Welcome to the Scaredy Cat Giveaway Hop, hosted by Mama the Fox and Mom Does Reviews! Are you a scaredy cat when it comes to this scariest of seasons? Does the idea of doing to one of the inevitable haunted houses give you the shivers? Do you face your fears or run away from them as fast as you can? Or is your greatest fear this season the fear of running out of candy before all the neighborhood kids have gotten their share for Halloween? Or have you planned to skip the whole thing and be elsewhere for the evening?

My Review: The opening of this one feels familiar, and it feels familiar in the same way that the opening of A Wall Is Also a Road is familiar. Because it starts as a dark academia story in a science fictional setting. Ro’s educational system feels like ours, because it is in all the worst ways. Ro is one of those students who doesn’t quite fit in. He’s GREAT at the individual language studies, but he’s terrible at the discipline required to go beyond studying to adapt to academia. (

My Review: It’s often said that “money is the root of all evil”, but that’s a misquote. The complete biblical verse says that “the love of money is the root of all evil”. Very much on the other hand, there’s an often repeated contemporary (contemporary to our era and not Wrex and Charlotte’s era) that “money is the root of all evil, but every woman needs roots!” As it turns out, this tenth entry in the Wrexford & Sloane series is set at the crossroads of those two competing uses of the old verse.

My Review: Just the words “Mardi Gras” conjure up all sorts of images of parades and beads and over-the-top decorations and scenes of absolute but also absolutely fun chaos. In the U.S., New Orleans is the unofficial “capital” of Mardi Gras, and probably the first place that people outside the area think of when the phrase is mentioned. For people who live there, it’s more than one day. It’s more than the tourist invasion that accompanies it. The roots of the Mardi Gras celebrations go deep and far back into the history of the city, and its a tradition that recently returned New Orleans native Ricki James-Diaz, proprietor of Miss Vee’s Vintage Cookbooks and Kitchenware Shop at the recently opened Bon Vee Culinary House Museum, is more than happy to participate in.

This week's schedule may go the same way as last week's schedule. It kind of already has, as one book I thought I'd be reviewing this week isn't going to be published until this time NEXT month. This week ended in a "bail and flail" where nothing was working, which is why I turned to the trusty duo of Barker & Llewelyn to get me out of the slump. Which certainly worked, BUT put me one book closer to the end of the series - at least until next year. I'm going to have to find another comfort read series to fill that gap.

This stack has some pretty. In fact, it has some of pretty much everything. Spooky season is just around the corner, holiday books are coming in, and this week's stack has a special book just to make it a bit, well, special. The pretty covers, IMNSHO, are The Chinese Lady, The Court of Venus, The Three Graces of Pearl Street and When Mikan Road Was Ours. As usual, they are not all pretty the same, but pretty nevertheless. The spooky season covers look like Dreamland, Mazywood…

My Review:  “It’s never too late to be who you might have been,” as George Eliot is supposed to have said. She’s certainly someone who would have known, whether she actually said it or not. In the summer of 1969, Eleanor Bell Strickland may not remember the phrase - because she’s been having more than a few problems with her memories of her own life these days - but she’s hoping it’s true all the same. And that it’s not too late for her to try, not so much in spite of being 69 herself, but because she’s just learned the reason why her memory has felt like Swiss cheese for longer than she’d care to admit.

My Review: Usually that title phrase is “Death OR Glory”, a commitment to an undertaking that will result in one OR the other. In other words, a variation on Patrick Henry’s oft-quoted phrase, “Give me liberty or give me death!”. Then again, when Henry uttered his famous line, the outcome of the American Revolution had not yet been decided. Very much on the other hand, by the time this 15th novel in the Barker and Llewelyn series begins in April of 1894, the cause that has brought General James Woodson, Brigadier David St.

My Review: Sherlock Holmes stories are my catnip. I can’t resist diving into one wherever I find it. Which is precisely what led me to pick this up. Even though the title led me to expect that I wouldn’t actually see Holmes within its pages - no matter how much I might wish to. Which does not mean that his influence - as well as that of his older brother Mycroft - isn’t looming all over this story. Well, Mycroft certainly looms. Sherlock, on the other hand, attempts to move the chess pieces from at least a couple of moves away - and is a bit caught out when he fails to predict the movements he believes he has set in motion.

Welcome to the Fall 2026 Seasons of Books Giveaway Hop, hosted by It Starts At Midnight and Versatileer! Once upon a time, this was the Month of Books Giveaway Hop, now it’s the Seasons of Books Giveaway Hop, with the hops starting on the days the seasons change. Today, September 22, - technically tonight at 8:05 p.m. - marks the official beginning of FALL for the 2026 season. Not that it actually FEELS like Fall here in Atlanta. Summer has lingered forever this year, with temps still in the mid-80s if not higher.

My Review: Conan the Barbarian meets Bridgerton - minus the romance. Or at least minus the romance SO FAR. That’s a combination that you’d think wouldn’t work, but actually does. And where it doesn’t it’s because it’s not intended to. Gotchimus, the barbarian of the title, has a problem with wizards. Or rather, he has a problem with the magical crap that wizards leave behind them. Specifically, the hex heaps. Think of the hex heaps as a toxic waste dump with ZERO environmental controls. Not even signs that say “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here” - which they absolutely need.

This week's schedule is feeling just a bit tentative - and a bit more like last week's than I intended it to be. C'est la reading vie. But seriously, last week was going fine until I got a migraine, and had to pull a previously finished review out of my emergency cache because my head just wouldn't let me write. It happens. And not that I wasn't planning to post Morfran in a couple of weeks. I just prefer my plans to stay planned. This week's schedule is feeling tentative because I'm waiting for the posting info for the…

There are several really pretty covers in this stack. Which makes for a VERY pleasant change! Particularly as they are not all pretty the same. I'm looking at The Bookbinder & the Thief, The Flower Court, The Memory of Borrowed Books, No Good Deed and Throne of Frost and Flame and they are all beautiful in their own ways. A Complement of Scoundrels isn't precisely pretty, but it has a kind of orderly complication combined with meticulous drawing that I also like a lot. The one I picked up just for the title is…

My Review: Morfran, formerly the Dark Lord of Ruthven™, had done his best to exit the whole “dark lord” business. Not so much that he’d seen the light, so to speak, but more that he’d seen the abyss that his wife Queen Ravana was heading straight down into and he decided there was a difference between being a mere Dark Lord and Evil Incarnate. Dark Lords - in Morfran’s opinion - rule their prosperous kingdoms through abject fear and cutting-edge style, while evil just burns the place to the ground and spits on the ashes.

My Review: This story is a direct follow-up to the Phoenix brothers’ and cousins' surprise discovery of Markaria in the previous book in the series, On a Barbarian World. Because now that they know it’s there, and now that cousin Aurina has married Markarian warlord Kavon Mal Dor, the Phoenix clan knows that a warm welcome is always waiting for them on this icy planet. This time around, they’ve returned with Niklas Phoenix’ Galactic Institute ship Drake, because the scholars at the institute have discovered more fascinating information about the Markarians’ Terran ancestors, as well as the possible location of a second crashed Terran ship.

Welcome to the Falling into Leaves Giveaway Hop, hosted by Mama the Fox and Mom Does Reviews! Fall hasn't quite fallen here in the ATL, at least not yet. The high temperatures the rest of this week and through the weekend are predicted to be in the high 80s and low-mid 90s. That's NOT fall weather. It's just not. It's not yet cold enough to get the leaves to start turning, either. Eventually. I don't miss Chicago winters - AT ALL - but I do miss their fall. Fall does tend to be a pretty season in the Midwest.

My Review: I didn’t so much pick this one up as reach out to the authors so I could make grabby hands at it. And I’m ever so grateful they obliged with both the book AND the audiobook. I fell hard for Prairie Nightingale’s compulsive nosiness and pattern disruption genius in the very first book, Homemaker, and was even more enthralled with her case in Trailbreaker. Part of what I loved about both books was the way that Prairie and her team were able to see both connections and especially disconnections in the evidence - AND in the places where there was a lack of evidence - because they were looking at entirely different things than any previous investigator had looked at.

My Review: In the end, this is a story about corporate greed and collateral damage. NYPSD Lieutenant Eve Dallas has solved plenty of cases wrapped around those same two axes over the now 63 books (and counting!) in the In Death series. As always, Dallas goes into the case seeking justice for the dead. Often, that means developing a meticulous case against a killer, one bloody, painstaking step at a time. But this case isn’t just about the murders in the present - it’s about murders in the past that Dallas and her colleagues never even knew WERE murders.

Today's cat picture is one of those "die from the cute" pics. George and Tuna are clearly communing in the upstairs hallway. How that works, I don't know, because Tuna is not exactly the brightest cat in the world - and he looks particularly discombobulated in this pic - while George doesn't always have possession of his share of the orange cats of the world's single brain cell. They're still buds, and its still adorable. I think this one was taken the night before we left on our trip, meaning that the suitcases were out and packed and every single cat in the house was unhappy about it.

This stack has a couple of VERY pretty covers in The Creek, the Crone, and the Crow and Meet Me in the Garden. Fossil Feud has a cute cover, a cute title, and my reading group is having a blast with it so it's rising fast up my virtually towering TBR pile. I'm also hearing good things about The Hocus Pocus Handbook, so that's going to get reviewed as soon as I can find a slot for it. But OMG the year is winding down fast. It's still summer-y here, but the temps are dropping into that delightful zone from the mid-70s to the low-80s and it's lovely to be outside.

My Review: Louella Twig thinks she needs a broom. Not a real broom for sweeping floors - she already has one of those. She needs, or at least thinks she needs, a broom to hang on the wall of her traveling book shop. A symbolic broom. A broom that would represent her successful graduation from a magical academy, proving that she was a fully trained witch. Which she is. Fully trained, that is. A graduate of one of the academies, however, she is not. Not because she failed her studies, but because her natural magic failed to fit into one of the established, well, natural, categories.

My Review: Battle of the Round House is a story within a story. It’s also a bit of fictionalized reality nestled inside a framing story that is ALSO fictionalized reality. And I loved the way it worked. It begins with that first bit of reality, of 75-year old Lucy Freeman, in 1936, participating in an oral history project that really existed as part of FDR’s Depression-era Works Progress Administration, otherwise known as the WPA. A young member of the Writers’ Project intended to interview Miss Freeman about her encounter with Marshal James “Wild Bill” Hickok, a meeting that occurred in 1871, when Lucy was around ten years old.

My Review: Did you love the Die Hard movies? Is there anyone who doesn't love the Die Hard movies? Seriously. Die Hard is the modern holiday classic that no one ever expected - but can’t resist. The Norcross Rescue is Die Hard with a much happier ending, which should be more than enough of a hint to tease readers, especially readers (like moi) who have followed the author’s Norcross Security series from its beginning in The Investigator. Most of the author’s series let readers return to the characters and the world with some lovely ending novellas, because we get involved with the characters and want to see how all of our friends are doing AFTER their happily ever afters.

My Review: What happens when the flagship of Starfleet is not available, has been called away, or has solved a problem, but created a huge mess along the way? Easy: you call in the division of Starfleet that focuses on engineering problems: the Starfleet Corps of Engineers. Have Tech, Will Travel starts a long series of novellas that follow one Corps of Engineers ships, the USS da Vinci. Escape Rating B: The 1990s through the early 2000s were arguably a golden era for Star Trek books, with over 550 novellas and novels published between 1990 and 2010.

From a fireside chat by Franklin Delano Roosevelt given on 6 September 1936: Tomorrow is Labor Day. Labor Day in this country has never been a class holiday. It has always been a national holiday. It has never had more significance as a national holiday than it has now. In other countries the relationship of employer and employee has been more or less accepted as a class relationship not readily to be broken through. In this country we insist, as an essential of the American way of life, that the employer-employee relationship should be one between free men and equals.

This Sunday Post features an extra special visiting cat. Say "hello" to Spike! Spike is visiting here today because a couple of weeks ago we visited him and his human in Anchorage. Spike is very clearly Luna and Tuna's brother from another mother, and we're his extra people because we're part of his herd. Literally. Whenever one of us went ANYWHERE in the house he stood around waiting until he could herd us back into a single location so he could watch over us. He was, as you can see, VERY determined about it!

There are some fascinating covers in this week's stack. Not so much pretty, but a lot of pretty interesting! Back for Blood somehow manages to be both a bit pretty and a bit pretty creepy in this cover. It looks pretty at first, then you get a good look at the images and it flips to pretty creepy. Odette Rising looks like the closest cover to really pretty. But I really love the style of The Dungeon Book - and probably the book as well, as that's the one I'm most curious about.

My Review: I picked this up because I’ve read a lot of the author’s work in the past few years and really enjoyed it. Howsomever, based on my reading of her Annual Migration of Clouds novella series and The Butcher of the Forest and some of her other short works, I was expecting, well, a short work. Which Wickhills definitely is not. What I got was better, thicker, richer, denser and with a whole lot more to chew on both while reading and after I finished. If it WAS finished, which is more than a bit of an open question - but in an excellent way.

My Review: I picked this one up because when I’m in the right mood, cozy fantasy is a very comfortable and comforting place to be, and to read. It’s kind of fantasy-lite for me. The settings are purely fantasy, but the stakes are, not so much smaller or lower, but closer to real life - even if the characters are a bit unreal or extra-real - and the solutions tend to be considerably less violent. It’s not that the protagonists don’t face crises and enemies and consequences, but that the solutions to all of the above do not come out of epic battles that leave behind epically bloody battlefields and epically high butchers’ bills.

My Review: This is a bit of a caper story. More than a bit, actually, but it’s the kind of caper where the protagonist or agent, or whatever Azure thinks of himself as because it sure as hell isn’t “hero” may be the point of view but isn’t as aware as he should be about precisely what it is he has a point of view OF. Of course he thinks he does. He thinks he’s handling a protection job for the Keres, the agency/megacorp to whom he owes a life debt.

Welcome to the Glitz and Glam Giveaway Hop, hosted by Mama the Fox and Mom Does Reviews! This hop used to drive me crazy every single year, because instead of "Glitz", it was "GLITS". What's a "glit" when it's at home? Inquiring minds would STILL like to know! But whether you're more of a glitzy person, or prefer to be glamorous, this hop is still a lovely thing to see on the first of September. Although this year it's a bit weird as Labor Day isn't until NEXT week.

My Review: I want to say this is a story about what happens after the “and they lived happily ever after” but that’s not the kind of story that Elder Race was in the first place. It IS a bit of a “no good deed goes unpunished" kind of story. But mostly, it’s a story like Peter S. Beagle’s “Sooz” in The Way Home and Premee Mohamed’s The Butcher of the Forest. It’s the kind of story where, after the monster has been defeated, life goes on, and then someone has to do it all over again.

Luna looks like she's just woken up from a nap in this picture. Alternatively, she's hiding from the "Monster Vacuum" in my lap and she's not pleased that I disturbed her. Or it's merely that "the princess of quite a lot" just doesn't want to be disturbed by anyone or anything - especially not the owner of the lap she's currently possessing. Speaking of disturbances and disruptions, tomorrow is the final day of August. Summer - as a period of time rather than a meteorological season - is coming to an end.

There's some of everything in this stack. Some pretty, some cute, some creepy, some curiosity, some anticipation, etc., etc., etc. In the pretty and pretty cute categories, there's The Bookshop Book, The Fall Fix Up, Fallen for France, and Rainy Day Bookshop. For creepy there's The Burn Line, Intercepts, and She's a Doll. Certainty looks ominous but not creepy the way that The Burn Line does. It's also the title I'm most curious about. The Bone Door manages to be both creepy and cute!

My Review: I grabbed this one for two reasons. First and foremost, because I love T. Kingfisher’s work. Occasionally she writes something that isn’t quite my jam, but even then I love the characters she tells the story through. Second, I especially love her fantasy romances, particularly her Saint of Steel  series that begins with Paladin’s Grace, and Daggerbound’s immediate series predecessor, the marvelous Swordheart. Like Swordheart, Daggerbound begins with someone who seems to be a bit too naive for the world they are a part of - and a mercenary bound in a sword.

My Review: Worldcon opens today in Los Angeles and Barbara Hambly is one of the Guests of Honor. I still have fond, in fact extremely fond, memories of Hambly’s Darwath trilogy, which I read when it came out back in the early 1980s. I still have my paperbacks, and the original cover of the first book, The Time of the Dark, is every bit as arresting as it was back then. Because that cover, featured at left, showed a Gandalf-type wizard in full wizarding garb sitting at what was obviously an already old kitchen table in a run-down apartment holding a can of beer.

My Review: This is the final entry in my Hugo reading. It’s being posted, fittingly enough, just before this year’s Worldcon in LA, where the Hugos will be announced. I wanted to hold one review until I got closer to the con, although I promise I read/listened to this last story before I turned in my ballot. Also fittingly, this is one of the weirder stories in the category, which is saying something because they’re ALL weird in one way or another. Part of me wants to make a joke about if one wants a list of realistic short stories one should not be looking at the Hugo list.

My Review: Reading has always been magic. Even Stephen King admitted it when he said that “Books are a uniquely portable magic.” Or as another writer, Mason Cooley once said, “Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.” Then there’s George R.R. Martin’s famous quote, “I have lived a thousand lives and I’ve loved a thousand loves. I’ve walked on distant worlds and seen the end of time. Because I read.” The Wednesday Witches Book Club is a story where books are LITERALLY magic. Pun very much intended.

My Review: The story is Caroline Foster’s. She’s come to London to look for her brother Charlie. Caroline is a young, shy, sickly, country girl - albeit of the squirearchy - with no money, no prospects, no other family and no hope. Charlie’s all she’s got and he told her not to come. But she’s out of resources - literally and completely - and has no other options. But Charlie is missing and Caroline needs a place to live and to use as a base for her search - and there’s no place better for that than as the maid of all work at Charlie’s last known address, the titular Whitechapel Full Moon Society.

This week's readings were not just generally good, but two of them absolutely blew me away. I was NOT surprised by how much I enjoyed The Tailor. I was expecting it because the series has just been so damn good. But I've been fortunate that the whole series was released here really close together so I didn't have to wait between books. Now that we've caught up with the series over here, it's going to be a LONG wait until book 9 comes out next summer. A Thousand Painted Hours is another book that I expected to be good.

There are a couple of actually pretty covers in this stack. I'm looking at Children of the Wild, Dead New World, and A Fellowship of Academics & Arts and those all hit my "pretty" button in their own pretty different ways. In contrast, there's only one creepy cover, and that's Tillinghast. I can't make the body parts in that cover make sense, and I'm probably better off if I don't! The book I'm really curious about is The First Ladies' Guide to Murder. It wouldn't work NOW, of course.

My Review: Elf Theo Brylar should literally be having the time of his life. Instead, he’s having cats. Lots and lots of cats. Oodles of cats. Whole entire clowders of cats seemingly materializing from the ether and following him around Adenashire, proclaiming, in every feline register from tiny squeaks to full-throated caterwauls, that Theo is absolutely NOT fine no matter how much he claims he is. Theo first rode into the Adenashire series in A Fellowship of Bakers and Magic, intent on delivering an invitation to compete in that year’s Langheim Baking Battle to a contestant registered only as A.

My Review: Aurina Phoenix is the advance scout for her half-brothers’ convoy business. These Phoenix Brothers, cousins to the treasure-hunting Phoenix Brothers on the other side of the galaxy - the more settled side - live and work at the galaxy’s edge. At this point in the Phoenix Adventures saga, Dare runs the convoy, Niklas’ wife Nissa captains the lead ship, and Rynan is still figuring himself out. Because the convoys take trade goods and, most importantly, settlers, out beyond mapped space, each route is a bit different from the ones that went before.

My Review: A Labyrinth of Honeybees reads, and listens, like one of the stories that Cleric Chih records in the Singing Hills Cycle. By that, I mean it reads like a bit of myth, a story that feels like we should be familiar with, but we aren’t because it’s a fictional myth in a fictional world and not our own. But it still reads like it should be a story out of legend. So this isn’t our world and these definitely aren’t our gods or even gods in our ancient mythologies, but the story plucks at the same set of heartstrings.

My Review: It starts with a cyanide capsule. Which is a surprising place for a story to start because it has so much potential to be the end. And very nearly is. That opening scene grabs the reader by the throat and doesn’t let go until the end of this utterly absorbing historical romance. It’s the story in between that captivates. Not just what happens AFTER Elsie Turner is given that capsule, but all the years and events and miles that led up to it - and to the terrible events that nearly bring her story to a premature end.

My Review: It’s interesting that the character of DS George Cross that we met back in The Dentist was extremely, well, let’s call it change-averse. And that’s an understatement. Yet, the DS Cross in The Tailor very much HAS changed - even if he doesn’t recognize just how much. Just as he doesn’t realize how much his colleagues at the Avon and Somerset Police have come to both like and respect him. No matter how much or how often he drives them round the twist. Which is very often indeed.

This Sunday there's nothing missing in the post, and I won't have to play a fill-in-the-blanks game when I wake up. After all, the whole point of Sundays it to not need to rush around to get ready first thing in the morning. Or at least it is at Chez Reading Reality! It also marks the end of a truly excellent reading week. A Trade of Blood, The Silver Hand and Preaching to the Choir were all absolutely terrific, but not terrific in the same way. And that's just a part of what made all of them such great reads!

There's not a lot of outright pretty in this stack, but there's certainly a lot of pretty darn cute! Fishbone Cinderella sweeps back and forth over the border between merely cute and downright pretty, while the cutest of the cute, IMHO are A Game of Cat and Killer, Meet Cute Magic, Mr. Mendlebee's Pandimensional Literary Repository (and Yarn) and The Reimagining of Thornwood House. Fishbone Cinderella is one of the books I'm most curious about - because I'm really curious about how that title works itself out. Speaking of titles, …

My Review: We’ve seen this story before - or at least we think we have. Scion of wealthy English family decides to take his American girlfriend home to the moldering family pile for a reunion. He’s a bit embarrassed about the staid, fusty traditions his family insists on, but he either loves her enough to let her see where he came from - or is scared enough of his family to need backup to get through the ordeal. Or, most likely, a bit of both. The vast, sprawling mansion, complete with gargoyles watching over everything and seemingly everyone, may not be moldering, but it certainly is a stately family pile.

My Review: Every time I looked at the title of this entry in the Magic & Mystery collection it gave me a bit of a pause. It felt like there was a piece missing, or words in the wrong order, or just something that niggled. It wasn’t until my second time through (these are short and sometimes that’s just what you need for a reading pick-me-up) that I realized that the title has two meanings. From Shiverick’s own perspective - and it’s his perspective through which we experience the story - he keeps himself suspicious of his wizardly colleagues and the world he has lived in for the past six centuries.