I loved returning to the Lady Astronaut universe after several years. This installment looks at the Second Mars Expedition, and the start of the permanent colony. Elma York is back as the first-person narrator, and this book brings her arc to a satisfying point, if not the end of her adventures.
A cozy mystery set on a generation spaceship, Murder by Memory features a practical, wise, and observant detective who unexpectedly finds herself inhabiting the body of… a murderer? A victim? Or both?
This book grew out of interviews that actor and director Brendan O’Hea held with esteemed Shakespearean actress Dame Judi Dench. In it, the pair discuss a number of Shakespeare’s plays, particularly in terms of the great female roles Ms. Dench has played in her time… The whole book is a masterclass in how to read, understand, and play Shakespeare, and more generally, how to act.
It’s All a Game starts off with the ancient games of senet, the “royal game of Ur”, and the many forms of mancala, then delves into a truncated history of chess before moving on to the board games many of us grew up playing.
Wooing the Witch Queen was an absolute delight, from its sweet, sensitive, traumatized cinnamon-roll hero to its introverted, reclusive, but decidedly not evil heroine.
I read Mind Games twice in 2024 and once (already) in 2025, which tells you something about how good it is; the book has already joined the ranks of my favorite non-fantasy Nora Roberts novels. Written with Roberts’s usual skill, Mind Games pits Thea Fox, a young woman with the sight, against the psychopath who killed her parents. . .
Mary Robinette Kowal makes good use of the historical “year without a summer” in the third book of her Glamourist Histories. As Britain remains locked in winter’s grip, Jane and her husband Vincent are in London to work on a glamour commission for Lord Stratton, an Irish peer. Hearing that her sister Melody is melancholic and realizing there are few marriageable men near home, the Vincents invite Melody to stay with them. Melody’s growing affection for Stratton’s son, Mr. O’Brien, is complicated by Jane’s suspicions of the young man, and by the public’s growing belief that coldmongers are responsible for the unseasonable weather. Meanwhile, Jane and Vincent must contend with his father’s relentless cruelty and ambition, as well as a shadowy plot that threatens O’Brien, the young coldmongers, Jane and Vincent’s very lives, and even the British government itself.
I enjoyed Hideaway just as much as I did the first time I read it. However, it doesn’t quite rise to the “favorites” level, in part because Hideaway is lighter on both romance and suspense than my favorite NR books.
A worthy prequel to Legends & Lattes! I absolutely loved getting to know young Viv and hearing about the early experiences that helped form the person she becomes in L&L.
A Midnight Puzzle is the third book in the Secret Staircase Mysteries, a delightful cozy mystery series featuring Tempest Raj, a stage magician/illusionist, and her family. The series gets its name from her father’s architecture-and-construction company, which specializes in secret rooms, hidden staircases, and other architectural puzzles. Tempest’s skills in creating and figuring out illusions come in very handy as she and her friends investigate several murders, each involving the Secret Staircase firm’s clients or jobsite in some way.
