#TravelingWithT

Hidden Nature by Nora Roberts

This book was sent to Traveling With T for review consideration.

Hidden Nature

Summary: The #1 New York Times-bestselling author presents a new novel about an injured cop who must fight to bring down a pair of twisted killers…

Natural Resources police officer, Sloan Cooper, and her partner had just taken down three men preying on hikers in the Western Maryland mountains. Driving back, she pulled in at a convenience store—and walked right into a robbery in progress. One gunshot from a jittery thief was about to change her world.

After being shocked back to life on the operating table, she has a long recovery ahead, so she moves back to her parents’ peaceful house in Heron’s Rest. As for the boyfriend who dumped her via text while she was in the hospital, good riddance.

She may be down, but she’s not out. So when a woman vanishes, leaving her car behind in a supermarket parking lot, Sloan searches online for similar cases. She finds them, spread across three states. Men and women, old and young—the missing seem to have nothing in common. And the abductions keep happening.

Luckily, the new man in her life shares her passion for solving this mystery. But it will take every ounce of endurance to get to the dark heart of this bizarre case—and she’s willing to risk her life again if that’s what it takes to stop the horror. Continue reading →

Parents Weekend by Alex Finlay

This book was sent to Traveling With T for review consideration.

Parents Weekend

Summary: From the bestselling author of If Something Happens to Me, comes one of the year’s most anticipated thrillers.

In the glow of their children’s exciting first year of college at a small private school in Northern California, five families plan on a night of dinner and cocktails for the opening festivities of Parents Weekend. As the parents stay out way past their bedtimes, their kids—five residents of Campisi Hall—never show up at dinner.

At first, everyone thinks that they’re just being college students, irresponsibly forgetting about the gathering or skipping out to go to a party. But as the hours click by and another night falls with not so much as a text from the students, panic ensues. Soon, the campus police call in reinforcements. Search parties are formed. Reporters swarm the small enclave. Rumors swirl and questions arise.

Libby, Blane, Mark, Felix, and Stella—The Five, as the podcasters, bloggers, and TikTok sleuths call them—come from five very different families. What led them out on that fateful night? Could it be the sins of their mothers and fathers come to cause them peril or a threat to the friend group from within?

Told through multiple points of view in past and present—and marking the return of FBI Special Agent Sarah Keller from Every Last Fear and The Night Shift—Parents Weekend explores the weight of expectation, family dysfunction, and those exhilarating first days we all remember in the dorms when our friends become our family. Continue reading →

The Retirement Plan by Sue Hincenbergs

This book was sent to Traveling With T for review consideration.

The Retirement Plan

Summary: Three middle-aged best friends turn to murder in order to collect on their husbands’ life insurance policies…but are unaware that their husbands have a devious plan of their own, in this darkly funny debut—perfect for fans of The Thursday Murder Club and Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone.

Three wives wanting a new life, three husbands in their way…

After thirty years of friendship, Pam dreams of her perfect retirement with Nancy, Shalisa, Marlene, and their husbands—until their husbands pool their funds for an investment that goes terribly wrong, and their dreams of beachfront condos and a sunny, carefree retirement vanish. The golden years are looking as dreary as their marriages.

But when one husband dies in a freak accident, the other three women are shocked to see his widow rebound with a huge life insurance payout and a new life in Florida. In the aftermath, the women discover that their husbands have identical, seven-figure life insurance policies. A new dream forms, and this time, it involves a hitman.

Meanwhile, their husbands have a secret retirement plan of their own. So, when things begin to go awry, they fear their own scheme may have backfired…with deadly consequences. The husbands scramble to stay alive, but they may not be fast enough to outmaneuver their wives.

What follows is a high-stakes tale of cat and mouse, both laugh-out-loud funny and unbearably tense, while ultimately a bighearted look at marriage, friendship, and middle-age. Continue reading →

The Five Year Lie by Sarina Bowen

This book was sent to Traveling With T for review consideration.

The Five Year Lie

Summary: Bestselling romance author Sarina Bowen’s debut thriller, about one woman’s search for the truth after receiving a text from her deceased ex.

She thought it was love. Then he vanished.

On an ordinary Monday morning, Ariel Cafferty’s phone buzzes with a disturbing text message. Something’s happened. I need to see you. Meet me under the candelabra tree ASAP. The words would be jarring from anyone, but the sender is the only man she ever loved. And it’s been several years since she learned he died.

Seeing Drew’s name pop up is heart-stopping. Ariel’s gut says it can’t be real. But she goes to the tree anyway. She has to.

Nobody shows. But the text upends everything she thought she knew about the day he left her. The more questions she asks, the more sinister the answers get. Only two things are clear: everything she was told five years ago is wrong, and someone is still lying to her.

The truth has to be out there somewhere. To safeguard herself—and her son—she’ll have to find it before it finds her. And with it, the answer to what became of Drew.

With a heart-stopping romance that only Sarina Bowen can execute, The Five Year Lie is a page-turning, spine-tingling thriller that will have you guessing until the very end. Continue reading →

This Book Will Bury Me by Ashley Winstead

This book was checked out from the library by Traveling With T.

This Book Will Bury Me

Summary: From the bestselling author of In My Dreams I Hold a Knife and Midnight is the Darkest Hour comes a chilling, compulsive story of five amateur sleuths, whose hunt for an elusive killer catapults them into danger as the world watches.

It’s the most famous crime in modern history. But only she knows the true story.

After the unexpected death of her father, college student Jane Sharp longs for a distraction from her grief. She becomes obsessed with true crime, befriending armchair detectives who teach her how to hunt killers from afar. In this morbid internet underground, Jane finds friendship, purpose, and even glory…

So when news of the shocking deaths of three college girls in Delphine, Idaho takes the world by storm, and sleuths everywhere race to solve the crimes, Jane and her friends are determined to beat them. But the case turns out to be stranger than anyone expected. Details don’t add up, the police are cagey, and there seems to be more media hype and internet theorizing than actual evidence. When Jane and her sleuths take a step closer, they find that every answer only begs more questions. Something’s not adding up, and they begin to suspect their killer may be smarter and more prolific than any they’ve faced before. Placing themselves in the center of the story starts to feel more and more like walking into a trap…

Told one year after the astounding events that concluded the case and left the world reeling, when Jane has finally decided to break her silence about what really happened, she tells the true story of the Delphine Massacres. And what she has to confess will shock even the most seasoned true crime fans… Continue reading →

Beach Vibes by Susan Mallery

This book was sent to Traveling With T for review consideration.

Beach Vibes

Summary: What would you do if you caught your brother cheating on your best friend?

While Beth is proud of her Malibu beach shop, Surf Sandwiches, she’s even prouder of her charismatic brother, Rick, who rose from foster care all the way through surgical residency. She makes subs, he saves lives. Things takes a turn for the happy after she finds out Rick is dating her new best friend, Jana. Then Jana’s handsome brother adds even more sparkle to Beth’s days…and nights.

But when she catches Rick with another woman—like, with with—her visions of an idyllic family future disappear in one awful instant. Either she betrays her brother or she keeps his secret and risks losing the man she loves and her best friend.

Love and loyalty collide with secrets and betrayal in this witty and emotional tale about the lengths we’ll go to for family, from Susan Mallery, bestselling author of The Boardwalk Bookshop. Continue reading →

Looking Back at February 2025

 

I made a decision over my Christmas holidays. I was going to take my PTO with no guilt and not answer the phone or texts because it was my time off. It was in my total compensation for my job. And not to say I am a master negotiator (because if I was, I would be making way more money) but when it became clear the salary really wasn’t going to budge, I started negotiating for other considerations (mainly more PTO) Continue reading →

Tell Me What You Did by Carter Wilson

This book was checked out from the library by Traveling With T.

Tell Me What You Did

Summary: She gets people to confess their crimes for a living. He knows she’s hiding a terrible secret. It’s time for the truth to come out…

Poe Webb, host of a popular true crime podcast, invites people to anonymously confess crimes they’ve committed to her audience. She can’t guarantee the police won’t come after her “guests,” but her show grants simultaneous anonymity and instant fame—a potent combination that’s proven difficult to resist. After an episode recording, Poe usually erases both criminal and crime from her mind.

But when a strange and oddly familiar man appears on her show, Poe is forced to take a second look. Not only because he claims to be her mother’s murderer from years ago, but because Poe knows something no one else does. Her mother’s murderer is dead.

Poe killed him.

From the USA Today bestselling author of The Dead Girl in 2A and The New Neighbor comes a chilling new thriller that forces the question: are murderers always the bad guys? Continue reading →

Blood Moon by Sandra Brown

This book was sent to Traveling With T for review consideration.

Blood Moon

Summary: #1 New York Times bestselling author Sandra Brown returns with a sexy thriller where an unruly detective and an ­­­­ambitious tv show producer work against the clock to prevent another young woman from disappearing before the next blood moon—while trying to resist the attraction between them.

Detective John Bowie is one misstep away from being fired from the Auclair Police Department in coastal Louisiana. Recently divorced and slightly heavy-handed with his liquor, Bowie does all that he can to cope with the actions taken (or not taken) during the investigation of Crissy Mellin, a teenage girl who disappeared more than three years prior. But now, Crisis Point, a long-running true crime television series, is soon to air an episode documenting the unsolved Mellin case. Bowie has been instructed by his unscrupulous boss to keep to himself his grievances and criticisms over the mishandling of the investigation.

Beth Collins, a senior producer on Crisis Point, knows what classifies as a great story and when there’s something more to be told. After working on the show for seven years researching, fact checking, and editing dozens of episodes, Collins is convinced that Crissy Mellin’s disappearance was not an isolated incident. A string of disappearances of teenage girls in nearby areas have only one thing in common: They took place on the night of a blood moon. In a last-ditch effort to find out the truth, Beth leaves New York City for Louisiana to enlist Detective Bowie in helping her figure out what happened to Crissy and find the true culprit before he acts on the next blood moon—in four days’ time.

At the risk of their jobs and lives, Bowie and Collins band together to identify and capture a canny perpetrator, while fighting an irresistible spark between them that threatens to upend everything. Continue reading →