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.

Good mystery with lots of twists, although one stretched my belief a bit too far. Difficult material to read at times.

I was expecting a somewhat silly fake kidnapping caper, but it was slightly more serious and the “kidnapping“ didn't even happen until halfway through the book. But it was an interesting juxtaposition of a hippie-style cult and an evangelical megachurch and the damage both can cause.

The somber cover does not match this somewhat madcap and irreverent mystery. It is entertaining, but rather convoluted in the end, with lots of characters, all keeping secrets and scheming.

This was fun. It gets extra points for the reference to Joan Wilder from the movie Romancing the Stone 😁

My 2nd Christmas murder mystery for this Christmas season. A solid historical mystery. Book 6 in series.

I think I heard about this book through and interview with the author on a podcast; otherwise I was completely unaware of this story.

In 1999 (!) MIT admitted to discriminating against women scientists (ongoing at the time, not just in the past). They corrected their practices, but as related in the epilogue, there are still men who think women don't have as much of an aptitude for science as men do 🙄

Finally reading this book feels like a big accomplishment for me. It's been sitting on my Kindle for a few years and I've always been too intimidated by its length to read it. But I did and it was very good!

A little Christmas mystery novella. # 4.5 in the Jane Wunderly series.

The mystery is entertaining but the characters, including the cat, are really the best part.

Book 2 in Philo Vance series and the only one in the series I've read. Clever set up for the mystery, but I didn't enjoy the way Vance solved it.

Reading with my buddy Stanley this afternoon 😻

Book 2 in series. Good teen mystery/thriller but the story isn't resolved in this book. This one came out in March of this year but I can't find any info about when/if book 3 is coming out. Kind of annoying.

An interesting plot involving missing and murdered indigenous women, but the writing was sometimes awkward and some parts of the mystery were not definitively solved (which is realistic but not satisfying).

This classic mystery was good! This was the first book I've read by this author, but won't be the last.

Good. Historical fiction set at the building of the Panama Canal. I didn't know much about this event, and I'm sure whatever I did learn about it in school was about how great the U.S. was for doing this. As with most historical things that I've learned more about as an adult, that was not the reality.

Pretty frustrated with #botm. None of the selections since July have appealed to me (enough to want to own them) so I've been skipping, but there are some add-ons that I want!

Cute teen romance