Tuesday, June 4, 2024

June 2024 Reading List

 Another huge list for June. I keep telling myself to cut back on my lists but they just seem to get longer!


Reading at Fantasy Buddy Reads-

 

Mercy Thompson, car mechanic and shapeshifter, must stop a disaster of world-shattering proportions in this exhilarating entry in the #1 New York Times bestselling series.

In the supernatural realms, there are creatures who belong to winter. I am not one of them. But like the coyote I can become at will, I am adaptable.

My name is Mercy Thompson Hauptman, and my mate, Adam, is the werewolf who leads the Columbia Basin Pack, the pack charged with keeping the people who live and work in the Tri-Cities of Washington State safe. It’s a hard job, and it doesn’t leave much room for side quests. Which is why when I needed to travel to Montana to help my brother, I intended to go by myself.

But I’m not alone anymore.

Together, Adam and I find ourselves trapped with strangers in a lodge in the heart of the wilderness, in the teeth of a storm of legendary power, only to discover my brother’s issues are a tiny part of a problem much bigger than we could have imagined. Arcane and ancient magics are at work that could, unless we are very careful, bring about the end of the world. . . .

 

 

 

Will truth and virtue triumph over the deadly darkness of an all-consuming evil?

The war against the dragon minions of Queen Takhisis rages on. Armed with the mysterious, magical Dragon Orbs and the shining, silver Dragonlance, the Companions of the Lance lead their people in a desperate final battle. Knight and barbarian, warrior and mage, dwarf and kender—no one has reckoned how high the price of defeat, or even victory, might be.

But now, in the dawn of a new day, the dark secrets that have long shadowed the hearts of the Companions come to light. If they are to truly defeat the five-headed dragon goddess, they must find a way to overcome their own personal conflicts and doubts. From betrayal and treachery to fragility and weakness, the greatest battle now lies within each of them.

Finally armed with dragonlances, a group of heroes, composed of a knight, barbarian, dwarf, and half-elf, faces a deadly showdown with the evil dragons and Takhisis, the Queen of Darkness.

 

 

 

Six months have passed since the reappearance of the starship Phoenix - the same ship which brought humans to the world of alien atevi nearly two hundred years ago, leaving a small and vulnerable colony to struggle for survival in a hostile environment. During these six months, the alien atevi have striven to reconfigure their fledgling space program in a breakneck bid to take their place in the heavens alongside humans. But the return of the Phoenix has added a frighteningly powerful third party to an already volatile situation, polarizing political factions in both human and atevi societies, and making the possibility of all-out planetary war an even more likely threat. On the atevi mainland, human ambassador Bren Cameron, in a desperate attempt to maintain the peace, has risked alienation from his own people by communicating with the staff of the Phoenix as spokesman for the atevi, and has arranged for one human representative from the Phoenix to take up residence with him in his apartments, and for another to be stationed on Mosphiera, humanity's island enclave. Now, Bren has the difficult task of indoctrinating Jason Graham, a young man who has never before set foot on a planet, in the intricate, delicate, and potentially lethal maneuverings of the human-atevi interface. And this at a time when, thanks to the assassination of an atevi lord who had been one of Bren's primary adversaries, and the near-collision of Bren's personal plane with a jet manned by an unknown pilot, the relationship between atevi factions is becoming more strained by the minute.  

 

 

 

THIRTY YEARS AFTER THE ECHOES OF FATE CHANGED THE COURSE OF HISTORY, AN ANCIENT EVIL STIRS ONCE MORE.

Millennia in the dark has left these lost and forgotten monsters hungry for war. The people of Illian can do nothing but rely on their peacekeepers, the Dragorn.

Are the dragon riders ready for what has been buried under their feet?

Gideon Thorn, Master of the Dragorn, can feel the Third Age coming to an ominous end. With Inara Galfrey and her dragon by his side, they must investigate the return of this ancient evil.

Alijah Galfrey has only one talent - getting into trouble. When he isn’t drinking, the half-elf is gambling his life away in the pursuit of relics no one cares about. Now, he finds himself at the sharp end of history. Can he take charge of his own future, or is he destined to be controlled by others?

Deep in the mines of Vengora, something ancient has been found, and the dwarves of Dhenaheim would go to war with the North over it. After sixty years in the world of men, Doran Heavybelly must finally return to his homeland if any peace is to be found…

THE FALL OF NEVERDARK CONTINUES THIS UNMISSABLE EPIC FANTASY SERIES.

 

 

Reading with the Mystery Book Club-

 

Her first love confessed to five murders … but the truth was so much worse. Will Hurley was an attractive, charming, and impressive student at Dublin’s elite St. John’s College—and Ireland’s most prolific serial killer. Having stalked his five young victims, he drowned them in the muddy waters of the Grand Canal. Sentenced to life imprisonment when he was just nineteen, Will is locked away in the city’s Central Psychiatric Hospital. Freshman Alison Smith moved to the Big Smoke to enroll in St. John’s and soon fell hard for Will Hurley. Her world bloomed … and then imploded when Liz, her best friend, became the latest victim of the Canal Killer—and the Canal Killer turned out to be the boy who’d been sleeping in her bed. Alison fled to the Netherlands and, in ten years, has never once looked back. When a young woman’s body is found in the Grand Canal, Garda detectives visit Will to see if he can assist them in solving what looks like a copycat killing. Instead, Will tells them he has something new to confess—but there’s only one person he’s prepared to confess it to. The last thing Alison wants is to be pulled back into the past she’s worked so hard to leave behind. Reluctantly, she returns to the city she hasn’t set foot in for more than a decade to face the man who murdered the woman she was supposed to become. Only to discover that, until now, Will has left out the worst part of all …  

 

 

 

The Great Depression. High-level corruption. And a murder that’s about to become Seattle’s hottest mystery. It’s the kind of story that can make a reporter’s career. If he lives to write about it.

Seattle, 1933. The city is in the grips of the Great Depression, Prohibition, and vice. Cutting his teeth on a small-time beat, hungry and ambitious young reporter William “Shoe” Shumacher gets a tip that could change his career. There’s been a murder at a social club on Profanity Hill—an underworld magnet for vice crimes only a privileged few can afford. The story is going to be front-page news, and Shoe is the first reporter on the scene.

The victim, Frankie Ray, is a former prizefighter. His accused killer? Club owner and mobster George Miller, who claims he pulled the trigger in self-defense. Soon the whole town’s talking, and Shoe’s first homicide is fast becoming the Trial of the Century. The more Shoe digs, the more he’s convinced nothing is as it seems. Not with a tangle of conflicting stories, an unlikely motive, and witnesses like Miller’s girlfriend, a glamour girl whose pretty lips are sealed. For now.

In a city steeped in old west debauchery, Shoe’s following every lead to a very dangerous place—one that could bring him glory and fame or end his life.

 

 

 

The hunter has become the hunted.

Ten years ago, DCI Jack Logan caught the twisted child killer known as Mister Whisper.

Two days ago, Mister Whisper escaped.

Now, Jack must track down the most ruthless enemy he has ever faced before he can strike again. But, after ten years behind bars, it isn't just murder that Mister Whisper has in mind.

It's revenge.

A Whisper of Sorrows is the sixth book in the DCI Jack Logan crime thriller series, all based in the Highlands of Scotland, and perfect for fans of Tartan Noir crime fiction.

 

 

 

Reading for NetGalley-

  

Midwife Sarah Malloy and her private detective husband Frank discover that the cure is worse than the disease when they investigate the death of a promising young woman in this atmospheric, riveting mystery from the USA TODAY bestselling author of Murder on Bedford Street.
 
Sarah Malloy has just helped with the delivery of a bouncing baby girl at her women’s clinic, when she receives a visit from an engaging and determined young woman writing an article for New Century Magazine. Louisa Rodgers explains that she is researching the dangers of patent remedies. Sarah is only too happy to tell Louisa exactly what she thinks of the so-called medicines whose ingredients include heavy doses of alcohol and other addictive drugs, and hurt much more than they help.

A few days later, Sarah receives a visit from a bereft Bernard Rodgers, who explains that his daughter, Louisa, has been found strangled in the lobby of the building where New Century has its offices. The police have decided it was a random attack and have made no attempt to investigate, hinting that Louisa got what she deserved for sticking her nose where it didn’t belong. Sarah wants justice for the bright young woman but as she and Frank delve deeper into Louisa’s life, they find that nothing is quite as it seemed and Louisa is not who she claimed to be. The Malloys must first solve the mystery of Louisa’s life before they can figure out who wanted to see her dead…

 

 

 

Chief of Police Kate Burkholder investigates a gruesome murder that reveals a little-known chapter of early Amish history in this new installment of the bestselling series by Linda Castillo.

Newlywed Chief of Police Kate Burkholder is awakened by an urgent midnight call summoning her to a suspicious fire in the woods. When she arrives at the scene, she discovers a charred body. According to the coroner, the deceased, an Amish man named Milan Swanz, was chained to a stake and burned alive. It is an appalling and eerily symbolic crime against an upstanding husband and father.

Kate knows all too well that the Amish prefer to handle their problems without interference from the outside world, and no one will speak about the murdered man. From what she’s able to piece together, Swanz led a deeply troubled life and had recently been excommunicated. But if that’s the case, why are the Amish so reluctant to talk about him? Are they protecting the memory of one of their own? Or are they afraid of something they dare not share?

When her own brother is implicated in the case, Kate finds herself not only at odds with the Amish, the world of which she was once a part, but also the English community and her counterparts in law enforcement. The investigation takes a violent turn when Kate’s life is threatened by a mysterious stranger.

To uncover the truth about the death of Milan Swanz, Kate must dive deep into the Anabaptist culture, peering into all the dark corners of its history, only to uncover a secret legacy that shatters everything she thought she knew about the Amish themselves―and her own roots.

 


 

The Hercule Poirot book-

 

In this breathtaking Agatha Christie mystery, the Third Girl sharing a London flat with two others announces to Hercule Poirot that she’s a murderer and then disappears. The masterful investigator must figure out whether the missing girl is a criminal, a victim, or merely insane.

Three young women share a London flat. The first is a coolly efficient secretary. The second is an artist. The third interrupts Hercule Poirot’s breakfast confessing that she is a murderer—and then promptly disappears.

Slowly, Poirot learns of the rumors surrounding the mysterious third girl, her family, and her disappearance. Yet hard evidence is needed before the great detective can pronounce her guilty, innocent, or insane...

 

 


Pick it for me book-

 

A year after getting divorced, Helen Carpenter, thirty-two, lets her annoying, ten years younger brother talk her into signing up for a wilderness survival course. It's supposed to be a chance for her to pull herself together again, but when she discovers that her brother's even-more-annoying best friend is also coming on the trip, she can't imagine how it will be anything other than a disaster. Thus begins the strangest adventure of Helen's well-behaved life: three weeks in the remotest wilderness of a mountain range in Wyoming where she will survive mosquito infestations, a surprise summer blizzard, and a group of sorority girls.

Yet, despite everything, the vast wilderness has a way of making Helen's own little life seem bigger, too. And, somehow the people who annoy her the most start teaching her the very things she needs to learn. Like how to stand up for herself. And how being scared can make you brave. And how sometimes you just have to get really, really lost before you can even have a hope of being found.

 



Reading for Book Club-

This will be a reread for me if I actually get around to reading it.

 

A mindbending, relentlessly surprising thriller from the author of the bestselling Wayward Pines trilogy.


Jason Dessen is walking home through the chilly Chicago streets one night, looking forward to a quiet evening in front of the fireplace with his wife, Daniela, and their son, Charlie—when his reality shatters.

"Are you happy with your life?"

Those are the last words Jason Dessen hears before the masked abductor knocks him unconscious.

Before he awakens to find himself strapped to a gurney, surrounded by strangers in hazmat suits.

Before a man Jason's never met smiles down at him and says, "Welcome back, my friend."

In this world he's woken up to, Jason's life is not the one he knows. His wife is not his wife. His son was never born. And Jason is not an ordinary college physics professor, but a celebrated genius who has achieved something remarkable. Something impossible.

Is it this world or the other that's the dream?

And even if the home he remembers is real, how can Jason possibly make it back to the family he loves? The answers lie in a journey more wondrous and horrifying than anything he could've imagined—one that will force him to confront the darkest parts of himself even as he battles a terrifying, seemingly unbeatable foe.

Dark Matter is a brilliantly plotted tale that is at once sweeping and intimate, mind-bendingly strange and profoundly human--a relentlessly surprising science-fiction thriller about choices, paths not taken, and how far we'll go to claim the lives we dream of.

 

 

 

Other books I would like to read-

I'm planning to reread Soul Taken with my husband before we read Winter Lost.

The vampire Wulfe is missing. Since he’s deadly, possibly insane, and his current idea of “fun” is stalking me, some may see it as no great loss. But, warned that his disappearance might bring down the carefully constructed alliances that keep our pack safe, my mate and I must find Wulfe—and hope he’s still alive. As alive as a vampire can be, anyway.

But Wulfe isn’t the only one who has disappeared. And now there are bodies, too. Has the Harvester returned to the Tri-Cities, reaping souls with his cursed sickle? Or is he just a character from a B horror movie and our enemy is someone else?

The farther I follow Wulfe’s trail, the more twisted—and darker—the path becomes. I need to figure out what’s going on before the next body on the ground is mine.



 

As heroes and villains seek to secure the seven godblades, the greatest evil to threaten Kingfall draws ever closer.

Six of the seven godblades have been revealed, but is Kingfall any safer than it was before these ancient weapons were returned to the light? This and myriad other questions must be answered before the world can know true peace.

In the east, Sampson Gaard and his unexpected band of traveling companions must navigate the dangers of the Spine as they seek the source of the strange force drawing them ever onward. Meanwhile, Roman Leary, burned and scarred beyond recognition, searches for a purpose even he cannot hope to understand.

In the west, Peony faces a newer, darker version of her bondmate, Dane, as well as a looming threat of war from her own brother, the newly crowned King of Odin. Dane, on the other hand, fights to restore his bond to the only creature in all of Kingfall who truly understands him, his dragon Daneus.

In the north, Rose grapples with the political pressures inherent in her role as queen, while simultaneously staving off the demons of her past. At the same time, Drake searches for answers to explain the resurrection of his dragonbond, Draconus.

In the south, Aisling, Amari and Prudence seek safe passage to Avadon, only to find themselves facing an enemy worse than any they've encountered thus far in the form of Pentockian slavers.

Be bright but do not burn. Embrace the shadows but do not live in the darkness.

 

 

 

Handsome appearance counts for naught unless matched by good character and actions.That's the firm opinion of not-so-meek minister's daughter Lavinia Ellison. So even though all the other villagers of St. Hampton Heath are swooning over the newly returned seventh Earl of Hawkesbury, she is not impressed. If a man won't take his responsibilities seriously and help those who are supposed to be able to depend on him, he deserves no respect from her. In Lavinia's pretty, gray eyes, Nicholas Stamford is just as arrogant and reckless as his brother--who stole the most important person in Livvie's world.Nicholas is weighed down by his own guilt and responsibility, by the pain his careless brother caused, and by the legacy of war he's just left. This quick visit home to St. Hampton Heath will be just long enough to ease a small part of that burden. Asking him to bother with the lives of the villagers when there's already a bailiff on the job is simply too much to expect.That is, until the hoydenish, intelligent, and very opinionated Miss Ellison challenges him to see past his pain and pride. With her angelic voice in his head, he may even be beginning to care. But his isn't the only heart that needs to change.These two lonely hearts may each have something the other needs. But with society's opposition, ancestral obligations, and a shocking family secret, there may be too many obstacles in their way.Fans of Georgette Heyer, Lori Wick, and Julie Klassen will enjoy the spirited exchanges between the bluestocking minister's daughter and the bruised war hero as they move past pride and presumption to a humbled appreciation of God's grace and the true strength of love.
 
 
 
 

Ellie Gleason has protected the town of Samford, Alabama for decades. It’s not as glamourous as her glory days as the WitchLight Hub, but it keeps her active during her golden years.

Life is good.

Well, it’s okay.

Fine.

It could be bloodier with a smidge more gore, but retirement is meant to be low-key. It’s not like her fragile bones could handle the strenuous hunt for monsters anymore, even if her current duties are dull as dishwater.

But when her great-nephew shows up on her doorstep in tears—or is he her great-great nephew?—begging for help, Ellie straps on her beloved shotgun Bam-Bam and gets the coven back together.

Sure, Betty just had a hip replacement, and Flo would rather flirt than fight, and Ida is busy with her anniversary plans, and Joan is…Joan. But Ellie is certain she can whip the girls into shape in time to defeat the creature preying on kids at a nearby summer camp. She might even have them home in time for dinner.

 

 

 

 

 

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