Dimos is a reporter who is sent to the war front to write about war hero General Wilder but when he is kidnapped by the anarchists of Hron, he learns there is more than the imperial and capitalistic ideals of his homeland.

Locke Lamora is a special kind of criminal. He can‘t help but steal from & con any likely target he encounters but he tends to steer his crew, the Gentlemen Bastards, towards thieving from the rich. That puts a massive target on all of them.

There were about 37 different storylines but Lynch did a good job keeping things from getting too confusing. I got a bit irritated when seemingly unrelated side stories were stuck in right during the action.

Abby gets volun-told to organize a Hanukkah festival to compete with area Christmas festivals but needs help. When she finds out the only other Jewish person nearby is her annoyingly sunny customer Seth, she begrudgingly asks for his help. He agrees in exchange for her pretending to be his girlfriend so his mom stops worrying. They spend Hanukkah with his parents in NYC so Abby can hunt for festival vendors & grow to understand each other better.

Teenager April has spent the last three years trying to return to normal life after a heart replacement but her mom is over-protective so she sees Christmas break with her dad as the chance for some freedom. There she hits it off with her best friend‘s older brother but they run into some issues.

The concept was fun but the writing was bad. I had to keep reminding myself that the characters were adults because everybody acted like 13-year-olds.

When a toddler‘s whole family is murdered, he wanders into the nearby graveyard and is adopted by the ghosts who live there.
Secret societies, an ancient mysterious creature under the hill, ghouls, a portal to hell, and possibly a vampire?
Such a weird book, I had no idea what was going on for half of it

Emily & Wendell take the throne from his murderous stepmother but before they can get settled, they find a blight is moving across the land, killing plants and turning creatures into mindless killers.
Emily does what she does best: researching & running headlong into dangerous situations that will ultimately fix the problem but with unexpected consequences. But this time, she has underestimated those around her.
A great conclusion to the trilogy!

Collection of short ghost and paranormal stories set at Christmas or during the winter.
There were a few hits and a few misses, most were ok.

Emily is back in the field, this time hunting for a hidden back door into Wendell‘s realm and plotting her next book: a map of the fae lands. Things get complicated when Wendell‘s stepmother sends assassins after him. When the situation gets even worse, Emily and her niece/assistant brave a solo mission into the Otherlands to bring back a new ally.

Loved this installment in the Emily Wilde trilogy!

Finally, a memoir by a cheese-obsessed 30-something who doesn‘t have their life together, nor even knows how to get their life together, but that‘s ok because they‘ve got blind audacity and cheese.

A mixture of heartfelt stories, funny anecdotes, poems, and advice, this is a good pick for people who don‘t connect with the run-of-the-mill memoir.

Something happened during WWI causing random people around the world to get powers, called Sparks. Rin can move through time and space, her wife Odette can heal people, and they run a circus full of Sparks who use their powers in their performances.

I absolutely LOVED the idea of a magical circus moving through the Midwest but there were so many unnecessary plot lines, that potential was lost in the muddle.

Astra is on her annual girls trip to the Milwaukee Christmas Market where she meets Jack who works at his family bakery. What she doesn‘t know, she‘s met Jack multiple times before, but the magic of the Christmas Market makes her forget each time… until this year when everything is different.

Overall it was a cute story but the characters tended to over-complicate things and the over-explaining of simple or unnecessary details drove me nuts.

Ines is running from something bad when she‘s accepted into Catherine House, a super prestigious, super secretive private school where students abandon the outside world for the 3 years they attend. But shit at the school is super weird.

I couldn‘t stand how apathetic and willfully oblivious Ines was. The author spent so much time on the food but little time explaining anything else. Lots of mystery, little payoff

Nora is suffering through a dead-end job as an editorial assistant at a failing publisher when the opportunity to freelance at a competing publisher falls in her lap. A pay cut has her making the terrible decision to do both jobs on the DL. Then she meets the author her boss is trying to sign and things get even more complicated.

I was expecting a bookish romcom but this was more of Nora dismantling her life, then working to put it back together.

Henry Dresden is the only out wizard in Chicago, and while that brings lots of skepticism, it also pulls him into bizarre cases for Chicago PD. The latest is where a sex worker and a man with mob connections are found with their hearts magically ripped from their chests.
Think PI noir meets magic, demons, monsters, and misbehaving technology.

When the portals into Tanria start acting up, the Marshals call in the inventor, Adam Lee. Rosie and Duckers are assigned to help and protect Adam but nobody bargained for a mysterious shadowy vine that only Rosie can see. When the three get trapped in Tanria, along with Duckers‘ ex, they struggle to find new ways through the mist and tiptoe around old feelings that are forced to the surface.

Plus dragons.

Such a solid ending to a great trilogy.

Told in three storylines: an American vet with PTSD returning to Vietnam to heal & find his wartime girlfriend and their child, a man who was orphaned during the war trying to get to America due to him being the child of a GI, & a farm girl who moves to Saigon to work at a bar & is coerced into sex work.

It had a slow start but it was otherwise well written & researched, & about things that aren‘t talked about enough, but it wasn‘t for me.

With her kids out of the house and her husband passed on, Twyla let her best friend, Frank, talk her into joining the Tanria Marshals to be his partner. Eight years later the Marshals are reduced to glorified park rangers… until dragons are discovered.
Twyla and Frank‘s easy friendship suddenly gets more complicated when a dragon expert joins their group and they all get caught up in a smuggling plot.

Annie got dumped & needed a fresh start. Looking for jobs outside of NYC to match her minuscule budget, she finds a job in a small town upstate. Soon after arriving, she meets Sophie, a charismatic figure, Annie can‘t help to be drawn to her, even though the townspeople seem to fear her.

Annie is such a sad sack through most of the book & the codependent relationship the women form is unsettling. And Annie‘s confidence just makes her an asshole.

I don‘t even know what to say about this one.

It was very interesting learning about the Marys Wollstonecraft & Shelley, but I spent most of the sizable book absolutely enraged at all of the men and most of the women who surrounded the Marys. Which also made me think that most of the authors involved in the Romantics movement were trash people.

The book itself was well written but I was so happy for it to be over.

In a world where most wizards only have magic over a small part of life, 14-year-old Mona is a bakery wizard. She can encourage biscuits to be soft, bread to not burn, & gingerbread men to stand up & dance.

When Mona discovers a dead girl in her kitchen and wizards start disappearing across the city, she reluctantly leads the fight against corruption in the government.

Never thought I‘d sob over bread golems & a skeleton horse but here we are.

Just in time for the 50th anniversary, The Gales of November gives a brief history of shipping in the Great Lakes region, talks about many of the crew of the Fitz and their families, and how the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald changed shipping forever.

An incredible book. As a midwesterner, I learned so much more about the Great Lakes and this legendary ship than I ever knew.

Starting the day that President Joe Biden announces he is not running for a second term, VP Kamala Harris takes the reader through probably the most historic presidential campaigns in history.
I listened to it during a particularly rough patch with the current administration so it was a bit like pouring salt in the wound, but it was interesting to learn what it took for Harris & her team to take a campaign from 0 to 100 in no time.

Maus pt. 2 is about Vladek‘s time in the concentration camps and what he did to survive until he was freed. It also offers a bigger look at how the Holocaust affected the rest of Vladek‘s life and how the author has struggled to come to terms learning about his parents‘ experiences and how that has directly affected his life.

When Daphne‘s fiancé dumps her for his long-time bestie, Petra, she‘s stuck in his hometown with no friends, family, or a place to live. One crazy idea later, Daphne is now roommates with Miles, Petra‘s ex.
While she loves her job, Daphne needs to leave town but Miles convinces her to let him show her the real Waning Bay & the pair grow closer as the summer comes to an end.

I was pretty meh about Henry‘s last book but I really enjoyed this one.

This book has been on my TBR for a long time but I had to bail after just 2 hours. It was so depressing.
I might try to circle back to it but can‘t for now.

The Problem with Pixies by Kat Healy first in the Homesteader Hearth series

Misty Meadows is a witch on the run. She finds out her family‘s grimoire is cursed so she steals it and flees to a small town in Indiana with the plan to stay hidden until she can end the curse. Here, she works on revitalizing an old farm house, making nice with the local fairy population, and not thinking about the hot shifter lumberjack.

17-year-old Sorel doesn‘t want to get married, so the night before her wedding, she makes a run for it. She dresses as a man & travels to the nearest town, giving her name as Isser Jacobs but, unknown to her, Isser Jacobs is a real person & he is involved in some questionable dealings.
Sorel finds a few people she can trust & together they try to figure out what‘s going on, & earn the attention of powerful beings while they‘re at it.

Maus pt. 1 tells the true story of the author‘s father, Vladek‘s, life in Poland as Hitler rose to power. In it, we see Vladek meeting his wife, running several successful businesses, and fleeing the Nazi forces as they began rounding up Jews.
We also see the conversations between the author and his father as he learns about his parent‘s past and tries to come to terms with it.

Final book in the Last Binding trilogy has Lord Hawthorn & Alan teaming up with Violet, Edwin, Robin, & Maud as they hunt for the final piece of the Last Contract & struggle to stay a step ahead of the magicians who want it.
Meanwhile, Alan continues the fight to keep his family afloat and Lord Hawthorn is forced to face the loss of his sister and the implosion of his own family.

Enemies to lovers, lots of intrigue, and edge-of-your-seat action.

Angrboda is punished with triple burnings for not sharing her knowledge with Odin but she manages to escape & flees to the remote woods. There, she meets Loki, they fall in love & have three children but they are the harbingers of Ragnarok.

I wanted to like it but Angrboda is so passive for most of the book, just letting things happen around and to her. So much of the story was about how powerful she was but she never did anything with her power.

A therapist, a nurse, a union leader, and a spy, all retired, team up to solve cold cases. When the owner of their retirement community is found dead, they‘re on the case, much to the chagrin of the police.

Things heat up when more bodies are found and the TMC teams up with the police to find the killer.

Fun read that‘s full of delightful characters and unexpected twists.

Sophie is the oldest daughter destined for a life of obscurity & bad luck. When a witch curses her with old age, she goes the only place she can think of to escape her fate.
Howl is the dramatic, mysterious wizard with the bad reputation in the moving castle on the hill. What the people don‘t know is he‘s more interested in seducing the local girls than he is in knowing what he‘s doing.
Sophie plans to set him straight.

Funny, ridiculous, & cozy.

After the modern world ended, the remaining humans formed new societies in five habitable zones across the globe. Luca Juniper lives in the Oasis at the base of the Rockies, a new utopia totally run by an AI called the Machine but terrorist group, Lumos, wants to end it all.

Interesting story but it needed some serious editing and I‘m not sure novella was the right format because it needed more world and character building.

It‘s like an early 20th Century Jewish Good Omens but the Angel and Demon leave Poland to find a girl from their town who has gone missing in America. On the crossing, they adopt (or are adopted by) Rose, a teen from a neighboring town looking for the American Dream and running from the girl she loves.

It feels like Good Omens but the stupidity has more of an Our Flag Means Death vibe in the best, most delightful way.

When the current state of the world gets you down, you hit your local bookstore and get different worlds to escape into. #bookhaul

Dymitr and Ala head to Dymitr‘s family home in Poland both for a funeral and to find something to pay Baba Jaga back for her help. There, they cross paths with Niko who is in town for his own mission: kill one of the most dangerous Knights alive.

Such an amazing sequel to When Among Crows, I cannot wait to see where Roth takes this trio next.

Na zdrowie!

Dawson covers the life of Edward Oscar Heinrich, the man responsible for developing many of the techniques and procedures that modern forensic science is built on. From a dead show girl to a murdered wife to a missing priest, Heinrich‘s life was shaped by the cases he worked on and the answers he sought.

Human Sebastian is a grad student on the Evocation track in college. His academic rival half-Elf Elethior is on the Conjuration track. When they‘re both chosen to work together on a grant project, neither of them expected to get along let alone start to like each other.

My new favorite Sara Raasch book. It‘s funny and a bit less camp than her Royals and Romance series.

Sally is the type-A sister who kept the house running from a young age. Gillian is a free-spirited and selfish sister who is fast to love and fast to move on. When Gillian‘s life hits a huge speed bump, she turns to her sister to clean up the mess, with mixed results.

I wanted to love it because I love the movie but I failed to find any of the charm and sisterly bond that was the core of the movie. Plus, a surprising lack of actual magic.

Terlu broke the law and was turned into a statue as punishment so it was quite a surprise when she woke up in a snowy forest six years later.
Terlu was sent to the island of Belde, home of an enchanted greenhouse that is failing and the gardener who hopes she can save it.
So cozy and sweet, with a found family of sentient plants and learning that you are worth sticking around for.

Told as the last letter from Mata Hari, it covers her childhood, her ill-fated marriage, then her life of freedom in Paris. When war loomed, her shift from entertainer & courtesan to double agent lead to her downfall.
While interesting, I didn‘t like the tone of the book. Her side was very matter-of-fact with little emotion or deeper insight into her character. The most sympathetic part of the book was the letter the lawyer wrote at the end.

Sibling Dex needed a change in their life so they left the monastery & took up the life of a traveling tea monk. After a few years, they needed another change & leave the designated human zone into the wild. They were not expecting to meet Mosscap, a robot who has decided to survey humans and find out what they need. The pair travel to a long-abandoned monastery and learn about each other and the world they didn‘t know.
Cozy and thought-provoking.

Jimmy “Prop” Propfield joined the army with his best friends Billy & Hank to get out of his hometown and to forget his first love. Unfortunately, that found him in the Philippines on the eve of Pearl Harbor.
The three friends soon find themselves taken captive and forced onto the Bataan Death March and into a POW camp. They spend the next few years just trying to survive the camp, heavy labor, a prisoner ship, and torture.
Good but heartbreaking.

Paranormal noir mystery set in prohibition Chicago sees magical detective Helen Brandt take one last job, to find the White City Vampire, before the demon who owns her soul comes to collect.
It doesn‘t take long for her to realize she is far more connected to her quarry than she thought, as is her employer, her brother, and the woman she loves.

Quick read but oh so good.

And because I think everybody deserves to see the alternate cover featuring Jester and Fjord as Guinevere and Oskar.

Starting as a one-off comment during Critical Role‘s second campaign that quickly turned into a series-long running gag, Guanzon turned Tusk Love into a funny, sweet, spicier-than-I-expected romance between a merchant‘s daughter and a half-orc blacksmith as they cross the continent to return her to her parents and her fiancé.

Maud Blyth is on a mission to help her brother save the magical world but things go wrong almost immediately when the old woman she is escorting across the Atlantic is murdered.
Maude recruits help from magician and stage performer Violet Debenhan, former magician Lord Hawthorn, and journalist Alan Ross to find the second piece of the last contract and discover the murderer all before the ship docks in England.

As a brand new posh resort opens in an old manor house, the past rises up to crash the festivities to the ground. Part Midsommer, part Hot Fuzz, the twists keep twisting.

Told from four POVs: Francesca-the owner, Owen-her husband, Bella-a mystery guest, and Eddie-kitchen employee, the story flips between past, present, and future (in the POV of a detective) as they try to solve a disappearance without rousting the anger of the mysterious Birds.

When Benny helps build a mysterious tank, he‘s offered a job at a Coney Island amusement park, he just has to help capture the creature to go into the tank. Nothing prepared for it to be a merman.

Benny does what he can to make life more tolerable for the merman, eventually forming a friendship that developed into deeper feelings.

This is one of the most beautiful books I have ever read, physically (the author also illustrated it) and the story.

Annabelle wakes up in a river and is adopted by a strange group of teens who live in the ghost town on top of Resurrection Peak. She can‘t remember what led to her ending up in the river but she returns to her life with the mission of finding out.

It was frustrating watching Annie miss all the signs that she was dead for so long, not to mention the multiple potholes, and how horribly she treated Sam.