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?
I loved The Teller of Small Tales, Julie Leong’s debut novel. It’s a cozy quest fantasy with a found-family vibe, set in a vaguely British renaissance-era world.
Naomi Novik’s Buried Deep and Other Stories is a stellar collection of short fiction that displays all of her skill as a writer as well as the breadth of her imagination. I read it slowly, savoring each story.
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. . .
The third Penhallow brother meets his match in The Wedding Witch! A delightfully funny, slightly spooky witchy romance, perfect for the season.
The Love Remedy is a well-researched, sensitively written novel that delivers a moving romance while avoiding most of the usual historical-romance tropes. I loved it!
A warm, cozy hug of a romance, and a tribute to books, writers, and booklovers. I loved a lot of things about this book: the main characters, the banter, and all the bookish references.
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.
