"One Must Die" by Candice Pedraza Yamnitz, Amber Lambda, Sarah Everest, Claire Kohler, Lydia Mae, and C. C. Urie

I'm not sure I've ever read a novel co-written by six people before.  Not an anthology, but a single novel!  It's quite the ambitious endeavor, but I think it worked really well.

It's hard to describe One Must Die succinctly.  As the cover says, it's a steampunk murder mystery.  Set in a mansion floating above earth that's filled with robots.  And hidden keys.  And secret passageways.  And, somewhere, a treasure vault.

A whole bunch of strangers are invited to try solving a mystery and finding the treasure in the mansion... and then it turns out they're not all strangers after all.  Someone must die before anyone can claim the treasure, and there's a time limit, too.  You have to find the correct key to open the vault, and you have to find the vault.  Lots of treachery and trickery ensues.

This book is kind of like if you put The Westing Game and Clue and Murder on the Orient Express and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow in a blender.  It's a fast-paced ride, but never gets too scary or too bloody or too intense.  I'll be handing this off to my tween and teens to read now that I've finished it.

Particularly Good Bits: Dread seemed to settle over the large dining room like spider threads, wrapping us too tightly for any chance of escape (p. 50).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-10 for violence, some romantic interludes (all tasteful), and talk about illegitimate children.

"The Bookish Bandit" by Erica Dansereau and Britt Howard

Awww, what a cute romcom this is!  It feels as autumnal as a pumpkin spice latte, as New York City-esque as a bagel with lox, and as bookloving-ish as a bookstore with a cat.  

An aspiring author impulsively sends her novel to a big city publishing house.  It lands in the slush pile, where it catches the eye of the publishing house's heir apparent, who falls in love with the book and demands it get published.

But then... mistakes happen.  Identities get mixed up.  The book is published, but with the wrong author name on it!  Equally furious and forlorn, the real author rushes to New York to take on the publisher and force them to admit they've wronged her.  And then ends up starting to fall in love with some guy who works for the publisher... and you can see where this is going.  But that doesn't make it any less fun to see how everything gets unsnarled in the end!

One of the things I liked best about The Bookish Bandit was how naturally faith was woven into the story.  Never preachy, always organic, the Christian themes were an integral part of the characters and their behavior, and I applaud how well Dansereau and Howard did that.

Particularly Good Bits:

The nerves return, but in the rare form of butterflies rather than fear.  I marvel at the way this woman both unravels and remedies me at once (p. 166).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG.  No cussing, no violence.  Some kissing and a great deal of swooning.  The main characters make it clear to each other and the readers that they will not be sharing a bedroom until they get married.  So, no smut, but definitely a 1960s rom com level of kissing and holding.

This is my 26th book read off my TBR shelves for the Mount TBR Reading Challenge.

"Summon the Light" by Tor Thibeaux

My dad died three weeks ago yesterday.  While traveling to Iowa for his funeral, I read Summon the Light by Tor Thibeaux, a retelling of Shakespeare's The Tempest that's part of the Classic Retold series.  This is a slender novella, barely a hundred pages, but it was exactly the representation of hope and healing I needed at the time.

Nick works as a smuggler after barely surviving the epic fight between mighty forces of evil and good.  The fight killed most of his friends and left the spirit Ariel in a magical coma.  Nick goes through his days feeling numb and detached until he begins to hear a beautiful song that urges him to return to the island he once called home.  Once there, he strives to rebuild the island's ruined chapel.  With each stone he replaces, the song grows stronger, and so does his hope.  

The book's message is one of not giving up even when you are devastated, of doing the next task that comes to hand even if it seems meaningless.  That confidence that even mundane things are still important in the face of great tragedy is something I absolutely needed reinforced during that road trip to Iowa.  I'm so thankful I grabbed this particular book off my TBR shelves, seemingly at random, when I was packing things to read on the trip -- I think the Lord must have guided my hand at that moment.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for fantasy violence.  No objectionable content.

This is my 25th book read from my TBR shelves for the 2024 Mount TBR reading challenge.

"The Stories of Edgar Allan Poe" (Manga Classics) by Stacy King, et al

My kids are getting old enough to not be too creeped out by classic horror stories anymore (at least, so they claim), so I've finally pulled out a few Manga Classics titles that I had avoided until now.  Including this one!  (I knew once I read them, they'd demand to read them, so I just had to bide my time.  Mom life, yo.)

This volume has four stories and one poem, all by Edgar Allan Poe.  Each one was illustrated by a different artist, but all were adapted by Stacy King.  The stories and illustrators are:

"The Tell-Tale Heart," art by Virginia-Nitouhei -- this one was appropriately weird, and I liked how some of the angles of the artwork made me think of film noir.

"The Cask of Amontillado," art by Chagen -- I love this short story, but I feel like this retelling could have been a bit cooler and darker.  Maybe it just paled in comparison to the excellent weirdness of the previous piece.

"The Raven," art by pikomaro -- Really, really, really well done.  This has the full text of the original poem and brings it to live with wonderful vividness.

"The Masque of the Red Death," art by Uka Nagao -- another favorite short story of mine, and I think they brought this one to life quite well.

"The Fall of the House of Usher," art by Linus Liu -- never been a favorite of mine, and I feel like this retelling rushed things a little bit, at the expense of the suspense.

Overall, this was super enjoyable, and not as gruesome as I feared it might be.  Definitely less scary than the stroll we took through the Halloween costume section of Party City yesterday :-b

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13.  Nothing toooooo gross or graphic, nothing smutty, no bad language... but definitely creepy on purpose.

This is my 25th book read from my TBR stacks for the 2024 Mount TBR Reading Challenge.

"Misty of Chincoteague" by Marguerite Henry

I reread Misty of Chincoteague and King of the Wind because I decided to use them both for the literature classes I teach at our homeschool co-op.  I read all four of the Misty books as a kid (Misty of Chincoteague; Stormy, Misty's Foal; Sea Star, Orphan of Chincoteague; and Misty's Twilight), and this one and Sea Star are the two I remember best.  Will I reread the other three in the near future?  Possibly.  They are charming, uplifting, wholesome, and educational -- what more could a horse-loving bibilophile want?

Misty of Chincoteague is about a brother and sister, Paul and Maureen Beebe, who live on Chincoteague Island off the coast of Virginia.  They hope to buy a wild Assateague pony called Phantom and her little foal Misty during the Pony Penning Days that take place each July.  Together, they do extra jobs for months and months to earn the $100 they figure Phantom will cost.  (That's about $1800 today...)  It's a lovely story about siblings cooperating, people who love horses, and the friendship and joy that a horse can bring to a child.

Because I was teaching this book for a literature class, I looked up the real history behind this book.  Misty was a real Chincoteague pony, and really belonged to the Beebe family, but the story in the book is largely made up.  Marguerite Henry actually bought Misty from Clarence and Ida Beebe, and they helped her with a lot of research about the wild ponies on Assateague Island in return for her writing their grandkids, Paul and Maureen, as the hero and heroine of her new book.  Although the books about Misty are fiction, they are grounded in fact about Chincoteague and Assateague, and about the people and animals that live there.  You can learn more about Misty, Marguerite Henry, and this book on this fansite, as well as on other sites such as Wikipedia.

I've had the pleasure of visiting Chincoteague and Assateague myself, back in my late teens.  We weren't there for Pony Penning Days, but I did get to see a few of the wild ponies!

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  G.  Good, clean family fun for all ages!

This is my 32nd book read and reviewed for my fourth Classics Club list.

"Ride the Dark Trail" by Louis L'Amour

I'm coming close to the end of my personal "My Years with the Sacketts" challenge.  Only one true Sackett novel left, and one that's tangentially related (or so they tell me).  

Ride the Dark Trail is a galloping good time.  You've got Em Talon, a fiery old woman holding off a host of greedy landgrabbers.  You've got Logan Sackett, a somewhat shiftless gunfighter discovering he's related to the old woman and coming to her aid.  You've got the Sackett version of the Bat Signal going up, and the Sackett version of "Avengers, Assemble!" happening, which is never anything less than delightful.  Smart and savvy folks on both sides, pert young woman to keep everyone on their toes, and a batch of rousing fights and brawls -- good stuff, friends.

Particularly Good Bits:

Now we Clinch Mountain Sacketts ain't noted for gentle ways.  The way I figure it is if a man is big enough to open his mouth he's big enough to take the consequences, and I was getting tired of talk (p. 11).

If This Was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for mild cussing, lots of violence with guns and fists, and very mild innuendo about a young woman leaving an employer because he made improper advances.

This is my 24th book read from my TBR shelves for the 2024 Mount TBR Challenge.

"The Solitary Summer" by Elizabeth von Arnim

I didn't realize until I started reading it that this is a sequel to Elizabeth and Her German Garden.  Imagine my delight when I discovered that was the case!  It was published a year after Garden and has a similar playful, refreshing feel.  And it shares the fact that it's written as if it is nonfiction, but is actually highly fictionalized.  

Elizabeth decides she wants to spend a summer in solitude, which her husband (always referred to as the Man of Wrath even though he comes off as fairly genial in a stoic German sort of way) thinks will be a disaster.  By "solitary," she doesn't mean she wants to be entirely alone all summer.  She just means she doesn't want to invite people out to stay at their German manor all the time.  She wants one summer with only her husband and children and servants around, to enjoy their home life, basically.  

The bulk of the book is her funny and insightful musings throughout the summer (and into the fall) about books, solitude, nature, gardening, and family life.  I didn't love this quite as much as Garden thanks to an extended section about the immorality of village young people, which felt more snide than funny.  But it's definitely a book I'll be rereading.  It did make me laugh aloud repeatedly.  I tried to read it entirely outside, mostly on my swing in our back yard, though I also read it on a bench outside my daughter's ballet studio a few times.

Elizabeth von Arnim was the pen name of Countess Mary Annette von Arnim-Schlagenthin, an Australian who married into the German aristocracy and used a pen name so as not to scandalize her in-laws.  While the character of Elizabeth is loosely based on herself, just as Elizabeth's husband the Man of Wrath is loosely based on Count von Arnim-Schlagenthin, and the children described here are presumably based on their children.  But what she recounts in the book is pretty much fiction presented as fact.

Particularly Good Bits:

...how can you make a person happy against his will?  You can knock a great deal into him in the way of learning and what the schools call extras, but if you try forever you will not knock any happiness into a being who has not got it in him to be happy.

Books have their idiosyncrasies as well as people, and will not show me their full beauties unless the place and time in which they are read suits them.

What a blessing it is to love books.  Everybody must love something, and I know of no objects of love that give such substantial and unfailing returns as books and a garden.

I believe a week of steady drizzle in summer is enough to make the stoutest heart depressed.  It is to be borne in winter by the simple expedient of turning your face to the fire, but when you have no fire, and very long days, your cheerfulness slowly slips away, and a dreariness prevailing out of doors comes in and broods in the blank corners of your heart.

And was there every such a hopeful beginning to a day, and so full of promise for the subsequent right passing of its hours, as breakfast in the garden, alone with your teapot and your book!

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-10, mainly for the aforementioned part about immoral villagers who go around getting pregnant out of wedlock and getting married later and seem to think this is fine.  It's not salacious at all.

This has been my 31st book read and reviewed for my fourth Classics Club list, and my 23rd from my TBR shelves for the 2024 Mount TBR Challenge.