I’m still a little behind in reviewing books, but let’s be honest: none of us thought I was going to be this up-to-date, given I usually make it a month or so before giving up on posting reviews.

Anyway.

I finished five books in May:

Kills Well with Others by Deanna Raybourn

In this follow-up to Killers of a Certain Age, the quartet of retired women assassins return. In this story, there is a mole in the secret agency they worked for, which leads to a former colleague being murdered and a clue being left that points to one of their old assignments. Their contact, not knowing which current agents she can trust, turns to them, asking them to go undercover on a cruise and take out the person responsible, while she works the internal angles. Only it turns out that even after his death, there may still be ripple effects that continue to be in play, bringing danger once again to their loved ones.

Solid fun. Honestly, if this book series hasn’t been optioned to a studio yet, it’s a shame.

Paper. Library. (more…)

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl asks us to share books we’d like to re-read.

Here are ten of mine:

1. Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde (It was so long between the first and second books that my memory of the story has grown hazy. It is sitting on my coffee table waiting for me to get moving.)
2. A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas (A charming memoir to reread every few Decembers)
3. Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (I keep thinking I’ll start it in January (or maybe it really begins in March?) and carry on with a year-long readalong.)
4. Peter Mayle’s A Year in Provence (See above.)
5. Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next (One of my favorite books by one of my favorite authors.)
6. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (I haven’t re-read it in more than 20 years.)
7. As You Wish by Cary Elwes (I read it in print the first time and think it would be fun to listen to it at some point.)
8. The Delicacy and Strength of Lace by Leslie Marmon Silko and James Wright (I loved this slim volume of correspondence.)
9. The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune (I have the sequel sitting on my coffee table and should revisit this one. I hope I love rereading it as much as I did Under the Whispering Door last year.)
10. Sorcery & Cecelia by Patrica Wrede & Caroline Stevermer (I’d like to read the rest of this series, but, again, it’s been a long time since I started it.)

How about you? What books do you want to revisit?

This semi-annual topic is always one of the wordiest Top Ten Tuesday titles from That Artsy Reader Girl, but it’s also a fun one. What’s coming out between July 1 and the end of the year that I might want to read? So many things, as always! Here are my top ten as of this moment:

1. Sangu Mandanna’s A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping
2. The Librarians by Sherry Thomas
3. Travis Baldree’s Brigands and Breadknives
4. The Space Cat by Nnedi Okorafor
5. Accomplice to the Villain by Hannah Nicole Maehrer
6. The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow
7. Freya Marske’s Cinder House
8. Hot Girls with Balls by Benedict Nguyá»…n (a volleyball romance!!!)
9. Rebecca Stead’s The Experiment
10. A Little Holiday Fling by Farah Heron

What new releases will you be hunting down for the rest of 2025?

It’s the week where I get to share my seasonal reading plans with the Top Ten Tuesday crew (as hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl). If history is any indication, this will get blown to bits by due dates and mood reads and volleyball and lots of other excuses.

But for today, at least, this is what I hope to read this summer:

1. T.J. Klune’s Somewhere, Beyond the Sea
2. The Phoenix Pencil Company by Allison King
3. Helen Simonson’s The Summer Before the War
4. David Grann’s The Wager
5. Sangu Mandanna’s A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping
6. Welcome to Murder Week by Karen Dukess
7. The Teller of Small Fortunes by Julie Leong
8. Dawn Staley’s Uncommon Favor
9. No Less Strange or Wonderful by A. Kendra Greene
10. The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride

My list includes a couple I own, several I have out from the library already, and a few I’m on the holds list for. We’ll see what comes of it all in a few months. (As for my spring list, I’ve finished one and am on track to wrap up a second before Friday.)

I’m a bit behind on sharing my reading, so I thought I’d take a stab at getting caught up. Here are the eight books I read back in April:

Lights on a Ground of Darkness: An Evocation of a Place and Time by Ted Kooser

Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner Kooser shares a 72-page memoir of his mother’s family in Iowa, mostly focusing on the summers he spent with his grandparents and uncle as a child in the 1940s. As you’d expect with an illustrious poet, you are dropped into the house next to their gas station, able to wander alongside the muddy Mississippi, taste the ice cold soda while waiting for the extended family to come along to play cards, and weep as, as it does for us all, time claims each one of them.

If you have loved Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine or A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas, you will find a similar tonal perfection in this tight mini memoir. Highly recommended. (more…)

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl celebrates all things summer. I’m choosing to share ten books from my TBR list with summer in the title:

1. The Summer Book by Tove Jansson
2. Summerlong by Peter S. Beagle
3. Summer at Tiffany by Marjorie Hart
4. Last Days of Summer by Steve Kluger
5. Umbrella Summer by Lisa Graff
6. The Sword of Summer by Rick Riordan
7. One Summer: America, 1927 by Bill Bryson
8. The Summer I Saved the World … in 65 Days by Michele Weber Hurwitz
9. A Summer at Sea by Katie Fforde
10. The Summer before the War by Helen Simonson

How about you? Any summery books you’d recommend?