Monday, June 1, 2026

State of the Stack (June 1, 2026)

This is my monthly post which details progress made on review books. I want to thank the authors and publishers who have contributed their books. 

Read This Month 

Dates indicate the date the review was/will be posted.
  1. Man of My Dreams by Olivia Worley (May 26)
  2. Skyring Water by Louis L'Amour & Beau L'Amour (May 27)
  3. A Pair of Aces by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray (May 28)
  4. Beach Thriller by Jamie Day (June 2)
  5. A Botanist's Guide to Tradition and Treachery by Kate Khavari (June 3)
  6. Murder at the Spirit Lounge by Jess Kidd (June 9)
  7. The Last Time We Saw Her by Jaclyn Goldis (June 9)
  8. Wildflower by Becky Jenkinson (June 10)
  9. Restless Bones by Gillian French (June 11)
  10. A Bitter Cut by Anna Lee Huber (June 18)
  11. Storm Tide by Paul Doiron (June 23)
  12. The Neighbors Are Watching by Aggie Blum Thompson (June 24)
  13. Enter the Nightmare by Jane Castle (June 25)
DNF
  1.  Whisper Creek by Allison Brennan
Read Previously, Posted This Month 

Dates indicate when the review was posted.
  1. Griffin Speaker by Jan M. Flynn (May 5)
  2. The Anniversary by Alex Finlay (May 6)
  3. The Cupid Dilemma by April Asher (May 7)
  4. An Ordinary Sort of Evil by Kelley Armstrong (May 12)
  5. Storm Warning by James Byrne (May 19)
  6. Dungeons and Danger by Elizabeth Penney (May 19)
  7. Ode to the Bones by Carlolyn Haines (May 20)
  8. The Final Target by Nora Roberts (May 21)
New This Month 

Date indicates when the book will be released.
  1. The Cloak and Dagger Club by Jackie McMahon (July 14)
  2. Unpredictable Magic by Faith Hunter (July 14)
  3. The Seance Garden by Juliet Blackwell (July 28)
  4. The Matchmaker's Cottage by Kat Sloane (August 11)
  5. Murder at Blackfriars by Jennifer Ashley (August 11)
  6. Those Who Are Gone by Laurie R. King (September 8)
  7. Fury in Death by J. D. Robb (September 8)
  8. Cursed City by Kate Golden (September 29)
  9. The Dying Light by Ann Cleeves (September 29)
  10. Dive Bar at the End of the Road by Kelley Armstrong (October 6)
  11. Bark Humbug by David Rosenfelt (October 13)
  12. The Key to a Killer by Olivia Blacke (October 20)
  13. Joy to the Bones by Carolyn Haines (October 27)
  14. A Glimmer of Death by Laurell K. Hamilton (November 3)
  15. Infinite Wisdom by Thomas R. Weaver (November 10)
  16. Murder of a Merry Gentleman by Celeste Connally (November 10)
All TBR Review Books

July
August
September 
October
November


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it's Monday! What Are You Reading? (June 1, 2026)

It's Monday, What Are You Reading? is now hosted by Kathryn at The Book Date.

It’s Monday!  What Are You Reading is where we gather to share what we have read this past week and what we plan to read this week.  It is a great way to network with other bloggers, see some wonderful blogs, and put new titles on your reading list.

Want to See What I Added to My Stack? links to Stacking the Shelves hosted by Marlene at Reading Reality.

Other Than Reading...

Happy June 1! We are in a weather sweet spot in Duluth. It is too warm to run the furnace but too cool to need the air conditioner and it is sunny. This means we are producing a lot more energy with our solar panels than we are using which is building up a nice amount of credit to use during our snowy winters. I have been enjoying having the windows open to enjoy the breezes and air out our winter-stale house. 

This was a nice week for reading. I finished all of my June review books, caught up with the Elemental Masters series, and chipped away at my 2026 TBR pile. I did add one review copy which led to buying the three previous books in the series which were on sale at Amazon for $2.99 each. 

I also finished all the draft posts on my July calendar. After I finish and schedule this post, I'll write my State of the Stack post which tracks my progress with review books. 

I have a medical test on Wednesday which should take about an hour, but otherwise my week is free of appointments. I hope to spend a lot of time reading and watching Braves baseball. They are doing amazingly well so far this year.

May Reading

I read 34 books in May. Twenty-two were mine and twelve were review copies. Of the books that were mine, seventeen were audiobooks. Also, 14 were from my TBR pile and 8 were rereads. 

I added 34 books to my LibraryThing account in May. Included were 7 new audiobooks and 16 new review copies. Twelve of the new additions (not including the review copies) are still on the TBR pile. They are also on my calendar for reading this year. 

So far in 2026, I have read 169 books including 65 review copies and 84 audiobooks. I have added 144 items to my LibraryThing account including 77 review copies and 38 audiobooks. I have 20 books from 2026 still on the TBR pile. I currently have 46 review copies pending for reading nearer their publication dates which extend out into November. 

Read Last Week
  • A Liaden Universe Constellation Volume 6 by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller (Kindle, Mine since May 10) -- Collection of Liaden Universe stories. My review will be posted on June 17.
  • Death by the Book by Lucy Connelly (Audiobook, Mine since April 8) -- Second Mercy McCarthy cozy mystery set in Ireland. My review will be posted on June 25.
  • The Silver Bullets of Annie Oakley (Kindle, Mine since November 18, 2025) -- Gaslight fantasy from the Elemental Masters series. My review will be posted on June 19.
  • Death at Inishmore Castle by Lucy Connelly (Audiobook, Mine since May 25) -- Third Mercy McCarthy cozy mystery set in Ireland. My review will be posted on June 26.
  • Trader's Leap by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller (Audiobook reread) -- Inspired by reading A Liaden Universe Constellation Volume 6.
  • Storm Tide by Paul Doiron (Review, June 30) -- 16th Mike Bowditch mystery. My review will be posted on June 23.
  • The Neighbors Are Watching by Aggie Blum Thompson (Review, June 30) -- Entertaining domestic thriller with a lot of gaslighting going on. My review will be posted on June 24.
Currently
Next Week
Reviews Posted
Want to See What I Added to My Stack Last Week?

Review:
Bought:
What was your week like?
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Friday, May 29, 2026

Book Review: Murder by Design by Lee Goldberg

Murder by Design
Author: Lee Goldberg
Series: Edison Bixby (Book 1)
Publication: Thomas & Mercer (Book 1)

Description: In a world carefully constructed for murder, solving crimes takes a keen mind and eye in a witty, clever, and fresh reinvention of the whodunit by #1 New York Times bestselling author Lee Goldberg.

Edison Bixby is wealthy, handsome, and, due to a traumatic brain injury, impulsively rude. He’s also a brilliant insurance investigator who solves baffling crimes by figuring out how the design of the man-made world around us makes them possible. Enter Wally Nash: a struggling actor hired to keep Bixby from offending everyone he meets.

Their first case together looks like a simple accident. Caroline Crowley took a nasty fall down a staircase at a shopping mall in front of dozens of witnesses. Video clearly shows the deadly misstep. But Bixby is certain she was murdered by design, subtly manipulated into causing her own demise. The mall itself made the crime intentional, if not inevitable.

Now Bixby must prove his outrageous theory before a very cunning killer gets others on his hit list to murder themselves, too.

My Thoughts: MURDER BY DESIGN was an engaging mystery by Lee Goldberg that introduces a new sleuthing duo. Edison Bixby is wealthy, handsome, and rude. This former police detective with an enviable solve rate suffered a traumatic brain injury when he was shot in the face by an assailant. His impulsive rudeness has caused him to lose his job with the police but primed the way for him to be an excellent insurance investigator. 

Wally Nash is a wanna-be actor who has thus far played a number of corpses and starred in a number of commercials for medical products. He's still waiting for his big break which he knows is just around the corner. He does temp work to make ends meet which they aren't currently doing. A short-term job as Bixby's minder seems ideal especially since it comes with free living quarters on Bixby's fanciful estate. 

Nash narrates this story and has a chance to play a number of different characters as he assists Bixby with solving a number of murders. The first has been declared an accident since a woman fell down a flight of stairs that she shouldn't be using at a mall. What first looks like an accident quickly becomes a murder investigation after Bixby looks at the scene. 

This first crime leads to a few more. All of which are determined to be murders by Bixby. All of which also occurred because of what Bixby sees as design flaws in the environment around the victims. Design of human spaces makes up a big part of this story and is the key to Bixby's deductions. 

This was an entertaining story. I enjoyed Nash's narration and self-delusion. The story was humorous and thought-provoking too. 

I received this one from Kindle First Reads. You can buy your copy here.
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Thursday, May 28, 2026

Audiobook Review: Smoke in Mirrors by Jayne Ann Krentz

Smoke in Mirrors
Author: Jayne Ann Krentz
Narrator: Gina Marie Davies
Publication: Tantor Audio (December 27, 2022)
Length: 10 hours and 57 minutes

Description: A con artist and seductress, Meredith Spooner lived fast—and died young. But her final scam—embezzling more than a million dollars from a college endowment fund—is coming back to haunt Leonora Hutton. The tainted money is stashed away in an offshore account for Leonora. And while she wants nothing to do with the cash, she discovers two other items in the safe-deposit box: a book about Mirror House—the place where Meredith engineered her final deception and a set of newspaper stories about an unsolved murder that occurred there thirty years ago.

Now Leonora has an offer for Thomas Walker, another victim of Meredith's scams and seductions. She'll hand over the money—if he helps her figure out what's going on. Meredith had described Thomas as "a man you can trust." But in a funhouse-mirror world of illusion and distortion, Leonora may be out of her league . . .

My Thoughts: Leonora Hutton learns that her half-sister Meredith Spooner embezzled more than a million dollars from a college endowment fund before she died in a car accident and left it all, along with a book about Mirror House and some newspaper stories about a thirty-year-old suspicious death. Leonora doesn't want the money, but she has questions about the other things in the safe-deposit box.

She leaves her job as an academic librarian and takes a job digitizing the Mirror House library so that she can look into things. Thomas Walker also has questions about the embezzlement and about Leonora. The two team up to find the answers. 

Thomas had a brief relationship with Meredith and now he's falling for Leonora but isn't sure if he can trust her. And Meredith's death isn't the first since the thirty-year-old mystery about the owner of Mirror House. Thomas's brother's wife was also the victim of an apparent suicide. Neither Thomas nor his brother believe that but have no evidence. 

This was a classic romantic suspense title. Both Thomas and Leonora are independent adults with histories. They develop a great relationship after some initial suspicions about the other. The side characters including Leonora's grandmother provide interest and some humor. Thomas's dog Wrench - at least that's how I heard the name on the audio - also added a touch of humor. Though I'm not at all sure that the dog who looks like a wolf is really a miniature poodle in character. 

This was a fun story. 

I bought this one as an Audible Add-on December 3, 2025. You can buy your copy here.
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ARC Review: A Pair of Aces by Marie Benedict & Victoria Christopher Murray

A Pair of Aces
Author: Marie Benedict & Victoria Christopher Murray
Publication: Berkley (June 2, 2026)

Description: A gripping novel about two trailblazing women on opposite sides of the law—a prosecutor and a madam—who team up to bring down notorious Mob boss Lucky Luciano in 1930s New York, from the New York Times bestselling authors of the million-copy bestseller The Personal Librarian.

Eunice Carter, assistant district attorney for the City of New York and Manhattan’s first Black female prosecutor, has her sights set on the one and only Lucky Luciano, head of New York City’s five largest organized crime families. Other prosectors have tried to bring down Lucky, but they’ve all focused on the crime syndicate’s traditional businesses—bootlegging, gambling, loan sharking, and drug dealing—or tax evasion. No one has thought to approach the mob through its role in prostitution. Until Eunice. But she can’t get Luciano alone.

Polly Adler has worked long and hard to build up her high-class brothel business. Her client list is filled with well-known names, both the famous and the infamous, who all know her booze is top-notch, her music first-rate, her food exquisite, and her girls the best. But Lucky has gone too far, putting her girls in danger, and Polly finally sees the chance to end his reign once and for all.

Together, Eunice and Polly fashion a case utilizing a network of women. Bridging the enormous divide between them and risking their own lives, they assemble evidence bit by bit, under the nose of the man they’re trying to convict. It is this very alliance—of two women from vastly different worlds—that launches the most sensational trial New York City has ever seen.

My Thoughts: Two very different women need to work together to take "Lucky" Luciano off New York's streets in 1935-1936.

Polly Adler is one of New York's most notorious madams. Arriving in New York from Russia as a twelve-year-old who spoke no English, Polly had to make her own way and send money home so that the rest of her family could join her in the United States. She began by working in a garment factory but was raped by her supervisor who fired her when she got pregnant. The people who she roomed with threw her out and left her struggling on the street for survival. She worked her way up from a street prostitute to the owner of a notorious house frequented by the literary set and local gangsters too. She prided herself in her care of her girls. 

Something new is coming to New York. Organized crime has taken an interest in prostitution and wants to bring all the houses and girls under their control. 

Meanwhile, Eunice Carter is an Assistant District Attorney working on the team with District Attorney Thomas Dewey to tackle organized crime. Eunice is a smart lawyer working under the burden of being both colored and female. While of high status in her neighborhood of Harlem, she finds herself relegated to the fringes of the investigation. She has been concentrating on prostitution which Dewey isn't very interested in until some other lines falter and Eunice makes contact with Polly who alerts her to the scheme of organizing prostitution under criminal control. 

The two work together secretly to gather the information needed to bring down crime boss "Lucky" Luciano. At first Polly wants Luciano gone so that she can resume her usual business without interference but over the course of time her goals change. Eunice wants to bring down Luciano but almost loses her marriage over her dedication to the case. 

This was an interesting story about two very different women. Each is fighting for her place in the world. They have more in common than either would have thought when they first met. This novel of biographical fiction introduced two amazing, but very human, woman. 

I received this one in exchange for an honest review from NetGalley. You can buy your copy here.
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Wednesday, May 27, 2026

ARC Review: Skyring Water by Beau L'Amour & Louis L'Amour

Skyring Water
Author: Louis L'Amour & Beau L'Amour
Publication: Bantam (June 2, 2026)

Description: Louis and Beau L’Amour present a collaboration across time, an epic novel of Cold War suspense, as a pair of unlikely heroes, a woman without a name, and the undefeated agents of the Third Reich find themselves locked in a deadly race to control the greatest secret of the 20th century.

1961. The world is on the brink of nuclear war. Walls are dividing East and West. Empires are crumbling. And in Barcelona, chaos is unleashed when a rogue officer of the East German STASI attempts to blackmail a pair of struggling arms dealers. The secret—30 tons of stolen gold hidden in an icebound wilderness at the end of the world.

Mike Fowler is a former Navy salvage diver and OSS assassin. Anton Voss is an expatriate German scientist whose past grows darker the closer anyone looks. Once they might have been enemies, yet the two share an inseparable bond; they have saved one another's lives. But all of that is put at risk when Mike discovers Anton standing over a midnight visitor with a gun in his hand.

Now they're on the run, allied with gangsters, pursued by the CIA, Israeli intelligence, and a shadowy cabal bent on creating an invisible empire. The trail leads from the rain-soaked docks of Marseilles to the futuristic towers of Caracas and the ruins of a secret island laboratory in Argentine Patagonia. The only way for Mike Fowler to save his oldest friends, and the woman he loves, is to unlock a decades-old mystery buried in his partner’s Nazi past . . . before it destroys them all.

Includes a special postscript by Beau L'Amour detailing the history of the original unpublished manuscript and the process of collaborating with his father both before, and after, his passing.

My Thoughts: SKYRING WATER is and epic spy/espionage novel that travels the world from France to Israel to Venezuela to Tierra del Fuego. It is populated by Nazis, a lovely member of the Mossad, CIA agents, and Australian salvage divers. It is set in 1961 but has flashbacks back to the 1940s. 

The main character in the story is Mike Fowler who is a former Navy salvage diver and a current arms dealer with his partner Anton Voss. Voss is a former Nazi scientist who is holding a secret that all the world wants and is willing to kill for. 

He convinces Mike that he knows of the existence of a scuttled sub holding millions of dollars in gold bars that the Nazis got out of Germany at the end of World War II. The purpose of the loot was to fund the next Reich which had already been seeded by undercover Nazis filtering their ways into business and industry all over the world. 

This story is about the expedition to uncover the treasure - which is not gold bars. The sweeping epic with a huge cast of characters reminds me both of James Bond and the works of Tom Clancy. It had bunches of morally ambiguous characters including the main character and it had long, involved descriptions of various weapons. 

Fans of the old-fashioned sort of thrillers will enjoy this book. I especially enjoyed Beau L'Amour's explanation of how this story came to be.

I received this one in exchange for an honest review from NetGalley. You can buy your copy here.
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Tuesday, May 26, 2026

Audiobook Review: The Shop on Hidden Lane by Jayne Ann Krentz

The Shop on Hidden Lane
Author: Jayne Ann Krentz
Narrator: Eva Kaminsky
Publication: Recorded Books (January 6, 2026)
Length: 8 hours and 42 minutes

Description: New York Times bestselling author Jayne Ann Krentz dives into an enthralling new romantic suspense novel filled with deeply entrenched grudges, psychic dangers, and a conspiracy that threatens not only two families but also the entire paranormal community.

The Harper and the Wells families have regarded each other with deep suspicion for four generations. The Harpers have been known to offer their psychic talents for less-than-legal purposes, and the powerful Wells clan has a reputation for playing both sides of the street. But for all the years of history and distrust between them, there is a mysterious pact binding the two. They share the responsibility for protecting a long-buried and very dangerous secret.

Sophy Harper and Luke Wells are shocked to learn that her aunt and his uncle have been sleeping together—and now they are both missing. Not only that, but the last traces of them are at the scene of a murder soaked in negative paranormal energy. Clearly, someone is willing to kill to obtain the secret their families have been charged with protecting. Despite their mutual distrust, which, as far as Sophy is concerned extends to Luke’s hellhound of a dog, they both know that the terms of the pact must be honored.

Their investigation uncovers a psychic trail leading to a bizarre desert art colony where nothing is as it seems. But Luke and Sophy are concealing a few secrets, too. By a strange twist of fate, a Harper and a Wells have no choice but to trust each other and the fierce attraction that is binding them as surely as the pact between the families.

My Thoughts: Sophy Harper and Luke Wells are the great-grandchildren of men who were once business partners, but who broke off their partnership and began a feud many years earlier. They are both psychics from psychic families who have taken different paths. The Harpers have traveled on the less-than-legal side of things while the Wells have become rich doing security and working all sides. 

Luke comes to Sophy to see if she knows where her aunt and his uncle might be. Sophy finds it hard to believe that they could be together. They trace the couple to an art colony in Arizona known for its vortex energy and learn that his uncle has made reservations for them under an assumed name. 

Arriving at the colony, the couple and Luke's new dog Bruce whom he rescued from the side of a road with a gunshot wound have lots of questions. The art seemed to be infused with psychic vibes, the artists are unhappy to be there, and the eccentric millionaire running the colony has two very scary, blond, female bodyguards who are raising alerts for both Sophy and Luke.
 
This was a twisty story that brings in elements from a lot of Krentz's recent books. Events at Fogg Lake, the Arcane Society, missing crystals and missing weapons that can only be used by someone with strong psychic talents all make for a complicated plot. 

Then there is the relationship between Sophy and Luke. Her psychic powers don't frighten him. In fact, he helps her with the aftereffects of using her gift. And she helps him when he has issues with his psychic talents. Their gifts seem to resonate with each other in a way that is new to both of them. 

This was a fun paranormal romance/romantic suspense story. 

I bought this audiobook April 1, 2026. You can buy your copy here.
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