Kay Chronister’s The Bog Wife

Love gothic horror? Don’t love horror but want to read something suitably spooky for Halloween? You have come to the right place! Kay Chronister’s haunting, atmospheric The Bog Wife is most definitely horror but not of the blood-and-guts slasher variety.

Thanks so much to Kelli for suggesting the book to me! I enjoyed it very much!

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Book Buzz: Horror, Historical Fiction, Eleanor Roosevelt, Picasso, Montana, An Experimental Thriller, The Prairie, Hawaii, Spinach, and a Safari Gone Wrong

Every month, we’re profiling new-ish releases that are getting critical and commercial buzz. For October, we’re looking at vampire horror, historical fiction spanning the 1800s and 1900s, literary fiction, a twisty new thriller with an unusual premise, ecologically themed nonfiction, a story of a spinach empire, and an audiobook about a safari that takes a murderous turn.

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Book Buzz: Espionage, Curses, Romance, Surreal Historical Mystery Sequels, Contemporary Mystery Debuts, Audiobooks, and Healthy Nonfiction Reads

Every month, we’re profiling new-ish releases that are getting critical and commercial buzz. For September, we’re looking at a new-ish contemporary espionage thriller series, this year’s If All Arkansas Read the Same Book pick, romances and mysteries–both historical and contemporary, audiobooks in a range of genres, and nonfiction on healthy living.

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Marie Benedict’s The Queens of Crime

In the early 1930s, Dorothy Sayers is a well-known mystery novelist, but she has deep secrets of her own. She is also a leader in the newly formed Detection Club, which wants to make mystery writing more prestigious. However, even within the ranks of the Detection Club, where everyone is ruffled by the press’s tendency to dismiss their work as genre fiction, there is dissension and tension over who to admit. Some of the more traditional members believe Dorothy and Agatha Christie are the only women authors worthy of admission. Dorothy and Agatha then team up with three other talented women mystery writers–Baroness Emma Orczy, Ngaio Marsh, and Margery Allingham–to solve a real-life mystery to prove their credibility.

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Book Buzz: Summer 2025 Book Tasting Edition

Every month, we’re profiling new-ish releases that are getting critical and commercial buzz. For July, we’re looking at the book menus used for yesterday’s book tasting, and filling in the gaps of what hasn’t already been covered on the blog.

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Book Buzz: Reissued Classics, Roman Mythological Fiction, Island Fiction, Science Fiction Metafiction, Vermont Mysteries, Historic Flights, The Hole-in-the-Wall Gang, and Monarch Butterfly Migrations

Every month, we’re profiling new-ish releases that are getting critical and commercial buzz. For March, we’re looking at a re-release of Shogun, a retelling of the founding of Rome, two different novels set on remote islands, a unique science fiction novel about a science fiction novel, a new historical mystery series set in 1960s Vermont, an audiobook about a race to fly across the Pacific in the 1920s, Western true crime about Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and a chronicle of following the over 10,000-mile annual monarch butterfly migration on a bicycle.

Continue reading “Book Buzz: Reissued Classics, Roman Mythological Fiction, Island Fiction, Science Fiction Metafiction, Vermont Mysteries, Historic Flights, The Hole-in-the-Wall Gang, and Monarch Butterfly Migrations”

Book Buzz: Historical Romances, Assyrian Queens, Oklahoma-Based Reservations, Coming-of-Age Audiobooks, Turkish Cookbooks, and Modern Manners

Every month, we’re profiling new-ish releases that are getting critical and commercial buzz. For February, we’re looking at a historical romance set in the Blue Ridge Mountains, a fictional look at the only ruling queen of Assyria, a mystery set on a fictional Oklahoma reservation, a coming-of-age audiobook, a delectable cookbook from a Turkish-American baker, and a guide to teaching children manners in the modern age.

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Book Buzz: Navajo Mysteries, YA Fantasy, Western Short Stories, French Historical Mayhem, Victorian Dinosaurs, and the Berlin Wall

Every month, we’re profiling new-ish releases that are getting critical and commercial buzz. For January, we’re looking at a mystery series set on the Navajo reservation with a supernatural twist, a YA fantasy that’s been described as The Hunger Games with magic, an anthology of Western short stories, a highly entertaining fictional series about the lead-up to the Hundred Years’ War, a nonfiction audiobook about when the Victorians met dinosaur bones for the first time, and a unique commemorative on the fall of the Berlin Wall.

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Book Buzz: Literary Fiction, Dark Fantasy, Show-Stopping Entertaining, and Series Galore

Every month, we’re profiling new-ish releases that are getting critical and commercial buzz. For December, we’re looking at literary fiction set in North Dakota, Hawaii, and Sarajevo; a delightful cozy women’s fiction series about a librarian set in rural Ireland; dark fantasy; nonfiction about eye-catching charcuterie boards; and a couple of very different series of audiobook historical mysteries.

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Andrey Kurkov’s The Silver Bone

Samson Kolechko is an engineer by training, but in the chaos that is Kyiv, Ukraine, in the spring of 1919, he finds himself a police investigator. Only weeks after losing his ear and his father to a rogue Cossack’s saber, Samson also contends with the uncertainty of everyday life in a world where the government changes every few weeks, depending on which army is in control of the city, and power and supply shortages, forced requisitions, and sudden violence are the only constants. Still, in the middle of all that, he finds himself immersed in an unusual case involving a silver bone.

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