Books Completed in April 2026

 The Masquerades of Spring, Ben Aaronovitch
The fourth of Aaronovitch's seasonal novellas set in the "Rivers of London" universe. But this one has a twist: it's set in the United States, where Englishman Augustus Berrycloth-Young—friends call him "Gussie"—lives in New York City enjoying the delights of the Jazz Age, hiding the fact that he is not only one of those who practices "the love that dare not speak its name," but that his lover is Black. Helped by a talented valet called Maximillian Beauregard, Gussie's living the good life, until Thomas Nightingale shows up on his doorstep, seeking help. Somewhere in the wild, there's an enchanted musical instrument on the loose, and Nightingale wants it confiscated and returned.

Aaronovitch writes a mean Bertie Woosterish romp crossed with magic. Gussie is a gem of a narrator and if you're a "Rivers" fan, you'll want this for your collection.

 The Home Front: The Best of "Good Housekeeping" 1939-1945, Brian Braithwaite, Noëlle Walsh, Glyn Davies
Big "coffee table book" I found in a thrift shop, reproductions of the British edition of "Good Housekeeping" during World War II. Lots of articles about keeping a stiff upper lip, being thrifty, working your Victory Garden, and ads for conserving food. A snapshot of the times.

 Anne of a Different Island, Virginia Kantra
A modern take on Anne of Green Gables, with unpredictable Anne Gallegher returning to her home on Mackinac Island after the death of her father, who always understood her ways. She hopes to become closer to her mother, who runs the island fudge shop, but she arrives without her doctor fiancé Chris, who can't leave his pediatric patients, and pretty sure she's lost her teaching job at an exclusive school because she objects to banning certain books in the school library. At the dock to meet her is Joe Miller, an older boy who always teased her, who's also her late father's apprentice in the carpentry business.

As Anne helps her mother, and her "bosom friend" Daanis, married and a new mother, she begins to understand herself, and her mother's special reliance on Joe.

This was sweet, and I cried at the end.

 Between the Lines: Master the Subtle Elements of Fiction Writing, Jessica Page Morrell
Picked this up at a book sales and glad I found it. Author provides concrete excerpts of writing she considers good examples of descriptions, characterizations, flashbacks, theme, etc. An excellent addition to your writing library.

 Deep End, Ali Hazelwood
This story was very popular last year, and the main characters even had a cameo in Hazelwood's Problematic Summer Romance. College student and championship diver, Scarlett Vandermeer is still recovering from a traumatic diving accident and is unable to dive at her best. Her teammate Penelope discovers Scarlett has certain sexual kinks that Pen's boyfriend, the Olympic champion swimmer Lukas Blomqvist, would like to indulge in as well, but she (Pen) doesn't want to. So Pen, who's actually broken up with Lukas drunkenly suggests Scarlett and Lukas get together—just sexually, you understand.

Naturally, it becomes much more than that. As Scarlett works through her trauma, it turns out Lukas' infamous calm actually stabilizes her. But for two people who are trying desperately not to fall in love, they're doing it pretty well.

Still don't get Pen's reluctance to tell people she and Lukas broke up a year earlier, so what she does near the end of the novel really makes me hate her, even if she apologizes for it.

 The Ride: Paul Revere and the Night That Saved America, Kostya Kennedy
Long ago I read Esther Forbes' Paul Revere and the World He Lived In, which she used as a template for her classic Johnny Tremain young adult novel. It's still as complete a bio of Revere as you can get, but if you're just curious about the famous Ride (which, as even Revere would have told you, he didn't finish; Samuel Prescott did) and what prompted it, this is an enjoyable modern review of the times and the man.

  Re-read: Mr. Revere and I, Robert Lawson
How could I read a book about Paul Revere's ride without re-reading a childhood favorite, the story of Revere's ride told by his faithful horse?

Of course, Revere didn't own the horse he rode that night; she was a borrowed mare named, they think, Brown Bess. But who cares when this delightful story is narrated by Scheherazade—just call her "Sherry"—who was originally a proud British cavalry horse brought over to guard the city of Boston from those terrible Rebels. Brought to ruin by her frankly stupid owner, Sir Cedric Barnstable, Sherry eventually pulls a noisome cart, but is rescued by the Sons of Liberty as a horse for Paul Revere to carry dispatches with.

Full of sly criticisms of stupidity of the British officers (who bought their commissions) and even the local prominent citizens like John Hancock and Samuel Adams, this book is a delight from beginning to end, actually portraying Revere's backbreaking trips in realistic style. Worth reading even by adults.

 This Way Up: When Maps Go Wrong, Mark Cooper-Jones and Jay Foreman
Apparently, these guys, The Map Men, are famous on YouTube, but I bought this because I've always been a little potty about maps. Would have loved to have been a cartographer. The Map Men talk about...surprise!...maps. Like a global map sold by IKEA which completely left out New Zealand (they apologized). Or trying to complete a map in the 1700s when the world wasn't completely explored. Or trying to navigate London...using a map of Paris (privately I didn't understand the purpose of this).

The problem with this book is when it's good, it's good, but then the authors start goofing around. I guess in an effort to make the Donner Party story less grim, it's told in this terrible style that I found really offputting. Telling the story of the deadly shortcut that led to the Donner downfall needn't have been told in a flip matter. Some other chapters are also depressingly flip. I expected to like this more.

 The Complete Guide to the Bible, Stephen M. Miller
Tempted by this when I saw it at Walmart. Containing maps, vintage images, pullouts containing additional info, modern photography, Miller walks you through each book of the Bible, explains the significance of each, points out any relevance to modern life, and provides other insights. Enjoyed this. Biggest takeaway, however, was: don't get involved with Assyrians. They perfected the art of torture.

 Fight, Sloane St. James
Callahan Woods is a wildland firefighter. Since being betrayed by his fiancée, Molly, a former childhood sweetheart, Cal has sworn off permanent relationships and lets any woman he gets involved with know it. Into his life walks Prescott Timmons, new EMT recruit. It's sparks aplenty, and they're not in the wildfires.

But "Scottie" is hiding a very big secret, one Callahan might never get over.

Whew, is it hot in here? Spice aplenty in this firefighter romance, plus you learn about the process of fighting wildfires and how the men and women live during fire seasons. Scottie's past is unique compared to other romances I've read.

 Robert Heinlein, Leon Stover
This is Stover's 1987 biography/examination of the life and fiction of Robert Heinlein. He certainly is a Heinlein enthusiast: he compares him to Mark Twain, and states that Have Spacesuit Will Travel should be as famous as Huckleberry Finn. (Okay, Have Spacesuit Will Travel was my first Heinlein and probably my favorite, but I'm also a Finn fan--so, sorry, Leon...no.) Did enjoy reading Stover's POV on characters like Friday, Valentine Michael Smith, Delos Harriman, and more.

 The Geographer's Guide to Romance, India Holton
Professor Elodie Hughes was a flighty but magically talented geographer at Oxford when she entered into a marriage of convenience (he wanted quieter digs) with stern, grumpy Professor Gabriel Tarrant. Their wedding night turned out to be magical for both of them, except neither knew how to communicate that. So it's been a year since they've seen each other when both Professors Tarrant are summoned to a magical eruption in a small Welsh village. It's growing in power, and if it can't be stopped, the rampant magic may destroy England.

Fighting wild magic, Welsh villagers glad for the business magic brings to their town, bonkers tourists, a pet goat, and their irresistible attraction to each other, Gabriel and Elodie scramble to halt disaster. A comic romantasy period romp.

Books Completed in July 2025

 The Early Life of Walt Disney, Andrew Stanley Kiste
What a total surprise to find this book; I didn't know it existed. Walt's life has been stringently chronicled (I have most of his bios, even the defamatory one), but his early years not in so much detail as this provides. Kiste goes back to the early history of the Disney family (Norman French who later settled in Ireland, then emigrated to Canada and later to the United States. There's a great deal more about Walt's father Elias and mother Flora; their life in Chicago, Marceline, Missouri, and Kansas City; plus about the other adult figures in Walt's short childhood, and the bond with his brother Roy. While there are not many more details about Walt's early life that have not been covered briefly in other biographies, Kiste expands the experience by talking about the historic events going on around Walt at the time: the changing status of the Midwest as the country shifted from an agricultural country to an industrial one, the average life of a farm family at the time, what Walt would have experienced in France as an ambulance driver, and the craft of early animation.

Takes a "deep dive" into what Walt would have experienced. Includes a tour of the reconstructed Disney home on Tripp Avenue in Chicago where Roy, Walt, and Ruth Disney were born.

  Sounds Like Love, Ashley Poston
Joni Lark, celebrated songwriter, with her creations performed by the likes of Willa Gray (think Taylor Swift), has suffered a setback ever since her mother was diagnosed with dementia: she can't write. But after she meets arrogant Sebastian Fell, son of hit rock star Roman Fell (who Joni's mom once performed with), a melody starts running through her head, and a voice begins speaking to her, a wry, lonely guy who claims he keeps hearing her thoughts. After Joni convinces herself she's not going crazy, she starts to warm up to the voice in her head, as he does to hers. It's this companion who's keeping her from losing it when she returns to her hometown of Vienna Shores, North Carolina, and her parents' business, a music hall called the Revelry, where she hopes to break her writer's block. Instead, she finds out her parents mean to close the venue, and that even her best friend is going through changes she can't talk about.

As in all Poston's romances, a little bit of otherworldly air in this sweet novel, which addresses what happens when stress causes your creativity to dry up, and, most importantly, making the most of the time you have left when medical problems intervene. 

  As Various as Their Land: The Everyday Lives of Eighteenth Century Americans, Stephanie Grauman Wolf
This is part of HarperCollins "Everyday Life in America" series. (I have all the others.) It covers the period from the end of the early colonial period through the Revolutionary War, addressing topics from how (and what style of) homes were built, who lived in them (originally just one room, it wasn't just a nuclear family, but possibly grandparents, grandchildren, adult unmarried siblings, even the hired hand or a servant), what they ate, how their children were treated (as the century went on, even lower-class families cherished their youngsters more) and then how the elderly were treated (they often ended up at the almshouse), how and what they worked at, and how injustices and crimes were handled (yes, men had the upper hand, but a man could still be put to death for murdering his wife). One of those books where you wondered how people survived even the most day-to-day crises.

  Harvest of Hope, Faith Baldwin
Fourth in a series of nonfiction inspirational books by Baldwin, who was a popular "woman's novel" author of the 1920s through the 1970s (she'd be shocked, I think by the "dark romances" currently in vogue). She was also a popular speaker at women's clubs and religious gatherings. I picked up her nonfiction because she was a friend of Gladys Taber, and these books are similar, although not as compelling. A seasonal tour through one year in her life.

  Problematic Summer Romance, Ali Hazelwood
This is a sequel to Hazelwood's Not in Love, about Eli Kilgore's rebellious younger sister Maya. She and Eli's friends and co-workers are in Italy for Rue and Eli's destination wedding in Taormina when almost all of them get food poisoning. This leaves Maya to obsess about her brother's partner Conor Harkness, who's dark and broody due to a really obnoxious family situation, but whom she became friends with years earlier during an emotional crisis.

The "problematic" part of the romance is that Conor is fifteen years older than Maya, and he thinks the gap will ruin her life if he engages with her. For me, the "problematic" bit is that for a mid-twenty-ish professional, Maya acts like a spoiled teenager and constantly flaunts herself in front of Conor thinking that seducing him will change his mind. Very frustrating reading. The protagonists from Deep End, which seems to be very popular, have a cameo.

  The New Girl, Cassandra Calin
I'll read anything that takes my interest, and I have picture books, like The Parakeet Girl, in the library to prove it. The cover of this book immediately caught me. It was only after I bought it that I realized that I'd seen the author's comics shared on Facebook.

Lia is a 12-year-old Romanian girl whose family (mom, dad, and little brother Denis) is moving to Montreal. If it isn't bad enough to be torn from school and her best friend, she gets her first period at the airport! After a summer spent trying to learn French, she starts school where they put her (and other immigrants) in an immersive homeroom to improve her French. Lia thinks she'll never make friends, but slowly she does, and her talent at art eventually gets her a spot on the school newsletter.

One of the reasons I bought this is that Lia is finally an adolescent protagonist I could identify with: she has horrible cramps every month (which, thankfully her parents, like mine, and her school—unlike mine—sympathized with). This was a great graphic novel, and I want a sequel because does her classmate ever tell her about their crush???? I enjoyed this more than Ali Hazelwood's new book!

  A Life Drawing: Reflections of an Illustrator, Shirley Hughes
I found a surfeit of illustrations by Hughes online one day, having loved her art for years, and wondered if there was a book about her career as an illustrator, like existed for Beatrix Potter or Tasha Tudor. Well, yes, there is: this book, from her childhood reading comics through her children's book series like "Alfie."

The book includes the sketches she made in art school, quick little illos in the margins, and beautiful two-page spreads of memories from her lifetime, including a gorgeous one of a railway station during World War II, with families and wives saying farewell to their soldiers. Great stuff for Hughes fans. Can be found used for reasonable prices.

  The Dog Who Followed the Moon, James Norbury
Inspirational book about a lost puppy who learns life lessons from a dying wolf—basically, enjoy your whole life, not just the goals, but the journey itself. The watercolor illustrations are beautiful. 

  Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and Other Lessons from the Crematory, Caitlin Doughty
Maybe this was a strange reading choice for a new widow, but it was actually very helpful, if slightlymacabre. Doughty was fascinated by mortality from childhood, and the book chronicles her years working at a crematory, and how it solidified her feelings concerning the deflecting way we treat death in the modern world.

If nothing else, it made me feel better about our decision as a couple to use cremation as a body disposal method. Dead bodies packed in overpriced containers taking up land needed for living people seems selfish, and the descriptions of embalming were just gross, not to mention that embalming fluid and other chemicals contained in coffins are now leaching into our ground water. Let's not even talk about the "extras" they talk you into.

  Cop Talk: True Detective Stories from the NYPD, E.W. Count
I suspect this was published to feed the interest in New York City crime engendered by Law & Order, since it came out four years after the series premiered. It's a collection of stories about NYPD detectives and some of their more interesting cases, from drug busts to murder cases.

  The Cloisters, Katy Hays
My first "dark academia book. Ann Stilwell is eager to get away from Walla Walla, Washington, after the tragic death of her father. Excited by academia, the work of her academic tutor on augury, and the idea of working in New York City, she accepts a summer job at the Met, only to be snapped up by Patrick, a curator at the Cloisters, Manhattan's evocative medieval museum. Here she meets Rachel, sophisticated and with all the connections, and Leo, the earthy but sexy gardener for the institution. Curator Patrick and Rachel enlist Ann to delve into the secrets of a tarot deck from the Renaissance era, but the twisted secrets of the personalities soon make Ann wonder: who should she trust? I enjoyed it.

Books Completed in May 2025

  Novel-in-the-Making, Mary O'Hara
Wyoming Summer is one of my comfort reads, but I didn't realize O'Hara had two more nonfiction books! This one is the story of writing her novel The Son of Adam Wyngate. It begins with her driving east with her collie after her divorce from Helge Sture-Vasa to re-establish herself in Connecticut, and thinking on what she wants to write next, a family drama based on her own father. I was heartened by reading about how many false starts she had! At one point, she envisioned it as a trilogy and began writing the second book first. It was quite encouraging to know that even as an experienced writer, she had so many false starts.

The book also makes me glad I live in the computer age: her talking about having to edit her drafts by cutting and taping multiple pages of typewritten manuscript together made me exhausted.

  Any Trope But You, Victoria Lavine
Margot Bradley's once-flourishing romance writer career has gone down the tubes: someone found her private file, the one the now-cynical author kept to herself because she wrote unhappy endings to all her famous rom-com epics after an epic breakup with her fiancé, and broadcast it to the world. Her sister Savannah, who has chronic autoimmune disease, proposes that she go away for six weeks to a lodge in Alaska and write in a new genre: mystery. But no sooner does Margot arrive in Alaska than she runs afoul of Forrest Wakefield, a former researcher who is now taking care of his invalid father and is guilty because he wasn't there to care for his mother.

Two cynics, in this genre, equal romance, although neither of them will admit it at first. Great fish-out-of-water protagonist who discovers the "cozy lodge" comes with physical challenges, and a hero with heart.

  The Rhine, Ben Coates
The Dutch are different, but then so are the Germans. And the Swiss, and all the other countries along the length of the Rhine River. Starting in Amsterdam, Ben Coates follows the path of the Rhine all the way to its source at Lake Toma, covering the history, sociology, and current political and social customs of the countries he travels through, comparing and contrasting the people, the food, and the treatment of the river.

Sometimes Coates has his tongue more firmly planted in his cheek than perhaps he should have, but I enjoyed his journey up...down?...along one of the most notable rivers in Europe. I bought this book because I was tired of all the good travel narratives being about France!

  Juneau, the Sleigh Dog, West Lathrop
Grosset & Dunlap's "Famous Dog Stories" series. I ate these up as a kid. Nope, didn't want to read about girls dating and gushing over boys, or, when I was younger, little girls simpering over their dollies and having tea parties. Adventures. I wanted adventures! These, along with Albert Payson Terhune's wonderful collie stories, captured my imagination.

Got this from a friend who knew I liked old dog books. It's a corker: an engineer and his son are on vacation in Alaska. Dad is called away unexpectedly for a few daysand wants to take son Pierre with him, but Pierre persuades him to leave him at the cabin with Juneau the husky, knowing a neighbor, Andy, will help him if there's a problem; besides, he's in the care of their Native-American guide Ka-uk, a member of the Tlingit tribe.

Alas, these books were not exactly enlightened: Ka-uk deserts the boy and proves to be treacherous, and Pierre and Juneau are obliged to fend for themselves. Considering when this was written, I was impressed that Ka-uk's problem didn't stem from being "naturally bad" due to his heritage, but because he was an outcast from both his own people and from white people. Pierre gains maturity and experience during his unfortunately long ordeal, and the dog is magnificent.

  Fake Heroes, Otto English
Nobody's perfect.

This is a book about ten heroes--historic and celebrity-- whose lives were not what the public believed. I admit, I bought this book because the first chapter was about Douglas Bader, a World War II pilot whose positive press covered up the fact that he wasn't who he seemed; my husband, the consummate fan of aviation heroes, had read about him and scorned his fame. My mother, the ultimate JFK fan, knew all about his peccadillos and, later in life, knew about his illnesses. Almost everyone knew he didn't write Profiles in Courage; Ted Sorenson did. And once Mother Teresa died, the word about her forcing people to suffer without painkillers because "suffering was good for them" became known. And how many people didn't know Coco Chanel was a Nazi collaborator?

English offers up as well, in each of ten chapters, people he believes more worthy of the honors.

  The Curse of Penryth Hall, Jess Armstrong
Ruby Vaughn had one chance at a good marriage, but was "ruined" by an in flagrante reveal. After serving in the first World War, she now lives in England working—and sharing a house with—an elderly bookseller, who unexpectedly asks her to travel to Cornwall to deliver some esoteric books to a folk healer. Ruby is reluctant to go because her old friend Tamsyn lives there after marrying an English aristocrat. Mr. Owens' client turns out to be the town Peller, a cross between a healer and, from what Ruby can gather, some type of witch.

When Tamsyn's husband turns up dead, everyone is under suspicion, including Tamsyn.

An atmospheric thriller set in the 1920s with lots of twists (although the characters seem to spend most of the book soaking wet).

  Re-read: The Selected Letters of Laura Ingalls Wilder, edited by William Anderson
There is some meat to this collection of Wilder letters, including some of the letters she and her daughter Rose Wilder Lane shared about the editing of the "Little House" books. Sadly, Rose burned most of the letters, especially those from the 1940s, so we will never know the full editorial partnership she shared with her mother. There is an impassioned letter of Laura's insisting that The Long Winter be confined to the Ingalls and Wilders with a few supporting characters rather than a full pallet of townspeople as Rose wanted to give full import of the isolation families faced during that hard winter of 1880-1881, which showed she did have the flair for storytelling that some literary scholars have denied her. But most of the letters are banal little responses to schoolchildren, with a few lovely gems.

The trouble is, I've read so many books about Wilder, including the recently published Pioneer Girl, that I've already seen many of these "surprise bits" (like the fact that a young couple and their baby lived with the family during the long winter), so the revelations aren't. It's also sad to read Wilder's last letters with her longing for her late husband clear even in the few paragraphs, and it's also obvious that the sisters did not remain very close after Ma and Pa and Mary died.

I've been a Laura "junkie" since I first saw the television series and wanted to know "the real story," so I'm glad I picked this up, but if you have less of an attachment to her, I would invest in one of the biographies instead.

  The Pocket, Barbara Burman & Ariane Fennetaux
What's the one thing women always complain about in modern clothing? Of course, not enough pockets. From 1660 through 1900, however, most women did have pockets, often capacious ones, which tied around the waist and went under their skirts (the skirts usually had a slit/slits to access the pocket(s).

This is a history of those pockets, most made of cotton, some of wool or leather or linen, some embroidered and many plain, and what women kept in them, from valuable things like coins and keys, to items for beauty (powder compacts, rouge), to things like snacks, books, visiting books, and sentimental objects. Often the pocket(s) were the only private places women had for their cherished items and they were often stolen by cutpurses who cut the tie strings or brazen thieves who reached under a sleeping women's pillow for her stash. Other women used their pockets as shoplifters hide things under their coats, to steal.

This is a scholarly study, but an interesting one.

  Modern Loss, Rebecca Soffer and Gabrielle Birkner
These are selections from a website called "Modern Loss," where stories of grief are shared. One of the stories from the co-authors sounds like it came out of a Law & Order episode: her father and stepmother were killed by a handyman who, a few weeks earlier, had done repair work at their home. He intended to just rob the house, but when he found them at home, he beat them both to death.

This book made me more depressed, so, obviously not what I needed to be reading at this time.

  A Musical in the Making, Mary O'Hara
This book was interesting to me not only about how she developed, then wrote and re-wrote, her musical play The Catch Colt, but how much work some of the process was. Since she was composing the music and writing the book, she had quite a load on her shoulders, but I never realized how laborious the orchestrations were! Fully half the book is about how she had to work and work on these orchestrations, and then she had to finally sell the play. I've seen behind-the-scenes of play production, but not ones that include the writing and the music. Pretty much just for O'Hara or play fans, though.

  Anything from Nothing, edited by Mercedes Lackey
The 2023 collection of Valdemar short stories. Much better than Shenanigans, which I really didn't like at all. The quality in this volume is pretty solid, from the opening story about a blacksmith's son who feels stifled in his small town and requests that a Herald take him away to Lackey's own tale of a small town under siege. Several of the stories are serial in nature, so we continue the stories of Healer Erenal and Nwah the kyree being held captive. One of my favorites was the story of a traveling carnival, "What a Chosen Family Chooses," and how they help a captive in a stifling village. "Needs Must When Evil Bides" is another good one, about a herbalist who helps a servant rescue a wealthy family taken hostage by bandits.

All the stories are worth reading.

Books Completed Since October 1

  Inventing English, Seth Lerer
I never could resist a good linguistics book, and this was an enjoyable one.

In nineteen chapters, Lerer sketches watershed moments in the English language, from the poetry of Old English to modern vernacular. Indeed, much of the changes discussed relate to poetry, which is different from most of the English language books I have. Once French enters the scene, it becomes the language of politics and of the wealthy. Words not only change, but word order changes as well, and dialects change depending on what region of England you're from. Then along comes the Great Vowel Shift (you didn't think we could talk about the English language without this phenomenon, did you?). Chapters on Samuel Johnson's dictionary and American English and regionalisms are especially interesting.

 The Comfort of Ghosts, Jacqueline Winspear
After seventeen mysteries and several adventures along the way, this is the final novel in the Maisie Dobbs series.

World War II is over. Maisie, consulting detective for several decades, is now married to American Mark Scott, a Federal employee. They have an adopted daughter, Anna. Maisie discovers that four teenagers are living in her old Belgravia house, and that they are nursing a shell-shocked and gravely ill former soldier. As she helps them, she discovers a secret about her late husband James Compton.

In Maisie's final story, her future takes a new turn, and we see somewhat into the future of her family, her friends, and even some new family. In a surprising turn, I learned that, because of fears of invasion by the Nazis, the British recruited and trained orphan teenagers to be assassins.

I will certainly miss Maisie and her extended family. Perhaps Winspear might update their story sometime so that we find out what happened to Anna, Priscilla's sons, and others.

  Lady of the Silver Skates, Catharine Morris Wright
This is a biography of Mary Mapes Dodge, who wore many hats in her life, especially as the editor of the magazine "St. Nicholas," one of my favorite things, but she is most famous as the author of the children's book Hans Brinker; or The Silver Skates. Known as "Lizzie" in her family, she grew up in a literary family who published magazines. Lizzie later married William Dodge, but when family fortunes started reversing, and one of their children became sick, Dodge abandoned the family and was later found to have committed suicide. Lizzie was forced to support her family and thus became the editor of one of the most famous children's magazines of all time, sharing correspondence with some of the most famous writers of the time.

I was happy to find this book because of my love for "St. Nicholas," and indeed, there is almost as much about the magazine as there is about her most famous book. It's very oddly written; I can't explain totally, but it has sort of a folksy narrative that is very odd in a biography. Sometimes it annoyed me a bit; I would have preferred it more conventionally written. But it was the most I'd ever heard about Mary Mapes Dodge, who was once a household name.

 The Black Bird Oracle, Deborah Harkness
This is the first book in Harkness' sequel to the All Souls trilogy that began with A Discovery of Witches. Matthew de Clermont and Diana Bishop have lived a quiet life since Diana confronted the Congregation, raising their twin children Philip and Rebecca. They are planning to take their usual summer in London when they are summoned: because they are "Bright Born," the children must be tested by the Congregation as they turn seven. Based on her own childhood experiences, Diana is afraid that Pip and Becca will be found wanting or dangerous, and will be spellbound as was.

Diana flees with the children to Ravenswood, her mother's family's home, where a community of witches also stand in judgment toward her. Later some of the community embrace her, and others see her as an enemy. It's here she will learn secrets about her mother's family.

It's not as compelling as Discovery, but I love the universe and the characters. I was a little disappointed that all of a sudden that Diana's father, who has appeared as a nice character in the previous books, seems to become a different person in this one, and not a pleasant one. I fear she might be retconning things to make the female characters more powerful. Still, I'm looking forward to the future of this series.

  London's Secret History, Peter Bushell
I picked this up at a book sale thinking it was about unusual places in London. Instead, it contains anecdotes about the eccentric people who lived in London over the years, including Samuel Johnson, Samuel Pepys, and Sydney Smith. Some of the names are well-known, like the Mountbattens, the Duke of Devonshire, Sir Walter Raleigh, the infamous Nell Gwynn, and more.

I found this to be very funny reading before bed and am glad I spent the $1.50 on tit.

  Spy, Spy Again, Mercedes Lackey
After her awful Eye Spy, which was ruined by her totally obvious hatchet job on an unpopular (yet truly odious) politician (it could have been done so much more subtly, but no, she had to be so obvious about it that it was stupid), this final book in the trilogy about Mags and Amily's brood is a corker. Tory, the youngest, has been the best friend of Prince Kyril "Kee" since babyhood. Neither of them have been Chosen by companions, and their combined Gift (Kee can amplify Tory's farseeing) makes them prime agents to go undercover in Karse to rescue the kidnapped daughter of Bey, Mags' cousin, a professional assassin.

Siratai, however, is holding her own. Being held hostage in a keep with magic baffles, the talented assassin is keeping her Karse captors at bay, but it will take more than the assistance from Earth elementals to get her from her prison.

Tory and Kee take second place in this story to Sira, who is a kick-ass, clever protagonist. You can read this just for her.

  Over My Dead Body: Unearthing the Hidden History of America's Cemeteries, Greg Melville
This is a fascinating history of the United States from the point of view of the earliest graveyards in Jamestown which show the conditions that first winter were so bad that the remaining explorers resorted to cannibalism through the years of graveyards to cemeteries to memorial parks, and finally the future of cemeteries, given the lack of land and the damage modern burial does to the environment. One chapter talks about how Plymouth settlers' survival depended on robbing Native American graves; another addresses how enslaved persons' graves were relegated to neglected areas of plantations. Fascinating insights into how embalming became popular after the Civil War (and how embalmed bodies are polluting our planet), how cemeteries became parks, military cemeteries, the infamous "Forest Lawn," and more.

Terrific reading.

  From Bad to Cursed, Lana Harper
Part of the "Witches of Thistle Grove" series. Four families live in Thistle Grove, the earth witch Thorns, the Avramovs (who deal with dark magic), the Blackmoores descended from Camelot, and the Harlows. During Beltane celebrations, dark magic attacks Holly Thorn, nearly killing her and halting her magic. Her cousin Rowan Thorn, and Isidora Avramov, who summons demons for fun, are partnered to solve the mystery. Issy has a history with Rowan that isn't pleasant, but she tries to act professional. Naturally, they fall in love with each other.

I found some of the magic intriguing. Isadora and Rowan, not so much.

Books Completed Since September 1

  Dear Little Corpses, Nicola Upson
This is the tenth book in Upson's "Josephine Tey" mysteries in which the writer (the real Tey's actual name was Elizabeth McIntosh; Upson writes of Tey as an original character who wrote McIntosh's novels) is enjoying a quiet stay in at the country cottage she inherited from an aunt in the village of Polstead with her lover, Marta. It is the day before World War II is declared and the village is preparing for the arrival of evacuee children from London. Unfortunately the buses arrive with more children than expected and in the chaos a little girl named Annie from the village vanishes. The longer the search goes on, the more dire the consequences appear to be. In the meantime, an eccentric family take on one little girl but refuse to take her 10-year-old brother, who is temporarily billeted with Josephine and Marta, who are in conflict when Marta's demanding director, Alfred Hitchcock, requires she come to Hollywood early.

I love Upson's writing; she has the talent to make these mysteries sound as if they were written in the 1930s without the unfortunate racism and classism that was rampant at the time. This also captures the spirit of the day leading up to and then the days after Great Britain declared war on Nazi Germany, and the attitude of a small town preparing to take in frightened and bewildered children. The menace of secrets held within the village limits is also well portrayed. I really enjoyed this one.

  Border Crossings: A Journey on the Trans-Siberian Railway, Emma Fick
This is the niftiest travel book I've seen in a long time. Fick and her "then-boyfriend, now-husband" Helvio, inspired by a used book about traveling the Trans-Siberian Railway, decide to do just that. They start in Beijing and end in Moscow. The unique thing about the book is that it's narrated in Fick's watercolor sketches and hand-lettered narrative. The whole thing is priceless...sketches of Mongolian nomads, Chinese train officials, countrysides, local houses, decorations, foods, passports, tickets, customs, animals, even the Moscow subway stations. It's fascinating, a real treat for the eyes.

 The Make-Up Test, Jenny L. Howe
Picked this up off the remainder table in Books-a-Million and discovered with amusement that it was set in a fictional college in Rhode Island (and the protagonist is from Maine)—it even features the Jack O'Lantern Spectacular at Roger Williams Park in one chapter. Allison Avery and her ex-boyfriend Colin Benjamin find they're going to have to work together in graduate school. Allison's looking forward to talking about literature and especially with working with Professor Wendy Frances, but the thought of teaching a class has her flummoxed. A whole book about people who obsess about books! And although Allison is plus-sized, it's not mentioned on every page of the book but exists as an undercurrent of the difficult relationship she has with her father. No crazy gay friends; they're all sane here. And Professor Frances is a wonderful, supportive character.

 The Rediscovery of America, Ned Blackhawk
An exhaustive scholarly history of how European exploration and settlement of North American, primarily the United States, ruined the thriving Native American settlements all over the continent. I was quite pleased to find an expansion of a history of the southwestern settlements like Acoma that Alistair Cooke touched on briefly in the second episode of his 1972 series America. Also enjoyed a further exploration of my home region of New England, if "enjoyed" can be properly used to refer to a narrative of steady betrayals and brutalities. I was also interested to learn of the contributions of Native American women like Laura Cornelius Kellogg and Elizabeth Bender Cloud in the fight for Native rights, since I had never heard any historical references to Native women, just modern ones like Wilma Mankiller. One must be strong-stomached to read the endless litany of broken agreements, unfulfilled treaties, and flat-out removals of indigenous people from the lands where their ancestors had fished, farmed, and hunted for ages, not to mention the terrible boarding schools and removal of children from their parents into foster care, where the kids were forbidden to speak about their heritage and they were often abused physically and sexually. Note that early settlement is covered more thoroughly than modern events.

I did find a minor error in the chapter which talks about the popularity of Westerns on television/in movies in the late 1950s featuring stereotypical and more than often offensive Native characters. Blackhawk states that Disney's "Peter Pan...Americanized the English tale Peter and Wendy and incorporated Indian characters and music in its depiction of Never Never Land." The "Red Indians" (as the British called them) in Peter Pan were ported directly from J. M. Barrie's book, which I read for the first time only a few years ago. Tiger Lily and the other members of her tribe were already there in glaring racist display, with Tiger Lily talking in a horrific "Pidgin Chinese" manner, substituting "Ls" for "Rs" ("Velly velly good" and similar dialog). It was repulsive. The British were apparently fascinated by American and Canadian "savages" and loved to see them in adventure tales.

 Truly, Madly, Sheeply, Heather Vogel Frederick
This is the last of the Pumpkin Falls mysteries, according to the advertisement, and I will miss Truly Lovejoy, her ex-military family, and her new home in New Hampshire. It's a busy autumn for the Lovejoys: Aunt Truly is marrying her old sweetheart, and they're buying a dilapidated farm on which they plan to raise sheep to make specialty yarn, plus at school they're building catapults in science class for the annual pumpkin toss. But someone seems to be trying to drive True and Rusty off their farm, not to mention decorative pumpkins are disappearing all over town. It will take Truly and her friends to solve both mysteries. And what about the new boy in school? Will he take Truly's mind off her friend Calhoun?

A couple of quibbles: What kind of fourteen-year-old still believes in haunted houses and ghosts, especially in a military family? And then there's the matter of the names of the sheep: One of the ewes (all but the ram named after famous women) is named "Frances" Scott Key? Couldn't another female historical figure have been found rather than turning a man's name into a woman's? Dolley after Dolley Madison, who saved the Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington? Sybil for Sybil Ludington who rode through the night to call the militia to help at the Battle of Ridgefield? Anne for Anne Hutchinson, who was a woman minister in Rhode Island who was persecuted because women weren't supposed to preach the gospel? Celia for Celia Thaxter, famous New England artist? Sheesh.

This has the most beautiful cover of any of the Pumpkin Falls mysteries. I'd love to have a print of it to frame!

 Travels With George: In Search of Washington and His Legacy, Nathaniel Philbrick
A delightful voyage with Philbrick and his wife (and their Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever Dora) as they retrace a tour of the entire United States as taken by George Washington by mostly carriage (but some by ship) between 1789-1791 to rally the states to accept the new Constitution. Like our first president, the Philbricks do the tour in stages following Washington's route via his journals and diaries, so it's a travelogue, a history of Washington's life, and a slice of life in post Revolutionary America all at once. I loved this book to death.

 The Ghost and the Stolen Tears, Cleo Coyle
The eighth book in the "Haunted Bookshop Mystery" series taking place in the fictional Quindicott, Rhode Island. Jack Shepard, the New York private eye shot dead in the entrance to the old bookstore now owned by Penelope Thornton-McClure and her aunt Sadie. Penelope, a widow with a school-age son, returned to her hometown and revived the fading shop, is the only one who can see Jack's ghost, now haunting the store. Alas, in this outing, as in the seventh book, Jack has turned into a martinet again, talking too much slang and bullying Penelope. As always, Penny's travel "back in time" sequences via Jack's lucky nickel are the most interesting parts of the book, and her two buddies Seymour the postman and Brainert the professor get more annoying by the day. Oh, the plot has to do with a missing necklace and a nomadic woman who travels around in her trailer.

 The Director: My Years Assisting J. Edgar Hoover, Paul Letersky with Gordon Dillow
This is Letersky's story of being an assistant to the famous and sometimes infamous J. Edgar Hoover. Letersky is evidently a Hoover fan, although he's not silent about Hoover's likes and dislikes. One hears so much about Hoover's buddy Clyde Tolson, but in this narrative he's a tottery cranky old guy. The best part of his book are Paul's stories about Helen Gandy, Hoover's private secretary for over fifty years, and about his own career as an FBI agent.

  It Happened One Fight, Maureen Lee Lenker
This book would be a lot shorter without the male and female protagonists constantly shoring up each other's egos once they finally begin talking to each other. It has its good parts—a lively 1930s based romance between Dash Howard (based on Clark Gable) and Joan Davis (based on Joan Crawford and Bette Davis), who find themselves married after a prank. So they go to Reno to make a film, after which they will be publicly divorced. But they've always had feelings for each other. and things don't go as planned.

Lenker has a nice sense of the 1930s, and so many of the things the actors endured back then (including the casting couch and pleasing gossip columnists, even if the latter costs your soul). In the end, though, I felt a bit empty.

  Pony, R. J. Palacio
Silas Bird is an unusual 12-year-old. Some years earlier he was struck by lightning and survived. Brought up in a solitary cabin by his photographer father in the 1860s, one night rough riders abduct his father to help with some sort of project that will make him a fortune. His father tells him to wait at the cabin until he returns, but after two days he packs up and mounts the bald-faced pony the kidnappers had brought with them and then apparently escaped. The pony leads him—and his "imaginary companion" Mittenwool—to a wood where he teams up with a grizzled marshal looking for counterfeiters, and this is only the beginning of Silas' adventure. Silas is a very peculiar boy and I was irritated by the narrative at first, but the story soon becomes very compelling.

Warning: some people have had problems with this story because there's a very subtle gay character in it. Big deal.

 The Best American Travel Writing 2021, edited by Padma Lakshmi
I don't know what possessed me to buy this book after what happened in 2020...but I was pleasantly surprised! Many of the essays had to do with staying home during the pandemic and missing travel or discovering new things about staying at home, or what happened to travelers during the pandemic, like the first story about quarantine on a cruise ship "Mississippi: A Poem, in Days" and "Out There, Nobody Can Hear You Scream" are the two best, and most sobering, essays about Black travelers and the challenges they still face in America's tourist places. Deep sea diving, the residents of Las Vegas, bathhouses, traveling and suicide—I don't think I caught a bad essay here.

  Heat Rises, Richard Castle
This is the third in the series of "Nikki Heat" novels supposedly written by the author hero of the television series Castle. The stories are basically extended Castle stories with the characters' names changed and a couple of tweaks. Kate Beckett = sexy Nikki Heat, Richard Castle = magazine journalist Jameson Rook (Castle/Rook, get it?), Captain Montgomery = Captain Montrose, Ryan and Esposito = Raley and Ochoa, Laney Parish = Lauren Parry. (Rook's mom is also an actress, and has a part in this novel as well.) In this outing, Heat is called to a crime scene at a bondage dungeon where the victim turns out to be a priest. As she works on the case, she's supported by someone from "higher up"—until she gets too close to information no one wants revealed. Surprisingly complicated and nonstop plot includes a nail-biting chase through one of the tunnels under Central Park. Really enjoyed this one.

  Yesterday's Britain: The Illustrated Story of How We Lived, Worked and Played, by Reader's Digest
This is a delicious coffee-table sized book (a little over 300 pages) summing up the years 1900-1979 (with a brief coda to the end of the 20th century) in Great Britain starting with chat about the new century, through agonizing Edwardian fashions to the terror and carnage of "the Great War" to the sparkling Twenties that landed, like the United States in a 1930s crash, to explode into World War II.

As usual with these books, I get bored once I get to the 50s with all the rock and roll and later hippie stuff, but it's all good with photos, pamphlets, maps, advertisements, and personal recollections. Found this at the library book sale. Would love if there was one for France...I wonder!

  Her Name, Titanic, Charles Pellegrino
This is a nifty combination of a narrative of the voyage of the Titanic alternating with Pellegrino's interviews of Bob Ballard and the story of how Ballard and his crew found the wreckage of the doomed liner. Even if you've already read other Titanic books, Pellegrino's narrative of the night of April 14, 1912, is compelling and interesting, and even contains trivia I didn't know. The latter includes Pellegrino talking about his dad, who worked on the Minuteman missile program. There's an interesting parallel introduced by Pellegrino between the Titanic and the space shuttle Challenger, since both were done in by ice.

Not your typical Titanic book!