"The Westing Game" by Ellen Raskin (again)

I have a rule for myself: I have to wait five years between rereads of The Westing Game.  I've had that rule since I first read it 30ish years ago, and I have stuck to it!  This rule is born of me reading it twice in quick succession and realizing that much of my enjoyment of the book comes from the quirky surprises it contains.  When I remember what is coming, it's less fun for me.

This time, I read it aloud to my family.  My son had read it several times, my oldest daughter had read it five years ago and didn't remember it, and my husband and my youngest daughter had not read it at all.  We had the jolliest time experiencing this book together!  We now have several new family in-jokes because of it.

The basic plot is this: when paper products mogul Sam Westing is murdered, he leaves his money to whoever can win the Westing Game he has set up.  Players of the game all live in a new apartment building, though they didn't realize their living there was all a part of Westing's pre-death plan to get them to play.  As friendships form, alliances collapse, and families learn important things about each other, the tension mounts to see who will decipher all the mysterious clues and win the Westing Game -- and millions of dollars.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for some discussion of corpses and murder, bombs, broken limbs, and an accident that results in disfigurement.  No cussing.

"The Annotated Northanger Abbey" by Jane Austen (Annotated and Edited by David M. Shapard)

I'm halfway through my ongoing quest to read all these annotated Austen editions!  The #JaneAustenDeepDive reading group on Instagram has been a continual delight, and the two-months-per-book pace has been perfect for me to read these detailed and informative editions.  

I think I learned more from The Annotated Northanger Abbey than from the Pride and Prejudice or the Sense and Sensibility, largely because this one explained alllllll the allusions to popular novels that Austen makes throughout the book.  One day, I will read some of the books she talks about, just to more fully understand this one.

Northanger Abbey remains tied with Pride and Prejudice as my second-favorite Jane Austen.  Up next for our group read-along is Mansfield Park, which is my least-favorite Austen.  I'm hoping that reading the annotated edition will help me appreciate it better.

If you don't know, this book is about a young woman who loves to read Gothic romance books, that era's version of romantic suspense, basically.  She travels to a resort town with some friends of her family, where she makes new friends and forms an attachment with a charming man with a great sense of humor.  But she lets her imagination start to run away from her sometimes, and has to learn to differentiate between fact and fiction.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for some mild bad language in the text, and PG-13 for the annotations, which talk about sexual mores and attitudes at the time.

"Road Trip Rescue" by Becca Wierwille

What a lovely book!  I was utterly enchanted by this middle-grade book about a girl trying to find her missing dog.

Kimmy's dog Bo disappeared two years ago.  When she finds a photo in a magazine that looks just like him, she begs her parents to take her to see if that dog in the magazine really is Bo.  Her parents can't take time away from their dairy farm, but Kimmy's Aunt Skylar decides to take Kimmy on a road trip with a stop at the place where Bo might be living.  

The road trip gets longer and longer, with various stops and adventures along the way, and with extra people joining it along the way.  Kimmy does finally find the dog from the magazine.  I won't spoil the book by telling you whether the dog is Bo or not.

Kimmy was born with one full arm and hand, and one "little arm" that ends just below her elbow.  Over the course of the book, she learns that not all strangers stare, not all people who stare are being intentionally rude, and not everyone thinks that her "little arm" makes her a freak.  Most importantly, she learns the power of the forgiveness, and that you can forgive people whether or not they apologize to you.  

This is Christian fiction of the best kind, with characters who strive to live out their faith and act according to what the Bible teaches.  They read the Bible and they attend church, too.

I plan to have my elementary literature class at our homeschool co-op read this book this year.  It's so good!

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: G.  A good, wholesome, heartwarming story.

This has been my 18th book read from my TBR shelves for the 2024 Mount TBR Reading Challenge.

Cover Reveal and ARC Sign-Up for My Book "Prairie Tales"

It's finally time to share the cover for the sixth book in my Once Upon a Western series!  Prairie Tales: Volume One is a collection of ten short stories that are all related to the first five books in the series, whether as sequels or prequels to those books.

Here's the official synopsis:

Discover ten re-imaginings of fairy tales, folk tales, and even a Mother Goose rhyme in this heartwarming collection. Journey across the plains of Nebraska and Kansas and explore the mountains of Wyoming and Colorado with characters from the "Once Upon a Western" series—or meet them for the first time! Encounter a mattress filled with apples, a runaway basket of gingerbread, a house that looks like a shoe, a disappointing Christmas tree, and a Halloween prank gone wrong. Each short story brings a classic tale to life, offering fresh adventures and cozy charm in the Old West.

The ten short stories included are:

• "None Too Particular" (The Princess and the Pea) 
• "Let Down Your Hair" (Rapunzel) 
• "I'll Do It Myself" (The Little Red Hen) 
• "No Match for a Good Story" (Scheherazade) 
• "Run, Run" (The Gingerbread Man) 
• "Who Lived in a Shoe" (There Was an Old Woman) 
• "The Ugly Evergreen" (The Ugly Duckling) 
• "The Wind Makes a Poor Husband" (The Mouse's Marriage) 
• "The Blizzard at Three Bears Lake" (Goldilocks and the Three Bears) 
• "Gruff" (Three Billy Goats Gruff)

And now, it's time to reveal the cover!

I think this just might be the prettiest cover for this series yet!  And look how wonderful it looks with all the others:

If some of those short stories sound familiar to you, five of them have been previously available on their own as free e-books, and two of them have been free Christmas gifts to people who subscribe to my author newsletter.  If you're keeping up with my math here, that means that three of these short stories are totally new and have never been available before!  And none of them have been available in print before this. 

Only "Who Lived in a Shoe" and "Blizzard at Three Bears Lake" will continue to be offered as free e-books on their own.  All the rest will only be available in this collection from now on.

Prairie Tales: Volume One will release on August 6, 2024, which is less than a month away!  If you don't want to wait a whole month to read it, you can apply for an Advance Reader Copy (ARC) by filling out this form.  I will give out a limited number of ARCs, and they will be available on a first-come, first-served basis, so if you want one, you'd better sign up soon!  All ARCs will be e-books, not paperbacks.

The Kindle edition of Prairie Tales is available for pre-order right here already, and you can also mark it as want-to-read here on GoodReads.

I'll be offering some book launch goodies, and taking this book on a virtual book tour during its launch week, so keep an eye out for news about those!

Oh, and yes... the title includes the words "volume one."  I fully expect to keep writing books and short stories in this series, which means there will be another volume of Once Upon a Western short stories one day!  I currently have plans for the next three books, and ideas for a couple more short stories...

"Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves" by P. G. Wodehouse (audiobook read by Jonathan Cecil)

I happened upon the audiobook version of Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse at a used book store this spring.  When I saw it was read by Jonathan Cecil, I snapped it up because I was pretty sure this would be a fun book for our family vacation.  My kids know who Jonathan Cecil is because he played Captain Hastings in several Poirot mysteries opposite Peter Ustinov, and we are definite fans of that particular iteration of Poirot.

Anyway, we had a jolly time listening to this book over a couple of days on our drive home last week!  We got a lot of laughs out of it, and we've acquired a few new favorite things to quote to each other (especially, "In that case, I shall now eat a ham sandwich!").

In this book, Bertie Wooster tries very hard not to get invited to a big manor house, not to get tangled up in his friends' problems, and not to get rid of the jaunty blue alpine hat with a pink feather that he loves and Jeeves hates.  As you can expect, he fails on all three counts, with hilarious and delightful results.  

I find it very heartening that Wodehouse published this book when he was 82.  And published two more Jeeves books after it!  Makes me hope I could have another 40ish years of writing ahead of me yet.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for a smattering of mild cussing here and there.

This is my 26th book read and reviewed for my fourth Classics Club list and my 17th from my TBR shelves for the 2024 Mount TBR Reading Challenge.  I'm counting it for the latter because, although I bought the audiobook this year, the paperback has been on my TBR shelves since 2023.

"Steal the Morrow" by Jenelle Leanne Schmidt

Another excellent book in the Classic Retold series!  In fact, please don't throw things at me for this, but I actually liked Steal the Morrow better than the book it's retelling, Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens.  :-o  I know, I know, but hear me out.

Steal the Morrow has its orphan, Olifur, fall in with a Robin Hood-esque band of boys living in the forest, led by a kind man named Fritjof who teaches them how to survive and thrive.  Unlike Robin Hood, and unlike Fagin in the original book, these folks don't steal.  They work.

Eventually, Olifur goes to a big city to find a doctor to help Fritjof, who has weak lungs and gets sick a lot.  There, he gets an unpleasant and dangerous job, reminiscent of a work house, to pay the doctor.  He encounters this book's versions of the Artful Dodger, Nancy, and Bill Sikes.  Moral quandries ensue, which Olifer eventually finds his way through, and the ending is WAY happier than the ending of Oliver Twist.  

So, yeah -- happier ending, less misery, far nicer characters, and a Robin Hood aspect make me like Steal the Morrow a lot more than Oliver Twist.  I'm not saying it's a better book, I'm just saying I personally like and enjoy it more.

Particularly Good Bits:

Perhaps that was part of growing up, he thought.  Perhaps there would always be small pieces of his heart missing, scattered from town to town, staying with the people he cared about most (p. 181).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for violent loss of parents, scenes of children in peril/danger, and violence toward women and children.  No smut or bad language, and the violence is not described in a gory way.

This is my 16th book read from my TBR shelves for the 2024 Mount TBR Reading Challenge.