Wild West who cuts out men’s hearts and replaces them with stolen diamonds. But from there, the story grew to be more of a response to the current landscape of the Young Adult genre.
In the past few years, I’ve noticed a trend of YA becoming synonymous with Romance. I think some of this is due to the age of YA readers, with polls suggesting that over fifty percent of readers are actually adults. I love a great romance and am in awe of the incredible authors out there giving us spice. Teen readers, too, need romance as they begin to navigate their own relationships. But they also need other stories.
Unlike adult readers who often read for escape, teen readers are still in the process of forming an identity. Romance by its very nature centers the pleasure—and in some ways value—of its female heroines on an external source instead of providing examples of girls who please themselves. I want to see more complicated girls and women in young adult stories who are allowed, even encouraged, to first fall in love with themselves—shadow and all—before worrying about someone else.
2. In both The Corpse Queen and Lady or the Tiger, you’ve written strong female characters who make difficult choices. I love that! Do you think female anti-heroes are underrepresented in teen fiction? And/or what do these stories bring to the genre that we need more of?
Absolutely. I think the world is still very uncomfortable with a woman choosing to do something that doesn’t serve other people but, instead, serves herself. This, coupled with the discomfort surrounding a woman’s sexual autonomy and desire, often gives us girls who can save the world but don’t know how to save themselves. This is why I’m so drawn to the antihero in fiction. These women are allowed to be exactly who they are without cowtowing to the demands the status quo places on them to be both helpful and beautiful.
Including more female antiheroes in young adult books gives readers a chance to see the parts of themselves they’ve often been asked to discard—their shadow selves or “outlaw energies” as Jungian psychologist Lisa Marchiano dubbs them—being accepted and valued instead of ignored. Girls and women deserve to be whole. And only by accepting our shadows can we ever truly shine our light.
3. What’s your favorite thing about Belle King?
I love that she is completely unapologetic about being herself. As a trained people-pleaser, I personally often find that hard, and I know a lot of other girls and women do too. Our culture often teaches us to meet others’ needs before our own. I love that Belle is willing to consider what she wants first.
4. What made you choose the 1880s Wild West as a setting for Lady or the Tiger?
I think that the setting is an interesting one because we typically think of the “Wild West” as a white, straight, male-dominated space. This was absolutely not the case. But this misconception does show exactly what a woman was up against in that time period and by comparing and contrasting our current climate, it also reveals what she continues to face today. By pushing back on certain tropes prominent in typical westerns, I got a chance to challenge these ideas.
For example, the “damsel in distress” trope has always stood out to me—Western films and novels often revolve around cowboys rescuing beautiful women or, if not rescuing them, using their untimely deaths as backstory for the hero. Often, these women serve as justification for a hero’s violence. I wanted to subvert that convention by placing a woman at the heart of the story rather than on its margins. I also wanted to give her the same depth and moral complexity typically reserved for the rugged male outlaws and antiheroes that dominate the genre. And I also tried to challenge the myth of a homogenous, cisgender American frontier by including diverse characters and historically grounded details that reflect the cultural richness that existed long before white settlers arrived and continues to exist today.
5. Is there a scene or character that was the most fun to write, or something in the book that you couldn’t stop thinking about, even after you finished the scene or draft?
I mean I loved the ending. That was really fun to write. But I think I also had a great time crafting the scene with Alice, Ama, and Dom on the riverbank. They really reveal themselves to each other there and admit things that other people would maybe judge them for because they know that it’s a safe, accepting space. That was a real moment of trust for the characters, and I think it brought back all the beautiful friendships I’ve been lucky enough to have over the years. I wanted Lady or the Tiger to be a love story, just not a traditional one. Because of this, I wanted it to also highlight some of the more important love stories that we maybe don’t always talk about. For me, my girlfriend growing up were life-changing, and I wouldn’t be who I am today without them.
6. What do you most hope that readers take away from your novel?
First and foremost, I hope they enjoy it. Creating Belle was a wild ride, and I’m so excited for readers to get to know her. Beyond that, I hope seeing her be exactly who she is without apology will maybe stick with them. That in some future moment, however small, they remember Belle and feel free to choose themselves instead of trying to please someone else.
7. What is your favorite question readers have asked you about your books?
I had a reader ask me which character from my books I’d most like to go to dinner with, which I thought was such a cool question. Not sure what it says about me, but I immediately chose the murderer.
Heather Herrman is the author of the adult horror novel, Consumption, and the Junior Library Guild selected Young Adult Novel, The Corpse Queen. The Lady or the Tiger, a new YA novel by Heather about a female serial killer in the Wild West will be available from Nancy Paulsen Books June 10, 2025.
Heather’s fiction seeks to explore the relationship between body and landscape, utilizing genre as a medium. She believes that American Horror Fiction provides a lens through which we can undress and view the timeless dis/ease of our society.
Heather holds an MFA from New Mexico State University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in various publications including the Dark Screams Anthology:Volume 10, Cemetery Dance, The Alaska Quarterly, South Carolina Review, and Snake Nation Review. Her fiction has earned the Frank Waters Prize, an Individual Artist Grant from the Nebraska Arts Council, and a scholarship to the Prague Summer Program for Writers.
She is represented by Barbara Poelle from the Word One Literary Agency.
Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use but help support this blog. I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.
When a teen has an unexpected vision about a future murder, he must juggle newfound interest from the supernatural community with trying to prevent the murder from happening in this new romantic fantasy from New York Times bestselling author F.T. Lukens.
Tired of being known as the artsy oddball, fifteen-year-old Cam Reynolds hopes to fly under the radar when he changes high schools as a sophomore. It shouldn’t be too hard, considering he’s a human going to school with kids who have super-cool paranormal powers, like his best friend and witch, Al, and longtime werewolf crush, Miguel.
Then Cam has a psychic glimpse of the future in front of most of the student body, seeing a gruesomely murdered teen girl from the point of view of the killer. When Cam comes to, he knows two things: someone he goes to school with is a future murderer and his life is about to change. No longer a mere human but a clairvoyant, one of the rarest of supernatural beings, Cam finds himself at the center of attention for the first time.
As the most powerful supernatural factions in the city court Cam and his gift, he’ll have to work with his friends, both old and new, to figure out who he can trust. Because the clock is ticking, and Cam and his friends must identify the girl in the vision, find her potential killer, and prevent the murder from happening. Or the next murder Cam sees might be his own.
My Review
This is the third novel by F. T. Lukens I’ve read. I went into this book with them as a favorite author, and that distinction remains. This is probably not the kind of story that I would normally pick up– paranormal isn’t my usual go-to, but for an author I really enjoy (also looking at you, Kalynn Bayron), I’ll give vampires or werewolves a chance.
So one of the really fascinating things in this book is the cultural feelings surrounding people with supernatural abilities in the story world. For example, Cam’s parents are super against any involvement with or participation in the supernatural. They’ve long been against Cam hanging out with his best friend because they’re a witch.
Incidentally, Cam’s parents don’t bat an eye at him being gay or his best friend being nonbinary, so the story world is very queernormative. Instead, some characters fixate on whether someone is a human with no supernatural abilities versus someone with abilities.
Whether someone has an ability isn’t a choice. Cam’s gift manifests in a moment of distress and remains undeniable throughout the rest of the book. Yet his parents act as though erasing this part of his identity would be better for him and for them. It’s a pretty powerful metaphor, and it’s used well.
The characters, especially Cam, are engaging and easy to root for. I think Lukens has always written standalone novels, but I found myself really hoping this one would be the start of a series. I would absolutely return to this story world for more hijinks and investigations with Cam’s crew at the helm.
If you like a good murder mystery, especially one with a clever social commentary woven in, you won’t want to miss Love at Second Sight.
Content Notes for Love at Second Sight
Recommended for Ages 14 up.
Profanity/Crude Language Content Strong profanity used somewhat infrequently.
Romance/Sexual Content Kissing.
Spiritual Content Some characters have supernatural/paranormal abilities. Some characters are werewolves, sprites, witches, or fae. Cam sees visions of the future. Another character sees and can interact with ghosts.
Violent Content Situations of peril. Cam sees visions of a girl who has been attacked and is close to dying. Boys get into a fight in a hallway at school. References to a car accident and near car accident.
Some characters react hatefully toward people with paranormal gifts or identities.
Drug Content None.
Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use but help support this blog. I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.
