My Review: Looking back at the Grand Illusion series, the very first book in the series, Isolate, was, among its many other marvelous themes and threads, a story about staging a mostly non-violent political coup from the inside. Following with Councilor and Contrarian, the series continues to explore what happens AFTER the balance of power has shifted as certain people attempt to shift it back to where THEY believe it belongs.

My Review: Los Angeles is possibly the ultimate ‘mirage city’. Not only does it appear in the heat haze of the California desert as a mirage, but what we think we see and know about it is a mirage created by the Hollywood star-making machinery that has painted the city as the place where there’s a movie star on every corner and one’s own dreams of stardom can come true.

My Review: The Annual Migration of Clouds series has been an exploration of what happens after “the end of the world as they know it”, which is a very different thing from the actual end of the world. The world is ticking along just fine in this post-climate-apocalypse dystopia, but the humans who caused it all - not so much.

I have several things to talk about today, which makes it a perfect day to post this picture of Luna, who clearly had a LOT to say on this particular afternoon. Today is the first day of Banned Books Week 2025. Celebrate your freedom to read by reading a banned or challenged book to see what the challenge really is all about.

There are a couple of really pretty covers this time around!  Both The Bookshop Below and Violet Thistlewaite Is Not a Villain Anymore are lovely. But the book on this list that I'm REALLY looking forward to is A Case of Life and Limb. I was surprised by just how much I enjoyed the first book in the series, …

My Review: The story kicks off with a bang, and a whimper, and a plummet toward disaster - all at the same time. Miranda Chase, on her honeymoon, gets a call from a dead man. Not a recording, not a premonition, not a ghost. Instead, an acknowledgement that the die has already been cast and there’s nothing that anyone can do to turn back the clock.

My Review: Cleric Chih’s Singing Hills Abbey is not precisely an archive of history. Not that it isn’t an archive, and not that it doesn’t preserve history. But it’s not a historical archive in the sense that we think of one. It’s not a place that stores original documents in an attempt to record history without bias or interpretation. The Singing Hills Abbey, and its collection, exists at the intersection of “we make gods in our own image” and “fiction is the lie that tells the truth”.

Welcome to the Scaredy Cat Giveaway Hop, hosted by Mama the Fox and Mom Does Reviews! Are you a scaredy cat when it comes to this scariest of seasons? Does the idea of doing to one of the inevitable haunted houses give you the shivers? Do you face your fears or run away from them as fast as you can?

My Review: Just as it is in the ‘real’ world at the moment, it’s time for the Fall Harvest Festival in cozy, charming, Shady Hollow. Investigative reporter Vera Vixen has been eagerly anticipating the coming festivities and can’t wait to get back home from a research trip to the ‘big city’ to participate. And, of course, report on the events for the local newspaper, the…

My Review: Lieutenant Alex Easton (Retired), late of the Gallacian Army, would much prefer to remain in Paris. Among the very tempting fleshpots and far, far away from the cold and dreariness back home in Gallacia. A place they never wanted to return to, and really don’t want to go back to ever again after doing just that in the adventures detailed in…

Our cats watch us all the time. At least all the time they're awake. When they're sleeping we can do whatever we want as long as we don't disturb them - although they can disturb us whenever they please. Because they're cats. Today I have another picture of the 'The Boys' to show you. It's a typical pose for them no matter how much danger it poses to us.

There's some pretty, and a whole lot of pretty interesting among this week's covers. The prettiest covers, at least from this perspective, are Letters from an Imaginary Country, People Watching, Some Kind of Famous and Turns of Fate, although as usual, they are far from pretty in the same way. Snake-Eater's cover is really well done, but that's not an image I'd ever think of as even in the same universe as pretty, so let's just call that one pretty interesting and try not imagine the fate of that poor snake in too much detail.

My Review: There’s a saying that “War is diplomacy by other means”. The converse is often applied as well, that “Diplomacy is war by other means”. It’s also been said that “War is hell”, so either way, references to hell are certainly applicable in both cases. Which leads straight into the motivations behind many of the characters in this mystery, as espionage is more than capable of being even more hellish than either war or diplomacy, particularly in the hands of a desperate despot doing his damndest to get his power back and keep it.

My Review: The Adenashire series has been cozying up to each of the friends who ‘conquered’ the legendary Langheim Baking Battle since the first delightful book in the series, A Fellowship of Bakers & Magic. At the delicious end of the Baking Battle, although Taenya won the competition, it was the fellowship of Arleta, Doli, Taenya and Jez that collectively walked away with the real prize in that contest - each other’s lifelong friendship.

My Review: “Back in the days when wishes still held power,” there was a human kingdom bordering the lands belonging to the Fae. In other words, this is a fairy tale. But not nearly as much like the fairy tales we all grew up on. Because this isn’t a story to entertain children, it’s a story about one particular child, twelve-year-old Lady Celia, and her rather abrupt coming of age.

My Review: We begin with just the sort of thing that lets the reader know that this story is going to go to some very dark places. Because it begins with three children being abandoned by their father at what appears to be the worst sort of orphanage without a backward glance. We don’t learn that the place was even worse than we imagined it to be until much, much later.

Welcome to the Fall 2025 Seasons of Books Giveaway Hop, hosted by It Starts At Midnight and Versatileer! Once upon a time, this was the Month of Books Giveaway Hop, now it’s the Seasons of Books Giveaway Hop, with the hops starting on the days the seasons change. Today, September 22, is the first official day of FALL for the 2025 season, meaning that the hop starts TODAY!

Tomorrow is the first OFFICIAL day of Fall in the Northern Hemisphere - which means that the holidays can't be far behind! (I've already started reading Halloween books with The Most Unusual Haunting of Edgar Lovejoy and that was a marvelous story to kick off the season!) The coming of Fall means that today is also a good day to post a picture of our spookiest cat, Hecate.

I don't think that 'pretty' is the right word for this week's covers, unless it's part of the phrase 'pretty fascinating'. THAT seems accurate because this week's stack is chock-full of books I'm really curious about, really fascinated by, or just plain am simply gasping to read ASAP. The book I've been looking forward to reading for the ENTIRE year is…

My Review: This isn’t exactly an ‘opposites attract’ romance - or it is from a certain, slightly magical, just a teensy bit paranormal point of view. Or at least in a kind of ‘laissez les bon temps roulez’ perspective. Because the ability to see ghosts is exactly the kind of thing that New Orleans is famous for. Edgar Lovejoy, as it turns out, comes by his ability to see spectres the old fashioned way.

My Review: This is a story about doing what is right instead of what is easy. Not that Margot Baxter Harriman has EVER taken the easy way, even when what is right flies in the face of accepted wisdom. Or at least, the ‘accepted wisdom’ of society that proclaims, frequently, loudly and often in the very voices and faces of the stockholders of B&H Foods, that women should be kept busy at home with their husbands and their children, and absolutely NOT running major corporations.

My Review: The blurb for this book, while it isn’t exactly wrong, isn’t right either. Those elements are all there, but, if I were saying this aloud I’d be saying that the “accent is on a different syllable” but with “syllable” pronounced with its accent in the wrong place. Verbally, the difference is clear, even though it sounds like it might be subtle in description.

Welcome to the Falling into Leaves Giveaway Hop, hosted by Mama the Fox and Mom Does Reviews! Fall has certainly FELL around here - and it's lovely. Admittedly, fall in Atlanta just means that the temps have dropped to the low 80s during the day and the mid 60s at night, but it does mean that the air is marvelously crisp in the evening and there's always a lovely breeze.

My Review: It begins as a straight-up police procedural. It just doesn’t end there. Or, quite possibly, at all. At first, things seem fairly ordinary, for select values of ordinary. A man is dead, shot in the middle of his office. It does go pear-shaped from there, but in ways that are also, well, sort of ordinary. Or at least ordinary if the dead man is one of the richest men in the world.

Today's cat picture probably does a better job than words ever could of just what kind of a lazy weekend we'd like it to be! When we first brought Tuna and Luna home, neither George nor Hekate was exactly best pleased with the prospect of more housemates. George has clearly been won over by Tuna's bumbling desire to have a cuddle buddy, and he and Luna also get along quite peaceably, but not like this.