Wasn't super excited about #botm selections but it's my birthday month so I had to get something so that I could get my free birthday book 😁 I liked Black Cake and Good Dirt does sound good so that was the obvious choice for me.

This was first published in 1929 and was a bestseller. Ursula Parrott wrote many books and stories, but has been virtually forgotten. I learned about her and this book on a podcast called Lost Ladies of Lit, which I highly recommend. This book is really good and I wish more of her work would be brought back into print.

I tried not to compare this to Thursday Murder Club as I was reading but I couldn't help it. The humor and charm fell very short in this one and it dragged on too long. I somewhat liked the main character but otherwise I didn't find the characters endearing.

Tells the history of women egyptologists whose work usually gets left out of history. I had a little trouble keeping track of people because I listened to the audiobook, but it was still good.

#botm arrived. I almost skipped but decided to give this one a try.

Biography of Mary Anning who discovered the first dinosaur skeleton and then numerous other fossils.

Interesting, but the author is not a historian and didn't have the necessary understanding of the historical context. Also, she makes a lot of unsubstantiated assumptions about what Mary and others were thinking and feeling.

Loved this! It's set in San Francisco at the time of the 1906 earthquake.

This is my favorite book of Quinn's that I've read (haven't read them all yet) and the first of Chang's that I've read (will be reading more).

I sort of liked this one, but didn't love it. I appreciate how all the pieces fit together, but one aspect was a little too mind bendy for me.

Although there are two mysterious deaths, possibly murders, and an investigator, I don't think this really fits the category of mystery.

Excellent cover, though!

I squeezed in one last short book for the year.

The Below Stairs series continues to be a sure bet. This novella is book 7.5 in the series.

Good mystery with lots of twists, although one stretched my belief a bit too far. Difficult material to read at times.

I was expecting a somewhat silly fake kidnapping caper, but it was slightly more serious and the “kidnapping“ didn't even happen until halfway through the book. But it was an interesting juxtaposition of a hippie-style cult and an evangelical megachurch and the damage both can cause.

The somber cover does not match this somewhat madcap and irreverent mystery. It is entertaining, but rather convoluted in the end, with lots of characters, all keeping secrets and scheming.

This was fun. It gets extra points for the reference to Joan Wilder from the movie Romancing the Stone 😁

My 2nd Christmas murder mystery for this Christmas season. A solid historical mystery. Book 6 in series.

I think I heard about this book through and interview with the author on a podcast; otherwise I was completely unaware of this story.

In 1999 (!) MIT admitted to discriminating against women scientists (ongoing at the time, not just in the past). They corrected their practices, but as related in the epilogue, there are still men who think women don't have as much of an aptitude for science as men do 🙄

Finally reading this book feels like a big accomplishment for me. It's been sitting on my Kindle for a few years and I've always been too intimidated by its length to read it. But I did and it was very good!

A little Christmas mystery novella. # 4.5 in the Jane Wunderly series.

The mystery is entertaining but the characters, including the cat, are really the best part.

Book 2 in Philo Vance series and the only one in the series I've read. Clever set up for the mystery, but I didn't enjoy the way Vance solved it.

Reading with my buddy Stanley this afternoon 😻

Book 2 in series. Good teen mystery/thriller but the story isn't resolved in this book. This one came out in March of this year but I can't find any info about when/if book 3 is coming out. Kind of annoying.

An interesting plot involving missing and murdered indigenous women, but the writing was sometimes awkward and some parts of the mystery were not definitively solved (which is realistic but not satisfying).

This classic mystery was good! This was the first book I've read by this author, but won't be the last.

Good. Historical fiction set at the building of the Panama Canal. I didn't know much about this event, and I'm sure whatever I did learn about it in school was about how great the U.S. was for doing this. As with most historical things that I've learned more about as an adult, that was not the reality.

Pretty frustrated with #botm. None of the selections since July have appealed to me (enough to want to own them) so I've been skipping, but there are some add-ons that I want!

Cute teen romance

This focuses a lot on schools/education, but also discusses the history and current state of each of the suburbs featured. Lots in this book to be frustrated and upset about.

Middle grade historical fiction set at Bletchley Park during WWII. Lizzie is a clever girl who escapes her guardian who is supposed to take her from London to her grandmother in Cleveland. She joins her brother, a code breaker, at Bletchley Park and investigates their mothers disappearance.

Book 4 in fun middle grade graphic novel series. Gotta love a book full of cats!

Good start to new mystery series. Vandy is a former cop and now a PI. She is tough and damaged.

I didn't like the main character, which would be fine if that was the author's intention, but I think he was meant to be sympathetic. Instead he came across as wooden and arrogant. The mystery was ok but the narrative structure didnt work for me.

Cozy evening reading with the kitty 😻

Fun middle grade mystery. 2 siblings + 2 friends + 1 mischievous grandpa try to find Al Capone's treasure but find current crimes instead.

Not my favorite by this author but still really good.

Pretty good. Easy read.

This would probably be really interesting for someone who wants to know about the technology and people involved in the invention of motion pictures. I was more interested in the story of the disappearance of Louis le Prince and his wife's accusation that Thomas Edison murdered him. That turned out to be a small part of the story.

Great cover, boring book. I would have bailed but it's for book club.

This was ok but I didn't love it.

Light pick. Started out clever. The paranormal aspect didn't quite work with the rest of the story, in my opinion. If the pace were faster and the length a little shorter I might have enjoyed it more.

I like how suspenseful and fast-paced this is. Although I was suspicious of certain characters, I didn't see the twists coming. I'm just not sure how I feel about how victims of traumatic loss and violent crime are portrayed in it (don't want to say more and spoil it)

Kind of boring. No big reveals or anything. No insight into how these people think - how they justify murder instead of divorce or how they act like a normal married couple going to marriage counseling when obviously what's wrong with their marriage is that they committed murder to make it happen!

Good mystery with a few twists (that I suspected were coming).

Good teen mystery. If you liked Johnson's Truly Devious series, you'll also like this. This is a standalone with a teen solving a disappearance in the current time paired with historical story happening in the same location.

I tried reading this a few years ago and bailed, which was the right decision. I just read it again for book club and did not like it. The 1st half was very boring and nothing really happened. Way too much time was spent explaining the main character's thoughts and feelings.

A middle grade book about grief and family, disguised as a murder mystery, that manages to have a mostly light tone in spite of the tough topic. Charming characters, including a parrot

This teen thriller is full of twists and more twists! Maybe too many, but I liked it.

I liked the plot/mystery and Juliette's timeline/pov, but otherwise the execution was lacking. The main 2 characters in the other timeline were very flat and not distinct from each other. And some of the discoveries were conveniently made possible by AI software.

Book 2 in the fun middle grade mystery series about the eccentric Swift family.

This is a necessary expose, but I didn't care for the writing style. But it is clear that Beatrice Sparks, author of Go Ask Alice, was a pathological liar and a terrible person. What she did in writing Jay's Journal (a book I hadn't heard of) is reprehensible. Her books should not be in print any longer, but publishers are still making money off them.

Very good. Also tragic.