A priceless heirloom worth its weight in lives. Can she crack the case before she becomes a killer’s trophy?
Hollywood, 1924. Grace Michelle’s professional star has risen. Now a successful costumier for a major studio, the ambitious woman has just about everything she wants. But when the father she thought was dead reaches out to reconnect, the talented designer doesn’t know what to think… especially after his new wife is kidnapped.
Discovering her dad is mixed up with a stolen Russian artifact, Grace puts her sleuthing skills to work to rescue the abducted lady. But with a famous actress murdered in connection with the missing valuable and a man she put away stalking her for revenge, the frazzled amateur detective fears getting to the bottom of this crime will leave her six feet under.
Can she hunt down the treasure before it bankrupts the lives of everyone she loves?
Grace Among Thieves is the nail-biting third book in the Grace Michelle Mystery historical series. If you like bright-but-beset heroines, breathtaking twists and turns, and the glamor of a lost age, then you’ll adore Kari Bovée’s riveting tale.
I received a complimentary copy of this book from iRead Book Tours. I voluntarily chose to read and post an honest review.
In Grace Among Thieves (A Grace Michelle Mystery) by Kari Bovee, the bodies keep piling up. Grace agrees to put on her imaginary detective hat and solve multiple cases, but maybe she shouldn’t have. With danger lurking close to home, she should reconsider sticking with her day job. I don’t think Grace ever will, though. Luckily, she has friends and family who lend a helping hand and watch her back. Heck, Grace even has the undead assisting her. Not zombies —just spirits. 🙂
When she’s not solving crimes or designing costumes, she runs a foster home with Chet. When you open your home to foster children, you must prepare for turbulence. There was plenty of drama between two foster boys — Daniel and Stevie. Stevie is the latest child to join the ranch, and he has baggage, as most foster kids do. The scenes featuring foster life added depth to the story.
The drama that unfolded on and off the ranch did reach a happy resolution, which might not be a shocking revelation. Speaking of shocking revelations, Kari Bovee delivered quite the humdinger! This surprise development raised the score a bit. Why? Cause who doesn’t love the unexpected (when it comes to mystery novels)!
Heart Rating System:
1 (lowest) and 5 (highest)
Score: ❤❤❤❤
When she’s not on a horse riding along the beautiful cottonwood-laden acequias of Corrales, New Mexico; or basking on white sand beaches under the Big Island Hawaiian sun, Kari Bovée is escaping into the past—scheming murder and mayhem for her characters both real and imagined in her historical mystery novels.
Kari Bovée writes the award-winning Annie Oakley mystery series and the Grace Michelle mystery series. In 2020 she was honored with First Place in category for the Chanticleer International Clue Awards for her book Folly at the Fair. In 2019 she was awarded the NM/AZ Book Awards Hillerman Award for her novel Girl with a Gun. The novel also received First Place in the 2019 NM/AZ Book Awards in the Mystery/Crime category, and won First in Category in the International Chanticleer Murder & Mayhem Awards. It was also a finalist in the 2019 Next Generation Indie Awards. Her novel Grace in the Wings won First in Category for the 2019 International Chanticleer Chatelaine Awards. Peccadillo at the Palace won Grand Prize in the 2019 Goethe Awards, and was a finalist in the 2019 Best Book Awards Historical Fiction category.
Kari Bovée has worked as a technical writer for a Fortune 500 Company, has written non-fiction for magazines and newsletters, and has worked in the education field as a teacher and educational consultant.
All that glitters… is sometimes blood. With her golden ticket buried in the ground, can she save a wrongly accused teen from the gallows?
Hollywood, 1924. Promoted to lead costume designer of a star-studded film, Grace Michelle should be on top of the world. But between her husband’s debt, her sister’s recent death, and the troubled teenaged girl she’s fostering, she’s struggling to please everyone and still keep a smile on her face. And when a Tinseltown shindig turns deadly, Grace is horrified to discover her young charge unconscious alongside the director’s grisly corpse.
Determined to prove the girl’s innocence, Grace’s own haunted past fills her sleep with prophetic nightmares. And no sooner has she sought clarity from a medium than a second body lands the scared teenager in the slammer.
Can Grace turn the camera on the real culprit before another victim ends up on the cutting room floor?
Grace in Hollywood is the second book in the riveting A Grace Michelle Mystery historical series. If you like fiercely loyal heroines, thrilling whodunits, and the magic of old cinema, then you’ll love Kari Bovee’s enthralling tale.
I received a complimentary copy of this book from iRead Book Tours. I voluntarily chose to read and post an honest review.
Grace and Chet have come a long way since Sophia’s death. They now live on a ranch and foster four children of various ages. They did more than open up their homes; they opened up their hearts.
While in their care, though, tragedy struck. A murder occurred during a Hollywood party, and their oldest charge, Lizzy, is the prime suspect since she was found with the deceased. Lizzy denied responsibility, and Grace believed her.
The evidence is mounting. Bodies are piling up. Lizzy is losing hope. Grace, however, doesn’t give up. Like with the murder mystery of her sister, Sophia, Grace will turn over every rock to uncover the truth. Through her investigations, she learns some shocking facts. She also finds herself facing the real villain of the story.
Grace in Hollywood – A Grace Michelle Mystery by Kari Bovee is a mystery you WON’T figure out quickly. All the twists and turns will keep you puzzled as to who is the real murderer.
The last page will have you muttering, “WTH,” or something close to that. I can’t wait to read Grace Among Thieves (A Grace Michelle Mystery), book three in the series.
Heart Rating System:
1 (lowest) and 5 (highest)
Score: ❤❤❤❤
When she’s not on a horse riding along the beautiful cottonwood-laden acequias of Corrales, New Mexico; or basking on white sand beaches under the Big Island Hawaiian sun, Kari Bovée is escaping into the past—scheming murder and mayhem for her characters both real and imagined in her historical mystery novels.
Kari Bovée writes the award-winning Annie Oakley mystery series and the Grace Michelle mystery series. In 2020 she was honored with First Place in category for the Chanticleer International Clue Awards for her book Folly at the Fair. In 2019 she was awarded the NM/AZ Book Awards Hillerman Award for her novel Girl with a Gun. The novel also received First Place in the 2019 NM/AZ Book Awards in the Mystery/Crime category, and won First in Category in the International Chanticleer Murder & Mayhem Awards. It was also a finalist in the 2019 Next Generation Indie Awards. Her novel Grace in the Wings won First in Category for the 2019 International Chanticleer Chatelaine Awards. Peccadillo at the Palace won Grand Prize in the 2019 Goethe Awards, and was a finalist in the 2019 Best Book Awards Historical Fiction category.
Kari Bovée has worked as a technical writer for a Fortune 500 Company, has written non-fiction for magazines and newsletters, and has worked in the education field as a teacher and educational consultant.
Their pull was undeniable, like fireworks on top of flaming bonfires.
After Anna James loses nearly everyone she loves and is betrayed by those she trusted, she sets out in search of a place that would bring her peace. She knew she had found it when she arrived in a sleepy little town called Silver Cliff and she vows to never trust anyone with her heart again, especially a man she fears would not only break her heart, he’d incinerate it.
Nathan Kent has dealt with his own heartache and demons from getting off the path he was meant to be on. He decides to return to his home town to rebuild his life and the last thing he needs is to fall in love with a snarky girl who keeps her past under lock and key. He realizes quickly, though, that she is girl worth risking it all for and vows to make her his.
Their pull was undeniable, like fireworks on top of flaming bonfires. But Anna can’t help wonder if she and Nathan are strong enough to survive a past that keeps resurfacing or if fate will keep shattering the world around her.
What the hell was she thinking agreeing to this? She hadn’t seen Nathan since she went to his house to apologize and they shared not only a moment but an almost kiss, and now…now she was going out to dinner with him and the girls and freakin’ Joshua Dale. She liked Josh, and she actually felt bad about turning him down when he asked her out on a date. He was a good guy, sweet, funny, definitely cute, especially in his deputy uniform, but there hadn’t been a spark. Even if there had been, she still would have said no. Men like that were too easy to fall for and trust. Men like that would inevitably hurt her. The biggest difference between men like Josh and Trevor was that Josh would feel bad about it.
With Nathan, though, there wasn’t just a spark. There were fireworks…fireworks on top of flaming bonfires added to all the burners on the stove going at once and mixed with all the chemicals overreacting to each other in a lab. She was sure she could come up with even more metaphors, but she’d already made her brain hurt from overthinking things. Nathan did not just have the potential to break her heart, he could incinerate it.
This wasn’t a date, she told herself again. It was a group outing. That would be her mantra tonight.
She changed her clothes several times, made sure her makeup—though she didn’t wear much—looked flawless, and she wondered if Nathan preferred her hair up or down. Not a date. Not a date. Not. A. Date.
Okay, so maybe it really wasn’t a date, but a huge part of her wished that it was. She liked him…much more than she wanted to. How could I let this happen? She removed the clip from her hair, letting her silken locks fall straight past her shoulders. She sat on her bed with her head in her hands, berating herself for allowing these feelings. As if I had a choice. He somehow barreled into her life out of nowhere, demanding she reveal all of herself to him, and the worst part was that she wanted to. If she wasn’t running into him, she was thinking about him or thinking about ways to avoid thinking about him. And here she was just minutes ago, wondering which way she thought he would prefer her hair to be styled.
Distance. I need some distance. She would not be able to avoid him entirely, but she could try to limit the time she spent around him. That seemed like the best course of action, only the thought of not seeing him suddenly hurt her heart.
“Fuck!” She flung herself backward onto the bed, slamming her palms down on the mattress.
The doorbell rang. “Down it is,” she said, referring to her hair. When she opened the door, Nathan stood there wearing a cocky grin.
“Hi.”
“Um…hello.” Anna barely recognized her own voice. It came out as a sort of breathy squeak. She tried to peer past Nathan, into his car, but there was no one else with him.
Nathan turned his head to look behind him. When he turned back to face her, confusion marred his features. “Are you looking for something?”
“Where’s Ruby?” Ruby was supposed to be picking her up, Carla was meeting them at the restaurant right after her shift, and she wasn’t sure how Josh was getting to the restaurant.
“Ruby had a few last-minute errands, so I offered to pick you up.”
Anna finally realized she was being rude by not inviting him in, so she gestured him inside. “I’ll just go grab my bag.”
“My bag,” he mimicked in an exaggerated New York accent, making Anna laugh.
“Right, you guys say purse.” For the most part, Anna’s accent was nondescript, but certain choices of words and the pronunciations of them were definitely very Brooklyn. “You lived in the city. You should be used to it by now.”
“Mostly everyone I knew were transplants just like me, but I did get my daily dose of New Yawk City speak.”
“Oh shut it,” she said playfully. “We know there’s an r in there. I’ll just go grab my little ole purse.”
“No rush,” she heard him say on the way to her bedroom. There was still a trace of humor in his voice.
Something had just occurred to her. Bag forgotten, she walked back out into the living room.
“Wait, are we being set up again?” She was going to kill Carla. This was surely her doing. “Are they all going to come up with some excuse and not show up, leaving just the two of us at dinner?”
Nathan looked confused, or annoyed, at the possibility. She couldn’t tell which. “No. As far as I know, both Carla and Ruby are still coming, and you and I are going to go grab Josh from the station.”
Well that won’t be awkward at all, she thought. She went back into her room to grab her purse, and after locking up, they walked back to his car in silence.
Elena Kincaid is an award-winning and Amazon best-selling author. She writes Paranormal and Contemporary Romances with alpha males who stop at nothing to protect their women, heroines who are anything but damsels in distress, and stories where the only love worth fighting for is the forever kind of love.
She was born in Ukraine and raised in New York, where she currently lives with her daughter. Her desk is constantly cluttered with journals, sticky notes, and torn-out pieces of paper full of ideas. When not working, Elena loves to spend time with her family, travel the globe, curl up with a good book, and catch up on her soaps.
Disclaimer from me, Kam: There are some scenes that might be triggers for some readers – physical abuse.
A ghost from her past. Her sister murdered. Can Grace slay her demons and find the killer before she ends up dead?
New York City, 1920. Grace Michelle has everything she wants: a home, a family, and a future career as a costume designer for famed showman Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr.’s Ziegfeld Follies. Pretty good for a girl who once lived on the streets of New York City. But when her sister, Sophia, the star of the show, is murdered, Grace’s safe and protected life is shattered.
Battle-scarred by the war and emotionally scarred by his past, Chet Riker has made it a practice to keep his distance from others; love, after all, leads only to pain. But Chet has a problem—a big one: he’s become indebted to mob-boss Joe Marciano in an attempt to save his estranged mother’s life, and Marciano wants him to pay up or else. Desperate to get the money, he contacts former client Florenz Ziegfeld for work.
Soon, Chet finds himself playing bodyguard for introverted Grace, who has reluctantly agreed to be Ziegfeld’s new leading lady—on the condition that Ziegfeld promises to find Sophia’s killer. Upon meeting Grace, Chet quickly finds his hardened theory that love equals pain tested. Grace, meanwhile, is swept up in a life she never wanted as the Follies’ star, and as the pawn in a series of publicity stunts during a transcontinental train trip to California that puts her life at risk. Who would want her and Sophia dead? Together, she and Chet must confront publicity-hungry Florenz Ziegfeld, power-driven Joe Marciano, and their own pasts to find Sophia’s killer—and let themselves love once again.
I received a complimentary copy of this book from iRead Book Tours. I voluntarily chose to read and post an honest review.
When a loved one dies under unusual circumstances, it’s not uncommon to go to any lengths to find out what happened to them. Grace did just that regarding the sudden death of her sister, Sophia.
Before Sophia died, she publicly disclosed some shocking revelations. I don’t want to spoil what they were, but it was on the icky side. As more information about Sophia is unveiled, her sister’s (Grace) life becomes in jeopardy. This is the point in the story where readers might encounter “trigger” moments. Let me explain: There are several detailed scenes where a man is severely beating a woman. He also gets violent with another, and rape was insinuated but (thankfully) never occurs.
There were a few components of Grace in the Wings I did enjoy: the dynamic between Chet and Grace and the power of women working together in a specific set of scenes. (No spoilers) The cover is also fantastic. It represents the period perfectly, the 1920s.
Unfortunately, due to the brutality of specific engagements, I dropped my score a couple of points. I’d suggest placing a disclaimer on the book’s summary for potential readers/buyers.
Heart Rating System:
1 (lowest) and 5 (highest)
Score: ❤❤❤
When she’s not on a horse riding along the beautiful cottonwood-laden acequias of Corrales, New Mexico; or basking on white sand beaches under the Big Island Hawaiian sun, Kari Bovée is escaping into the past—scheming murder and mayhem for her characters both real and imagined in her historical mystery novels.
Kari Bovée writes the award-winning Annie Oakley mystery series and the Grace Michelle mystery series. In 2020 she was honored with First Place in category for the Chanticleer International Clue Awards for her book Folly at the Fair. In 2019 she was awarded the NM/AZ Book Awards Hillerman Award for her novel Girl with a Gun. The novel also received First Place in the 2019 NM/AZ Book Awards in the Mystery/Crime category, and won First in Category in the International Chanticleer Murder & Mayhem Awards. It was also a finalist in the 2019 Next Generation Indie Awards. Her novel Grace in the Wings won First in Category for the 2019 International Chanticleer Chatelaine Awards. Peccadillo at the Palace won Grand Prize in the 2019 Goethe Awards, and was a finalist in the 2019 Best Book Awards Historical Fiction category.
Kari Bovée has worked as a technical writer for a Fortune 500 Company, has written non-fiction for magazines and newsletters, and has worked in the education field as a teacher and educational consultant.
It’s the 1980s, and art historian Claire Markham reels from a series of heartbreaking losses. Desperate to escape her shattered reality, she becomes an art guide in Europe for quirky stranger Viv Chancey and embarks on a life-changing journey through the art-filled cities of Milan, Venice, Ravenna, Florence, Siena, Rome, and Paris.
Once abroad, Claire tries to hide her woes by focusing on Viv’s art education, but Viv—who is not who she seems—has a different learning experience in mind. Frustrated and wanting to reimagine her life, Claire embraces the idea of reality as illusion and finds herself slipping into the tales of art and history.
When threatened with one more crushing loss, Claire must learn from the spirit of her eccentric companion and the lessons from the art they encounter to take charge of her life or lose the most precious thing in it.
The Art of Traveling Strangers is a journey of self-discovery and personal empowerment inspired by the great art masterpieces of Italy and France. It’s a tale of female bonding and the amazing powers of perception. After all, reality, like art, is just an illusion.
Zoe Disigny holds a master’s degree in art history and has taught at the college level throughout her career. She has led numerous art tours in Europe and established a business in Paris offering art history adventures for American tourists.
