Month: May 2026

The Sunday Post AKA What’s on my (Mostly Virtual) Nightstand 5-31-26

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | The Sunday Post> Virtual Nightstand

Today is the last day of May. That Memorial Day occurred this past Monday and not tomorrow feels a bit off. Nevertheless, it is what it is. (Next year, Memorial Day WILL be May 31, which somehow feels normal. Don’t get me wrong, I love 3-day weekends as much as the next person, but the resulting float of the holidays can still feel off.

But June still starts tomorrow, along with Audiobook Month AND Caffeinated Reviewer’s annual JIAM (June is Audiobook Month) Challenge. I am participating, but I’m not sure just how many audiobooks I can manage in just a single month. Over a whole, entire year, quite a few, but in just one month? We’ll see.

Speaking of seeing, the above picture of Luna had to be seen to be believed. She’s just completely abandoned, mostly asleep, and not quite keeping track of all of her limbs. When this was taken, she was just aware enough to notice that she was being photographed, but not quite awake enough to do anything about it. In a week or two I’ll post the follow up picture, the one where she’s fully awake, looking adorably cute, and obviously posing for the camera. Or for her human daddy. Same difference.

Current Giveaways:

$10 Gift Card or $10 Book in the Spring 2026 Seasons of Books Giveaway Hop
$10 Gift Card or $10 Book PLUS EVENT-WIDE AMAZON/PAYPAL PRIZE in The Summer Giveaway Event

Blog Recap:

#GuestPost: Memorial Day 2026: Books at War
Grade A #BookReview: The Monk by Tim Sullivan
B #BookReview: The Girl That My Mother is Leaving Me For by Cameron Reed
A++ #BookReview: Ode to the Half-Broken by Suzanne Palmer
A- #BookReview: The Ivory City by Emily Bain Murphy
Stacking the Shelves (707)

Coming This Week:

Berry Good Giveaway Hop
When He Calls Your Name by Catherynne M. Valente (#HugoReview)
The Last Mandarin by Louise Penny and Mellissa Fung (#AudioBookReview)
Cash and Gravity by Perrin Pring (#BookReview)
Field Guide for the Formerly Villainous by Autumn K. England (#BookReview)

Stacking the Shelves (707)

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | Stacking the Shelves

Is it just me, or does it feel vaguely wrong that it’s STILL May but Memorial Day is already behind us? Something about this weekend still being May but Monday is NOT Memorial Day is just not right.

Speaking of not right things, it feels like we’ve definitely entered the “cute” cover era. The “pretty” cover era feels like it’s over. Of course, that could just be because I don’t read a lot of literary fiction which tends more in that direction. Although the cover of The Eagle in the Mountain is gorgeous in its own way. That’s a style we saw a lot of when we lived in Alaska and I do kind of miss seeing it everywhere.

Find Me Where It Ends has the distinction of being the cutest horror or horror-adjacent cover I’ve ever seen. Whether the book lives up to it is yet to be determined.

The book with the best title – or at least the title that most grabbed my attention – is World’s Okayest Oracle (Reluctantly) Seeks Demon. There’s something about that parenthetical (Reluctantly) that makes me smile every time I see it.

What about you? What’s tweaking your curiosity in your stack this week?

eagle in the mountain by caskey russell
five weeks in the country by francine prose
ms mebel goes back to the chopping block
find me where it ends by cassandra khaw
lovers by kristin cast
served him right by lisa unger
bad company by sara paretsky
courtship in quarantine by jem spears
scarlet ball by nghi vo
audrey lane stirs the pot by alexis hall
most worthy husband by faye delacour
odessa by gabrielle sher
homebound by portia elan
good joy bad joy by mikki brammer
enchanting the fae queen by stephanie burgis
one week to win the chocolate maker by timothy janovsky
roses and stone by jessie mihalik
worlds okayest oracle reluctantly seeks demon by olivia dade
butler by clare mackintosh
great wherever by shannon sanders
silver and blood by jessie mihalik

For Review:
Audrey Lane Stirs the Pot (Winner Bakes All #3) by Alexis Hall
Bad Company by Sara Paretsky
The Butler (Butler #1) by Clare Mackintosh
A Courtship in Quarantine (International Love and Misadventure) by Jem Spears
The Eagle in the Mountain (Raven and Eagle #2) by Caskey Russell
Enchanting the Fae Queen (Queens of Villainy #2) by Stephanie Burgis
Find Me Where It Ends by Cassandra Khaw
Five Weeks in the Country by Francine Prose
Good Joy, Bad Joy by Mikki Brammer
The Great Wherever by Shannon Sanders
Homebound by Portia Elan
The Lovers (Towerfall #2) by Kristin Cast
A Most Worthy Husband (Lucky Ladies of London #3) by Faye Delacour
Ms. Mebel Goes Back to the Chopping Block by Jesse Q. Sutanto
Odessa by Gabrielle Sher
One Week to Win the Chocolate Maker by Timothy Janovsky
Roses & Stone (Silver & Blood #2) by Jessie Mihalik
The Scarlet Ball by Nghi Vo
Served Him Right by Lisa Unger
Silver & Blood (Silver & Blood #1) by Jessie Mihalik
World’s Okayest Oracle (Reluctantly) Seeks Demon by Olivia Dade

If you want to find out more about Stacking The Shelves, please visit the official launch page

Please link your STS post in the linky below:

A- #BookReview: The Ivory City by Emily Bain Murphy

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: The Ivory City by Emily Bain MurphyThe Ivory City by Emily Bain Murphy
Format: ebook
Source: borrowed from Amazon Kindle Unlimited
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery, historical romance
Pages: 352
Published by Union Square & Co. on November 4, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

The St. Louis World’s Fair, 1904: A miniature city of palaces and pavilions that becomes a backdrop for romance, betrayal—and murder.      Cousins Grace and Lillie have been best friends since birth, despite Grace’s vastly inferior social status ever since her mother married for love instead of wealth. When Lillie invites Grace to the biggest event of the century—the legendary World’s Fair, also known as “The Ivory City”—Grace hopes her fortunes might be about to change.       But when a member of their party is brutally killed at the fair, and suspicion falls on Lillie’s brother Oliver, Grace must prove Oliver’s innocence before her beloved cousins’ family is ruined forever. Along the way, she'll discover that the city’s wealthy elite—including Oliver’s handsome but irritable friend Theodore—aren’t quite who they appear to be. And amidst the glitz, glamor, and magic of the Ivory City lurks a danger that just may claim her life.

My Review:

Grace Covington has grown up pinned to the fringes of the high society that should have been hers by birth – or would have been if her mother hadn’t chosen to marry for love instead of wealth and status.

The only thing that has kept her on that fringe has been the love of her cousins Lillie and Oliver. In spite of their mother’s constant attempts to push Grace, forcibly if necessary, out of their lives, Oliver and especially Lillie have been equally determined to keep Grace close.

But all their lives are on the cusp of change – even if not the change any of them believed it would be. In their early 20s, on the threshold of adulthood, it’s time for them to go their separate ways – even if Lillie and Oliver aren’t willing to see it. Grace is tired of being reminded at every turn that she does not belong in high society, is unwilling to continue to tolerate the sly cuts, denigrating comments, and scandalous innuendos that beset her at every turn. And recognizes that its time for her to forge her own path and it can’t be the same as Lillie’s no matter how much they have been sisters of the heart.

Grace intends that the opening weeks of the “Ivory City”, the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, will be her final hurrah among high society. It’s supposed to be last flutter of bright glitter before she literally kisses her beloved cousins goodbye – and brightens her dour Aunt Clove’s whole entire life into that sad bargain.

But fate intervenes, along with utter disaster, when Oliver falls in love with an actress, a woman his mother will never allow to sully their family – no matter what she has to do to prevent it. But when the woman drops dead of poison in the midst of a society gala, it’s Oliver who is arrested and sent to jail to await trial because he handed her the fatal glass.

Even as he’s tried – and found guilty – in the gossip rags and the yellow press, Grace and Lillie are determined not to let that verdict be pronounced in an actual courtroom. They are certain that Oliver couldn’t possibly have done it. But someone certainly did, and they’re willing to dig into whoever and whatever it takes to find out the terrible truth. Even if it “ruins” them both in the process.

Escape Rating A-: The story belongs to Grace Covington, not just because she turns out to be the person who makes things happen, but because she’s the character who grows and changes and makes decisions about her life and future. But what makes this story special, what gives it its shine and sparkle, is its setting at the 1904 World’s Fair. Because Grace isn’t just telling a story about her life and her choices and her decision to investigate crime, but she’s telling it and working on it in this fantastic setting that has briefly but brilliantly (in more ways than one) made the unreal magically real.

And doesn’t shy away from some of the really awful parts of that reality – even as it expresses Grace’s shock and awe and disgust and horror in ways that fit her time and place and circumstances and rather than ours.

So the story works on multiple levels that intertwine and support each other and cast both shine and shade on each other at the same time.

Grace’s own part of the story is one that has been told before, although it’s certainly done well in The Ivory City, as does Grace herself. But still, she’s the ‘poor’ relation of a rich family, barely tolerated by their society because her cousins refuse to abandon her, her snobby aunt is a horror and her cousins’ friends all look down on her and aren’t at all shy or even polite in letting her know they think she’s beneath them. Then she rises to the occasion by investigating the murder that her cousin has been accused of and exposes the truth.

It’s a good story, it’s well done here, but it’s not new in and of itself. The Saffron Everleigh series starting with A Botanist’s Guide to Parties and Poisons tells a similar kind of mystery, also historical, in a different time and place but with a setup very much like this one. Minus, of course, the World’s Fair which is kind of the point.

The way that this microcosm of the world that the powers that be are presenting it as being – even though it reflects all their prejudices and hides a lot of darkness under its bright lights, provides a world within a world where everyone is briefly cheek-by-jowl, where there is a lot of mingling of people and classes, where all the things that make a community function are crammed into a hothouse environment and where people can see beyond the boundaries of their usual settings and opportunities – if they’re willing to.

Which is what allows Grace to live somewhat independently, mix with people from other classes, meet and fall in love with a man who would otherwise be out of her reach, become a newspaper reporter and investigate and more importantly uncover a scandal among people who are willing to shore up their social position through murder.

And it all happens fast because she doesn’t have to travel around, the Fair has compacted the world into a small and tempestuous space. In the end, the story, like the fair itself, encompasses the whole world and not just a tiny piece of it.

It’s probably impossible to read the title or the blurb of The Ivory City without being reminded of The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson. And they certainly do share their World’s Fair settings. But just as it’s not the same World’s Fair, it’s also not the same kind of story. Not just because Devil is nonfiction – even though it reads as compulsively as fiction – while Ivory City is fiction through and through. But also because Devil is a story centered around its male characters, and their unplanned rivalry, while Ivory City is focused on its female characters, their newfound agency, their cooperation and their rivalries, and especially their triumphs.

A++ #BookReview: Ode to the Half-Broken by Suzanne Palmer

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A++ Reviews> book reviews
A++ #BookReview: Ode to the Half-Broken by Suzanne PalmerOde to the Half-Broken by Suzanne Palmer
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: artificial intelligence, dystopian, hopepunk, post apocalyptic, robots, science fiction
Pages: 416
Published by DAW on May 26, 2026
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Forty years ago, the world nearly ended.
Be is an old robot who was there, and doesn’t want to think about what happened, or what role they played in that conflict. They have settled into a life of isolation in the abandoned ruins of an old mill in the former New York Botanical Gardens, disinterested in what has happened in the outside world since they stepped away from the war. Someone out there, though, has not forgotten about them, and when they are attacked, their person vandalized, and one of their leg stolen, they set out to find the thief accompanied by a cyborg dog and a human mechanic.
The world has changed, but the recovery from the war is uneven and faltering, and Be begins to suspect a malicious hand trying to rekindle the old conflict and finish what was started. In order to stop them, Be needs to come to terms with both their own past and who they have become, and how everything and everyone else they knew has changed in their absence. Being left alone is no longer an option, and peace may be impossible.
This is a story about coming to terms with your past, with who you’ve become and who you still want to be: a tale of resilence and hope, an ode to those struggling to become whole in a world half-broken.

My Review:

This one just blew me away. To the point where I had to let it settle for a day before writing this review, so that I could be coherent enough to say something more than just SQUEE! (Fair warning, I’m still going to squee because this was so awesome.

Initially, I picked this up because I loved the author’s Finder Chronicles, and the universe-weary voice of the series chaos-magnet protagonist, Fergus Ferguson. I wasn’t expecting more Fergus – I mean, it would be nice to get more of that series but Fergus’ AND HIS FRIENDS’ odds of survival degrade with each story so they’re all better off if he stays retired.

In Ode to the Half-Broken, from the perspective of its initially unnamed protagonist (and its name is DEFINITELY an integral part of the story) I got something entirely different – but equally as fascinating if not just a bit more – in every possible way.

It all begins when our unnamed main character wakes up in a bathtub in a ruined building, covered in EMP chips, disconnected from the network – and from most of their own senses. Minus one leg. As our point of view character is a bipedal mech, the loss of a leg is a significant impairment to mobility.

It gets better. Both in the physical sense and in the sense that the story just keeps getting better and better. We’re already invested in this mech’s dilemma/mystery and the story just keeps getting more involving as it goes. Just as the mech does.

The story takes the form of a great American road novel, as our mech sets out from their violated home base in the abandoned wilderness of New York City’s Central Park to find, first and foremost, someone who can restore their mobility. So that they can hunt for whoever, whatever and most importantly whyever their person and their sanctuary was invaded.

What it finds is a world going both right and wrong at the same time. As it gathers a team around it – to its own surprise – made up of different types of mechs from tiny drones to a former trainmech now embodied in a minibus, from a cyborg dog to a human mech mechanic – it trades its former solitude for a cooperative life with others pursuing the same goals and supporting each other through a landscape that is both trying to recover and being pushed towards a deeper disaster.

There are clearly opposing forces helping, hindering and hampering their quest on all sides. As the danger ramps up, the unnamed mech, now calling itself “Be”, is forced to explore a past they hoped they’d left behind them in order to protect their friends in the present in the hopes of finding a brighter future that seems to always be out of reach.

Afraid, very afraid, that if they reclaim their former identity, that future will already be lost.

Escape Rating A++: Reading this got me through a four-hour power failure. By got through I mean that I was so caught up in the story that I was able to ignore the beeping, fweeping and outright wailing of seemingly every single computing device and attendant uninterruptible power supply in the entire house. For FOUR hours. Which is, come to think of it, an appropriate metaphor for this story as its all about mechs and AIs and their integrations or cohabitations – or not – with humanity in this post-apocalyptic world that is doing its damndest either to get out of its current dystopia and/or shove that dystopia into full-on not just end of the world as they know it but end of everything.

The part of this review that’s above the rating doesn’t NEARLY encompass the depth of the story or my complete fascination with it and utter absorption in it. I’ll try some more here.

As readalikes kept popping into my head as I read this story, I realized that I’ve read a lot more robot/mech/AI stories in the past few years than I thought – and I thought I’d read quite a few. Thinking about those stories, and the whole of Ode to the Half-Broken, I think the way it plays out in my head is that it’s a trip through the post-apocalyptic dystopia of Service Model, but the dystopia is more like Shining Smith’s world in Junkyard Cats, hoping to get through its Mad Max style dysfunction to a post-post-apocalypse that has the hope and the healing of A Psalm for the Wild-Built, but with a level of interspecies/intermech/intereverything cooperation like Automatic Noodle. I could throw a few more books on that pile, particularly American War by Omar El Akkad, because the way this dystopia has fractured has a uniquely American feel. Not that Europe probably isn’t in just as big a mess, but if we were viewing this story from Europe, or Asia, or anywhere else in the world, it would look different. Just as fucked up, but different.

Ode to the Half-Broken is certainly a great American road novel, but the road it’s travelling on was created, bombed, and irradiated by the actual, literal four horsemen of the apocalypse. One of whom is trying to make the apocalypse worse, one who is helping the world recover, one who is actively fighting against any further collapse and one who is along for the ride, being a good boi AND a good friend every mile of the way.

I’m not even close to describing just how good this was. But I’m going to stop trying because I hope I’ve teased you enough to get you to read it. The characters were fascinating, fantastic and utterly real, from the narrator to the toolbox mechs to the dudebros and the warmongers. The world felt like one I could step out of the door and walk right into – even if that would be a bad idea for numerous reasons. It felt, well, both real and fully-realized and entirely too possible.

And yet, in the end, just as there was in Automatic Noodle but entirely differently, there’s hope. A hope that all the characters are clinging to – and so is the reader.

#BookReview: The Girl That My Mother is Leaving Me For by Cameron Reed

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews> novelette review> Short Story Review
#BookReview: The Girl That My Mother is Leaving Me For by Cameron ReedThe Girl That My Mother Is Leaving Me For by Cameron Reed
Format: ebook
Source: supplied by publisher via Hugo Packet
Formats available: ebook
Genres: dystopian, science fiction
Pages: 35
Published by Reactor Magazine, Tor Books on April 2, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

In a corporate-run dystopia, a trans girl plucked out of poverty to give birth to a clone meets her replacement.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

My Review: 

Welcome to the first in what will be a series of reviews of this year’s Hugo Nominated short works.

I’ve been voting on the Hugos since Chicon V in the early 2000s. Which doesn’t seem nearly as long ago as it actually is. BUT I’m primarily a novel reader, and more recently also a novella reader. I don’t go looking for novelettes and short stories over the course of a year. And I felt really bad about that when I submitted my ballot. Not that one has to vote in every category, but I felt like an opportunity was being missed – only because it was.

(And I fully admit that reviewing the shorter stuff – generally as podcasts when I can get them – helps me ensure there’s a daily post on Reading Reality. This seems like a win/win, so here we are.)

This year, I’m making more of an effort not to review things before they get discussed in the 2026 Hugo Readalong on reddit  because it’s fun to see what other people thought after I’ve finished my own thoughts. Or am at least in the middle of my own thoughts.

I’m starting this year with the novelette category, meaning stories over 7,500 words and under 15,000 words. About an hour in audio, which I get when I can. I’ve already read one of this year’s novelettes, Martha Wells’ most recent Murderbot short, “Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy”, originally published in Reactor on July 10, 2025 and reviewed last year.

“The Girl That My Mother Is Leaving Me For” is an intriguing story to begin this series with, as it’s a story that I ended up with mixed feelings about.

The thing about the shorter forms is that sometimes the story fits its length, and sometimes it feels like the story has been forced into a Procrustean bed, meaning that it’s been shoehorned into a shorter length than it really needed.

The background of this one had a LOT of interesting potential. From multiple axes. Or possibly with multiple axes being applied to make it fit.

From one perspective, it’s about a future dystopia of scarcity, where only the rich have enough of, well, anything and everyone else is underfed, underhoused and under the bootheels of the rich. (Unfortunately, it sounds like a future we could get to from here all too easily.)

We don’t get details of the how and the why, but because it’s already close to the possible, it’s easy to imagine. Which is where we get to the parts we can’t quite imagine.

Two megacorporations (lots of megacorps in SF right now, surprise, surprise) have chosen different formulas and origin stories to explain their own rises to the top. Formulas that involve cloning and literal and figurative programming of each successive CEO. It’s a cyberpunk world, with cyberpunk solutions.

The way that the CEO is created/raised, well, raises a whole bunch of questions about nature vs. nurture. OTOH each CEO is a clone of the previous. And very much OTOH, they’re raised through a vast scheme of lies and fabrications to replicate the experience of the original founder in ways that don’t logically work at all. From a certain perspective, the Founder’s origin story has been fetishized, and her successors are treating that precise origin story as the fount of all her genius even though the story takes place three generations later. While the facts of that biography can be replicated, the experience of it cannot.

And of course this story takes place when it all breaks down. So on top of all of the above we have the story of a very unreliable narrator trying to keep a toehold on survival as she’s being replaced AND what happens when the whole structure collapses and she and her wife are forced to flee and actually live the life they were supposedly replicating.

Which is where the story crashes into an abrupt thriller-type ending that leaves the future wide-open.

Escape Rating B: There’s a LOT of story going on, and it’s too big for its container. Because the above isn’t all of it – of course not – but it’s not even all the themes involved in it. One reviewer said that this would be great as the prologue to a longer story, and I think that’s close to right.

There are shortcuts in the setup that rely on the reader being familiar with cyberpunk and the current trend towards megacorporation conglomeration and control in SF. The situation in the story raises a whole bunch of nature/nurture questions AND manages to include stuff about the surveillance state while folding in a discussion about how embodiment and dysmorphia feel and work in a society where anyone (rich) can swap bodies – and everything that goes with that – whenever they want an upgrade for whatever upgrade means to them.

Those issues reminded me a LOT of These Fragile Graces, This Fugitive Heart by Izzy Wasserstein and especially Seth Haddon’s Volatile Memory Duology, Volatile Memory and and its upcoming conclusion, Null Entity. Especially Null Entity, which will be out in July.

But this story feels like a good place to start this year’s Hugo reviews. “The Girl That My Mother Is Leaving Me For” raises a lot of interesting issues, gives the reader a lot to think about and leaves the future hanging.

This series continues next week with one of the short stories, either “In My Country” or “Six People to Revise You” depending on which one I get to first!

Grade A #BookReview: The Monk by Tim Sullivan

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews
Grade A #BookReview: The Monk by Tim SullivanThe Monk (The DS Cross Mysteries #5) by Tim Sullivan
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: crime thriller, mystery
Series: DS George Cross #5
Pages: 384
Published by Atlantic Crime on April 7, 2026
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

For at finde en drabsmand skal man have et motiv ...
Kriminalassistent George Cross bliver tilkaldt, da liget af en munk bliver fundet brutalt myrdet i et skovområde nær Bristol.
Man ved intet om broder Dominics fortid. Hvordan kan Cross opklare forbrydelsen, når han ikke ved noget om offeret? Og hvorfor skulle nogen ønske at gøre en munk fortræd?
De finder ud af, at broder Dominic ikke havde nogen fjender – eller i hvert fald ikke nogen, der er åbenlyse. Men hans fortid afslører, at han engang var en velhavende mand, og at han ofrede det hele for sin tro.
For en mand, der intet har, virker det mærkeligt, at grådighed kan være motivet for hans drab. Men grådighed er trods alt en synd ...
---
"Et intelligent mysterium fuld af spænding, men også af humor og medfølelse. George Cross er ved at blive en af mine yndlingsdetektiver." - Elly Griffiths
"Jeg er smaskforelsket i George Cross." - Stephen Fry
"Det ultimative et spændende plot med en engageret kriminalassistent, som jeg ville følge til verdens ende. Bare genialt!" - Marion Todd
"En genial kriminalassistent af den gamle skole med et moderne tvist ... fra de komplekse følelser i hans privatliv til de knivskarpe detaljer i politiets efterforskning. Spot on!" - Russ Thomas
"Tim Sullivans detektiv, kriminalassistent George Cross, er autist. Hans tilgang til efterforskningen er uortodoks ... han fungerer overraskende godt som en fiktiv karakter, der behandler spor på en måde, der minder om Poirots 'små grå celler'." - Sunday Times
"Endnu en tour de force ... Hvis du er på udkig efter en god krimiserie, kan du ikke få meget bedre end denne. George Cross er en absolut fornøjelse." - Biskop Stortford Independent

My Review:

The question on the minds of everyone involved with this case is “who would want to murder a monk?” Because the sight of a monk, in full habit, dumped in a ditch, duct-taped to a chair and literally and obviously beaten to death, causes pretty much every mind involved to rabbit around the wrong question. Not that it’s not both important and heinous that Brother Dominic is dead – particularly in such a brutal and gruesome fashion. Even DS Cross gets caught up in it and sent off track as rarely happens to him.

But it’s not about a monk. Or any monk. It’s about this person, whether as Brother Dominic or as the man he used to be. Whoever that might have been. Because no one commits this much brutality against a random stranger – or even a random strange monk. He was someone very specific to somebody who specifically wanted him dead.

The question is why? Which begs the question of who the man was before he joined the monastery and retreated from the world. Who did he let in? Or who discovered where he had shut himself in?

The case, as is usual with Cross, went places that no one really wanted him to go. Because that’s what he does. He is compelled to discover the truth. Not an approximation of the truth, not something adjacent to the truth, not something ‘close enough for government work’ to the truth.

The actual truth. No matter how much it drives his DCI out of his tiny mind (and it IS rather small) AND the way it makes his colleagues groan because he usually has one last (important) tangent to uncover after a case is theoretically closed.

That in this case EVERYTHING is complicated – not just by the usual secrets and lies – but by the mystery that surrounds the victim’s identity. The way that identity casts confusion into Cross’s own life makes this entry in the series even more of a puzzle than usual. And pushes Cross into multiple discomfort zones even as it brings him an unexpected bit of community in a place he never expected.

Escape Rating A: This story has been calling my name since I finished the previous book in the series, The Politician, just a few weeks ago. (Time flies when you’re either having fun OR reading. Especially reading.)

The story also teased me because it reminded me just a bit of one of the Inspector Gamache books, which turns out to have been The Beautiful Mystery. Because that story is also set in a monastery and also involves a murder that occurs because the monks let the outside world IN a bit more than was wise. Or perhaps even godly. Not that Cross is a religious believer of any stripe. Faith just isn’t logical to his rigidly ordered mind.

The case is a bit of a mess this time around. Or, to be strictly accurate, DS George Cross is a mess this time around. A different mess than he usually is in a way that knocks him a bit off his game in ways he is having difficulty dealing with.

Everyone involved focuses on the habit the victim is wearing and not the man inside the habit. Brother Dominic’s vocation discombobulates everyone around the case. Because no one expects someone dedicated to a religious life to be murdered – to even have anything worth murdering FOR. It offends the sensibilities.

Cross would claim he doesn’t have those. But of course he does, they’re just triggered differently. In this case, they’re triggered first because everyone is wasting time around their disbelief and not investigating the case of who it was done to so they can figure out whodunnit.

When Brother Dominic’s earlier life is finally uncovered, Cross is sent off track in a different way. Because Brother Dominic’s brother, his biological sibling, is one of Cross’s few friends. Not that Cross likes to admit that he has those or that he’s invited nearly as many people into his internal circle as have managed to inveigle themselves there.

At the same time, the reveal of Brother Dominic’s original identity opens up multiple new cans of wormy clues to his murder. Which leads back to the destruction of a family legacy, to an inability for some of the privileged to acknowledge their own actions or the consequences thereof, and to the old motives of revenge being a dish best served both ice cold and all around.

And it’s that last that keeps Cross investigating – and the reader guessing – until the very last page.

This series has been an absorbing delight to read. Which means that I’ll be back in a month or two with the next book in the series, The Teacher, as soon as the ‘round tuit’ circles back around to DS Cross and his fascinating cases.

Memorial Day 2026: Books at War

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | Holidays> Memorial Day
Poster of a WWI solder climbing a path of books labelled, drafting, citizenship, building, seamanship, etc. Captioned "Knowledge Wins" and "Public Library Books Are Free"
“Knowledge Wins” WWI propaganda poster by the American Library Association

Burton E. Stevenson, librarian at Camp Sherman in Chillicothe, Ohio, during World War I:

“When I started this work, I had some very plausible theories about the kinds of books the men would want; but I soon discarded them. We have had requests here for every sort of book, from some books by Gene Stratton Porter to Boswell’s ‘Life of Johnson’ and Bergson’s ‘Creative Evolution.’ We have had requests for Ibsen’s plays; for books on sewage disposal; and so many requests for ‘A Message to Garcia’ that I had a supply mimeographed. In one building there were so many requests for books on religion and ethics that we set up a small reference collection. Broadly speaking, of course, most of the men read fiction ; exciting, red-blooded fiction-detective stories, adventure stories, and so on. But there is also a steady demand for Conrad, and Wells, and Hardy, and Meredith. Poetry is also in demand, and good books of travel go well. The only kind of books we don’t want is the salacious, risqué sort—for they have no place in our camp libraries. And we don’t care for unattractive, cheap editions, with yellow, muddy paper and flimsy binding. We want attractive books—nice, clean copies of good editions—and the more of these we get the better service we can give the men.

Bookplate with an image of a WWI soldier carrying a huge stack of books. Captioned "War Service Library: Books are provided by the people of the United States through the American Library Association for the use of the soldiers and sailors.
War Service Library bookplate, ca. 1917

This quote is found in a 1918 pamphlet, “War Service of the American Library Association”, by Theodore Koch of the Library of Congress. It describes a project by the American Library Association, in collaboration with the War Department and other organizations, to acquire and make books available to soldiers and sailors during WWI. Libraries were set up at many training camps in the U.S. and books were sent overseas for distribution to the front lines, military hospitals, and prisoners of war. (Regarding the trenches, one British officer, when writing back home to request some books, noted “Don’t suggest that I should read ‘War and Peace.’ If one makes ambitious plans like that, one certainly gets killed in the midst of them.”).

Koch subsequently expanded his observations in a book, Books in the War; the Romance of Library War Service. The book describes not only ALA’s War Service, but also the efforts of the French and British to distribute books, including books in Braille for the benefit of soldiers blinded during the war. ALA’s overseas efforts eventually led to the establishment of a headquarters library in Paris. That HQ ended up becoming itself one of the memorials to the war that is going strong to this day: The American Library in Paris, the largest English-language lending library on the European continent.

The pamphlet ends with the following poem, read by Mr. Nixon Waterman at the dedication of the ALA Library at Camp Johnston, Florida:

Arms and the Man

Men, with War’s challenge before you,
You who must win in the fight,
You who shall bring the glad morning
After War’s terrible night;
Here find the way and the wisdom
To match and to master the Hun,
Translating the book and its message
Into the speech of the gun.

Here find the counsel to stay you
Down through the riot and ruck,
Here find the zeal that shall lift you
Out of the mire and muck.
Here are the words of your seniors,
Your masterly skill to increase,
And type’s many tongues to direct you
On toward the daybreak of peace.

Perhaps not the best example of poetry, but it serves to express two of the purposes of the Library War Service: helping the soldiers fight better via technical materials and distraction during pauses in combat, but perhaps more importantly, laying groundwork in those who survived to see the peace to make the most of it.

I will close this post with another extract from the book:

“A handsome young blond giant who looked like a native American, one arm strapped to his side, was scrutinizing closely the papers in my bag. ‘What is that you have there?’ he asked, most politely. *Oh, nothing you would care for,’ said I; ‘only two old Greek newspapers.’ ‘Well, Greek is my language,’ said he, ‘and it’s a long time since I’ve seen a word of it. May I have them?’ And as he sank into the nearest chair and lost himself in the precious papers he murmured rapturously, ‘First Greek words I’ve seen in six months.'”

This little incident. Miss Freeman went on to say, brought home to her, as nothing else had, a realization of how many nationalities have gone into the making of America, and have poured out their blood, as stanch Americans, upon the fields of France.

May we never forget the sacrifices of those who came from all over the world to be Americans and sometimes lost their lives in service to our country.

The Sunday Post AKA What’s on my (Mostly Virtual) Nightstand 5-24-26

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | The Sunday Post> Virtual Nightstand

First, you have no idea how many books I bailed on this week. Both in text and in audio. I’m not sure whether it was me or them, but I was throwing stuff to the side left, right and center. In the car. (It’s very awkward while driving!)

I’m not at all sure about this coming week’s schedule, either. Even with Galen doing his usual holiday guest essay on Monday. I’m definitely starting my annual Hugo Award nomination readings this week. Both because I need at least one short thing AND because the votes are due August 8 and there are a lot of novelettes and short stories to go through first. So it’s time to start on THAT before they turn into a 12-review pileup at the end. No one wants that. Not even me.

Today’s featured feline is Hecate, because she’s perfectly posed for what looks like it will be a cool, drippy 3 day weekend around here. We bought those shelves for her. The others too, but especially her. They’re her favorite place to hang out because she can watch us and if she wants to watch the ‘kitty television’ outside, all she has to do is roll (carefully) over. But she’s looking inside watching us because its so wet out there’s not much to see outside. And we’re feeling the same!

Current Giveaways:

$10 Gift Card or $10 Book in the Spring 2026 Seasons of Books Giveaway Hop
$10 Gift Card or $10 Book PLUS EVENT-WIDE AMAZON/PAYPAL PRIZE in The Summer Giveaway Event

Blog Recap:

A- #AudioBookReview: A Deadly Episode by Anthony Horowitz
Summer Giveaway Event!
B #BookReview: It’s Hard to Be an Animal by Robert Isaacs
Grade A #BookReview: In a Dangerous Orbit by Anna Hackett
Grade A #BookReview: The Summer Share by Jenn McKinlay
Stacking the Shelves (706)

Coming This Week:

Memorial Day 2026 (#GuestPost by Galen)
The Monk by Tim Sullivan (#BookReview)
The Re-Do List by Denise Williams (#BookReview)
Kaiju Agonistes by Scott Lynch (#HugoReview)
The Ivory City by Emily Bain Murphy (#BookReview)

Stacking the Shelves (706)

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | Stacking the Shelves

These aren’t pretty. Seriously, they just aren’t. It’s been weird for a while. Like “pretty” book covers have gone out of style. There’s cute, there’s interesting, there’s intriguing, there’s scary, there’s outright gory, there’s occasionally downright boring, but not “pretty”. I think I’m weirded out.

The cute ones are (unsurprisingly) the romance covers, It Seemed Like a Good Idea and The Lust Crusade. This Story Might Save Your Life has an interesting cover. Grief Eater and Needlemouth certainly  have scary and gory covered (in blood). The intriguing covers – at least for this reader – are A Trade of Blood and Wickhills. (I KNOW both books are fascinating because I’ve already finished them for Library Journal reviews.

I’ll leave boring in the eye of the beholder. But pretty seems to have left the building – or at least the last few weeks’ stacks.

What about you? Anything in YOUR stack you can’t wait to dive into this 3-day weekend?

final target by nora roberts
curse of hester gardens by tamika thompson
more than enough by anna quindlen
innocence road by laura griffin
whalesong by miles cameron
lust crusade by jo segura
sweetbitter song by rosie hawlett
trade of blood by robert jackson bennett
nothing tastes as good by luke dumas
this story might save your life by tiffany crum
portrait of a witch undone by ks shay
wickhills by premee mohamed
write off by kara mcdowell
it seemed like a good idea by lauren blakely
grief eater by emma osborne
temptation of charlotte north by camilla bruce
until death by mary berman
earth 7 by deb olin unferth
encore by juliet izon
needlemouth by k ming chang
deep black by miles cameron
house that eats the dead by max doty

For Review:
The Curse of Hester Gardens by Tamika Thompson
Deep Black (Arcana Imperii #2) by Miles Cameron
Earth 7 by Deb Olin Unferth
The Encore by Juliet Izon
The Final Target by Nora Roberts
Grief Eater by Emma Osborne
The House That Eats the Dead by Max Doty
Innocence Road by Laura Griffin
It Seemed Like a Good Idea (Darling Springs #1) by Lauren Blakely
More Than Enough by Anna Quindlen
Needlemouth by K-Ming Chang
Nothing Tastes as Good by Luke Dumas
A Perfect Hand by Ayelet Waldman
Portrait of a Witch Undone by K.S. Shay
Sweetbitter Song by Rosie Hewlett
The Temptation of Charlotte North by Camilla Bruce
A Trade of Blood (Shadow of the Leviathan #3) by Robert Jackson Bennett
Until Death by Mary Berman
Whalesong (Arcana Imperii #3) by Miles Cameron
Wickhills by Premee Mohamed
The Write Off by Kara McDowell

Borrowed from the Library:
The Lust Crusade by Jo Segura
This Story Might Save Your Life by Tiffany Crum

If you want to find out more about Stacking The Shelves, please visit the official launch page

Please link your STS post in the linky below:

Grade A #BookReview: The Summer Share by Jenn McKinlay

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews
Grade A #BookReview: The Summer Share by Jenn McKinlayThe Summer Share by Jenn McKinlay
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, large print, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, family life fiction, friendship fiction, relationship fiction, romantic comedy, women's fiction
Pages: 368
Published by Berkley on May 26, 2026
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

When two misfits discover they’ve inherited the same beach house, sparks fly in the most unexpected ways, in this hilarious and heartfelt rom-com from the New York Times bestselling author of Summer Reading.
Free-spirited travel influencer Hannah Spencer has spent five years touring the country in her vintage van. An unexpected inheritance from her Pops brings Hannah to Cape Split, North Carolina, where she learns she’s the new owner of a worse-for-wear seaside beach house. Or, rather, fifty percent of one. Turns out Simon O’Malley inherited the other half from his Gramps.
As Simon and Hannah spend the summer tag-teaming repairs on the crumbling cottage, they discover the house was once home to a timeless love story. Soon, they begin to wonder if the house’s romantic past may be a good omen for their future together. But there’s one problem—Simon is set on selling the property at the end of the summer.
Hannah thought one summer at the Split would be enough, except it isn’t like any place she’s ever been, and Simon isn’t like any man she’s ever known—and she’s thinking about putting down some roots. She just needs Simon to see their budding relationship and this newfound community the same way or their first summer share might also be their last.

My Review:

I picked this up because I loved Witches of Dubious Origin. While I wasn’t exactly hoping for the same kind of book, because Witches is cozy fantasy and this book is more cozy small town romance/relationship, I was still hoping for some of the same sensibilities – and certainly some of the same charm.

Those things I definitely got!

The meeting between Hannah Spencer and Simon O’Malley isn’t so much of a “meet-cute” as it is a meet really, really awkward with a big surprise inside. Literally inside the beach house on the Outer Banks they each thought they’d inherited from their beloved grandfather which turns out NOT to be a solo inheritance.

Hannah inherited her HALF of the cottage from her “Pops”, while Simon inherited HIS half from his beloved “Gramps”. Now they’re stuck with each other – according to their grandfathers’ wills – for two whole months during a glorious Outer Banks summer. At the end of the two months, they can each do what they like with their half. But that assumes they’ll be on something like the same page at the end.

They sure don’t start out there, not on the same page, not even in the same book. She wants to stay. After five years of being a travel influencer, Hannah is ready to stop living out of her van. The minute she sees the cottage, she recognizes that she’s tired of running from her past griefs and traumas, and that this gift from her “Pops” is a golden opportunity to make both a home and a homebase for herself and her big, goofy, Harlequin Great Dane, Dude.

Simon needs to sell. He needs the money to support his brother Charlie’s long-term medical care – and keep their rapacious father away from Charlie’s medical conservatorship and the money invested in it. And he can’t make the kind of living he needs to on the Outer Banks to make sure he has enough to be there for both of his adult siblings, because he KNOWS their father won’t.

But the story isn’t just about Hannah and Simon and Dude. (Not that Dude doesn’t steal every scene he galumphs into.) Not even though the romance that steals up on Hannah and Simon is lovely and hesitant and hot and sweet in all the right ways.

The romance that steals the story is the one that started 60 years ago, between two young men who met and fell in love over a contested fishing spot, during one golden Outer Banks summer – before one shipped off to war and the other began the life he was expected to have. Only to find each other decades later, and return to the place they were happiest, with time enough for a second chance with the love of their lives.

A secret they both kept from their entire families for decades, leaving their grandchildren with a chance for happiness of their very own. If Hannah and Simon can step out from their own secrets and traumas and grab the opportunity with all four hands – and four paws.

Escape Rating A: I picked this up early because it looked like the precise antidote for my reading slump – which it definitely turned out to be. I had a terrific reading time, to the point where I almost wish this was the start of a series because as much as I loved the main characters and THEIR story, I’d love to go back and see more of the whole community. They were great folks AND I need to see how ‘The Dude’ is abiding.

What’s driving me crazy about this book is that I can’t decide whether it’s a romance that just happens to, well, happen in the midst of a story about family relationships, found families, family secrets and a great community – or if the shoe is on the other foot and its a relationship story in which a romance occurs in the present because a different romance occurred in the past.

I know I’m splitting hairs a bit, but for my reading group it’s a serious question and I keep waffling about the answer.

Whichever comes first, the romance or the circle of family and community relationships, the story is delightful – and not just because of Dude. Not that he’s not a HUGE spread of icing on this delicious (book) cake.

What made this book work for me is the way that different plot threads played off against each other – and that the changes and revelations happen at what feels like a realistic and human length of time – and not in an instant.

Because three stories intertwine in The Summer Share. The one at the top of the pile is the ill-advised, somewhat hesitant, emotionally complex slow-burn into conflagration romance between Hannah and Simon. They’re surprised at their joint inheritance. They’re shocked at the secret their grandfathers were keeping. They’re hurt that the person they thought they were SO very close to kept such a huge secret for so many years.

At the same time, discovering that secret – and investigating the whole story of their grandfathers’ secret life in the OBX, brings them together AND connects them with the community. A community that had taken Bobby and Billy into their hearts and is more than happy to take their grandchildren to that same place. One startling revelation at a time.

And underneath all of that are the issues and family relationships and traumas that Hannah and Simon came to the cottage with in the first place. All the things that need to be resolved before they can get to their own happy ever after.

In the end, I had a lovely reading time on the Outer Banks with Hannah and Simon. And Dude. Mustn’t forget the Dude. Their troubles felt real, their solutions felt solid, and their happiness was definitely earned. This is a book that will leave readers with a big smile on their faces, whether they come for the romance or for all the intertwined relationships that make a community and a life.