Waiting on Wednesday

 

Can't-Wait Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Wishful Endings to spotlight and discuss the books we're excited about that we haven't yet read. Generally, they are books that have yet to be released, but don't have to be. It is based on Waiting on Wednesday, hosted by the fabulous folks at Breaking the Spine.

WELCOME TO THE GILDED AGE. WHERE NOT EVERYTHING GLITTERS.

1890: the Gilded Age, a period of financial success and political corruption. The United States is growing at a breathless rate, with six new states recently added to the Union.

With expansion comes an influx of crime. Outlaw gangs hold sway on the frontier and heists and robberies are commonplace. A lot of businesses shrug off these depredations as the cost of success. Those who don't hire the Pinkerton Detective Agency to get their money back.

The Pinkertons' newest operative is twenty-two-year-old Clare Wright. Highly educated, skilled with disguises, and handy enough in a fight, Clare's future in the agency seems bright. But when she's introduced to Fred Harvey, she finds herself thrown right into the heady mix of frontier life.

Harvey's Arizona hotel has been robbed and Clare is the perfect recruit to solve this mystery. Clare must infiltrate high society and win the confidence of killers like Butch Cassidy as she seeks the truth.

HAPPY READING!!

New Release Tuesday

 

Former detective and perpetual grouch Charlie Smeg is old–at least that’s the way he feels–and newly retired from the Edmonton Police. He's washed up, burnt out, and unappreciated by younger cops clawing for his job. He’d been a good detective but methods change, times change.

He’s looking forward to a life of solitude, a good book, and staying indoors during the winter months. Unfortunately, his former boss has other plans. He’s not even a week out of the job when she asks him to mentor rising star Meaghan Byatt–one of those upstart detectives–on her first case in the homicide department.

The case is an odd one from the get-go, enough that Smeg decides, against his better judgment, to help.

With a jobless stepson living at home who won't stop encouraging him to get with the times, and his growing fondness for Byatt making him begrudgingly look forward to human interaction, this case might be what Smeg needs to get back in the game.

HAPPY READING!!

Cover Runway Sunday

     

They say you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but we all know we do it. Sometimes, the cover initially catches our eye, drawing us to give a book a closer look. It's the first thing we see, our first impression. Every Sunday, I'll post some of my favorite book covers. Coming soon!

Retail worker Emmett Truesdale has never fit the Southern California mold of six-pack, suntanned masculinity. Over three hundred pounds, he carries the weight of his childhood trauma and millennial ennui around his waist and in his soul. After trying every diet under the sun, he remains stuck—in his dead-end job, in love, and in his body.

Desperate for help, he enrolls in a clinical trial for a new weight loss product called Obexity. The treatment is as horrifying as the results are miraculous and as Emmett sheds pounds at superhuman speed, every part of his life improves overnight.

Unfortunately, Obexity comes with some killer side effects, including lost stretches of time and overwhelming cravings. Worse, people who were cruel to him have started disappearing and when the police warn of a cannibalistic killer on the loose, he fears that Obexity is turning him into a monster. But how can he give it up now that people are finally starting to treat him like he’s human?

Nerve-racking, sinister, and at times surreal, Nothing Tastes as Good is an unputdownable thriller that combines The Substance with the best of Stephen King and keeps you guessing until the final page.

HAPPY READING!!

Mini Reviews

 

Somehow, I have more questions. So many more questions. Like, who really is the Killer of Ira Street? Because I was very sure it was Lewellyn, but now, now I'm not so sure. It's still an option. However, now there are other options. Two brand new suspects, of which I hope Lewellyn finds out about and deals with. Because Fawkes is about to become an actual problem. And seriously, what is with the onions! I'm really enjoying this series. I cannot get enough of how weird Lewellyn is, and I really just want good things to happen to Shavonne. He's been through so much, and he's really been a puppet for Fawkes to pull his string in whatever amuses Fawkes.  And someone is also killing people. So there's that.

This was cute. I really liked the addition of her own cats as she told her stories. The stories of her cats were cute and fun. The illustrations were cute, too, though I kept getting her cats mixed up. Though that might have just been a me thing. My brain has been overloaded. Still, this was fun and cute. However, I'm not sure this needs to be a series. I don't know if I want more. Still, the first book is adorable and great for cat lovers.

HAPPY READING!!

February Edmonds SBC

Holy cows, what a turnout last night! We had to spread out to a fourth table and the bar! I cannot thank everyone enough who came out. It was cold, dark, and January had been so long, as usual. Seriously, how is there still another week left in this month? Still, it was so great to see so many new faces last night mixed in with our amazing regulars. Starting off the new year with reading!

If you couldn't make it out this month, don't worry! The Edmonds Silent Book Club meets every third Wednesday of the month. So we'll be back at Leftcraft Taphouse at 7pm on February 18th! I'll have more BINGO cards with me, and a special announcement about the March meeting!!

Hope to see you in February!

HAPPY READING!!

Waiting on Wednesday

 

Can't-Wait Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Wishful Endings to spotlight and discuss the books we're excited about that we haven't yet read. Generally, they are books that have yet to be released, but don't have to be. It is based on Waiting on Wednesday, hosted by the fabulous folks at Breaking the Spine.

When former serial killer Carol takes her place in a luxury retirement home, she begins to find her feet with a small new group of friends. If she can only keep her past hidden, maybe she has a chance at happiness.

That's when she discovers that, absurdly, every other one of Sheldon Oaks residents was involved in the law somehow. It's not long before her true identity is leaked, and when a former police commissioner resident is murdered, naturally all eyes turn to her...

Now she must solve the case to prove her innocence—just as her new friends start their own investigations into whether there is more than one killer at Sheldon Oaks.

HAPPY READING!!

New Release Tuesday

 

No one knows exactly how the Goblin War began, but folks will tell you that goblins are stinking, slinking, filthy, sheep-stealing, henhouse-raiding, obnoxious, rude, and violent. Goblins would actually agree with all this, and might throw in “cowardly” and “lazy” too for good measure.

But goblins don't go around killing people for fun, no matter what the propaganda posters say. And when a confrontation with an evil wizard lands a troop of nine goblins deep behind enemy lines, goblin sergeant Nessilka must figure out how to keep her hapless band together and get them home in one piece.

Unfortunately, between them and safety lies a forest full of elves, trolls, monsters, and that most terrifying of creatures…a human being.

HAPPY READING!!

Mini Review

 

Hahahahaha! This was the best accidental library find ever! I read the entire thing out loud to one of my friends. It gave us both a giggle. I've read several books by this author, and they are always quick and fun reads. This is a hundred percent the perfect dad gift. So glad I stumbled across this gem at the library!

I jumped into this because I realized that I hadn't read it before, only seen the adaptations on TV. And! Because David Suchet read the audiobook, he will always be the Hercule Poirot. So I borrowed it from the library and listened while I chopped things at work. This hit in the middle for me. It's not my favorite of Christie's work, but it was still interesting. There were enough red herrings that I didn't see the whole picture until the end, as Poirot was setting the scene. However, I'm glad I listened to it because I think I might have DNFed a physical copy. Suchet and his voices really kept me listening.

HAPPY READING!!

Cover Runway Sunday

     

They say you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but we all know we do it. Sometimes, the cover initially catches our eye, drawing us to give a book a closer look. It's the first thing we see, our first impression. Every Sunday, I'll post some of my favorite book covers. Coming soon!

Ten suspects. Ten heists. A mystery only Ernest Cunningham can solve.

I've spent the last few years solving murders. But a bank heist is a new one, even for me. I've never been a hostage before.

The doors are chained shut. No one in or out. Which means that when someone in the bank is murdered, hostages become suspects.

THE BANK ROBBER
THE MANAGER
THE SECURITY GUARD
THE KID
THE FILM PRODUCER
THE PRIEST
THE RECEPTIONIST
THE PATIENT
THE CARER
ME

Turns out, more than one person planned to rob the bank today. You can steal more from a bank than just money.

Who is stealing what? Are they willing to kill for it? And can I solve the crime before the police kick down the door and rescue us?

HAPPY READING!!

Night Worms Unboxing

 

January Theme: Missed Calls

It's new book day! Which is extra special because I'm trying to not buy any new books this month. This month is about reading what I own, but Night Worms is the exception to that rule! And, I'm always excited for their package, especially when there are two books inside with authors I've never read before. Makes it extra exciting!

Wouldn't you know it, one of these books is a BINGO book! I love it when the stars align in such a way. Also, no one in this house has read a Simone St. James book. So that will be an adventure for all of us to enjoy Night Worms Day!! Also, before you run away, look at these stickers. Are they not amazing! They are going on the bins I just put in my smaller shelves to hold my snacks and stuff. Because everyone needs to see them both, always.

HAPPY READING!! 

6 Books for 2026

 

So I've been seeing a lot of these posts all over Instagram, and it's been cool to see what everyone else was hoping to crack open this year. And then, I got to thinking about the books I want to read this year, and then I started on my shelf. Then I was adding books to my Storygraph (because I'm trying to pull away from Goodreads this year). Next thing I know, I was creating this graphic.

I am notoriously bad at sticking to a TBR, so I'm glad we're not calling this that. I'm hoping that by calling this the 6 for 26, it'll feel less like a school reading list. Maybe I'll actually manage to read all of them. Which, considering I'm a slow reader, is quite the ask. Two of the books on this list are huge!

Additionally, I will need to track down the Camilla Bruce book. I swear I own it. She's a favorite author of mine, but I just do not know where it ended up after I set up the new bookcase.  

Still, I'm excited to see if, framing this less as a TBR and more as a 'hopefuls' list, I'll be less hesitant to pick any of these. Something about TBRs feels like a chore. Does anyone else feel that way?

HAPPY READING!!

The Creeping Hand Murder - Review

 

Author: Maureen Johnson & Jay Cooper

Genre: Humor/Satire

Format: Hardback

Pages: 128

This is my second book by this duo (Maureen Johnson and Jay Cooper, illustrator), and I'm so ready for a third one! I saved this for a day when I could read it from cover to cover without any distractions. After their first book, I knew I wasn't going to want to put it down or be bothered. I'm so glad that I waited until I was in the mood for something ridiculous because this book goes hard in making fun of the classic murder mystery tropes. 

Maureen Johnson has a hilarious writing style that is campy, fun, and keeps you glued to the pages. Combine that with Jay Copper's illustrations, pencil sketches in black and white with a pop of red color. It all really works. It gives you extra information besides what you're taking in through Johnson's writing. So it's almost, and that is kind of the point, to the point of too much information. Halfway through, I realized I'd focused too much on one aspect, and I missed another thing.

It was so easy to form suspects and theories on the crime throughout the whole book. I was kind of hoping maybe it was going to be a disembodied hand doing all the murders. Then, of course, I had another wild theory that I was kind of disappointed that it was wrong. Then I had another theory that was less fun, but maybe more correct. I was so busy focused on the other people and the letters that I missed what was right in front of my face.

While I had some of the puzzle sorted out by the end of the book, I still hadn't figured out who did it. Because my favorite theory was about to happen. I could just tell it was going to an ending that made sense and tied it all up quite nicely. It was honestly perfect. Because I was so busy over here suspecting all the usual suspects, I wasn't looking at the picture as a whole. The red herrings were so perfect.

This was just a lot of fun! If you want a low-risk, high-reward read that has you laughing out loud, you should check this out. Or, there is another book, Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village. Both are hilarious and so much fun! This has become an instant buy duo of authors. I so hope they work on another book!

HAPPY READING!!

Waiting on Wednesday

 

Can't-Wait Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Wishful Endings to spotlight and discuss the books we're excited about that we haven't yet read. Generally, they are books that have yet to be released, but don't have to be. It is based on Waiting on Wednesday, hosted by the fabulous folks at Breaking the Spine.

When private investigator Shyla Sinclair is invited to the looming mansion of mysterious Texan tycoon Saxton Braith, she’s more than a little suspicious. The last thing she expects to see that night is Braith’s assistant driving an iron rod straight through the back of his skull. Scratch that—the last thing she expects to see is Braith’s resurrection afterward.

Braith can’t die, it turns out, but he has no explanation for his immortality, and very few intact memories of his past. Which is why he wants to pay Shyla millions to investigate him, and bring his long-buried history to light. 

Shyla can’t help but be intrigued, but she’s also trapped by the offer. Braith has made it clear that he knows she’s the only person he can trust with his secret, because he knows all about hers. 

HAPPY READING!!

New Release Tuesday

 

Meet Alma Timperley. She
- Run a hotel
- Solve a mystery
- Talk to ghosts...?

December, 1914: After the death of her aunt, Alma Timperley is surprised when she suddenly finds herself the heiress to the Timperley Spiritualist Hotel in a pretty coastal town in Cornwall.

But not everything is as it seems... the hotel offers guests a very special chance to communicate with the dead.

When the body of one of the hotel's maids is found, it is considered a tragic wartime accident. But the more Alma and the local police try to fathom what happened, the more they begin to realise this is much more than just a death - there might be a German spy in Falmouth.

With the stakes higher than ever, Alma must grapple with her own extraordinary secret if she is going to have more than a ghost of a chance of solving the mystery.

Being able to talk with the dead is one thing; solving their murder is positively ghoulish...

HAPPY READING!!

Mini Reviews

 

I am in love with this series, and I'm not sure who is more adorable, the man or the cat. But I adore that they are healing each other. This is just a high-reward, low-risk book. It's nothing but good vibes, good feelings, and an adorable cat. I'm going to sprinkle this series in throughout the year between reads. Because honestly, this was the best book to crawl out of my reading slump from December!

This started out interesting: an artist moved into a supposedly haunted house. Turns out the house is sort of haunted, and Ro makes friends with it. After that point, it kind of went downhill for me. There are some time skips to keep the graphic novel moving, but we lose the fact that the Ro and this thing in the house are doing more than bonding. Because all of a sudden they are in this weird siutationship, then it wants to keep her in the house. We never hear what happened to the other owners/renters of the house. This thing is just there with all its eyes. I don't know. This just fell a big flat for me, which is a disappointment because I usually really like Skottie Young's stories. I will say Jorge Corona's art didn't disappoint, and I spent a lot of time trying to find the monster in the darker panels. I just wish we'd been given a bit more.

This was an absolute delight! Katie Spalding had to have a lot of fun putting this book together. While her writing is very informed, it's also a lot of fun, and she's fully engaged through the whole book. She drops her own thoughts and opinions here and there. Plus a few gold one-liners that had me laughing out loud. As a whole, this book is wild and definitely filled with weirdness. I listened to the audiobook version of this, and it felt like the narrator had a lot of fun reading it as well. This was a delight from start to finish. It started as the book I was listening to at work, but it became so hard to pause that I started listening while doing house chores. Super fun read.

    HAPPY READING!!

Cover Runway Sunday

     

They say you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but we all know we do it. Sometimes, the cover initially catches our eye, drawing us to give a book a closer look. It's the first thing we see, our first impression. Every Sunday, I'll post some of my favorite book covers. Coming soon!

Two women living centuries apart are bound by the same dark secret in this haunting novel that "upends everything you think you know about ghost stories" (Jennifer McMahon, author of The Winter People).

"A delightful twist on both the haunted-house and beach-read genres." —Carissa Orlando, author of The September House

The Devil enters through doors left open…

On the isolated Eastern Shore of Virginia, Edith is a healer, a woman of knowledge—and a woman watched. Shadows move where they shouldn’t. Whispers creep through the dark. Terrified she has opened her home to the Devil, Edith makes a desperate choice.

Claire doesn’t believe in ghosts—until she returns home to care for her dying father and finds her childhood house… listening. As one sleepless night bleeds into the next, she becomes convinced something is stirring beneath the floorboards. Something that has waited a long time to rise.

Is the house haunted? What compels this lurking darkness? As the danger mounts, Edith and Claire will discover they’ll need each other to survive. But they are separated by four hundred years. And time is running out for them both.

HAPPY READING!!

Waiting on Wednesday

 

Can't-Wait Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Wishful Endings to spotlight and discuss the books we're excited about that we haven't yet read. Generally, they are books that have yet to be released, but don't have to be. It is based on Waiting on Wednesday, hosted by the fabulous folks at Breaking the Spine.

All his life, Sir Cameron has stayed as far away from danger as possible. He is, quite frankly, too handsome to die a violent and pointless death in battle. But when the Church hands down a prophecy to his fellow knights predicting that the only way to defeat their nemesis, the mad sorcerer Merulo, is to kill Cameron, he finds himself in a situation too sticky for even his considerable wiles. Short of ideas, Cameron throws himself on the mercy of the one person who now actually wants him to survive: the mad sorcerer.

Merulo isn’t thrilled to be babysitting a spoilt, attention-seeking knight, but fate has tied them together. And transmogrifying Cameron into a vulture is at least a great source of entertainment. Cameron, meanwhile, is on a voyage of self-discovery. It turns out he’s really, really into surly sorcerers who lock him up and tell him what to do. Who knew?

As a legion of knights surround their stronghold, the sorcerer’s poisonous ambitions draw ever closer to fruition. Cameron is quite invested in not dying, but he finds he’s also invested in Merulo. And sometimes, supporting the sorcerer you care about means taking an interest in their hobbies. Even if that hobby is trying to kill God.

Even if it might get you killed, too.

HAPPY READING!!

New Release Tuesday

Secrets, murder, and mayhem collide as this unlikely sleuthing duo—an under-butler and a foul-mouthed octogenarian—hunt a killer in a manor sealed against the end of the world.

Cornwall, 1910. On a remote tidal island, the Viscount of Tithe Hall is absorbed in feverish preparations for the apocalypse that he believes will accompany the passing of Halley's Comet. The Hall must be sealed from top to bottom—every window, chimney, and keyhole closed off before night falls. But what the pompous, dishonest Viscount has failed to take into account is the danger that lies within... By morning, he will be dead in his sealed study, murdered by his own ancestral crossbow.

All eyes turn to Steven Pike, Tithe Hall's newest under-butler. Fresh out of Borstal for a crime he didn't commit, he is the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time. His unlikely ally? Miss Decima Stockingham, the foul-mouthed, sharp as a tack, eighty-year-old family matriarch. Fearless and unconventional, she relishes chaos and puzzles alike, and a murder is just the thrill she's been waiting for.

Together, this mismatched duo must navigate secret passages, buried grudges, and rising terror to unmask the killer before it's too late...

HAPPY READING!!

Cover Runway Sunday

     

They say you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but we all know we do it. Sometimes, the cover initially catches our eye, drawing us to give a book a closer look. It's the first thing we see, our first impression. Every Sunday, I'll post some of my favorite book covers. Coming soon!

A small town, a dark past. Jenna Willcot is a spunky, disabled, horror fanatic who visits rural Montana for a stay at a horror-themed rental cabin. Jenna has struggled with severe anxiety for years, hardly ever leaving the house. This vacation will test her limits, and, she hopes, open her back up to the world. But she is about to find out her dream vacation is built on a nightmare.

25 years earlier, the Bitter Butcher massacred 11 people in the small town of Marion, on the land where Jenna’s vacation cabin now sits. Her arrival coincides with the beginning of a new massacre as a body is discovered outside town. It quickly becomes clear that this is no isolated incident, as further killings occur, each with their own connection to the original massacre.

Jenna starts seeing slashers around every corner and must team up with locals Erica and Jamie. Together, they will struggle to survive this killing spree while unearthing secrets connecting the town’s shameful history to slashers past and present.

HAPPY READING!!