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 February 2026

 Eye Spy, Mercedes Lackey
It has literally taken me years to read this book, the second of the Family Spies book, about Abidela, the second of Mags and Amily's three children. I threw it down the first time because she had a very obvious parody of a Certain Political Person in the early narrative, and I hated that Lackey wasn't more subtle about it: I would have liked to have had his identity revealed more slowly and less blatantly.

Anyway, Abi has an unusual Gift: she can sense weak spots in structures, and, because of this, she and her best friend Princess Kat were able to save people from being harmed when an unknown weak spot caused a much-used bridge to collapse. Since Abi is studying to be an Artificer (engineer), this makes her invaluable, but she needs to be instructed by Healers to get the most out of her Gift. The story follows Abi's training and then the one final mission she finds herself on before she can be called a Master Artificer, one that involves invaders from outside the kingdom of Valdemar, ones hoping to ruin that country's good name.

This was better than the parody would have led me to believe, but there's quite a lot of detail about structural engineering in the book (although it is about engineering students, after all), and the plot tends to get lost in the details. Still glad I finally read it.

 Gemini, Jeffrey Kluger
Everyone remembers Project Mercury: John Glenn, the race against the Russian space program, Gus Grissom almost drowning. And, of course Project Apollo took American astronauts to the moon.

But between them was Project Gemini, two-astronaut missions that served as the testing ground for the equipment that landed NASA astronauts on the moon: the backpacks for spacewalks, the testing of docking equipment in space, long-term missions, and studies on how long-term missions affected the human body. Usually the contributions of the Gemini missions have been summarized or simply highlighted, but this is Kluger's in-depth survey. You'll find out about the names behind the scenes along with the astronauts, like Gene Kranz and Christopher Kraft; why Scott Carpenter and John Glenn never flew again (Carpenter for the wrong reasons); and more dangerous events that were not made public at the time.

Easy to read, but a great narrative about this phase of the space program.

 Harlem Sunset, Nekesa Afia
Louise Lloyd, who as a young girl foiled a kidnapper, and rescued other kidnapped girls like herself, returns in the sequel to Dead, Dead Girls. She's living happily with her paramour Rosa Maria Moreno, and working at the Dove, owned by Rosa Maria's brother Rafael. One night a young woman spends some time after hours drinking in the Dove with the trio, who all wake up next morning to find Nora dead. The police are quick to pin the crime on Rosa Maria. Louise is also trying to save the sanity of her suicidal sister Josie, who hasn't made peace with the death of her twin, but their father's harsh dismissal of Louise's lifestyle makes this difficult.

Helped by a reporter named Harriet Sinclair and a mysterious man named Fox Schoonmaker, Louise is determined to prove Rosa Maria innocent. But twisted forces are working behind the scenes.

I didn't recall the author's sentences being so choppy in the previous book. The narrative bothered me for this reason, and I didn't enjoy it as well as the first.

 The Ex Talk, Rachel Lynn Solomon
Shay Goldstein has always loved her career in public radio, but a new employee at Pacific Public Radio is giving her figurative hives. Dominic Yun is a rising, ambitious journalist who wants to use public radio to bring down corrupt politicians, and Shay's boss Kent O'Grady is all for giving him his way. Shay thinks there's room for human-interest stories, the kind public radio does so well.

After Shay and Dominic have a friendly rivalry on a live talk show, Kent suggests they create and star in a relationship talk show in which they pretend they are ex-lovers who broke apart but remain friends. Eager to keep a human-interest show, Shay agrees, although feigning a relationship offends both her and Dominic. To their surprise, the show is a hit, and PPR's ratings soar. And Shay and Dominic, in trying to reconcile their fake relationship (no one knows it's fake except for them, Kent, and a few others), start to grow closer—and closer.

I love Solomon's characters and settings. Another great offering.

 Driving the Green Book, Alvin Hall
By now, everyone has heard of "the Green Book," thanks to a PBS documentary, a BBC radio show, and a (highly fictionalized) film, but for years, the people who knew it best were the African-American families who benefited from it. The original editor was a mail carrier who hoped to aid Black families who needed—and later wanted—to travel, for, back in the 1930s, traveling for Black families/individuals was hazardous and difficult because they were banned from hotels, restaurants, and sometimes even from whole towns. Victor Green compiled a list of boarding houses, restaurants, barber/beauty shops, and other businesses friendly to African-American travelers, who, due to bigotry, usually traveled with their own food, water, and gasoline due to a lack of these services. The last edition of the book was, sadly and incredibly, published in 1961.

Hall and his companions travel to locations listed in the Green Book, and interview people who traveled or whose relatives traveled using the book. The stories they tell are revealing, sad, and infuriating. A complicated but compelling read.

 Lighthouse Families, Cheryl Shelton-Roberts & Bruce Roberts
As a kid, I loved a horse story called "Maudie Tom, Jockey," about a wild girl brought up by her lighthouse-keeper father. I became fascinated by the lives of lighthouse-keepers' families. Found this book at the Air Force Museum, a collection of stories told to the authors by children who grew up on lighthouses. These children played unsupervised on small islands, rowed boats to school, helped their fathers keep the lamp and the lighthouse working and clean, and endured inspections during which they were supposed to keep out of sight.

Modern children, especially, would be shocked at the freedom the kids had and the antics they got into. These are first-person narratives, so you get a feeling for how they talked in the past, and their feelings about growing up as "lighthouse kids."

 Unnatural Ends, Christopher Huang
Three adopted children of a wealthy baron return home after their father dies. Alan, Roger, and Caroline had an unconventional upbringing under a stern father, who was also their tutor, and a retiring, weak mother; their one respite: a playroom in a deserted tower where they played games of Camelot. Now, returning home, they discover their father was murdered, and has indicated in his will that only one child will inherit his estate: the one who solves his murder!

Set in the early 1920s, Huang sets up a mystery worthy of the classic era, with twists galore, and grim truths.

 CSI: Crime Scene Investigation: In Extremis, Ken Goddard
Ken Goddard, according to his author profile, was a former deputy sheriff, CSI police forensic scientist, and crime lab director. And boy, does it show.

This is the first of the CSI novels not written by Max Allen Collins, involving a multi-US Customs Agent shootout at a desert drug-bust. The team has to figure out who shot who and when, and how a prominent mobster some distance away was also shot at the same time as a mule deer. It's all about the procedure in this one, with minute details about the angles of the shots, the bullets used, the sophisticated hardware used. If you want to know how the crime lab works down to the details, check this one out.

 Shocking Secrets of American History, Bill Coate
This is an inexpensive little history book of "surprising and amusing tales." If you've read a lot of history, you probably know most of the trivia. Some interesting items of note: Henry Morton Stanley, who "found" David Livingstone, changed his name to cover the shocking thing he did. Alexander Hamilton never shot back.

A great bathroom or bedtime book, as the stories are told in two, or in a few cases one, pages each.

Books Completed in January 2025

 One Christmas in Washington, David Bercuson and Holger Herwig

  The Joys of Christmas 2013 -Guideposts

  Ideals Christmas 2024

 Ideals Christmas 2025

 The Eight Heartbreaks of Hanukkah, Jean Meltzer

 Old Christmas, Washington Irving

 The Little Book of the Nativity, Dominique Foufelle

  Re-read: A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

 Goodness and Light and Watch for the Light

 Quincy's Curse, Keith Robinson
In this quirky fantasy, Quincy Flack, a boy who believes he's cursed, moves to a new village with his abusive aunt and uncle (think the Dursleys) and is befriended by Megan Mugwood, a plucky girl who lives with her widowed mother, experiencing hard times since her father was killed by a dragon. Next thing you know, they've met a wizard—he says he's not—who can "grow mountains."

This is rather oddly told, from the point of view of each new character that Quincy, Megan, and Pagfire encounter, rather than the other way around, so you really don't get a whole lot of character development. But it's a fun story to see how the coincidences work out.

  Unearthing The Secret Garden, Marta McDowell
I say I didn't inherit the Italian gene for gardening; however, I can't seem to resist these garden-related books by McDowell (Beatrix Potter's Gardening Life, The World of Laura Ingalls Wilder). Maybe because I would like to have a beautiful walled garden like in the Burnett book, but don't want to do the work!

If you like The Secret Garden, you'll probably enjoy this book, as it tells an abridged version of Burnett's life, and her special affection for gardens: wherever she lived, she always had one, even if it was a leased property. If you love gardens/gardening, then this is just the book for you, with beautiful black-and-white/color photographs of Burnett in her gardens or just of the flowers in her gardens. As a bonus, the volume includes three of Burnett's short writings: an essay about her gardens, an article about the "ha-ha," an English estate feature that separated gardens from parkland, and the story of the robin that inspired the robin character in The Secret Garden.

  The Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association, Caitlin Rozakis
Vivian and Daniel Tanaka and their five-year-old daughter Aria were just normal people until Aria is bitten by an emotionally-disturbed werewolf. Since she can't go to a human-only school because of her unfortunate tendency to shift, sometimes in mid-play, they are forced to send her to the magical Grimoire Grammar school, where Vivian feels left out because she's only mortal, and tries to juggle Aria's magical curriculum and be part of a community. But someone seems to be targeting Aria as part of a prophecy that states the community will be destroyed.

Think PTA politics taking place at Hogwarts. The enjoyment in this book is the magical, yet mundane, universe that Rozakis builds around the Tanaka family, with gossiping, pushy parents.

  Feuds, edited by Mercedes Lackey
These are 21 new stories from Lackey's world of Valdemar, about Heralds, Bards, Healers, and recurring characters like Nwah the kyree.

I'm still really not sure that I like the "themed" volumes that they've done the last few times. Shenanigans rather bored me, although Anything With Nothing was better. I have to say about this one, though, that I enjoyed how each writer addressed "feuds" differently, with different concepts (especially the first story, which had the creepy "full circle" vibe to it), and that there's really not a bad story in the bunch. We even get a Vanyel story where he pairs up with his aunt in a story that parallels Romeo and Juliet. I got a big kick out of Vanyel posing as "Jackomo, Prince of Minstrels and Minstrel to the Prince," revealing that Misty Lackey is a fan of the wonderful Danny Kaye film The Court Jester (Kaye poses as Giacomo, King of Jesters and Jester to the King).

  The Martians, David Baron
Who hasn't heard of the Lowell Observatory? Certainly I'd heard about it, and thought Percival Lowell was a famous scientist.

He wasn't, just a rich Massachusetts dilettante from the famous Lowell family of cotton mill fame (Amy Lowell, the 19th century poet famous for "Patterns," was his sister). He went looking for novelty, including during trips abroad, where he encountered the charismatic Camille Flammarion, an astronomer who opened the minds of hundreds to the wonders of space. But the real obsession with Mars began when astronomers at the Lick Observatory spotted three lights in a triangular pattern and an Italian named Schiaparelli mapped the planet and identified lines he called "channels," translated as "canals" in English, clear evidence of life on Mars—and Martian obsession was on, with everyone from H.G. Wells to Nikola Tesla involved.

If you thought alien-mania started after Roswell, this will disabuse the notion. Illustrated with black-and-white pictures from the newspapers of the time.

 The Mating Game, Lana Ferguson
This is a companion book to Ferguson's The Fake Mate (Nate, the doctor in that novel, is related to Hunter Barrett). I wasn't enchanted by that one, but this one was half price...another omegaverse novel, this about Tess Covington, who discovers she's a late-bloomer wolf-shifter who's also an omega about to go through her first heat. Her doctors tell her it would be dangerous to take heat suppressants before her first heat, so she's advised to keep away from alphas.

Unfortunately, her next client for redesign—she and her brothers are hoping for a home redesign show on HGTV—is Hunter Barrett, a small-town lodge owner, an alpha who's avoiding romance. The prospects for the redesign are good, since the lodge is charming but how will these two stay away from each other, especially after Tess starts going into full-blown heat?

I liked this one a little better. The lodge sounds like a really nifty place and Hunter's protectiveness of Tess was very sweet.

Books Completed in October 2025

 In These Hallowed Halls, edited by Marie O'Regan and Paul Kane
A dozen stories of dark academia, from the thievery of research papers and the seduction of graduate students, to the one really chilling, uncomfortable-ending tale called "The Department of Ontography," in which a student's curiosity about the mysterious department leads to a horrifying future. (The story of the new teacher at the isolated girls' school was pretty creepy, too!) This was a perfect book to read before Hallowe'en!

  Written in Bone, Sue Black
Who knew a book about the human skeletal system could be so absorbing?

Black, a forensic anthropologist, has another hit after All That Remains, in which she surveys the human skeleton top to bottom, and how evidence from each of the parts of the skeleton has solved crimes ranging from the heartbreaking death of an abused pre-schooler to the murders of adults. Along the way, you learn fascinating facts about our bones and skeletal structure, all told in Black's lively narrative style. Great for crime buffs and science nerds.

  Spells, Strings, and Forgotten Things, Breanne Randall
Thalia, Eurydice, and Calliope Petridi are three sisters, all witches, who live in the charming town of Gold Springs, California. They own a combination bookstore/bakeshop (this sounds familiar...), but are struggling emotionally since their mother disappeared, leaving them in charge of the Dark Oak, a tree in which evil magic has been trapped. The Petridis are members of a group of magic users called Lightcrafters, who use the loss of happy memories to fuel their power; their rivals are the Shadowcrafters, who draw their power from the earth. And the latter—especially their leader Lucien Deniz--wish to draw power from the Dark Oak.

Then Calliope realizes, from a grimoire which communicates with her, that she must release the power from the Dark Oak to keep disaster from happening. Her ally? Deniz, who is abruptly and inexplicably emotionally tied to her.

This has a lot of positives to it, especially the sisters' support of each other, but the plot about the hidden secret of the Dark Oak and the feud between the Lightcrafters and Shadowcrafters seems drawn out. The text has some beautiful imagery, and Calliope's solution at the end is heartbreaking, yet optimistic.

  The Life and Crimes of Agatha Christie: A Biographical Companion of the Works of Agatha Christie, Charles Osborne
A history of Agatha Christie's works (not just her mysteries, but her Mary Westmacott books and other writings) against the story of her life, a combined biography and detailed bibliography (down to how many times she reused plot points in different stories!). Presents a nice overview of her life and work.

  If I Stopped Haunting You, Colby Wilkens
This book sounded so promising. Two young writers, Penelope Skinner and Neil Storm, accompany two other writer friends to a haunted Scottish castle. There, they encounter what they believe is an actual ghost. It was billed as a romance/haunted house mystery. I was additionally charmed when I discovered the two protagonists were Native American.

Alas, the execution was...disappointing. Turns out Penelope and Neil are feuding because Penelope wrote an honest book about Native people that no one bought, and Neil sold out his Native lead to his publisher's suggestions, but the book has made him a sensation. After an angry encounter with Neil at a conference, Penelope imagines herself persona non grata in the publishing field. Naturally, once they're together at the haunted castle, they start being attracted to each other—pages and pages of sexual yearning. And that's the way the book goes, Neil and Penelope resisting attraction while investigating the ghostly happenings, with their two friends being continually annoying.

And the kicker at the end is that the ghost story turns out to be a totally ho-hum historical romance cliché. This one goes into the trade-in bin.

  Built on Chocolate: The Story of the Hershey Chocolate Company, James D. McMahon Jr.
Oversize hardback full of color historical photographs chronicling the history of Milton Hershey and the chocolate empire he founded. Hershey was a fascinating man who emulated Cadbury and Rowntree, the two British chocolate magnates, in building affordable, clean housing for his workers, and trying different types of products over the history of the company.

I remember taking the trolley tour of Hershey back in 2009. This book covers all the territory of the tour—and more.

  Mate, Ali Hazelwood
The sequel and companion book to Hazelwood's fantasy romance Bride, about the future of Misery Lark Moreland's childhood companion, Serena Paris, who, the world has learned, is a werewolf/human hybrid. Unfortunately, this means the humans want to exploit her, and the werewolves want to destroy her. Luckily, she's under the protection of Misery's mate/husband's brother Koen—unfortunately, he seems to hate her guts, even though, to protect her, he's claimed her as his mate, which means whoever threatens her risks the wrath of the werewolves.

There are many more twists to the story, including a cult and a promise to the pack. If you're in the mood for a suspenseful romantasy, this will fill the bill.

  Jolene, Mercedes Lackey
Anna May Jones, growing up in a smoky mining town, has always been sickly. Her parents, coal miner Lew Jones and his wife, abruptly send Anna May to live with her mother's sister, a "witchy woman" in a secluded area two-days wagon journey from her home. Her health immediately improves, because Anna May is an Earth Master and the pollution of her hometown made her ill. Anna May spends a happy summer learning to make herbal concoctions, and becoming attracted to a talented young stonecutter, Josh. She also discovers that she, like Aunt Jinny, can see and maneuver "the Glory," elemental Earth power.

This is mostly the story of Anna May's emergence as an elemental Magician and her slow control of "the Glory," her growing attraction to Josh, the discovery of a hidden Cherokee settlement, and the appearance of another "witchy woman," the beautiful—and super-powerful—Jolene. Very late, the book introduces a villain who lusts after Anna May's power, and the climax finds Anna May confronting Jolene for the soul of Josh. Kept my attention, but like the Annie Oakley book, much is world-building before the quick climax.

  What the Owl Knows, Jennifer Ackerman
Another brilliant book about birds from Ackerman. She writes in an engaging style about how humans view owls, and about the owl lifestyle itself, from courtship and parenthood to migration (yes, owls do migrate!). They are fascinating birds, not as "stupid" as has been indicated in many avian texts, yet not as "magical" as the Harry Potter books have made them out to be. The chapters about owls' extraordinary hearing are fascinating: how they can pinpoint prey from the tiniest move of a muscle of a small animal.

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.