La Belle Sauvage by Philip Pullman

November 7, 2025

La Belle Sauvage by Philip Pullman

Malcolm Polstead is an 11 year old boy living near Oxford with his parents at The Trout, the inn that they own and run. Malcolm is a good kid who helps out wherever he can, including assisting the nuns at the abbey across the river from the inn. But when a baby girl is brought to the abbey to be cared for by the nuns, Malcolm begins to learn about the dark forces at work outside his peaceful village.

Philip Pullman returns to the world of His Dark Materials for another trilogy, The Book of Dust, with the first volume being a prequel set at the time of Lyra's birth. Unlike a lot of sequels written a decade or more after the original, this doesn't just rehash the story from His Dark Materials but serves to fill in the gaps about Lyra's life. It's helpful but not totally necessary to have read HDM. La Belle Sauvage is the name of Malcolm's brave little canoe that keeps them safe. I recommend the audiobook. Looking forward to the second book, The Secret Commonwealth.

Everyone on This Train is a Suspect by Benjamin Stevenson

October 28, 2025

Everyone on This Train is a Suspect by Benjamin Stevenson

When the Australian Mystery Writers Association invites him to speak on a panel at their annual conference, Ernest Cunningham and his girlfriend find themselves on the Ghan, the famous historic train that runs from Darwin to Adelaide. Almost all of the other conference participants appear to hold some sort of grudge against each other. What could possibly go wrong?

Set shortly after the events of the first Ernest Cunningham book, this is another fun and clever mystery. Like the first book, it's a locked-room mystery with a lot of characters. I sort of guessed who the murderer was, if not the why. The writers and publishing people weren't as endearing as Ernest's family in the first book - I would have been okay with a few more of them being killed off. I recommend the audiobook - make sure you listen or read the epilogue. And Juliet says yes the second time.

The opal mines at Cooper Peady that play a part in the last section

Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson

October 22, 2025

Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson

Ernest Cunningham is reluctantly traveling to a remote mountain resort for a family reunion. He hasn't seen his family for three years, since he testified against his brother in court, sending him to prison for murder. So now they will be reunited for the first time and he's not looking forward to it. But then even before everyone arrives, a body is found in the snow, and Ernest realizes that the killer must be someone in his family.

It's the family reunion from hell. A dysfunctional family trapped at a snowed-in resort, each with their own backstory, a raging blizzard, the body of an unknown person in the snow. The mystery is complicated, and it makes the reader feel dumb that they can't figure any of it out until Ernest explains it all for you, which does spoil some of the enjoyment - after all, half the fun of reading a mystery is trying to figure out what happened and who is the villain. The narrator claims that he is not unreliable, but he is at times, although he defends himself by saying that what he says is what he believed at the time. This worked well as an audiobook. If you enjoyed the Knives Out miniseries, you will most likely enjoy this offbeat mystery.

A Most Agreeable Murder by Julia Searles

October 20, 2025

A Most Agreeable Murder by Julia Searles

Beatrice Steele, oldest daughter of the impoverished Steele family, and her sisters are invited to the autumn ball, where their parents hope that at least one of the daughters will form an attachment (marriage engagement) with a wealthy man. If not, their greedy cousin Mr. Grub plans to have their father declared incompetent and take over their family home. Beatrice herself has little interest in marriage, being obsessed with true crime. But when the most eligible bachelor dies in the middle of the ball, Beatrice joins forces with a disgraced detective to solve the murder.

A somewhat over the top comedy of manners and murder. There are a lot of characters and locations in the manor house, like a game of Clue. The detective here is rather incompetent/inexperienced. Some of the humor is goofy, more slapstick that sarcasm or witty repartee. At the end of the book, we still don't know what's up with Mary, Beatrice's younger sister, so the author left herself open for a sequel. Jane Austen-ites won't care for this one as it pokes a certain amount of fun at Jane's books and characters.

A Regency era ball

Red City by Marie Liu

October 14, 2025

Red City by Marie Liu

Two young magicians in training, Sam and Ali, are recruited by two rival magic syndicates who control Angel City. The Lumines and Grand Central have maintained a polite balance of powers in Angel City for decades, but their relationship is becoming strained, mostly because of a highly coveted alchemical substance called sand. Sand enhances everything: beauty, intelligence, charisma, desirability, sexual prowess. But now Sam and Ali realize that their organizations are going to pit them against each other.

This was recommended to me by Edelweiss because I have read most of V. E. Schwab's books, and I do love me some V. E. Schwab. It's supposed to be the author's first adult novel, but it reads pretty YA to me. I enjoyed the multiple points of view. The story moves slowly in the first two sections and I really didn't connect at all with the characters. This is the first book of a new series and the ending makes that pretty obvious - not exactly a cliffhanger or sitting on the edge of my chair waiting for the next volume. Possible triggers include graphic sex, murder, explicit violence, organized crime mentality/politics.

Many thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for providing an eARC for review.

The Emerald Affair by Janet Macleod Trotter

October 8, 2025

The Emerald Affair by Janet Macleod Trotter

After serving as a nurse at the front in World War I, Esme McBride visits her best friend Lydia at Lydia's wealthy family's estate in Scotland. Esme misses the challenge of wartime nursing and is seeking a new posting somewhere that she will feel needed. While visiting Lydia, Esme meets an army captain and a doctor, both of whom served in India and are going back to live and work there. Esme immediately falls for the captain, but Lydia has already decided that she is going to marry him, no matter how ill suited they may be. 

Set between the two world wars, this is the story of four people who embark on marriage and life in India for a variety of reasons, all of them destined to be disappointed. Plenty of fascinating details about life in India during the British colonial period: the native people, the British ruling class, colonialism, the towns, the bazaars, the food, the political situation. This is a long book that could have been about 100 pages shorter without doing any harm to the story. The ending is a little too neat - I saw it coming. The first book in a trilogy.

The British in India