These kinds of samplers are so helpful and useful, and I always like getting them. Thanks so much to Minotaur Books for doing these.

A strong selection of samples for 2023 mystery books. The books presented in this sampler were very different from each other. There are a few that pulled me in and had me wanting to read it. That was The Best Friend.

I did not like "The Double Agent". It was too much like a history lesson.
I thought "The Best Friend" would be good since it was written by the same author as Downton Abby. I was disappointed. I think they should have chosen a different part of the book to sample.
I found Blackwater Falls boring.
I am glad I read the sample so I didn't waste my time on all four books.
I received this galley from NetGalley.

Thanks to Netgalley for an advanced copy of this sampler.

I had not heard of Blackwater Falls or the author but the several chapters I read were compelling and I would add it to my TBR.

I also enjoyed The Lindbergh Nanny. I love historical fiction and really enjoyed the start of this one.

I found several books here that I chose to read and review. There are authors that are new to me, and that is particularly attractive to an avid reader.

Thank you!

I mostly picked this up to sample The Best Friend and The Lindbergh Nanny, but it was Blackwater Falls that caught my attention the most. I will read that one in the near future.

Thanks to the publisher, Minotaur, for the chance to review the staples of forthcoming novels.

The four novels range from a nanny to a double agent.

Have a feeling that all of these novels mentioned will be popular though I am not in the mood to read any of these novels right now. I am a mood reader.

thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for this advanced reader's copy in exchange for my honest review.

a great sampler that introduced me to many books that I highly anticipating

I am so excited for a bunch of these! These all look really good! It was so hard not to add all of these to my TBR list.

I always love these samplers! This one was no exception! The options were not ones that I would typically be interested in, but I found myself wanting to read more. I am particularly interested in The Lindbergh Nanny.

This review was also published on Goodreads.

Thanks Netgalley and St. Martins Press for this preview. There are some really great sneak peeks in this sampler and I'm looking forward to checking them out in the future! What a great way to learn about books that I can put on my never-ending TBR!

While all of these titles look fascinating, I will be reading and reviewing The Best Friend in it’s entirety. Because I don’t have the ARC through NetGalley, I won’t submit a review through here but will tag Minotaur and NetGalley in my Instagram post and mention in my blog post. Thanks for the sample!

This was my first Minotaur Sampler. I really enjoyed getting a taste of a few various books. This is such a great way to check out new authors or get a preview of an upcoming book by an author you already know. Jessica Fellowes was the only book in this sample that I was familiar with. But I enjoyed the other samples as well and can add them into my “to be read” lists.

Having read this sampler, I realize this format is not for me. I cannot fairly review this book, but I appreciate having the opportunity to read it..

While I always appreciate the minotaur sampler this one for some reason didn't resonate with me much.

The Best Friend maybe a book I may decide to pick up I felt the sample chapters themselves were too short to get a real feel for the book but it does have an interesting premise.

The Lindenberg Nanny is a book I know I can definitely gift to a few people who'd love it.

Thank you for sharing this with me…. However I was confused and thought that it was the actual books not just a try a chapter. I look forward to reading these books in they’re entirety.

These Minotaur Samplers are some of my favorite things to read because it gives me a sneak peek of a few of the upcoming books. I get to read the first few chapters or so of the ARCs and determine if they interest me, if they're my type of story, and get them on my radar to request and read them if I want to and of course, I almost always want to read all the Minotaur books.
This sampler had these books in it,
The Double Agent by William Christie
The Best Friend by Jessica Fellowes
Blackwater Falls by Ausma Zehanat Khan
The Lindbergh Nanny by Mariah Fredericks
For me, the ones I'm most excited about and hoping to get and read the ARC are The Best Friend by Jessica Fellowes and Blackwater Falls by Ausma Zehanat Khan. I wasn't as interested in the other two, although I can see why others would be interested in The Lindbergh Nanny and The Double Agent.
Thanks so much to NetGalley, St. Martin's Press, and Minotaur Books for letting me read and review this fun and great sampler. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I'll never get enough of thrillers and mysteries. In this batch, The Lindbergh Nanny in particular really caught my attention. I'd love to read that. The rest was interesting, too, and I'll consider picking them up in the future.

Thanks once again to NetGalley, St. Martin's Press, Minotaur Books, and four fine authors for providing me with this ARC copy of The Minotaur Sampler, Volume 6: New Books to Make Your Heart Race in exchange for my unbiased review. My opinions are my own.

The first book is an excerpt from William Christie’s The Double Agent, a next-in-series featuring Russian-German double agent Alexis Smirnoff, a Russian orphan. The story takes place in 1943, when Alexi finds himself captured by the British. He has an encounter with none other than Winston Churchill himself. He doesn’t seem particular about which side he’s on; he’s out to save his own hide and this time finds himself becoming a double agent for the British. Alexi is a quick thinker. He’s frequently in danger, but fortunately, he thinks fast on his feet and is able to avoid worse trouble, at least as far as this snippet takes us. I found myself wondering where the story was going and where the wily Mr. Smirnoff would wind up.

Second is The Best Friend: A Novel by Jessica Fellowes. This standalone is the saga of two best friends, intensely close – until they’re not. Kate and Bella have grown up together, but quite early on, we see that Kate is more domineering and seems to view herself as superior to Beth. There’s a party where Beth hopes to spend time with a boy she likes, but…things don’t quite work out the way the friends had discussed, and even very early in the book, it appears that this loose thread could unravel their relationship. The book is billed as “suspenseful”, so I’m not sure what follows.

Blackwater Falls is the first in a series by Ausma Zehanat Khan in which Detective Inaya Rahman, a half-Afghan, half-Pakistani Community Response Unit investigator in Colorado is assigned to the scene of a murder of a Syrian immigrant girl. This seems to be a timely story given tensions across the country about immigrants, particularly those from Muslim countries. There are tensions between Inaya and her supervisor, and the police and sheriff as well. Also, I picked up some hints that Inaya has some secrets in her past that may come to light as the story progresses.

The Lindbergh Nanny is another standalone, penned by Mariah Fredericks. Who hasn’t heard of the Lindbergh kidnapping? This novel focusses on the nanny, a young Scottish woman named Betty Gow. If nothing else, reading these few chapters has made me curious to read about the real Betty Gow.

4 stars

Regrettably, Amazon rejected my review. I made changes and resubmitted, but they still have chosen not to publish it. I do not understand their reasoning, although this also happened with a second review. I have reviewed many NetGallley books in the past with no issues.

I always enjoy these samplers, now that I know about them! This time, Minotaur gives us a taste of four upcoming mysteries/thrillers:
- The Double Agent by William Christie (a follow-up to his A Single Spy)
- The Best Friend by Jessica Fellowes
- Blackwater Falls by Ausma Zehanat Khan (first book in a new series)
- The Lindbergh Nanny by Mariah Fredericks

In addition to finding new books, by trying these samplers, I’ve found new-to-me authors that I want to read more from.

Everyone has their own likes and dislikes, of course, but the ones that appealed most to me are Blackwater Falls and The Lindbergh Nanny.

The setting for Blackwater Falls is a Colorado town not too far from Denver and the detective is a half-Afghani/half-Pakistani (“all American”) women who is called to investigate what seems to be a hate crime in a largely Muslim community with Somalis and Syrian refugees.

I was surprised at how much excerpt of The Lindbergh Nanny pulled me in. I enjoyed her nervousness at being interviewed for the job and her non-fawning reaction to Charles Lindbergh.

The Double Agent looks to be a very exciting action story with lots of twists and turns. While it’s a sequel to Christie’s earlier book, A Single Spy, I had no trouble following along with the action in the excerpt provided.

The Best Friend just didn’t appeal to me, but again, that’s just me.

Note: I received my copy via NetGalley, but this ebook is available to everyone, free of charge, on Amazon and Barnes & Noble's web sites.