Fourteenth Annual Blogo-Birthday Celebration Week and Giveaway!

This year’s OMG Fourteenth Blogo-Birthday Week Celebration technically began with yesterday’s Sunday Post. The actual, technical blogoversary is this Friday, April 4, with my own birthday the following day, April 5, which is when the final giveaway will be posted.

Reading Reality began on April 4, 2011, under the name “Escape Reality, Read Fiction”, which is also the reason the ratings are “Escape Ratings” and “Reality Ratings”. This blog, and all of the other reading/writing/reviewing activities that have grown up around it over the past fourteen years have turned into both my longest and my absolute favorite job. At least in part because I created it out of things that I wanted to do, and can do the work at whatever time feels right to me.

Meaning that I do a lot of my reading late at night – although not generally as late as I used to. More often 1:00AM and less likely 3:00AM – not that I don’t see that time on the clock when the book is so excellent that I can’t make myself stop reading!

This week, this Blogo-Birthday Celebration, is a Hobbit Birthday. In The Lord of the Rings, at the very beginning of The Fellowship of the Ring, we learn that when hobbits celebrate their birthdays, its an occasion for giving presents to others – not receiving presents for oneself. In that spirit, there will be giveaways every day this week, whether gift cards or books or the winner’s choice between the two.

It’s my way of saying thanks to each and every single one of you who read my reviews, comment on my posts, participate in the giveaways – and admire the pictures of the cats. I’m grateful to you all for being a part of my journey!

Therefore, in thanks and appreciation to YOU, on this second day of my Blogo-Birthday Celebration Week I have a giveaway, just as I did yesterday and will every day the rest of the week. Today’s giveaway is for a $25 (US) Gift Card for Amazon or to a bookstore of your choice if you have a local that sells gift cards over the interwebs. (If you live outside the US and have a local Amazon, the gift card will be the equivalent of $25 US from your country’s Amazon.)

I also have one $25 Barnes and Noble Gift Card to give away as well. This is a physical card that I’ll mail to the lucky recipient. It’s a lucky find from one of my desk drawers, but it’s unused and doesn’t expire so someone will get the benefit of it this year.

As always, from the bottom of my bookish and cat-loving heart, my heartfelt thanks to each and every one of you who has been part of this adventure. There’s more to come!

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The Sunday Post AKA What’s on my (Mostly Virtual) Nightstand 3-30-25 + Giveaway!

Today marks the start of Reading Reality’s FOURTEENTH! Annual Blogo-Birthday Celebration Week. Which means that today starts an entire week of giveaways. YAY! I’ll get more into the whole Hobbit Birthday thing of this week’s celebration in tomorrow’s post, which will include one of the big giveaways, but today is just a bit of a kickoff to start the festivities. Please come back every day this week to get in on ALL the prizes!

In the meantime, this week just finished was still a regular week of blogging and reading and reviewing – and it was a good one. First, I get to give one more shoutout to the marvelous historical mystery, The Railway Conspiracy by John Shen Yen Nee and SJ Rozan. It just so happens that this was the title I highlighted for this week in last Sunday’s Post, and now it’s the Book of the Week because it got this week’s highest rating. It was an absolutely excellent read/listen and I can’t recommend this one highly enough – although I do certainly keep trying!

It’s not a Sunday Post without a cat picture so here’s today’s poster cat. Hecate is dozing in the sun on one of her favorite perches, making the world go away as only a napping kitty can.

Current Giveaways:

$10 Gift Card or $10 Book PLUS EVENT-WIDE AMAZON/PAYPAL PRIZE in the Spring, March Madness, Earth Month and Mother’s Day Giveaway Event!
$10 Gift Card or $10 Book in the Spring 2025 Seasons of Books Giveaway Hop

Blog Recap:

B #BookReview: The Cat Who Saved the Library by Sosuke Natsukawa, translated by Louise Heal Kawai
B #BookReview: Luminous by Silvia Park
Grade A #AudioBookReview: The Railway Conspiracy by John Shen Yen Nee and SJ Rozan
B #BookReview: The Undermining of Twyla and Frank by Megan Bannen
A- #BookReview: Where the Axe is Buried by Ray Nayler
Stacking the Shelves (646)

Coming This Week:

Blogo-Birthday Celebration Week Begins! + Giveaway!
Honey Bunny Giveaway Hop
Direct Descendant by Tanya Huff (#BookReview + Giveaway)
The Three Locks by Bonnie MacBird (#BookReview + Giveaway)
Blogo-Birthday Celebration + Giveaway!

 

~~~~~~ GIVEAWAY ~~~~~~

Welcome to the very first giveaway of this year’s Blogo-Birthday Celebration! As I write this on Friday, the weather this weekend in the ATL is expected to be a glorious spring day on Saturday and a nasty thunderstorm on Sunday. Which sounds like a perfect spring weekend to me – a day to go out in the sun AND a day to stay in and read. Spring might not even have sprung yet where you are, but it will eventually, so what’s your favorite thing to do on a beautiful spring day? Answer in the rafflecopter for your chance at one of Reading Reality’s usual prizes, the winner’s choice of a $10 Amazon Gift Card or $10 in Books.

And don’t forgot to come back tomorrow for another giveaway!

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Blogo-Birthday Birthday Book Celebration and #Giveaway!

It’s snuck up on my again. Today is my 67th birthday.

Today is also “First Contact Day” in the Star Trek Universe, which is fitting as I’ve been a fan since I first watched the show with my dad as it was originally broadcast. To paraphrase another ‘verse, that’s a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. The past is another country, and they do things differently there.

Referring to another fandom I fell into at about the same time, I’m having a Hobbit birthday, meaning that I’m giving away presents instead of getting them. (Galen and I aren’t doing presents this year, as we’re rolling all of this year’s presents into a later trip, but I did finally get myself a set of AirPods.)

Spring has officially sprung, and 2024 is one quarter over. Meaning that enough reading has happened here at Chez Reading Reality to make a giveaway of my favorite books of the year so far a VERY reasonable possibility.

So I’ll be giving the winner’s choice of one of my favorite books this year so far to one lucky commenter on this post. I’m going to be a bit loosey-goosey about it this time around, because 1)all the books in the Barker & Llewelyn series have been Grade A books so far, so this is another bite at that apple, and 2)two of this year’s bests are book two in their respective series so if you haven’t read the first book yet it will also be available.

This giveaway is open internationally. If the winner is in the US, the books will be shipped from Amazon or your local bookshop if you have one that can handle this business over the interwebs. But if the winner is outside the U.S. and not in one of the other countries where there’s a ‘zon outpost, books will be sent from Wordery, which ships worldwide for free.

The list to choose from is (drumroll, please):

The Bell in the Fog by Lev AC Rosen
The Bezzle by Cory Doctorow
The Black Hand by Will Thomas
Come Tumbling Down by Seanan McGuire
Demon Daughter by Lois McMaster Bujold
Gryphon by M.L. Buchman
The Hellfire Conspiracy by Will Thomas
Holmes, Marple & Poe by James Patterson and Brian Sitts
The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles by Malka Older
The Lantern’s Dance by Laurie R. King
Lavender House by Lev AC Rosen
The Lies of the Ajungo by Moses Ose Utomi
Mastering the Art of French Murder by Colleen Cambridge
The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older
Mislaid in Parts Half-Known by Seanan McGuire
The Missing Witness by Allison Brennan
Red Team Blues by Cory Doctorow
The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett
These Fragile Graces, This Fugitive Heart by Izzy Wasserstein
The Truth of the Aleke by Moses Ose Utomi
What You Are Looking For Is In the Library by Michiko Aoyama

I went diving a bit deeper in order to pick multiple genres to make sure there’s something on this list for everyone, but clearly it’s been a very murder-y, fantasy, SF-y year so far. So if I’ve missed your favorite genre and there’s a book you’re dying to read, I’d be happy to share that with you (up to $25 US) instead.

Just let me know in the rafflecopter what book you’d most like to have your very own copy of, from my list or yours, in whatever format suits you best. Someone is going to get very lucky, at least reading-wise!

This post ends this Lucky 13th Blogo-Birthday Celebration Week. If you haven’t checked out the rest of this week’s posts, there’s been a giveaway every day, so be sure to enter any and all that look like your jam.

Next year – OMG it’s wild to be talking about NEXT year when it seems like this year has barely begun – the Celebration will take place the week of March 31-April 5. Come one, come all, and be sure to come back over the year between to see what fabulous books and fantastic giveaways happen in all the months between now and then!

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LUCKY THIRTEENTH Annual Blogo-Birthday Celebration and #Giveaway!

Today is the LUCKY 13th anniversary of the very first post on Reading Reality, then called “Escape Reality, Read Fiction.” I think the t-shirt that inspired that name is still hanging in the back of my closet.

I’ve been referring to this as the “Lucky 13th” anniversary because I do feel lucky to have lit on the idea of a blog thirteen years ago, and even though blogs are not the force that they were back then, I still feel very lucky every day to have meaningful work to do – even if I had to invent the job myself!

I feel especially lucky this year to be a recipient of the ALA RUSA CODES Louis Shores Award for “excellence in book reviewing”. The award is in recognition of my work here at Reading Reality, my contributions to Library Journal, and my service on several of the Reference and User Services Division’s adult book awards committees over the past 11 years and counting.

 

And I always feel lucky, that all of you who read my reviews and comment on my posts – and participate in the giveaways! – are out there making this whole thing worthwhile. I appreciate all of you more than I can say.

Which is why Reading Reality’s blogoversary, my own birthday tomorrow, and this whole entire week, are Hobbit birthdays. Meaning that I’m giving away presents every single day as part of the celebration.

Without further ado, in thanks and appreciation to all of you, on this fourth day of my Blogo-Birthday Celebration Week I have a giveaway, just as I have every day this week and will tomorrow. Today’s giveaway is for a $25 (US) Gift Card for Amazon or to a bookstore of your choice if you have a local that sells gift cards over the interwebs. (If you live outside the US and have a local Amazon, the gift card will be the equivalent of $25 US from your country’s Amazon.)

I also have FOUR $25 Barnes and Noble Gift Cards to give away as well. These are physical cards that I’ll mail to the lucky recipients. They are a lucky find from one of my desk drawers, but they are unused and don’t expire so several people will get the benefit of them this year.

As always, from the bottom of my bookish and cat-loving heart, my heartfelt thanks to each and every one of you who has been part of this journey. There’s more to come!

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A- #BookReview: A Body at the Dance Hall by Marty Wingate + #Giveaway

A- #BookReview: A Body at the Dance Hall by Marty Wingate + #GiveawayA Body at the Dance Hall (London Ladies' Murder Club #3) by Marty Wingate
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy mystery, historical mystery
Series: London Ladies' Murder Club #3
Pages: 304
Published by Bookouture on April 8, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleBookshop.org
Goodreads

1922. Amateur sleuth Mabel Canning is surrounded by the bright lights of London as she chaperones a young American woman to a dance. But when someone is murdered, a deadly tango begins…Meet plucky woman-about-town Mabel Canning, leader of the London Ladies’ Murder Club and trusted assistant to gentlewomen. When she is tasked with accompanying Roxy, a fun-loving heiress, on a glamorous night out, Mabel can’t wait to sip champagne and practice the foxtrot. But just as Roxy sashays out of sight, a mysterious man warns Mabel that the feisty young redhead is in danger. And someone is dead before the music stops...Roxy was the last person to see the victim alive, and she stumbles into Mabel’s arms with her daffodil-yellow dress splashed with blood. Determined to protect her ward, Mabel gathers her dashing beau Winstone and her pals from the murder club. Together they trace the weapon back to the ballroom, but when its twin goes missing, it is clear time is running out to prevent another murder on the dance floor…The police conclude the killer is in Roxy’s family, but Mabel finds herself spinning between a motley troupe of suspects. Mr Bryars, the anxious ballroom manager, is constantly tripping over himself to hide his secrets. But would he kill to protect his reputation? And young Ned Kettle may have looked dashing while waltzing around with Roxy, but he was once a notorious thief. Is the sticky-fingered rogue also a dab hand at murder?Just as Mabel and her murder club friends quickstep closer to the truth, Roxy is kidnapped, and Mabel comes cheek to cheek with the killer. Can she save poor Roxy and herself? Or has she danced her last dance?A delightfully witty and utterly addictive whodunnit absolutely bursting with 1920s sparkle, from USA Today bestselling author Marty Wingate. Perfect for fans of Agatha Christie, Richard Osman, Verity Bright and T.E. Kinsey.

My Review:

As a member of Miss Kerr’s Useful Women Agency, Mabel Canning has taken on all kinds of jobs and been useful to many different people, from helping someone decide on wallpaper to delivering packages to making sure that certain young scamps really do board their trains back to school.

It’s not at all outside the bounds of the services offered by the Useful Women Agency for Mabel to accompany a young American woman on outings and excursions, to be her tour guide while keeping an eye on her, and doing her best to keep Roxanne Arkwright out of trouble.

But trouble finds Mabel, as it has in her previous adventures, A Body on the Doorstep and A Body at the Séance, in the form of, well, a dead body – this time on the floor of the Hammersmith Palais de Danse.

(Yes, it’s a new face on the ballroom floor, which is how I always heard the phrase, “new face on the BARroom floor” as a child. I’m both tickled at the reference and chagrined at how long it took me to figure it out – albeit not THIS long.)

Scotland Yard, in the person of Detective Inspector Tollerton isn’t nearly as surprised as he’d like to be to discover Mabel on the scene of yet another murder – but Mabel has been useful to Scotland Yard in two previous cases, so Tollerton seems to have reached a position of tolerance, at least, on the subject of Mabel and her penchant for being on the scene when a body drops at someone’s feet – whether those feet are her own or not.

At least this time around Mabel can’t possibly be a suspect, as she was locked in the Palais’ larder at the time. And neither can her charge, Roxanne Arkwright, be in this particular frame. Although Roxanne’s father certainly could be. And briefly is as the case unfolds.

That the murder victim, Oswald Deuchar, was a private investigator in the employ of Roxanne’s father, Rupert Arkwright, for the purpose of watching over Roxanne – along with Mabel but without her knowledge – adds both to the confusion and to the potential motives for his death. After all, private investigators, even ones as quirky and eccentric as Deuchar often accumulate enemies.

Unless the poor man’s death wasn’t about Oswald the investigator and protector, but instead had everything to do with his protectee – and Mabel’s – Roxanne Arkwright.

Escape Rating A-: I’ve already reached the point in Mabel’s adventures where I’m here specifically for her, and the particular case she’s working on is just extra. A compelling extra in the case of A Body at the Dance Hall, but still extra. I’m here to see how Mabel and her friends are doing, and to watch as she learns more about London, her assigned jobs for the Useful Women Agency, and the progress of her romance with her neighbor, Park Winstone. I’m especially here for the way that she keeps learning how to be a good investigator as well as an independent woman, a good worker and a good friend.

What I really like about Mabel and her adventures is that Mabel comes into the story both by agency and with agency and that it doesn’t feel anachronistic that she does.

In the first book in the series, A Body on the Doorstep, Mabel comes to London from the tiny village of Peasmarsh. She’s in her early 30s, never married, and has always dreamed of being on her own. She loves her father dearly, but Peasmarsh is a small, insular town and she’s not ready to settle into the plans it has for her.

Mabel’s comes to London after both the Great War and the Spanish Flu epidemic. An entire generation of young British men died in the trenches, to the point where Mabel is one of many women who may have to make their own ways in the world because of those losses. The idea that she might be on her own, that her father may worry about her – he does – that the doorman at her building looks out for her on his behalf and sends back reports – which he does – does not mean that Mabel isn’t completely independent. It just means that he loves her and wants to know someone is looking out for her, but even that doorman abides by the principle that what her dad doesn’t know won’t hurt anyone. No one is supporting Mabel except herself and she answers to no one except Miss Kerr at the Useful Women Agency.

Mabel’s life is a far cry – and a delightful one – from women in quite a lot of historical mysteries (including the one I bailed on last week in a rage). Mabel’s world isn’t fair to women – the world STILL isn’t – but her times and her circumstances allow her to be in a position to answer to herself alone and not be forced to kowtow to the men in her life for every second of her existence. Which was a true experience but isn’t any fun to read and too many female-fronted historical mysteries spend the first third of the book if not more showing all the ways that the world forces them to conform and how they, in turn, are forced to work around all those restrictions.

This series is a breath of fresh air because Mabel doesn’t have to do all of that heavy lifting just to be about her business. And I’m so very happy that is so and honestly relieved to start another of her cases.

And I’ll get down from my soapbox now.

The thing about this particular case is that both Roxanne and the villain have daddy issues. Their fathers have been missing from their lives from about the same age – but the reasons for their absence are quite different, and the results, well, the results are about as diametrically opposed as they could get – very few of which have to do with their positions at nearly opposite ends of the socioeconomic ladder.

Because I don’t want to get into spoiler territory, let’s talk about Roxanne’s issues because, well, her issues have issues and not a one of them is her fault. Her parents are divorced, her mother left England for America eight years ago, when Roxy was just ten years old. And her mother has been gaslighting her ever since about pretty much everything to do with her father, to the point of outright parental alienation so severe as to constitute emotional abuse while demonstrating EXACTLY why parental alienation is considered emotional abuse at the same time. Roxanne comes to London expecting to find a monster, only to discover a father who loves her very much and has missed her terribly, and a stepmother who can help Roxy heal from her mother’s treatment and build up faith in herself and her own judgment – because that’s exactly what her own mother has been tearing down all these years.

All of which means that in the middle of her assignment to show Roxanne the sights of London, Mabel also has a ringside seat on the behavior of Roxy, her father and stepmother, her mother when she arrives from America very much like the avatar of DOOM in T. Kingfisher’s A Sorceress Comes to Call – albeit one without any actual magic but plenty of the same malice.

The closer Mabel gets to Roxy, the more she treats her as a bit of a ‘little sister’, the much harder it is to detach herself as the plot closes in and traps Roxy in its jaws. From that point, it’s a race to the finish, to save the young woman from an enemy that no one saw coming because there was so much enmity already floating around.

I had a ball with A Body at the Dance Hall, so I’m thrilled to say that there is a FOURTH book coming in December, Murder of a Suffragette. I’m already looking forward to it.

~~~~~~ GIVEAWAY ~~~~~~

Because I really enjoy Mabel’s adventures, as I did the author’s Birds of a Feather and Potting Shed series, I chose this book for my Blogo-Birthday Celebration Week, so that I could share that enjoyment with the lucky winner of today’s giveaway.

On this second day of my Blogo-Birthday Celebration, today’s giveaway is the winner’s choice of ANY one of Marty Wingate’s books, in any format, up to $20 (US).

Good luck with today’s giveaway and remember that there’s more to come!
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The Sunday Post AKA What’s on my (Mostly Virtual) Nightstand 4-9-23

Today is Easter Sunday. It’s also just about the middle of Passover AND the middle of Ramadan.

Today also marks the end of my TWELFTH Annual Blogo-Birthday Celebration Week – although the giveaways will continue to be open this week so please take this opportunity to get in on a lot of fabulous celebratory prizes!

And neither this week nor any other week here at Chez Reading Reality would be complete without a cat picture. Or, in this case, a picture of two cats. As most people who are owned by cats will tell you, it is IMPOSSIBLE to do ANYTHING alone when you have cats. Or cats have you, as the case may be. Here are Luna and Tuna making sure that their human doesn’t fall in or otherwise disappear while on the “throne”.

Current Giveaways:

Any book by Barbara Hambly
Blogoversary $25 Gift Card Giveaway
Favorite books of 2023 (so far) $25 in Books Giveaway
The Cleaving by Juliet E. McKenna
$10 Gift Card or $10 Book in the Just Because Giveaway Hop
$10 Gift Card or $10 Book in the Dancing in the Rain Giveaway Hop

Blog Recap:

A Review: One Extra Corpse by Barbara Hambly + Giveaway
TWELFTH Annual Blogo-Birthday Celebration and Giveaway!
Blogo-Birthday Birthday Book Celebration and Giveaway!
Dancing in the Rain Giveaway Hop
Just Because Giveaway Hop
A+ Review: The Cleaving by Juliet E. McKenna + Giveaway
Stacking the Shelves (543)

Coming This Week:

The Stars Undying by Emery Robin (audio review)
The Way Home by Peter S. Beagle (review)
Midnight, Water City by Chris McKinney (review)
The Winter Knight by Jes Battis (review)
Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh (review)

Blogo-Birthday Birthday Book Celebration and Giveaway!

It tends to sneak up on me, but today is my 66th birthday. Today is also “First Contact Day” in the Star Trek Universe, which is fitting as I’ve been a fan since I first watched the show with my dad as it was originally broadcast. To paraphrase another ‘verse, that’s a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. The past is another country, and they do things differently there.

Referring to another fandom I fell into at about the same time, I’m having a Hobbit birthday, meaning that I’m giving away presents instead of getting them. (Galen has already given me my birthday present and any day without one of the cats bringing me what they think of as a present is a good one. Recently it was a dead wasp, which was just a horror on more than one level as our cats are NOT allowed outside.)

Spring has officially sprung, and 2023 is already one quarter over. Meaning that enough reading has happened here at Chez Reading Reality to make a giveaway of my favorite books of the year so far a VERY reasonable possibility.

So I’ll be giving the winner’s choice of one of my favorite books this year so far to one lucky commenter on this post. This giveaway is open internationally, but not through The Book Depository as Amazon has announced the closure of that arm of their book business octopus, effective April 30. Instead, if the winner is outside the U.S. or one of the other countries where there’s a ‘zon outpost, books will be sent from Wordery, which also ships worldwide for free.

The list to choose from is (drumroll, please):

Book Lovers by Emily Henry
Don’t Open the Door by Allison Brennan
The Echo of Old Books by Barbara Davis
Firebreak by Nicole Kornher-Stace
A House with Good Bones by T. Kingfisher
In the Shadow of Lightning by Brian McClellan
The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle
The Lies of the Ajungo by Moses Ose Utomi
The Magician’s Daughter by H.G. Parry
The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older
Never Too Old to Save the World edited by Addie J. King and Alana Joli Abbott
The New Guys by Meredith Bagby
Nightwatch by M.L. Buchman
The Skeleton Key by Erin Kelly
Under Fortunate Stars by Ren Hutchings
The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz
The Weight of Command by Michael Mammay
Where Shadows Dance by C.S. Harris

I’ve done my best to make sure there’s something on this list for everyone, but if I’ve missed your favorite genre and there’s a book you’re dying to read, I’d be happy to share that with you (up to $25 US) instead.

Just let me know in the rafflecopter what book you’d most like to have your very own copy of, from my list or yours, in whatever format suits you best. Someone is going to get very lucky, at least reading-wise!

Don’t forget to come back tomorrow for not one but two giveaway hops, and be sure to check out this week’s previous giveaways from Monday and Tuesday!

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TWELFTH Annual Blogo-Birthday Celebration and Giveaway!

Today is the 12th anniversary of the very first post on Reading Reality, then called “Escape Reality, Read Fiction”. Which explains why all the review ratings are “Escape Ratings” unless the book is nonfiction and then they are “Reality Ratings”.

Two years ago was the big milestone blogoversary at ten years, and last year represented a milestone birthday. So the numbers aren’t so much of a big deal – although the idea that I’m still doing this every day twelve years later is a bit of a shock.

Twelve years for us means three different cities – and one of those cities twice – eight different residences, and an entirely different clowder of cats as the members of the original bunch went to the Rainbow Bridge over the intervening decade plus. Although the spirit of Erasmus still seems to be stealing my pens. As he did.

This annual Blogo-Birthday Celebration Week, like the ones before it, will be a “Hobbit Birthday” as I give away presents instead of getting them. Mostly. Galen has already given me my birthday present, a lovely Coach bag to replace the purse that George recently chewed through the strap of. As he does.

I give away presents this week because I want to thank each and every one of you who take the time to read my reviews and features, post comments and enter the giveaways. Creating Reading Reality was my salvation when I was laid off during the “Great Recession” and has continued to be so in all the years since.

TWELVE years and still counting.

So, in thanks and appreciation to all of you, on this second day of the Blogo-Birthday Celebration Week I have a giveaway, just as I did yesterday and will every day this week. Today’s giveaway is for a $25 Amazon Gift Card or a Gift Card to a bookstore of your choice if you have a local that sells gift cards over the interwebs. (I’ll be giving away books again tomorrow for my actual birthday.)

From the bottom of my bookish and cat-loving heart, my heartfelt thanks to each and every one of you who has been part of this journey. There’s still more to come!

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Review: One Extra Corpse by Barbara Hambly + Giveaway

Review: One Extra Corpse by Barbara Hambly + GiveawayOne Extra Corpse (Silver Screen Historical Mystery #2) by Barbara Hambly
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery, mystery
Series: Silver Screen Historical Mystery #2
Pages: 256
Published by Severn House on March 7, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

Hollywood intrigue, glamor . . . and murder: Enter the roaring twenties in this thrilling Silver Screen historical mystery, starring two very different female sleuths.
May, 1924. It's been seven months since young British widow Emma Blackstone arrived in Hollywood to serve as companion to Kitty Flint: her beautiful, silent-movie star sister-in-law. Kitty is generous, kind-hearted . . . and a truly terrible actress. Not that Emma minds; she's too busy making her academic parents turn in their graves with her new job writing painfully historically inaccurate scenarios for Foremost Studios, in between wrangling their leading lady out of the arms of her army of amorous suitors.
So when one of Kitty's old flames, renowned film director Ernst Zapolya, calls Emma and tells her it's imperative he meet with Kitty that morning, she's not surprised. Until, that is, he adds that lives depend on it. Ernest sounds frightened. But what can have scared him so badly - and what on earth does cheerful, flighty Kitty have to do with it?
Only Ernest can provide the answers, and Kitty and Emma travel to the set of his extravagant new movie to find them. But the shocking discovery they make there only raises further questions . . . including: will they stay alive long enough to solve the murderous puzzle?

My Review:

One Extra Corpse, like its predecessor Scandal in Babylon, strips away the phony tinsel of Hollywood to find the real dirty, bloody tinsel underneath.

It’s 1924, just one month after the events of the first book in the Silver Screen Historical Mystery series, Emma Blackstone has mostly settled herself into her new life in Hollywood as her movie star sister-in-law’s general factotum and keeper of all secrets as well as caretaker of both Kitty Flint AND her three pampered Pekingese dogs, Chang Ming, Black Jasmine, and Buttercreme.

Managing Kitty also comes with a bit of tinsel-making of Emma’s own. She’s regularly employed – and sometimes just plain used – as a scene doctor for movie scripts during these frenetic-paced early days of the silver screen – and occasionally as a social prop for a gay actor who needs to be seen with a woman to protect his image.

Days that may be silent on film but are filled with noise, chatter and above all gossip behind the scenes. Gossip that all too frequently includes who’s sleeping with whom this week – as opposed to last week or next week – as the star-making machinery of Hollywood seems to be fueled by equal parts sex and addiction.

The addiction of entirely too many actors to their drugs of choice – frequently provided by their studios, the addiction of the studios to making money and controlling their actors so that they can keep making that money, and the addiction of the general public to movies as well as gossip about their favorite stars.

No one wants a dead body on the set, not when that dead body belongs to a big name movie director and when it’s all too clear that the man was murdered. Quite possibly by his over-acting, downright histrionic current wife. Who had plenty of motives and no alibi.

But she’s a star in her own right, and her studio doesn’t want to ruin her box-office potential. She makes them too much money to be a murderer, and the police have been paid plenty to make sure she doesn’t get labeled as one. The studios have handed the police a neat-and-tidy case with a tailor-made perpetrator. They can afford to sacrifice an extra to keep one of their stars out of trouble.

Which is where Emma and Kitty get themselves involved. They were on the scene because the victim had something important he wanted to tell Kitty. Who was one of his many, many ex-lovers, just as he was one of hers. Of course, he was killed before he could tell them whatever-it-was, otherwise there wouldn’t be a case to investigate.

And there so very much is. Not the case of a jealous wife, tempting though it was. Or at least Emma is sure that isn’t the solution – not when the Bureau of Investigation (the FBI before it became the FBI) seems to have searched Kitty’s house looking for something, and mysterious thugs make multiple attempts to murder one or both of them.

All while a desperate young woman is on the hook for a murder that she couldn’t possibly have committed. Or could she?

Escape Rating A: This was surprisingly meaty for a book whose cover kind of screams camp with vamp, but then, the silent movie era did have to maximize flash and style to convey emotion. After all, the characters couldn’t use their own words, or even the scriptwriter’s words.

What makes this story so good, and kind of rocks the reader on their heels at the end, is the way that it gets deep into how the sausage-machine of moviemaking worked then – and probably still does now to a greater extent than we like to think about while we’re watching the latest hit.

This story looks hard at the human cost of all that “entertainment”. When that director is killed on set, he dies in the middle of directing a climactic battle scene in his last picture. A scene that uses real bullets fired hopefully above the heads of real people while the inevitable stampeding horses are harnessed into a rig that is guaranteed to bring them down in a crash of heavy bodies on spindly legs that will look great on film. That some of those extras will need to be carried off on stretchers, and that some of the horses will be crippled and shot afterwards, is considered just part of the cost of making movies.

Nobody cares who or how many die as long as it can be hushed up and the show goes on. Which is what the case turns out to be all about in the end.

But it middles in a whole lot of the real issues of the time, in Hollywood and elsewhere. Particularly, in this case, the growing “Red Scare” about communism and socialism in Hollywood, and the lengths the government will go to suppress it, the adults who briefly flirted with it in their misspent youths will go to escape their pasts, and how far some will go to keep their secrets – or the secrets of their own, currently imploding, government.

As the story whipsaws the reader back and forth from the froth of Hollywood to the hamfisted murder investigation to the all-too-real threats to Emma’s and Kitty’s life and liberty, it’s impossible to stop turning pages to find out not just whodunnit but what they done and why they did it.

Most people read mysteries for what has been called “the romance of justice”, that guarantee that good will triumph and evil will get its just desserts. One Extra Corpse doesn’t deliver on the whole of that promise, but it delivers as much justice as was possible and definitely satisfies in that delivery just the same.

~~~~~~ GIVEAWAY ~~~~~~

Today is the first day of Reading Reality’s Blogo-Birthday Celebration Week. There will be giveaways every day this week, and I wanted to get the week started with a real bang.

Barbara Hambly is an author who I’ve been reading and following for more than 40 years, since her first book, The Time of the Dark. Over those decades she has written epic fantasy, urban fantasy, paranormal that verges on horror, and historical mystery. While I haven’t read EVERYTHING she’s ever written, I’ve read and loved some of everything she’s turned her hand to, and am looking forward to more to come as I expect Emma and Kitty have plenty more cases coming in their future. At least I certainly hope so.

As is my custom, TWELVE YEARS now and counting, I’m giving things away for this combined blogoversary and birthday week. Today’s giveaway is the winner’s choice of any one of Barbara Hambly’s books, in any format, up to $30 (US) so that includes One Extra Corpse.

Good luck with today’s giveaway and remember that there’s more to come!

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Blogo-Birthday Celebration and Giveaway!

Today is the 11th anniversary of the very first post on Reading Reality, then called “Escape Reality, Read Fiction” a phrase I got off a t-shirt, a long time ago in a galaxy, as the saying goes, far, far away. Probably somewhere in the Chicagoland area, where I lived for a fairly long time.

Last year was the BIG Blogo-versary, as the 10th blogoversary seemed like kind of a milestone. It also marked Reading Reality as the longest “job” I’ve ever had. An 11th anniversary seems a bit anticlimactic in comparison.

OTOH, my birthday tomorrow IS one of the milestone birthdays. I just hope I’m not spending it at the County Courthouse on jury duty, but as I write this on Sunday “the jury” is still very much out on that particular front.

Nevertheless, this annual Blogo-Birthday Celebration Week will still be a “Hobbit Birthday” as I will be giving away presents instead of getting them. (Galen has already given me my birthday present – a new improved keyboard case for my trusty iPad. It’s exactly what I wanted!)

I give away presents this week because I want to take this opportunity to thank each and every one of you who take the time to read Reading Reality, post comments and enter the giveaways. I appreciate you more than I can possibly say. When I started this blog 11 years ago, it was during the “Great Recession”. I had just been laid off and wasn’t sure what I was going to do with myself. Looking for a job may very well BE a full time job but it’s only fulfilling in the result and not in the daily grind of it. The blog turned out to be my salvation, and has continued to be so as I turned from being a fulltime librarian to a part-time librarian to today, a semi-retired librarian and a freelance writer.

And a book reviewer and blogger. For 11 years and counting. 

So, in thanks and appreciation to all of you, on this first day of the Blogo-Birthday Celebration Week, I have not just one but two giveaways. One is for a $25 Amazon Gift Card and one is for $25 in books from either the Book Depository or, for those in the U.S. $25 in books delivered from the book store of your choice. If you have a local bookstore that’s doing mail order, I’ll have the books or a gift certificate sent to you from them. If you don’t have a local of your own, then you can choose from one of the big regional bookstores like Tattered Cover or Powell’s, national indie Bookshop.org or get your books from the Book Depository. But books you will get! 

Last but not least, if you have enjoyed the cat pictures included in my Sunday Post, please take a minute to check out my Birthday Fundraiser on Facebook for Planned PEThood of Duluth, GA. All of the cats we have ever had have been rescues, and Lucifer and George both benefited from their services before we adopted them. So we’re paying that forward a bit again this year, and I hope you’ll consider joining us.

From the bottom of my bookish heart, thanks so much to each and every one of you who has been part of this journey. There’s plenty more to come!

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