Thursday Thirteen 418: Recently Read

Below are featured the last thirteen books completed this year. As always, click on any cover for more info.














ABOUT THE BOOKS:


ROW 1: As you can see, I’ve been reading a lot of cozy mysteries again, including Chance of a Ghost by EJ Copperman, book four of a series. I won a copy of Death at Breakfast through Goodreads, but while it was an okay read, I did not enjoy it as much as hoped. It felt like there were a couple loose threads at the end. Marty Wingate was the April Featured Author in the Cozy Mysteries group, and The Garden Plot was book one in her Potting Shed series. I will likely pick up book two somewhere down the road.

ROW 2: A row of firsts! Irish Stewed is book one in a new series by Kylie Logan (AKA Casey Daniels). Will certainly watch for book two next year! It Takes a Witch is book one of Heather Blake’s “Wishcraft” series — I have more of these in Mount TBR. I picked up Last Dance partly out of nostalgia and as tribute to a writing team lost this past year, Joyce and Jim Lavene. We lost Joyce last October, and husband Jim passed in early May. I plucked this one out of Mount TBR out of all the stockpiled books of theirs as it fit a mini challenge of someone being falsely accused. This is one of their series whose gaps have been hard to fill in. I suspect it may be more difficult than ever to find books of theirs I am missing—at least for a while.

ROW 3: A couple more “first” books here. Allyson K. Abbott was the May Featured Author for the Cozy Mysteries group. This particular book is set in a Milwaukee bar, the first in her Mack’s bar series, and helped mark off another Ultimate Challenge, a book set in your state. Would definitely like to find more in this series! Nightmares Can be Murder was read for a monthly mini challenge, and is the first in a "dream club" series. The Obsession is the latest single title release from Nora Roberts. I managed to knock off the first one hundred pages in one day, after which the stupid day job kept getting in the way of my reading time. It was good, even if the foreshadowing was such that I recognized the murderer as soon as we met him/her.

ROW 4: The Best-Loved Poems of Jackie Kennedy Onasis was a steal of a find at the library’s monthly used book sale. I had encountered roughly half of the poems previously, and discovered a few new favorites. It served as my “book of poetry” for this year’s Ultimate Challenge. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was the classic group read for April, and one I enjoyed reading. The May classic group read, Return of the Soldier, was one I did not enjoy as much. Both knocked two more items off my 2016 Ultimate list.

ROW 5: Eleanor & Park is a YA bestseller and banned book that I recently picked up cheap as a “daily find” from B&N. Excellent novel! It was worth more than I actually paid for it, and marked off yet another item for the 2016 Ultimate Challenge.


Your turn: What are you reading?



LINKING TO: Thursday Thirteen