Page-Turning Novels You'll Race Through—and Read Again

Reboots and new takes on Sherlock Holmes seem to appear every week, but Sherry Thomas' twist is particularly smart and captivating. Here, "Sherlock" is a cover for Charlotte Holmes, an observant and ambitious young woman eager to escape the strictures of upper-crust London society, which expects nothing more from her than to marry well. Thomas, taking a detour from her best-selling historical romances to launch her Lady Sherlock series with this book, hits all the Victorian-sleuth pleasure points, giving her heroine practically every Holmesian feature but the pipe and deerstalker cap. Charlotte is a keen cataloger of small details—a swatch of clothing, an unopened curtain—which reveal volumes about a puzzling crime. And she has a juicy mystery to solve involving the murders of three wealthy figures. However, beyond her well-researched details about hansom cabs and the devious uses of arsenic, Thomas helps you understand a Victorian reality: A woman's reputation could explode in an instant, leading her scrabbling to survive. Witty, fast-paced, with a charismatic heroine who surprises and delights.