Barbara Nickless

1 month ago | coloradosun.com | Barbara Nickless |Kevin Simpson

The MinotaurJuly 2018From my place near the door, the bookstore was an oasis of light and humanity amid the booming snarl of a thunderstorm. An oasis, at least, for most attendees, present company excepted. I stood at the back, gazing over the heads of forty-six people in folding chairs, their attention riveted to the woman playing a mythical Greek princess on the makeshift stage. “Take this,” Princess Ariadne said to an imaginary Theseus, holding out her hand.

Jan 1, 2025 | writersdigest.com | Barbara Nickless

On an icy February day, as the wind beat at the house and a gray sky lowered, threatening more snow, my phone rang. It was two o’clock on a Monday afternoon. I sat at the kitchen table, tugging at a reluctant plot thread in my latest novel. The phone was a jangling interruption; my thoughts scattered like marbles on a frozen lake. When I picked up the phone my husband told me, “Someone from Kiewit just called. Kyle didn’t show up for work today.”Kyle. Our son.

Dec 30, 2024 | novelsuspects.com | Barbara Nickless

Wherever there are people, there are spies. Large cities—where individuals gather by the hundreds of thousands—are hot spots for clandestine work. In the backrooms of elegant restaurants and along seedy back alleys, from seemingly impenetrable embassies to crowded bazaars, our most famous metropolises host covert operatives who collect intelligence, snoop on their fellow practitioners, and infiltrate the governments of enemies and allies alike.

Nov 19, 2024 | kirkusreviews.com | Barbara Nickless |Patricia Cornwell |Kathy Reichs

Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival. Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan. A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been.

Sep 9, 2023 | kirkusreviews.com | Barbara Nickless |Andrew Klavan |Lisa Jewell

It's hard to read but hard to look away from. When two women who share a birthday meet, a journalist becomes the subject of her own true-crime mystery. On their 45th birthdays, Josie Fair and Alix Summer meet at a pub and discover they were born not only on the same day, but in the same hospital. Alix is a successful journalist, and Josie convinces Alix that her story is worth telling: Josie met her husband when she was 13 and he was 40.