A Book a Day...

Today a big day

Horse race, and Eel Festival

This was hilarious, weird, and sometimes I wondered if I had accidentally taken some… helpful substance or something, heh, but, truly, it was such an off the hook just going full bore hilarious.

It is both a parody of a British Baking show, as well as a really well plotted mystery too. Shauna is a middling baker who, when there is an attempted murder under the tent, convinces the producers to let her solve the crime if she can. And it is a hilarious comedy of errors. Such a fun read. And… there’s a second “volume” too, so, watch these Saturdays for that in the future (once I can get my hands on it), and we’ll see if that’s just as off the hook hilarious too.

You may like this book If you Liked: A Murder Most Fowl by Carmela Dutra, Six Geese A-Slaying by Donna Andrews, or Garfield, Fully Caffeinated by Jim Davis

This is set in the Kelvin aka Star Trek 2009 movie universe. And, we get to meet a very interesting Klingon in the book. He is not like any other one we've met (or not many of them for sure). Kirk and the Enterprise are really far out when they have to fight the Klingons both on a planet (poor Bones) and also against them on the Enterprise. Don’t want to give too much away, so, I’ll leave it there.

It was a cool look at Kelvin Klingons (say that three times fast), and we even got a Kelvin Orion dude too. It was a very fun read.

Would there even be any fantasy books if someone, at some point in the book didn’t think, ‘what could go wrong if I just do a little magic’. Doh! And whoops.

Isabella Nagg is one of those people who has that thought, and, of course, it would be a boring book if she was right, no harm no foul, okay, next book). Everything goes sideways though when she gets a visit from said cat, the Wizard’s former cat. And suddenly, Isabella and the cat have to save their village before it’s too late.

Okay, so, come to find out quite a few people really really liked the footnotes, and, I’m not saying I disliked them, I thought they were fun, but, yeah, it definitely took me a bit to get into them. (They reminded me of… I think it’s Ryan North and his bottom of the page footnotes in his comics). I did very much like the cat companion, although I wasn’t totally sold on the plants in the book. And, I did think that the villain was villain enough. On the whole the book reminded me a lot of a sort of cozy Douglas Adams sort of fantasy book. And also sort of Fantasy Cottagecore? Is that a thing? I’m not up on the whole naming of stuff, I just read it and leave the naming to others.

You may like this book If you Liked: Brigands & Breadknives by Travis Baldree, Greenteeth by Molly O'Neill, or Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett

A boy in a red hoodie takes his dog for a walk in a city. And as he does, he observes all the windows and what is or isn't going on in them. The illustrations also have a bunch of stuff going on in the world that's not in the windows.

The book is cool, but it was really the illustrations that were so much fun. The world that is in all those windows is wicked rich. Such a fun read!

You may like this book If you Liked: Milo Imagines the World by Matt de la Pena, Kitten and the Night Watchman by John Sullivan, or City moon By: Cole, Rachael

Barbara, 13 years old, is not the favorite daughter of the Van Laars (who own Camp Emerson, a summer camp). But, when she suddenly disappears from her bunk in 1975, the search is on for her in the Adirondack woods. Judy Luptak, the police detective assigned to the case is also on the case. And, it’s also made more twisty because years and years before Barbara’s disappearance, her brother also disappeared. Twice. In one family? Yep, that’s definitely a heckuva start to a mystery.

The characters were awesome, and the mysteries most definitely kept me guessing. It was like layers upon layers and made it a really great read.

You may like this book If you Liked: All the Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker, Knife River by Justine Champine, or Back to the Garden by Laurie R. King

Bugs and Elmer Fudd

The man of many voices

Supergirl is so sick of Superman this and Superman that. She decides that she should show her cousin and the Kent/Lanes what Krypton is all about by going to Argo (which, like in the TV Series Supergirl is on another planet in space, although, in this comic’s universe, I think it’s farther away than in the TV series).

And they do set out to go visit Argo, and even Natasha Irons gets to come along. But, then the trip goes sideways because someone wants to honor Superman., again. Except, nothing seems to be right when they get to the planet that wants to do the honoring. Will they ever actually get to Argo?

I have to say that the ending was sort of different than usual, as far as the how of the bad guy stuff was resolved, but, it surprised me in a totally good way. Awesome graphic novel. (And now I need more Supergirl/Natasha “Steel” Irons). Ooh, and, how could I forget. I first saw Sarah Leuver’s art online somewhere, and was so psyched to see it here in this comic!

Ooh, grumpy, wicked grumpy Doc McCoy, well, he's not quite Doc McCoy yet. He's Leonard H. McCoy, a Cadet at Starfleet Medical (well, Starfleet Academy at least) who is homesick and then when an underclassman with a lot of blond hair gets McCoy in trouble he's suddenly on the Disaster Relief Club (seriously, a club, heh...). And then, once their training is over, suddenly, they already have to go on a mission to a planet that is wicked unstable.

Oh, and, Spock is on McCoys team (along with a woman named Lisa. And, she was great, her twist at the end of the book cracked me up quite a bit). McCoy and Spock get along even less than their playful banter on the Enterprise during the TV show years. Heh. It was a fun read and while it did have Spock in it, it was nice that it mostly focused very well on McCoy. A fun middle grade sort of read.

You may like this book If you Liked: Lifeline by Bobbi J.G. Weiss, Space Camp by Ted Pedersen, or Crisis on Vulcan by Brad Strickland

Definitely a sucker for a mystery with magic in it. Or a magical novel with some mystery within it. This is that. It’s Chicago, 1940s, and Helen, well, she sold her soul to save her brother’s life (as one does… heh). Unfortunately, her time is coming to an end, but then she gets offered one last job. And, it’s one that just might mean that she doesn’t have to give up her soul. All she has to do is find the White City Vampire, a serial killer. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy, right?? Oh, and small thing, she has three days to do it.

It’s only a novella, but, that doesn’t matter because the story is just packed into a slightly shorter package. And, whew, yep, quite the story. There was always the ticking time in the back of my head as I read about Helen trying to figure out the who and they why of the White City Vampire. And the characters, whew, the good ones, the bad ones, the gray ones. So awesome. Such a fun fun read.

You may like this book If you Liked: The City of Stardust by Georgia Summers, Turns of Fate by Anne Bishop, or Strange New World by Vivian Shaw

Calling a book perfect is neither fair to the author or to prospective readers. And yet, this is the very best book about Amelia Earhart and the story of her last flight that I've read so far. And it's as near to perfect as a book can get I think.

It tells 4 stories, as the subtitle says. Three of those are theories about what happened to Amelia (and sort of Noonan, although, like in most other books, he's an afterthought sorta). That she was captured by the Japanese, that she was stranded on one of the small islands/atolls in the Pacific that are around Howland Isle, or that she ran out of fuel and went into the vastness that is the Pacific Ocean. The fourth story is that of Amelia herself. Starting from her as a kid until the last message she sent. And then there is the final chapter, and the end of the book in general. It almost perfectly sums up how I feel about actually finding Earhart vs. what her life being cut short has helped create. An absolutely amazing book.

You may like this book If you Liked: The Flight: Charles Lindbergh's 1927 Transatlantic Crossing by Dan Hampton, Amelia Earhart: The Turbulent Life of An American Icon by Kathleen C. Winters, or East to the Dawn: The Life of Amelia Earhart by Susan Butler

This was creepy. I mean, definitely in the best way possible, but… shiver.

It takes place across 30 years. First we meet Beth, an orphan who goes to stay with the Averell family at Raven Hall. Then decades later we meet Sadie, she’s hired to come to Raven Hall and play a part. Then the secrets start being revealed (or not revealed) as Beth and Nina, another kid who is Beth’s age, become friends. And, Sadie goes to Raven Hall in 2019 because she’s an actress, but, why.

This was not a novel to read while watching TV or doing something else. It was twisty, and, honestly, I did wonder how the present and past were going to twist themselves together. But, while I know not everyone liked it, I did like the ending, and, although it was a slow burn, I never thought about putting down the book.

You may like this book If you Liked: Black Rabbit HallM by Eve Chase, The Distant Hours by Kate Morton, or The Woman in the Mirror by Rebecca James

They still need some help

Very Awesome Animal!

In Gotham City there's a really popular drink that's making people sorta weird. But, I mean, it’s Gotham City, right?

But, soon the Gotham City Sirens (Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy, Catwoman) think that this drink might be a lot dodgy, and, so, they are on the case. They also have help. A character named Jaina and Bunny which is part of Jaina... sorta. There was a fun part later where there was another ‘part of Jaina’ who appeared too. That one cracked me up a lot.

The Sirens have to figure out how the bad guy is doing it before they get sucked into everything themselves. There was some fun Ivy/Harley stuff, and lots of awesome banter between them and Selina. It was an all around fun comic.

There is a man who has gone missing near Themyscira (although he and his wife who were diving didn’t know that). But, while one would think that he’d have wound up on Themyscira, he didn’t. He wound up on a sort of male island version of Themyscira. And, him landing there changes everything. Stuff gets bloody, and very Greek Olympian God-dy (Ares especially has a big role in this book).

We also finally (in this series) get to see a bunch of Oracle aka Barbara Gordon. In this universe she did get attacked by the Joker (that was sort of glossed over in the book with a throwaway line) and she is Oracle, not Batgirl. But, either way, there was more with her than all the other books in the Justice League Prose series combined, and it was good stuff too. Ooh, and, the original character of Ana, she was really cool too. This was an all around awesome read.