"The Mysterious Mr. Quin" by Agatha Christie

I really like the Mr. Quin mysteries.  Really, REALLY like them.  I read a few of them previously, in those seasonal Agatha Christie collections, and I liked them so much that I picked up this anthology that has nearly all of the Mr. Quin stories in it.  (WHY did they decide to leave a couple out?  So annoying.  Now I have to track those down.)

The Mr. Quin stories all revolve an aging gentleman named Mr. Satterthwaite who has spent his life cultivating a peerless taste in art of every kind.  He knows many, many people, and often happens to be at someone's estate when someone is in dire straits, or encounters desperate people while on holiday, and so on.  Then the mysterious Mr. Harley Quin will show up and give Mr. Satterthwaite a helpful hint or a nudge of some kind, and events will take a sudden turn, usually for the better.  Several suicides and murders are avoided, some grave disappointments are averted, and some crimes are solved over the course of the book.  And many of the stories have just a touch of eeriness, but no actual creepiness.  

This would have been a great collection to read in October around Halloween, and I'll probably reread it in the autumn in a couple of years, once I have forgotten how most of the mysteries turn out.  That way, they will be fresh and delightful again.  Happily, I only remembered the solution to one of the stories I had previously read, and I only remembered it about a page before we got to the reveal.  Quite delightful.

My favorite stories in the collection were "The Face of Helen," "The Dead Harlequin," and "The World's End."

Particularly Good Bits:

Mr. Satterthwaite put away the little set speech he had prepared, and hastily rummaged for sympathy and friendship in the bottom drawer of his mind (p. 183, from "The Face of Helen).

He was a sensible young man, and, as such, uninteresting to Mr. Satterthwaite, who was an artist and a connoisseur in life (p. 249, from "The Bird with the Broken Wing").

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG-13 for several murders, discussions of and depictions of suicide, and other crimes.

This is my 8th book read and reviewed for my fifth Classics Club list.

"The Sweet Life" by Suzanne Woods Fisher

If you love ice cream, you will probably enjoy this book, because a LOT of it revolves around making and consuming ice cream.  I read the whole book in one day while on a road trip and insisted we stop somewhere with ice cream for supper because I neeeeeded some.

When Dawn Dixon's fiancé calls off their wedding and, that same day, she learns her widowed mom has secretly been battling cancer, Dawn goes into an emotional tailspin.  Her fiancé insists she go on their already-paid-for-and-non-refundable honeymoon trip to Cape Cod, and take whomever along she wants.  Dawn picks her mom, Marnie.  Marnie is unpredictable, freewheeling, and secretive.  Dawn is secretive too, but prefers that her life be predictable and regimented, so she and her mom clash a lot, especially when Marnie decides to buy a dilapidated historic building and turn it into a quaint ice cream shop.   With Dawn's help, because Dawn loves to make ice cream.

This is the first book of a series, so not everything gets figured out and resolved by the end, but the ice cream shop does open, and the two main characters do come to understand each other much better.

I really liked that this book revolved around the relationship between a mother and daughter, rather than around a romantic relationship, though those existed on the fringes of the story.  And I loved all the ice cream making :-)  And I liked that Marnie had solid faith in God and was a regular churchgoer, but Dawn didn't and wasn't, so we got to see a mother helping her daughter grow and mature in her faith.  That was cool.  

However, the writing was very simplistic most of the time, almost to the point of being clunky.  There was also an awful lot of telling us how a person felt or what kind of person they were, rather than showing us those things.

Particularly Good Bits:

She was a big believer in miracles.  Big ones, small ones, everyday ones.  You just had to keep your eyes on the lookout for them (p. 29).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG.  You have some romantic sparkage here and there, but it's not exactly a "kissing book."

"The First Fast Draw" by Louis L'Amour

Well, this was not a new favorite L'Amour book, but it was still fun.  And I read it in like three days, so you know the pacing was excellent.  Kept me turning those pages like crazy!

Cullen Baker returns home to Texas after the Civil War ended.  He didn't really participate in the war, but everyone assumes he did.  The people who hated him when he was a kid living there still hate him.  Seems like the only people who don't want to punch or shoot him are outlaws... and Katy Thorne.  Katy is from one of the best families in the area, but even her friendship can't save him from greedy carpetbaggers and a variety of other creeps.  Cullen just wants to farm the land he already owns, but everyone keeps blaming him for all sorts of crimes he didn't commit, just because he makes a handy scapegoat.  Eventually, Cullen takes after the people who hate him, and the sparks fly fast and furious.

I know this is an earlier L'Amour book, so I'll cut the too-fast ending some slack.  It's a fun read, and I liked Cullen and Katy a lot.

Particularly Good Bits:

A really rough man never has to prove anything to anybody, he knows what he can do and he doesn't care even a mite whether anybody else knows it or not.  With a youngster it's otherwise.  He figures he's got to show everybody how tough he is or nobody will believe it, so he winds up in plenty of grief (p. 9).

One thing I'd learned was it mattered mighty little how much money a man had as long as he was contented (p. 13).

For a man to be a peace with himself was important, Will said, not what people say.  People are often wrong, and public opinion can change, and the hatreds of people are rarely reasonable things.  I can hear him yet.  He used to say there was no use a man wearing himself out with hatred an dill-feeling, and time proved it out (p. 13).

A few men riding into the street meant nothing to anybody, not those days.  There were loose men from everywhere, just drifting, hunting they knew not what, men who had lost what they had i the war and were hoping, away back inside their skulls, to find it somewhere else (p 53).

To have friends a man has to be friendly, and to get others to think of you, you have to think of others (p. 145).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for violence and threats made to a woman.  Some cussing, obviously a good bit of western violence, but no smut.

"Williamsburg at War: Virginia's Colonial Capital in the Revolutionary War" by Michael Cecere

I picked this book up while at Colonial Williamsburg last month to celebrate July 4th.  And started to read it while staying in a house that was build in the 1750s on the other side of the James River from Williamsburg.  And then it took me more than a month to finish it, but it still seemed like the perfect time and place to start reading.

Williamsburg at War was particularly interesting to me once we got past the lead-up-to-the-war part.  Having been to Colonial Williamsburg dozens of times, I know a good bit about the Powder Magazine Incident and Lord Dunmore (who the colonists all wished had done less) fleeing Virginia and so on.  But everything past that point was pretty new to me, and I liked getting to learn new and interesting things about a place that is dear to my heart.

I particularly liked the author's point at the very end of the book, that the fact that the capitol of Virginia was moved to Richmond during the war meant that Williamsburg sank into relative obscurity... which made many parts of it remain fairly unchanged over the next hundred and fifty years, allowing for the Rockefellers and the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation to create the most amazing living history experience right where history happened, without having to tear down a lot of skyscrapers or something.  I had always felt kind of sad for Williamsburg, getting left in the dust back then, but now I see that it was actually a blessing for us today.

Also, I was greatly amused by this one bit of complaining from a European officer, Captain Ewald, about the misery of summer in Virginia:

"For six weeks the heat has been so unbearable that many men have been lost to sunstroke or their reason has been impaired.  Everything that one has on his body is soaked as with water from the constant perspiration." (p. 187).

I regret to say Virginia summers have not changed.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for discussions of warfare, including things written about war and death by people who experienced it.

This has been my 8th book read and reviewed for my #RevolutionaryWarReads challenge.  I've bought a lot of new books about the Revolution this year, because of it being American's 250th birthday, so I've made an entirely new graphic to display just the books I have read for this challenge, not the ones I might read.  I'm still aiming for thirteen by the end of the year, one for each of the original colonies.

"The Leavenworth Case" by Anna Katherine Green

I probably never would have read this if it hadn't been for Patricia Meredith's book A Deed of Dreadful Note.  That book is a fictional imagining of how Green could have gotten the ideas she needed to write The Leavenworth Case.  It took me a few years to get around to reading the original, but I'm very happy I kept it on my TBR and finally made time to read it, because I very much enjoyed it.

A wealthy merchant is murdered.  His two nieces, whom he has raised, are the prime suspects.  Particularly since one of them has become an heiress thanks to this murder.  We get two detectives in this book, one professional and one amateur.  The professional is a New York police investigator named Ebenezer Gryce, while the amateur is a young lawyer named Everett Raymond, who also narrates the book.  Gryce has the wisdom and experience needed, but Raymond has a personal stake in things that aids his natural cleverness.  He falls in love with one of the dead man's nieces over the course of the book.

From what I have read, The Leavenworth Case was a really popular book when it was released in 1878.  Green has been called the Mother of Detective Fiction because her Detective Gryce books (she wrote quite a few more) made the genre popular almost a decade before the first Sherlock Holmes stories appeared.  She made the detective series popular in particular, and also is credited with inventing the "girl detective" type in a later book.

For me, The Leavenworth Case was remarkable not just for being so seminal to my favorite genre, but also for being a really satisfying mystery.  A lot of very early detective fiction can feel simplistic or even a bit twee, but this book kept me guessing until the big reveal.  I will say it's got a slow and contemplative pacing that some modern readers might not appreciate, and there was also a long letter of confession from the murderer at the end that felt unnecessary, but those weren't big enough detractions to make me dislike the book as a whole.  I hope to find more of the Detective Gryce books to read in the future.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for murder and related subject matter.  No cussing, gory violence (though blood spatter and brains are briefly mentioned) or smut.

This has been my 7th book read for my 5th Classics Club list.

Top Ten Tuesday: Bygone August Books

This month's Top Ten Tuesday prompt from That Artsy Reader Girl is "Books I was reading on this day mid-August over the past ten years."  I keep a monthly record of what books I read and what movies I watched, and it's really fun to go looking back through that for things like this!  But it does mean I don't necessarily know what I was reading on a specific day, so I just aimed for things toward the middle of my list for each August.

I've linked the titles to my own reviews, in case you want to know more about any particular book.

2016 -- Rainbow Valley by L. M. Montgomery (classic, coming-of-age, World War One, Canada)

2017 -- Rules of Murder by Julianna Deering (Christian, mystery, historical fiction, 1930s Britain)

2018 -- Famous Gunfighters of the Western Frontier by W. B. "Bat" Masterson (non-fiction, Old West history, essays)

2019 -- War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (classic, Russian, Napoleonic Wars)

2020 -- Rook di Goo by Jenni Sauer (fairy tale retelling, sci-fi + fantasy, strong heroine, found family)

2021 -- The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (classic, swashbuckler)

2022 -- Rose Petals and Snowflakes by Kendra E. Ardnek (fairy tale retelling, fantasy, Jane Austen retelling, sisterhood)

2023 -- The Last Atlantean  by Emily Hayse (Christian, historicalesque fantasy)

2024 -- The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle (classic, fantasy)

2025 -- The Case of the Footloose Doll by Erle Stanley Gardner (Perry Mason, mystery, courtroom drama)

Do you keep track of what you read?  If so, how?

"Grits and Glamor" by B. R. Goodwin

Because I enjoy cooking and love to bake, I always like reading books where the main character's job involves the kitchen.  B. R. Goodwin writes quite a few characters who have mad culinary skillz, and Grits and Glamor fully lives up to my expectations in this department.

Chloe Garland is a professional private chef.  As in, went to fancy cooking schools and everything.  She's also awkward, funny, kind, helpful, and a strong Christian woman.

Roman Rivers is a famous movie star who is famous for playing a pirate hottie, but prefers to keep his personal life very cool indeed.  Particularly because that helps keep his young half-sister protected and out of the spotlight.  

Chloe becomes Roman's chef.  Sorta.  Sparks fly.  His best friend doesn't like her.  His half-sister adores her.  Bunnies erupt everywhere.  (Not even joking -- there are a lot of bunnies in this book.)  Grits and ice cream and latte art abound.  It's a jolly time.

Also, this is SPOILAGE, but there is NO third-act break-up.  I repeat: zero breaking up over nonsensical and contrived "problems" occurs.  So refreshing.  I want to hug B. R. Goodwin super tightly for that one.  END OF SPOILERS.

Grits and Glamor kind of ties together Goodwin's two Christian romcom series, Sugartree Romance and Happy in Honey Hill.  I loved that.  I've read a book or two from each series, so it was really fun to see characters from them pop up in this.

I really appreciate how Goodwin doesn't write perfect characters or cliched ones.  Her Christians walk the good walk and fight the good fight, and they know how to talk the good talk, too.  But they aren't perfect.  Nor do they stew in their own sinfulness and say it's just "human nature."  They make mistakes, and they learn from them.  They sin and stumble and stray, repent, forgive and are forgiven, and move forward in redemption.  That's too hard to find in Christian fiction.  That's what makes Goodwin's books must-reads for me, even though romcoms are not a genre I routinely gravitate toward.

Particularly Good Bits:

Being loved fully by the people in your little world who matter most has a way of erasing the background noise of voices suggesting you deserve otherwise (p. 213).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for a lot of kissing and lightly described makeouts, talk of needing to set physical boundaries so they can keep their bodies and minds pure, and discussions of appreciating people of the opposite sex.  It's tasteful, but not something I would hand a tween.

"Setting Time Free" by Sarah Everest

Each installment in the Untouched serial series is more taut and exciting than the last!

Breaking Triviality was a fun adventure.  Sifting Through Chaos turned serious fast.  And Setting Time Free was so suspenseful that I read the second half of the book in one sitting!

In this third and final installment, modern-day teens Marit and Cas are still trying to help 1940s Dutch teen Anneliese and a few new friends survive in newly occupied Rotterdam.  The Nazis have overrun the city and are an ever-present menace.  Anneliese's new friend Bastiaan and his resistance buddies try to help Marit and Cas find the mysterious locket that could return them to their own time.  But there are enemies on all sides, more even than Marit and Cas really realize.

Even more so than Sifting Through Chaos, this book brought to life the heartbreak and horror of war.  There are on-page deaths and some realistic descriptions of the struggle to find food and remain humane in the midst of scrabbling for survival.

As a whole, this serialized trilogy is a thrilling, suspenseful adventure story for teens that I very much enjoyed.

This book releases on Tuesday, August 11. I was privileged to be selected to read an advance copy from the publisher, but I was not requested or required to review the book; all opinions are my own.

Particularly Good Bits:

It was as though someone had cut a hole in my stomach and pulled everything out, leaving me a hollow cocoon, my butterfly soul having flown off to chase the light of my handsome prince (Marit, chapter four).

It would have been easy to slip back into the fearful girl I had once been, but I was not that girl anymore.  I had walked through the fire and felt the devil nipping at my heels.  And despite all the evil we had witnessed, the words Betje had sent us off with rang true.  The Lord was with us, no matter how dark the night (Annelies, chapter eight).

He had stepped out of the pages of my life as quickly as he had entered them, leaving the story unfinished (Annelies, chapter seventeen).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for wartime violence, including on-page shootings and death.  No cussing or smut.

"Farewell, My Lovely" by Raymond Chandler

Raymond Chandler's crisp, laconic, sharp, caustic, dazzlingly evocative writing is always good for what ails me.  Especially when what ails me is a mild case of summertime SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) and its accompanying discomfort in my own skin.

I try to limit myself to one Raymond Chandler book a year so that there is always enough time between my reading of any single book to make it feel fresh again with each reread.  So far, that's been working pretty well.

In Farewell, My Lovely, private investigator Philip Marlowe accidentally encounters an ex-con named Moose Malloy.  Moose is fresh out of prison and single-mindedly hunting for the love of his life, a singer named Velma.  He corrals Marlowe into helping him look for her, then accidentally commits a murder while trying to get information out of a black saloonkeeper.  Marlowe has to report the murder to the cops, but this is early 1940s California, and nobody really cares about an accidental murder of a black man who wasn't rich or famous or important in anyway.  Marlowe is told to forget about it, and the cops will track down Moose in their own good time.  The injustice bothers him, and he makes a lot of snide remarks about it to various authorities, to no real avail.

But Marlowe keeps getting sucked back into Moose's quest to find Velma.  Sometimes things happen to him that seem unconnected to Moose, like getting hit on the head and waking up to discover a murder, or getting hit on the head and waking up in a private hospital for recovering drug addicts.  But he starts to realize everything is all connected, eventually.  It feels for quite a while like a meandering spiral of a story, but that spiral is getting pulled tighter and tighter and tighter like a watch spring the whole time.

Particularly Good Bits:

I didn't say anything.  I lit my pipe again.  It makes you look thoughtful when you are not thinking (p. 91).

Aster Drive had a long smooth curve there and the houses on the inland side were just nice houses, but on the canyon side they were great silent estates, with twelve foot walls and wrought-iron gates and ornamental hedges; and inside, if you could get inside, a special brand of sunshine, very quiet, put up in noise-proof containers just for the upper classes (p. 119-120).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-16 for violence, including not-overly-detailed descriptions of some gory murders, as well as innuendo (mainly in dialog) here and there, some bad language, and the aforementioned casual racism and some racial slurs common in the era.  This is hardboiled detective fiction from the 1940s, so it's not actually smutty, but most of the characters Marlowe encounters are not nice people.

This has been my 6th book read and reviewed for my fifth Classics Club list.

"Secrets of the Revolution" by Megan Soja

This second book in the Harbor of Spies series by Megan Soja did not disappoint!  It builds upon the first book, Spark of the Revolution, but could also be read as a stand-alone.  (But you do find out how the first book ends, if you care about spoilage.)

This book centers around William Abbott, older brother of the main female character of the first book.  His plans for the future entirely change with the receipt of a single letter, and he wholeheartedly embraces the Patriot cause as a result.  He stays in Boston and becomes a spy.

Along the way, he meets Hannah Pierce, who runs her aging father's apothecary shop.  Not only is she keeping her father's failing health and mind a secret, but she becomes involved in the growing Patriot spy ring as well.

And, of course, William and Hannah fall in love.

I especially enjoyed how many real historical people, places, and events Soja includes in this series.  And I appreciate how the Christian faith of both main characters grew and changed over the course of the book.  I liked book two even better than book one, and I'm glad I'm only halfway through the series, because that means I still have two books to look forward to!

Particularly Good Bits:

Silence hovered between them, begging to be filled (p. 29).

"Perhaps many memories hold a touch of the bittersweet, but I believe that makes them all the more precious.  They remind us of the experiences that shaped us.  And in recognizing how fleeting and fragile life is, they spur us on to fully live each day that God gives us" (p. 91).

It was not a failure to close one chapter of her life and begin another (p. 276).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for sweet romance including lightly described kisses, plus some descriptions of mild violence.  No cussing or smut.

This has been my 7th book read for my #RevolutionaryWarReads challenge!

Top Ten Tuesday: Have We Met?

This week's Top Ten Tuesday subject from That Artsy Reader Girl is "Books I want to read by new-to-me authors."  So, here are ten books that I have on my physical TBR shelves that are by authors I haven't read anything by before.

Since I haven't read these, I'm grabbing publication years and genre info from their Goodreads pages, and linking their titles to their Goodreads listings in case you are interested in learning more about them.

Boundless by Amy Caldwell -- 2023, Christian, contemporary, clean romance, ranch, modern cowboys

The Weight of Air by Kimberly Duffy -- 2023, Christian, historical fiction, circus performers, clean romance

Not Quite Miss Austen by Kim Griffin -- 2025, Christian, historical fiction, 1950s, clean romance

Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome -- 1889, classic, British lit, humor, travel

Passing by Nella Larsen -- 1929, classic, African American fiction, New York City

The Lady and the Loyalist by Stephanie McRae -- 2024, Christian, historical fiction, American Revolution, clean romance

Parnassus on Wheels by Christopher Morley -- 1917, classic, humor, New England, book-lover main character

The Betrayal of Eden by Erin Phillips -- 2025, Christian, young adult, fantasy, retelling of The Count of Monte Cristo

Freckles by Gene Stratton Porter -- 1904, classic, young adult, Indiana swamp

The Moonstone's Curse by Sam Siciliano -- 2017, mystery, historical fiction, Sherlock Holmes pastiche

That's my list for this week!  Have you read anything by these authors?  Do any of these titles catch your eye too?  Did you do a Top Ten Tuesday post this week?  Let me know in the comments!

Making it Easier for You to Find Book Reviews Here

Over the past couple months, I've had some folks asking me for suggestions of specific kinds of books, or how to find my reviews of those book categories or genres.  I point them to this blog, and mention that I have specific pages for Clean Kids Books, Clean Teen/YA Books, and Clean Adult Books. 

But one person was specifically looking just for Christian fiction, and wanted an easy way to find a list of those reviews.  So, I added a Christian Fiction reviews page.

Then another person asked me if there was an easy way to see all my reviews of a couple different book series.  And I had to admit there wasn't, because I alphabetize the reviews on my Fiction Book Reviews page by title.  But I read a LOT of series, and there are quite a few that I have reviewed all the books in over the years.  So, I created a Book Reviews by Series page -- I just made it live today.

You can always find all those pages in the toolbar at the top of my blog, along with a lot of other handy ones like the Christmas Reads page.  If you're using a mobile device, they show up as a dropdown list right under my blog header.

Hope that helps some of you find things on this blog!  When you've been sharing book reviews for almost 15 years, and you read 50-100 books a year that adds up after a while!

"Sifting Through Chaos" by Sarah Everest

Book two in the Untouched series picks right up where book one (Breaking Triviality) left off.  That's a great thing about a serialized series -- you aren't left wondering what happened between books!  I appreciate that.

In Sifting Through Chaos, modern-day teens Marit and Cas have time-traveled back to 1940s Rotterdam right when the Nazis were overrunning the Netherlands.  They meet Annelies and her family (who were in the split-time first book too) and work together to escape the bombings and take shelter at the family's farm cottage outside the city.  But that cottage isn't meant for living in, and they must find another solution.  

Along the way, they've acquired an elderly woman and an orphaned toddler to care for as well.  That gives Sifting Through Chaos some found-family elements, which I always appreciate.  The bulk of the book is about figuring out how to keep these people safe while also searching for a way to get Marit and Cas back to their own time.

Marit has had a crush on Cas for years, and she finds her feelings growing deeper as she gets to know him.  Cas has a girlfriend back home in their own time, but they have been drifting apart for a long time, and he begins to wonder if he should break things off with her if/when they return to the present.  This is partly because he is developing feelings for Marit, but also because he realizes his girlfriend is not someone he wants to spend the rest of his life with.  Meanwhile, Annelies realizes she is falling for her knew Dutch soldier friend Bastiaan.  All of this is handled with believable teenage emotions and ways of thinking.

Sifting Through Chaos doesn't end on quite as much of a cliffhanger as Breaking Triviality did, but it definitely makes me eager to read book three, Setting Time Free, which will release in August.

This book releases next Tuesday, July 14. I was privileged to be selected to read an advance copy from the publisher, but I was not requested or required to review the book; all opinions are my own.

Particularly Good Bits:

So many crushed dreams were scattered around my feet (Cas, chapter nine).

...there was just no right way to tell a three-year-old phoenix she would rise from the ashes and become the best, warmest, most understanding grandma a girl could ever ask for (Marit, chapter twenty-one).

Tears of defeat threatened to overflow, but a surprising defiance welled up inside me.  I wouldn't give the enemy the pleasure of stealing my hope (Annelies, chapter twenty-eight).

My entire world had been shuffled into ruin and nightmares (Annelies, chapter thirty).

Minutes ticked by to the steady rhythm of our feet (Cas, chapter thirty-five).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG-13 for wartime violence and an incident where a German soldier attempts to haul away a teenage girl and rape her (the word 'rape' is not used, but his intentions are clear, as is her growing fear of what could happen).  No gore, no bad language, and no smut.  

"The Fighting Ground" by Avi

Well, that was different.  I'm not entirely sure I liked The Fighting Ground, but I definitely found it interesting!  Especially the idea behind the format of the story.  Instead of having chapters, it's broken up into sections by time, each section relating what happens every five minutes or so.  Depending on your reading speed, that can make this feel like it's happening in real time.  That was a nifty conceit.

The book focuses on a thirteen-year-old boy, Jonathan who aches to join the Patriots and fight against the British.  His father was wounded in the war and has come home to recover, but Jonathan doesn't see his father as a hero.  He sees him as a boring and tired adult who doesn't want Jonathan to have any fun.

So, Jonathan seizes his chance when there's an opportunity to borrow a gun from a neighbor and go fight some Hessians in the neighborhood.  Except the skirmish he ends up taking part in has little glory or excitement.  It's noisy and confusing and scary, and Jonathan decides he has had enough of war.  Unfortunately, the war has not had enough of him.  Before he finds his way back home, he faces some terrible people and learns some uncomfortable truths about himself and about war.

This is probably not a book I'll keep on our shelves.  But I think it was a timely thing to read right before the 250th anniversary of our nation's birthday.  It's a good reminder of the toll that the war took on ordinary people of all ages, and of the fact that war isn't glorious or fun -- it's dirty and dangerous and uncomfortable and scary.  For me, that's a good reminder of how much respect I owe those who choose to serve our country in the military, both now and in the past.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG-10 for several cuss words, a scene of battle and bloodshed, and lightly described encounters with death and dead bodies.  This is a middle-grade book, but some younger readers may find it too scary or disturbing.

This is my sixth book read for my #RevolutionaryWarReads challenge that I've set myself.  You may notice I've made a new graphic for this challenge... and I probably will need to make another new one before the year is over, because I keep acquiring more books about the American Revolution!  This will do for right now, though.

"Pigeon Post" by Arthur Ransome

Every time I read an Arthur Ransome book aloud to my kids (who are now teens, but I still call them my kids), I think I can't possibly love it more than the previous Swallows and Amazons books.  And I am usually wrong.    They tend to be better and better the farther we get in the series.

(We actually didn't like Coot Club much and decided to skip it for now after a few chapters, but that was because it was mainly about Dick and Dorothea, and we wanted to read about the Swallows and the Amazons, not the Ds.)

We adored Pigeon Post.  First of all, it was a jolly good adventure.  One part toward the very end made us all laugh so much that I had to stop reading, wipe my eyes, and blow my nose because I was crying from laughing so hard.  And it took several starts before I could really move on, because the laughter didn't want to stop.  Man, what good stuff.  And the final quarter or so of the book was absolutely thrilling -- I read until I was hoarse and we still didn't want to stop.  

Pigeon Post is all about the Swallows (John, Susan, Titty, and Roger) and Amazons (Nancy and Peggy) and Ds (Dick and Dorothea) deciding to go prospecting and find gold so that Nancy and Peggy's Uncle Jim (aka Captain Flint) would settle down near home and stop wandering all over the world having adventures.  They figure if they find gold, he will be too busy gold-mining to go galivanting.  

Being their typical resourceful selves, they figure out a way to convince their parents to let them go camp far away from the lake to do their prospecting, using carrier pigeons to relay messages every day assuring the Natives that they are well, safe, and happy.  And, in the end, one of those carrier pigeon messages ends up saving the day for more people than just the prospectors.

I'm not sure kids ever have been this awesome and jolly and free to roam around doing cool things.  But I like to believe there was a time and place when it was possible.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for some perilous and intense things happening at the end.

This is my 5th book read and reviewed for my fifth Classics Club list.

Top Ten Tuesday: Coming Soon to My Bookshelves

This week, our Top Ten Tuesday prompt from That Artsy Reader Girl is most-anticipated books releasing in the second half of 2026.  So, here are ten twelve books I am eagerly looking forward to releasing!  Some of them are parts of series I am reading, some of them are stand-alones, and the genres are definitely all over the place.  They don't have much in common, except for the facts that they are all by Christian authors, and I would like to read them!

I am linking the titles to their Goodreads pages so you can learn more about them.  And providing a little description of why I want to read them, too.

As You Were by Hannah Hood Lucero -- July 1 (TOMORROW!!!) -- I want to read this because I enjoyed one of Lucero's YA books and want to try some of what she is famous for, her romantic military suspense books.

Getting Real with God by Aubrey Reiss Taylor -- July 1  (TOMORROW!!!) -- I am interested in this devotional because it promises to be filled with Godly wisdom in approaching difficult topics.

More Than Fine by Kim Griffin -- July 29 -- I want to read it because it's set in Charleston, SC, a place I have fond memories of.

Beaux and Dragons by Candice Pedraza Yamnitz -- August 3 -- I want to read this because it's marketed as Persuasion by Jane Austen meets How to Train Your Dragon, and I am so here for that.

A Lot Like Lavender by B. R. Goodwin -- August 3 -- I want to read it because it's book three in the cute Happy in Honey Hill series, which I have been enjoying.

The Roman Holiday Rule by Andra Loy -- August 4 -- I'm interested in this one because I love the movie Roman Holiday (1953), and this is supposed to refer to and riff off the movie.

Setting Time Free by Sarah Everest -- August 11 -- I want to read it because it is book three in a YA trilogy about time travel, the Netherlands, and World War II, all of which fascinate me... and because I'm almost done reading book two!

Everlasting Love by Latisha Sexton -- August 25 -- I want to read this one because I have read other books by Sexton and liked them, and because it's a sequel to a book of hers that's on my TBR shelves.

Braving Red Waters by Sarah Hanks -- August 26 -- I'm interested in it because the whole series looks fascinating, since it involves time travel, and this one involves the American Civil War.

Raise My Ebenezer by Jennifer Q. Hunt -- September 29 -- I am interested in this one because I have only read one book by Hunt, and I liked it, so I would like to read more.  This is book two in a series, so I will have to read book one first, obviously.

Of Assassins and Pirates by Sarah Everest -- October/November TBD (please note that the cover has not been revealed yet, so I just mocked one up because it felt weird not to feature its with the others in my graphics) -- I want to read this because is the next book in the Games of Greed and Ruin series, which I have been enjoying so very much!

Soul of the Revolution by Megan Soja -- November 10 -- I want to read it because this is book four in a series about the American Revolution, and I am working on reading the whole series this year as part of my #RevolutionaryWarReads challenge.

Are any of these on your wishlist too?  Have you read anything by these authors?  Do tell!

Did you share a Top Ten Tuesday list this week?  Drop a link in my comments!

Top Ten Tuesday: Summertime TBR 2026

This week, our prompt from That Artsy Reader Girl is Books on my summer 2026 reading list.  Here are ten books I really would like to read this summer!

I'm including publication years and genre tags for them as found on Goodreads, since I haven't actually read any of these yet.

The Dogs of War by Emily Hayse -- 2025, new adult, fantasy, coming-of-age

The Fighting Ground by Avi -- 1984, middle-grade, historical fiction, American Revolution

Lady Agatha Speaks Her Mind by Elisabeth Aimee Brown -- 2026, young adult, fairy tale retelling, fantasy

The Lady and the Loyalist by Stephanie McRae -- 2024, Christian, historical fiction, American Revolution

The Leavenworth Case by Anna Katherine Green -- 1877, classic, mystery, detective fiction

Major Fireworks by B. R. Goodwin -- 2024, Christian, clean romance, humorous

The Secret of Sarah Revere by Ann Rinaldi -- 1995, young adult, historical fiction, American Revolution

Secrets of the Revolution by Megan Soja -- 2025, Christian, historical fiction, American Revolution

Serve Love Mend by Jenni Sauer -- 2026, YA, Shakespeare retelling, fantasy

Washington's Spies by Alexander Rose -- 2006, non-fiction, American Revolution

Do you have books you want to get read this summer?  Have you read any of these?

"Strange and Obscure Stories of the Revolutionary War" by Tim Rowland

This book was so much fun!  I absolutely loved Tim Rowland's writing -- he had such a slyly funny writing style, and I laughed aloud multiple times while reading this.  I made my family listen to me reading selections aloud because they tickled me so much.  When I finished reading this, I ordered his similar book about the Civil War because I am sure I will enjoy it too.

Was every one of these Strange and Obscure Stories of the Revolutionary War new to me?  No.  Were they all super strange?  No.  But they were a great way to explore some of the less-touted events and aspects of the American Revolution.  It's kind of hard to explain really -- this isn't exactly revisionist history or trying to ruin your view of the Founding Fathers, but it does point out some foibles here and there.  But not in a mean way.  It's funny and... almost a British humor flavor, if you know what I mean? 

If you like to learn trivial and little-known facts and stories, you would probably dig this book.  I'll share a couple of my favorite passages below so you can get a taste of this book's specific flavor.

Particularly Good Bits:

The idea that Americans might one day make a break for it was as old as America itself, and a veritable cottage industry arose in Britain out of speculating on the American future.  The British were well aware of a couple of points.  One, there were certainly people who sailed overseas for adventure and to seek fortune, but in the main, few people cam e to the New World because they were tickled with the way things were working out for them in the old.  This wasn't shaping up to be a territory that longed for leadership from across the pond.  Two, from the British perspective, the colonies were becoming a collection of every screwball sect and religious mutation on the face of the planet, and good luck governing that (p. 18).

When the British first arrived on the Carolina coastline in the spring of 1776, the patriots were in the process of throwing up a log and sand fort at the entrance to the Charleston harbor.  Washington's man, General Charles Lee, didn't like the looks of the forward position and ordered Colonel Moultrie to abandon the fort and regroup closer to town.  Moultrie thanked the colonial commander for his suggestion, which he summarily ignored.  This caused the predictable cries by lee of insubordination, and the intervention of Rutledge, who sternly told Moultrie he was to obey the commands of General Lee unless he didn't want to (p. 132).

If This was a Movie, I would Rate It: PG-10 for discussions of wartime wounds and violence, and a little bit of rough language.  Kids probably wouldn't get the humor anyway.

This is my fifth book read for my #RevolutionaryWarReads challenge that I set myself as part of my celebration of our country's 250th birthday this year.

"Honeysuckle Breeze" by B. R. Goodwin

Do you read multiple books at once?

If you do, does that ever cause you to finish two or three books about the same time?  And does that then cause you to develop a giant backlog of books you need to review, usually right when you have almost zero time to blog?

Or is it just me?

Anyway.  I swear it was still springtime at our house when I read Honeysuckle Breeze, the springtime book in the Sugartree Romance series by B. R. Goodwin.  It was May.  I finished this book a little over two weeks ago.  And two others at the same time, and two more right after that, and and and... I'm catching up at last, but yeah, it's kind of been a struggle.

About the book!  It's really cute and funny... but also drove me a little nuts in the middle because the main characters were avoiding talking to each other instead of just saying, "Hey, what is going on with you?  I am confused" like... well, I was going to say "like adults," but what I actually mean is "like I wanted them to."  However, I am particularly allergic to the miscommunication/non-communication trope, so that probably won't bother other people.

Honeysuckle Breeze picks up shortly after the end of Southern Snow, but focuses on a different Remillard sibling.  And a different Lovett sibling.  This time, it's Kindergarten teacher Caroline who is trying to figure out her complicated feelings for Griffin, who was her best-friend-with-flirting-benefits until they kissed each other at Christmas, and now he is ghosting her entirely... and then suddenly returning to her life and turning it upside down.  I do love second chance romances, so this book was overall a hit for me :-)

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for discussions of single-parenting and the decisions that led to that, lots of flirty banter, lots of thinking about being attracted to another person, and some lightly described kisses.  No smut, no cussing, no violence.

"Of Pastries and Vengeance" by Amber Lambda and Lydia Mae

Another great addition to the Games of Greed and Ruin series!  Of Pastries and Vengeance focuses on one character from the first book, One Must Die, plus adds a new character, while also expanding the world in which the series is set.

If you read One Must Die, you probably remember Maple, the sweet baker whose peach scones gained her several friends, though they didn't convince quite everyone in the deadly Sky Manor game that she was a good person. As I recall, several people were sure she was not as pure and uncomplicated as she wanted to appear.

And they were right.  Maple has a big secret: she may bake delicious cinnamon rolls and peach scones and other bakery delights now, but she was once a notorious and feared member of the city's underground no-holds-barred prize fighting circles.  Not only that, but she believes her father was murdered during one of those illegal fights.

Maple meets Rory Evander, a brand-new law enforcement officer who is intent on capturing a killer.  No matter who that killer may be.  Rory and Maple team up, albeit with reluctance on both their parts, and begin hunting for clues.  And start to develop feelings for each other in the process, as you might expect.

Since I love a good murder mystery, I really enjoyed this.  There were enough surprises to keep me guessing and enough clues to keep me satisfied.  I look forward to seeing where these two characters end up in the next book.

Like the other books in this series, this is Christian fiction, though the Christian themes are maybe a bit less overt in this than in some of the books.

This book WILL make you hungry...

Particularly Good Bits:

I cringed.  This guy was going to stick out like a burnt tea biscuit (p. 31).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for scenes of hand-to-hand violence and non-gory descriptions of murder.  No smut and no cussing.