I enjoyed this mystery. 68-yr-old widow Muriel Blossom (from Lippman's Tess Monaghan series) wins the lottery and takes a luxury river cruise in France. A man she meets on her flight from the U.S. dies in Paris. Not as charming as Thursday Murder Club, but still good. It felt like it could have been an episode of Murder She Wrote - very much the sort of shenanigans that Jessica Fletcher always managed to get herself entangled in.

2nd Vera book and as good as the first. Vera collects three more people for her found family and solves their problems.

Low pick. Mostly good, but a little slow-paced and the ending wasn't completely satisfying to me.

Interesting set up - set in Pakistan, an egyptologist is called in when a mummy is found after a drug raid.

Very slow paced mystery until near the end. Unnatural dialogue and overuse of figures of speech.

This was mostly entertaining but kind of dragged in the parts about the characters' backgrounds. Then the ending was disappointing and unsatisfying.

Middle grade graphic novel about relationships, communication, grief, and plants. Beautiful artwork.

I did not like this one. I would have bailed, but it's for my book club. I didn't find the plot very compelling, most of the characters were terrible people (and not in a fun way), and the conclusion/motivation for the whole thing was far-fetched.

Good thriller about terrible rich people, set in Capri. Lots of secrets, betrayals, and double-crossing.

Thorough biography of Katharine White, fiction editor at the New Yorker magazine for decades. Her 2nd husband was E. B. White. This 21-hour audiobook contained much more information than I needed to satisfy my casual interest, but her career was interesting

The idea of this book is interesting - a young nurse working in a hospital in Bombay in the 1930s, but the story and pace dragged and I didn't care for the writing.

I liked this mystery, but I did not like many of the main character's actions.

The author has indigenous heritage, but was adopted and raised by a white family, according to her author's note.

This is somewhere between so-so and pick, but since I liked the 2nd half and ending more than the 1st, I'll go with pick.

This is not a rom-com. There is wry humor and sarcasm and what I think were jokes that went over my head. Many references to feminist theory and academic concepts that are not my area of expertise. The dates/plan to marry rich were unnecessary. I liked the story of her family and her career struggles.

Good thriller that kept me guessing.

Beautiful weather today and I had the day off work! I went for a walk, planted flowers, and then spent the afternoon reading this book.

A quirky middle grade mystery about Bonnie Montgomery who solves mysteries in disguise as Montgomery Bonbon, with her grandpa's help.

Middle grade mystery. Students at a boarding school are sent by an unknown person calling themself The Mastermind on a mysterious treasure hunt to win a prize.

Pretty good, but ends on a bit of a cliffhanger with the initial hunt completed but they get instructions for a new one.

Good teen mystery that deserves a better cover that conveys the atmosphere of the setting (New Orleans) or food/cooking which is important to the characters.

Marcel is determined to clear his half-brother Amir who is accused of murder. They also have a lot of family issues to work out.

This was a good book to spend a lazy Sunday yesterday reading. It wasn't perfect but it held my interest and I wanted to see how it concluded. I liked that when the main character put together the clues in the end, she didn't act confused or doubt herself and she took decisive action.

Interesting plot: A popular influencer with a wellness/beauty/supplement empire is maybe not as perfect as she seems. An employee tries to expose her bad deeds and ends up dead.

I was expecting some justice in the end, or truth winning out, or something satisfying, but the whole thing was too ambiguous. Some questions were answered by the end but not others. Just unsatisfying overall

This was fun! Published in the 1960s. Emily Pollifax, a widow in her 60s, is bored so she decides to become a spy for the CIA. They of course don't hire her as a spy, but through a mix up, they do recruit her to vacation in Mexico & pick up a package. Things didn't go according to plan & she is kidnapped by communists & sent to a prison in Albania. Much of the plot relies on coincidence and dumb luck, but I still enjoyed it

I don't know mythology very well and all I knew about Hippolyta and the Amazonians was from Wonder Woman. This novelization was good - lots of drama and action.

Lord Peter Wimsey book 6. Very good! I think Miss Climpson and Miss Murcheson deserve the credit for solving this one - they did all the work! I wish Sayers had written a spinoff series about Miss Climpson and the “Cattery.“

I enjoyed this one. It doesn't have much of a plot; it's mostly just a bunch of quirky, likeable characters. It's about Bob Comet, a retired librarian who stumbles upon an eccentric group of people living in a small retirement home, then we go back to the early years of his career and marriage, then back to his childhood, and end at his elderly years again.

Just a quiet book about the joy, oddities, and pain of ordinary life.

Biography of Merle Oberon who had to pass as white and deny her South Asian heritage in order to become a Hollywood star

#bookhaul from Better World Books. The cover of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is kind of delightfully weird. This edition is from the 60s and has a cover price of $1.25!

I liked the plot - pregnant teenagers at a home for unwed mothers try to reclaim their power through witchcraft - but it was a little too long and a little too slow.

Teen mystery involving a Hollywood murder 50 years ago and a possibly haunted house.

Excellent short stories

It was interesting to learn about Marty Goddard and her advocating for rape victims. It was infuriating to learn about the attitudes toward rape at the time and the way police mistreated victims.

Re-read before reading the sequel which just came out. Women assassins taking out terrible people, including Nazis, seems like an appropriate read for the current times.

Two sisters who are polar opposites and don't like each other are sent on a mission by their dying grandmother to deliver 3 letters to people from grandmother's past in Paris, Venice, and Vienna in 1937. They deliver the letters and discover some family secrets.

I found both sisters very annoying most of the time, but there were some plot elements that I enjoyed.

#botm arrived today! I've read The Change twice and have the ebook but decided to treat myself to a pretty print copy. Feels like it might be the right time to read it again, given current events.

I probably would have skipped this month, but I wanted my boty finalist. Liquid sounds interesting but I hadn't heard of it before and its rating on goodreads is lowish.

Book 2 in really good WWII mystery series.

Not sure what I think of this one. I wasn't expecting the dark turn that it took. It's also much too long.

It's been on my TBR for over a decade so I'm glad I finally check it off.

I really liked this. I liked the humor and satire, but also the more serious parts. The epilogue was unnecessary, but otherwise it was good!

Delightful middle grade Hanukkah and Christmas book about identical twin girls who were adopted by different families and then happened to find each other.

How can you not read a book with this cover?

Charlie's uncle dies and leaves Charlie his estate: billions of dollars and his supervillain lair. And cats and dolphins.

This is not my typical kind of book but I loved it. It's fun and there are cats!

I didn't really know anything about Captain Cook before reading this. Very interesting to read about his approach to exploration and the people he encountered.

Two cats and a book 😺

This was really good and then the ending was terrible. This was not a thriller ending. The story was building and building and going in a certain direction and then went completely flat and everything that had been building was invalidated. Not the right way to use twists/surprises. One bad guy got what he deserved, but that was in what was basically a side plot.

Explores some interesting ideas and has some unexpected twists, but was too slow in some sections and the science lacked plausibility.

Wasn't super excited about #botm selections but it's my birthday month so I had to get something so that I could get my free birthday book 😁 I liked Black Cake and Good Dirt does sound good so that was the obvious choice for me.

This was first published in 1929 and was a bestseller. Ursula Parrott wrote many books and stories, but has been virtually forgotten. I learned about her and this book on a podcast called Lost Ladies of Lit, which I highly recommend. This book is really good and I wish more of her work would be brought back into print.

I tried not to compare this to Thursday Murder Club as I was reading but I couldn't help it. The humor and charm fell very short in this one and it dragged on too long. I somewhat liked the main character but otherwise I didn't find the characters endearing.

Tells the history of women egyptologists whose work usually gets left out of history. I had a little trouble keeping track of people because I listened to the audiobook, but it was still good.

#botm arrived. I almost skipped but decided to give this one a try.

Biography of Mary Anning who discovered the first dinosaur skeleton and then numerous other fossils.

Interesting, but the author is not a historian and didn't have the necessary understanding of the historical context. Also, she makes a lot of unsubstantiated assumptions about what Mary and others were thinking and feeling.

Loved this! It's set in San Francisco at the time of the 1906 earthquake.

This is my favorite book of Quinn's that I've read (haven't read them all yet) and the first of Chang's that I've read (will be reading more).

I sort of liked this one, but didn't love it. I appreciate how all the pieces fit together, but one aspect was a little too mind bendy for me.

Although there are two mysterious deaths, possibly murders, and an investigator, I don't think this really fits the category of mystery.

Excellent cover, though!

I squeezed in one last short book for the year.

The Below Stairs series continues to be a sure bet. This novella is book 7.5 in the series.