February 2024 Reading List

February will be a month full of mostly sequels for me with a few new-to-me authors sprinkled in.  I've got eleven books on my list, plus there is also the monthly reading challenge for February that is short stories or novellas, but I'm not going to add those in because I'm not completely sure what I'll be reading for it yet. I'll make a separate post about that.

 

Book Club Read

 

Lesson One of the Scholomance: Learning has never been this deadly.

A Deadly Education is set at Scholomance, a school for the magically gifted where failure means certain death (for real) — until one girl, El, begins to unlock its many secrets.

There are no teachers, no holidays, and no friendships, save strategic ones. Survival is more important than any letter grade, for the school won’t allow its students to leave until they graduate… or die! The rules are deceptively simple: Don’t walk the halls alone. And beware of the monsters who lurk everywhere.

El is uniquely prepared for the school’s dangers. She may be without allies, but she possesses a dark power strong enough to level mountains and wipe out millions. It would be easy enough for El to defeat the monsters that prowl the school. The problem? Her powerful dark magic might also kill all the other students.

 

 

Reading at Fantasy Buddy Reads

-I'm buddy reading five books over at Fantasy Buddy Reads this month. I'll be continuing on with three series I started buddy reading in January. The first is the second book in the Beaufort Scales series.

  

A festive tale of kidnapping, explosions, & stolen turkeys.... One should never meddle in the affairs of dragons, but someone has been doing just that. They’ve been making imitation dragon scale baubles that are nothing short of lethal, and kidnapping delivery drivers all over the Yorkshire Dales. They’ve also been leaving behind some distinctly dragon-ish traces. Beaufort Scales, High Lord of the Cloverly Dragons, is hot on the trail – or would be, if he wasn’t having certain political problems at home. That leaves Alice and Miriam to track down the real culprits, rescue the hostages, and salvage Mortimer’s bauble reputation, all while misleading the police regarding the of existence of dragons, and hopefully without being blown up by unexpectedly aggressive Christmas decorations in the process. Luckily they have the full resources of the Toot Hansell Women’s Institute at their disposal. They’ll need it. And then there’s the small question of who stole all the Christmas turkeys… Dragons, the Women's Institute, and one very suspicious cat. What could possibly go wrong? Yule Be Sorry is the perfect Christmas cozy mystery for anyone who likes their crime funny, dragonish, and full of cake and friendship. 

 

-The second is book two in the Threadlight trilogy.

FEAR THE ROSES. FEAR THE LIGHT.

Chrys swore to never again let the Apogee take control but, in a moment of desperation, he gave in. Now, he will learn what the Apogee truly wants.

In Alchea, Laurel will do anything to get her threadlight back, even if it means working for the leader of the Bloodthieves. But she has no choice...a life without threadlight is no life at all.

To the west, Alverax travels with the Zeda people to the large port city of Felia, where they seek refuge after the fires in the Fairenwild. But he shattered the coreseal, and no one quite knows what the consequences will be. They only know it won't be good.

Together, they changed the world—now, they must save it.

 

 

-Book three is the second book in the Skinjacker trilogy.

Everlost, the limbo land of dead children, is at war. Nick the “Chocolate Ogre” wants to help the children of Everlost reach the light at the end of the tunnel. Mary Hightower, self-proclaimed queen of lost children and dangerous fanatic, is determined to keep Everlost’s children trapped within its limbo for all eternity. Traveling in the memory of the Hindenburg, Mary is spreading her propaganda and attracting Afterlights to her cause at a frightening speed.

Meanwhile, Allie the Outcast travels home to seek out her parents, along with Mikey, who was once the terrifying monster the McGill. Allie is tempted by the seductive thrill of skinjacking the living, until she discovers the shocking truth about skinjackers.

-I'll also be reading this book, not only as a buddy read, but also for NetGalley. This author has been on my radar for a while but I haven't read any of his books yet, so hopefully this is a good one.

 

A Holmes and Watson-style detective duo take the stage in this fantasy with a mystery twist, from the Edgar-winning, multiple Hugo-nominated Robert Jackson Bennett

In Daretana’s greatest mansion, a high imperial officer lies dead—killed, to all appearances, when a tree erupted from his body. Even here at the Empire’s borders, where contagions abound and the blood of the leviathans works strange magical changes, it’s a death both terrifying and impossible.

Assigned to investigate is Ana Dolabra, a detective whose reputation for brilliance is matched only by her eccentricities. Rumor has it that she wears a blindfold at all times, and that she can solve impossible cases without even stepping outside the walls of her home.

At her side is her new assistant, Dinios Kol, magically altered in ways that make him the perfect aide to Ana’s brilliance. Din is at turns scandalized, perplexed, and utterly infuriated by his new superior—but as the case unfolds and he watches Ana’s mind leap from one startling deduction to the next, he must admit that she is, indeed, the Empire’s greatest detective.

As the two close in on a mastermind and uncover a scheme that threatens the Empire itself, Din realizes he’s barely begun to assemble the puzzle that is Ana Dolabra—and wonders how long he’ll be able to keep his own secrets safe from her piercing intellect.

By an “endlessly inventive” (Vulture) author with a “wicked sense of humor” (NPR), The Tainted Cup mixes the charms of detective fiction with brilliant world-building to deliver a fiendishly clever mystery that’s at once instantly recognizable and thrillingly new. 

-This next one is also by a new-to-me author.

 

A century from now, thanks to a technology allowing instantaneous travel across light-years, humanity has solved its energy shortages, cleaned up the environment, and created far-flung colony worlds. The keys to this empire belong to the powerful North family—composed of successive generations of clones. Yet these clones are not identical. For one thing, genetic errors have crept in with each generation. For another, the original three clone “brothers” have gone their separate ways, and the branches of the family are now friendly rivals more than allies.

Or maybe not so friendly. At least that’s what the murder of a North clone in the English city of Newcastle suggests to Detective Sidney Hurst. Sid is a solid investigator who’d like nothing better than to hand off this hot potato of a case. The way he figures it, whether he solves the crime or not, he’ll make enough enemies to ruin his career.

Yet Sid’s case is about to take an unexpected turn: because the circumstances of the murder bear an uncanny resemblance to a killing that took place years ago on the planet St. Libra, where a North clone and his entire household were slaughtered in cold blood. The convicted slayer, Angela Tramelo, has always claimed her innocence. And now it seems she may have been right. Because only the St. Libra killer could have committed the Newcastle crime.

Problem is, Angela also claims that the murderer was an alien monster.

Now Sid must navigate through a Byzantine minefield of competing interests within the police department and the world’s political and economic elite . . . all the while hunting down a brutal killer poised to strike again. And on St. Libra, Angela, newly released from prison, joins a mission to hunt down the elusive alien, only to learn that the line between hunter and hunted is a thin one.

 

 

Reading with the Mystery Book Club

-We're reading three books in the Mystery Book Club this month. Two of them are from two different series. The first one is the second book in the DCI Logan series.

Not all monsters are make-believe.

When a badly mutilated body washes up on the shores of Loch Ness, DCI Jack Logan's dream of a quiet life in the Highlands is shattered.

While the media speculates wildly about monster attacks, Jack and the Major Investigations Team must act fast to catch the killer before they can strike again.

But with Nessie-hunters descending on the area in their dozens, and an old enemy rearing his ugly head, the case could well turn out to be the most challenging of Jack's career.

And, if he isn't careful, the last.

Death and dark humour combine in this fast-paced Tartan Noir crime thriller set in the Highlands of Scotland.

 

 

-The second one is a book in a series by an author I've never read before. We're reading the seventh book first because they're all standalones and this is when the books are supposed to start being really good. The plan is to go back and read the first six if we like this one. Normally I'm not a fan of doing this, but I was iffy about this series to begin with so I'm making an exception. I would rather start with the better books.

Oslo in November. The first snow of the season has fallen. A boy named Jonas wakes in the night to find his mother gone. Out his window, in the cold moonlight, he sees the snowman that inexplicably appeared in the yard earlier in the day. Around its neck is his mother’s pink scarf.

Hole suspects a link between a menacing letter he’s received and the disappearance of Jonas’s mother—and of perhaps a dozen other women, all of whom went missing on the day of a first snowfall. As his investigation deepens, something else emerges: he is becoming a pawn in an increasingly terrifying game whose rules are devised—and constantly revised—by the killer.

Fiercely suspenseful, its characters brilliantly realized, its atmosphere permeated with evil, The Snowman is the electrifying work of one of the best crime writers of our time.

-The third book is a standalone, also by an author I've never read before.

 

Michelle and Cliff Stage bought their isolated vacation cabin in the mountains of North Carolina with hopes of repairing their eighteen-year marriage. But when Cliff disappears one night searching for the source of a mysterious light in the woods, Michelle's life will change in unimaginable ways. After the sheriff's department fails to find him, Michelle scrambles down the same dark mountainside alone, the strange, beckoning light her only guide.

What she discovers is a cabin, identical to theirs, housing a life she barely recognizes--and a husband she hardly knows. Cliff is a changed man. Now caring and considerate, no longer a manipulative womanizer, he is also missing a finger. He claims that Cassie, their teenage daughter, is dead, killed in a car accident over a year ago. Michelle knows that's not possible--Cassie had phoned her from Atlanta only hours before. Even when shown Cassie's grave, Michelle refuses to accept she's gone.

Michelle wants her daughter and her life back, and the only clue to what has happened is a man named Pink. A real estate agent and the man who years earlier built Michelle and Cliff's cabin, Pink was rumored to have killed his wife and buried her on the property then vanished never to be seen again. But in Michelle's new reality, Pink and his wife still reside in town and Pink's smile-splashed billboards are everywhere. To get back to the world where her daughter exists, Michelle must unravel the mystery of Pink while questioning her very reality--and her sanity. Haunting, atmospheric, and deeply thought-provoking, The Cabin on Souder Hill questions the very nature of our existence and the choices we make to form it.

 

The Pick it For Me Book

-My "Pick it for me" list consisted of nothing but historical romances this time around because that's what I'm in the mood for reading the most. This can be blamed on me finally watching the second and third seasons of Sanditon. After the actor who played Sidney wouldn't come back and do the show, I lost interest because it just wouldn't be what I had been hoping for. It's taken me a couple of years to be able to go back and finish watching. I think the reason I could go back and watch now is due to that fact that I got my closure for Sanditon by reading two different finished versions of the novel by two different authors, so I felt like I could watch the TV show and enjoy it for what is was. Anyway, I wanted more of that type of romance, so I made a list full of it!

 

She can only stay as long as the invalid needs her... so he makes it his business to need her forever.

When a cryptic invitation brings Giulia Pepper to her uncle's remote estate in Devon, she arrives in dire need of a benefactor, only to discover that her uncle never sent her any invitation—nor does he want her there. Forced into a corner, Giulia must contrive a way to convince him to allow her to remain, just long enough to figure out where to go next.

Nicholas never asked for an earldom, but when an aged lord arrives at his door and tells Nicholas that he is next in line for the title, he willingly goes to Halstead Manor to learn the role. But someone isn’t pleased with the heir, and after a gunshot wound in the arm, Nicholas must discover who is out to get him.

When Giulia stumbles—literally—over a fallen man on the lane to Halstead, she has her she can stay at Halstead and nurse her uncle's heir back to health. But as mystery builds and danger mounts, will Giulia and Nicholas be able to solve the puzzle before the Earl forces Giulia to leave for good? And furthermore, can they manage to work together without losing their hearts in the process?

The Hercule Poirot Book

 

A most unusual series of crimes at a student hostel intrigues Inspector Hercule Poirot in Agatha Christie’s Hickory Dickory Dock, especially when a simple case of kleptomania paves the way to murder.

Hercule Poirot doesn’t need all his detective skills to realize something is troubling his secretary, Miss Lemon—she has made three mistakes in a simple letter. It seems an outbreak of kleptomania at the student hostel in which her sister works is distracting his usually efficient assistant.

Deciding that desperate times call for desperate measures, the great detective agrees to investigate. Unknown to Poirot, however, desperation is a motive he shares with a killer. . . .