The newest entry into the delightful time-travel murder mystery series by Kelley Armstrong, “Death at a Highland Wedding,” might be my favorite of the four books in the “Rip Through Time” series. In this mystery, Mallory Atkinson, a 21st century Canadian detective who has traveled in time back to the 1870s, journeys with her employer and his family and friends to Scotland for the wedding of Hugh McCreadie’s sister.
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There’s nothing like a sweet, humor-filled fantasy with just a touch of romance, and Auralee Wallace’s “The Late Night Witches” is the perfect fall novel. The main character is Cassie Beckett, and she lives on Prince Edward Island with her three children. Her husband is away with Doctors Without Borders, and it doesn’t look like he’s coming home any time soon. Her somewhat flighty sister Eliza also lives in town.
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The Missing Pages” by Alyson Richman is a perfect title for a novel about love, loss, and those who adore books. Bibliophiles are smitten by the scent of paper and ink; they love to sit in the peaceful silence of libraries and peruse vast selections of books; they love to meet other bibliophiles and talk books. And sometimes, as in this beautifully narrated story, they fall in love. There is much loss in these pages, but there is also much love.
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Readers loved the alternate world Sarah Beth Durst created in “The Spellshop,” and in her new novel, “The Enchanted Greenhouse,” she takes us back to that charming, magic-filled world where flying cats roam and miniature dragons pollinate huge sunflowers in magical greenhouses. In the first book, we learned of Terlu Perna, a lonely librarian who broke the law when she created a sentient plant to keep her company in her solitary life among the stacks of magical spell books. She was sentenced to be turned into a wooden statue forever.
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In a sweet novel filled with flowers, magic, and everlasting love, J. C. Cervantes takes us to Mexico, to the magical hacienda “la Casa de las Flores,” where a family of women have woven their magic for generations using the enchanted flowers they grow on their beautiful flower farm. “The Anatomy of Magic,” focuses on Lily Estrada, weaver of memory magic. Each of the women in the Estrada family wields her own kind of floral magic.
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In his new novel, “Bird of a Thousand Stories,” which is billed as young adult, but which all adults will find charming, Kiyash Monsef continues the story he began in “Once There Was.” It’s the tale of Marjan, who comes from a long line of Persian healers of fantastical animals. Marjan didn’t realize her talents until her father died, and those who needed her services came for her.
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One might be tempted to look at the cover of “There’s Something About Mira” and think that Sonali Dev’s newest novel is a romcom. While there is plenty of romance in this very touching story that spans generations, states, continents, cultures, and social status, there are also quite a few situations that force readers to examine our own prejudices and misconceptions. Even in how we express ourselves, we often reveal our inner, often very unintentional microaggressions.
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Can you imagine the Loch Ness Monster a human-by-day and monster-by-night? And a male one at that? In “Under Loch and Key,” author Lana Ferguson stretches her imagination and our credulity with this delightful romp featuring not just one fantastical creature, but two.
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In “All the Other Me,” author Jody Holford captures that question that many of us have pondered: are there other universes in which we live different lives because we’ve made different decisions? What if I hadn’t done that, we might wonder. How would my life have been different? In this novel, we meet Isabelle Duprees, the main character. She is an extremely successful businesswoman, one of the top one-percenters. She receives accolades, invitations to galas, the best tables at restaurants. But as extremely successful and capable as she is in business and her professional life, her personal life is anything but successful.
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“The Mirror” is the second book in “The Lost Bride” trilogy, and considering that the first book in the series, “The Inheritance,” ended on a huge cliffhanger, there are sure to be many fans who couldn’t wait for this book to be released. And sure enough, it does begin just where the first book left off, after main character Sonya and her cousin Owen had stepped through a magic mirror, which in the story serves as a portal to other times in the Poole family history.
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In Sarah Beth Durst’s latest novel, “The Spellshop,” she clearly demonstrates her amazing ability to write across a variety of genres and for a variety of readers. She can write children’s middle grade fiction, young adult fantasy, or adult fantasy; and here she’s written a sweet, warm adult novel that has magic and quirky characters. It’s a love story, but not “just” a romance. When the main character, Kiela, flees the library where she has worked as a librarian for over a decade, immersed and literally living at the library, she travels to the distant island where she was born.
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“Mouse & His Dog” by Katherine Applegate and Gennifer Choldenko follows “Dogtown” in the adventures of dogs at a private dog shelter called, of course, Dogtown, as narrated by the mouse who lives there. This mouse loves the dogs in Dogtown, and he desperately tries to find them homes before they end up on “the list.” In this beautifully written, touching novel that is both an ode to the joy of loving dogs and a plea to rescue one, we meet several dogs who are typical of dogs we might really meet in a shelter.
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