Dec 24 2025

That’s Dickens with a C and a K, the Well-Known English Author

Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge’s name was good upon ’Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

A Christmas Carol

Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country’s done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were partners for I don’t know how many years. Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend, and sole mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral, and solemnised it with an undoubted bargain.

The mention of Marley’s funeral brings me back to the point I started from. There is no doubt that Marley was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate. If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet’s Father died before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts, than there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy spot—say Saint Paul’s Churchyard for instance—literally to astonish his son’s weak mind.

Scrooge never painted out Old Marley’s name. There it stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse door: Scrooge and Marley. The firm was known as Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes people new to the business called Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Marley, but he answered to both names. It was all the same to him.

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The rest.

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Why don’t you try W.H. Smith?

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Dec 23 2025

Candy Corn Christmas! by Jonathan Fenske

Y’all, there’s nothing quite like blearily turning to the last book you plan to review before Christmas and discovering that it might truly be the weirdest thing you’ve read all year.

Picture this: it’s one in the morning on Christmas Eve Eve and you’ve made enough of a dent in your emails that you’ll only have a hundred or so more to go through in the daytime (in your Inbox, anyway. You shudder to think of the state of your Promotions folder.) You figure, “Hey, I have time to quickly read this kids’ book I’ve been saving for the occasion” and pick up the brightly illustrated volume, figuring it’ll be a fun mishmash of Halloween and Christmas traditions. After all, its title is Candy Corn Christmas! It should be short and sweet, right?

Well, it’s certainly short! And there are a lot of sweets in it, as a miniature army of candy corn languishes in the pantry, unloved and forgotten now that Halloween is over. But strange sounds and smells lure them out of their, ahem, resting place, and off to the living room, where they discover the most magical night of all: Christmas!

The living room is decked out with all sorts of Christmas lights and decorations and sweets. The candy corn swarm over it all, to the chagrin of the actual Christmas treats. The candy corn are loud and messy and disruptive in their excitement. Candy Cane finally has enough, yelling at them to go home. They’ve already had their holiday, now shoo! But a visitor shows up to remind everyone of the true meaning of Christmas, more or less.

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Dec 22 2025

This Book Will Bury Me by Ashley Winstead

As a winter treat to myself — while I’m supposed to be on break with the rest of my industry, lolol — I decided to finally crack open one of my most anticipated books this year. Ashley Winstead broke my heart in 2023 with Midnight Is The Darkest Hour, so I was ready for This Book Will Bury Me… or so I thought, until I finished that last heart-wrenching page.

Janeway Sharp is enjoying college life as a slightly older student at the University of Central Florida when she receives devastating news. Her beloved father has suffered a heart attack. She immediately leaves the party she’d been attending to drive the two hours or so home, only to receive even worse news: her father is dead.

In the aftermath, neither she nor her mother knows what to do with their grief. A series of small, everyday occurrences leads Jane to a true crime message board. Her powerlessness in the face of death is alleviated by her involvement with the board, especially when she’s able to actually help solve a case by going in person to investigate a murder that occurred not too far from where she lives. Soon, she’s invited to an elite circle of crime solvers famous not just online but in real life — albeit to a fairly specialized audience — for being successful amateur online sleuths.

This small group soon feels like family to Jane, even with all their ups and downs. Tho they all learn each other’s names, it’s still easier to go by their nicknames from the board. Lightly is a retired cop, while Mistress is a retired librarian: both serve as de facto mom and dad to their little team. Goku looks like your stereotypical hacker, while Citizen is in the Navy (and one of the hottest guys Jane has ever seen.) They all call her Search, after her own handle. Together, they make a great team, successfully using their skills and intelligence to help the cops solve multiple homicides.

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Dec 21 2025

Two Short Reviews for December

I like seeing authors trying new things, and seeing Travis Baldree, who writes in a corner of fantasy that sometimes strikes me as authors and readers trying to connect over a menu of tags — “I’ll have a found-family, sapphic, friends-to-lovers tale with a side order of hidden magic, hold the prophecies and the Chosen One, please” — try something new is particularly welcome. Brigands & Breadknives is not entirely new, of course. He uses the same setting as in Legends & Lattes and Bookshops & Bonedust. The beginning of the book also features several of the same characters, although Baldree shifts his focus early on.

Brigands and Breadknives by Travis Baldree

In Bookshops & Bonedust, Baldree introduced Fern, a ratkin who owned the titular bookshop. She and her shop played important roles in the growth and adventures of that book’s heroine, Viv. It looked like Fern’s happily-ever-after was the revival of her shop in her hometown of Murk. The opening of Brigands & Breadknives shows that ennui was an enemy at least as dangerous to Fern as the previous volume’s necromancer. In Murk, Fern developed a near terminal case of is-this-all-there-is and decided that the cure was to move her shop to the city where Viv is now running a thriving coffee shop. Unfortunately, as the first chapters of Brigands & Breadknives shows, she got the diagnosis all wrong. The wrong cure also meant a lot of work and support from her friends was at best misdirected.

One night, after failing again to tell her friends about her unease, Fern falls in a drunken stupor into the back of a wagon. When she awakens, she finds that she is a day and a half outside the city, foodless, and penniless. On the positive side of the ledger, the cart belongs to Astryx, a legendary elf warrior known as the Oathmaiden. She is transporting a goblin prisoner to points northward with the intent of collecting a large bounty. Fern speaks some goblin, which Astryx does not; the prisoner gives no appearance of speaking the common tongue. Astryx agrees to take Fern under her wing as something of an interpreter and something of an assistant. With each step, Fern gets further away from the people who wanted only to help her, and who have no idea what happened.

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Dec 19 2025

Tantalizing Tales — December 2025 — Part Two

Another round-up column for you, dear readers, catching up with books I still haven’t yet had the time to read this year but really want to! First up is a book co-authored by four amazing thriller writers. In Desperate Deadly Widows, Kimberly Belle, Layne Fargo, Cate Holahan and Vanessa Lillie join forces once more to tell the continuing story of four women linked through the deaths of their partners.

In 1985, a plane carrying four Mafia-affiliated lawyers exploded over the Atlantic. Their widows — all wildly different but all resourceful and determined — joined forces to figure out what really happened and how best to protect each other and themselves. Two years and several changed situations later, the widows reunite. Krystle is still trying to save the law firm, while former model Justine is training to be a lawyer herself. Meredith now owns and operates the strip club where she once danced. And Camille works on the shadier side of the law, orchestrating honey pot schemes for women seeking vengeance.

Worlds collide once more when Camille’s latest target turns up dead in the champagne room. That would be bad enough, but the deceased Mayor Tom was also a well-connected person of influence. And Camille isn’t the only one of the widows implicated in his murder. It’s going to be up to the foursome to untangle a conspiracy that depended on the death of one powerful man. Will their bonds be strong enough to withstand the pressures seeking to turn them against one another? Find out in this wild 80s romp of a suspense thriller!

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Dec 18 2025

The Heartwarming Love Coloring Book by Gaynor Carradice

I don’t ever remember being this overwhelmed in previous holiday seasons but y’all, this year has been a doozy. Between work, holiday events, shopping and unexpected medical emergencies, this has already been A Month. I’ve had to let so many non-essential things fall to the wayside this December, including my weekly art sessions, while I tried to prioritize the things that I do in community and not just for me.

So I was extremely relieved to be forced, after a fashion, to finally work on this delightful coloring book. Don’t get me wrong, I love coloring, and especially coloring Gaynor Carradice’s adorable line drawings. The forty-five pages here truly run the gamut of heartwarming love, presenting all sorts of scenarios in which the love of sweethearts, family and other people dear to us are depicted using cute woodland animals in the coziest scenes. There are pictures without characters, too, for when you just want to think of a comforting place or object (or, perhaps, you want to give yourself a little self-care because you deserve love, too.)

The lines are large and bold, helpful for those who don’t want to strain their eyes or cramp their hands, with the added benefit of leaving space for more intricate patternwork if you like to add your own flair to the drawings. Speaking of space, there are generous borders for each single-sided, oversized sheet, allowing you to cut out and frame any particular masterpieces you create.

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Dec 17 2025

True War Stories, Vol 1 edited by Alex de Campi and Khai Krumbhaar

Sometimes I feel like if people truly knew the reality of war (and pain and loss,) they’d be far less happy to embrace it. You’ve got all these weird macho cosplayers acting like war isn’t a big deal when they’ve never seen any action themselves. Then, ofc, you have the sociopaths happy to risk, if not outright take, the lives of others. Most of the military personnel I know, however, are thoughtful, responsible people with a clear-eyed view of what they’re involved in: something necessary and far more complicated than any glib slogan could encapsulate.

That is the tone, too, taken by the fifteen storytellers in this graphic volume, which will hopefully be the first of many. War is a lot of things to a lot of people, and this book seeks not to romanticize but to very much humanize the personnel who join the United States military. Some of our narrators are far more excited about the prospect of serving than others, but all have compelling stories of their times in active combat zones. Some of the stories go on to describe the aftermath of service, but all emphasize how military personnel are human beings just like us, with the same complex motivations and desires. Whether its a trans woman desperate to get out of the service and be reunited with her love, or a soldier in Vietnam who just wants a good night’s sleep, these are all deeply human stories.

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Dec 16 2025

Asylum Murders by Michael G Colburn (EXCERPT)

Hello, readers! We have a treat for you today with an excerpt from the second installment of Michael G Colburn’s twisty historical Lady Black mystery series.

Asylum Murders finds our heroine, London thief turned Australian high society widow Lady Edith “Edie” Black, in the midst of establishing her mostly secret career as a private investigator. She’s thus pleased to be hired for a case that requires the utmost discretion: the disappearance of the Parliament of Victoria’s ceremonial mace after a night of debauchery involving high-ranking officials. She’s looking forward to tracking down the missing mace and bringing it back to its rightful home… until her investigation leads her to a young woman brutally beaten and left for dead the very same night.

Meanwhile, Edie’s best friend Britina is serving as a novice nun tasked with caring for patients at the infamous Kew Asylum. After Britina notices that patients are disappearing with no explanation, she’s framed for murder, declared criminally insane and locked up behind the very walls she worked in. Edie will have to infiltrate the asylum in order to save her best friend, while solving more than one crime in the process.

Read on for an excerpt that gives further insight into Edie and Britina’s pasts:

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Dec 15 2025

The Snowman Code by Simon Stephenson

with incredibly charming illustrations by Reggie Brown.

Ooof, I should have known from the introductory note itself, with the line “Sometimes it can feel like winter because there is snow inside”, that this book would wring me out. Gosh, when was the last time I had an ugly cry like this, over something that didn’t touch directly on dark chapters of my own past? I genuinely can’t recall, which only speaks to the power of this astonishing middle grade novel.

Blessing is ten years old and enduring the longest winter of her lifetime. Ordinarily, she wouldn’t mind the cold and snow. Trouble is, winter weather affects her mother Margaret adversely. Blessing has already been sent away twice to live with foster parents while Margaret was voluntarily institutionalized for depression, so the last thing she wants to do is upset her mother by admitting that she’s being bullied at school. Unable to take the bullying any longer tho, she begins to skip classes, loitering around London and making up stories to tell her mother about what she’s done all day instead.

Everything changes when she sees a snowman come to life in a deserted park one afternoon. The two strike up a friendship that sees them doing their best to help each other out, and that had me absolutely blubbering by the end of this moving yet still hilarious book about friendship, love, sadness and grief.

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Dec 14 2025

Hemlock & Silver by T. Kingfisher

Hemlock & Silver is T. Kingfisher’s latest novel, and the sixth of her works that I have read this year. I’ve already bought six more, and I have a list of which of works are being published or re-published in 2026, so I have a lot of Kingfisher to look forward to. I’m looking forward to how she hilariously applies common sense to fantastic situations. I’m looking forward to how her characters look at things slightly askance, questioning things that the world around them takes for granted. I’m looking forward to how her ordinary, or at least ordinary-ish, people have the capacity for heroics. I’m looking forward to how her heroes have unexpected vulnerabilities. Most of all, I’m looking forward to the surprises she draws out of situations and stories I thought I already knew well.

Hemlock & Silver by T. Kingfisher

Kingfisher also has a knack for arresting opening lines, and Hemlock & Silver is no exception: “I had just taken poison when the king arrived to inform me that he had murdered his wife.” In short order, the scene becomes both more and less explicable than that beginning as Kingfisher slowly doles out explanations while adding complications. “The poison was a distillate of chime-adder venom, which burned my sinuses when I took it off my wrist the way some people take snuff.” So the as-yet-unnamed narrator is familiar with poisons, and apparently takes them on a regular basis. But why? “I hadn’t recognized [the king] at first when he stepped through the door of the stillroom. Well, why would I? The king was someone that I had seen far off, at the head of a long table or perched on a throne. Without context, he was simply a well-dressed man who had come in without even knocking.” So the narrator is placed highly enough in society to have seen the king indoors, though from a distance, and prosperous enough to have a separate room to work in. Work that involves taking poisons. “… I thought perhaps he was one of my father’s friends, so I simply said, ‘Wait a moment, please,’ and turned back to stripping rosemary leaves off thin wooden stems. (I always process rosemary after snorting adder venom. The fragrance of the rosemary helps to clear out the awful burnt smell of the venom.)” (all quotes p. 1) So the narrator’s father has friends who might be mistaken for royalty; the narrator also snorts adder venom often enough to have developed a routine for what to do afterward.

The scene only gets more arresting as it progresses. The first external detail of the narrator emerges when she says that when she realized the man she had just given an order to really was the king, she tried to curtsy and “when I clutched my skirts I dropped the rosemary, and the leaves went spilling down over my skirt and clung to the fabric, sticky with sap.” (pp. 1–2) The ordinary course of things, if a visit from a king can ever be ordinary, does not return.

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