Next novena upcoming! And more cozy fiction...

Hello all, and TGIF! I was going to start a St. Therese novena on her feast day, but decided instead to forge ahead into upcoming October feast days. There are a couple of great ones this month, and I thought we could pray them together, and we'll only overlap on a day or two, hee hee! Our next novena will start on Tuesday, and will be praying along with St. Teresa of Avila!

She is officially the patron of headache sufferers, and of writers, and can also be an asset for intentions regarding faith and contemplative spirituality. The novena begins on Tuesday, and like before, I have the prayers listed on a page within the blog found on the main navigation menu for both desktop and mobile. :)

Beginning October 13th, I'm going to be praying the novena to St. John Paul II. I'll create a page for that one too next week, we'll still be finishing up with St. Teresa, but I don't think this will be too onerous. Two days of double novena prayers! For those with the Pray app, both of these are on there, though St. Teresa is premium. :-0 I think I'm going to actually become one of their patrons so that I have acces to all of their novenas. It's only $15 a year to support their work, which I do truly love!

By time we finish up with JPII, it'll be later October, and then we can plan for November. I feel a St. Cecilia situation coming on! And maybe Holy Souls in Purgatory! 

*virtual high five*

As it's been a bit of a stressful week, planning for these novenas has been a happy distraction. Also a happy distraction is my current cozy mystery:

This is book 1 in the Amish Matchmaker series, and book 2 comes out December 1st, so it's a perfect time to dive into this one! I've had it on my Kindle for awhile, and am so glad that I'm finally getting to it, it's delightful! You all know how much I love Amish fiction, and this one also features quilting and 2 goats, what could be better?! :-0

Between minding a pair of rambunctious goats, meetings with her quilting circle, and matchmaking, Millie Fisher has plenty to keep her busy through her golden years. But the witty widow always makes time to solve the odd murder . . .

 

Some Amish men don’t know what’s good for them. That’s what Millie Fisher told herself when young Ben Baughman set his heart on marrying Tess Lieb. With Tess’s father refusing to give his blessing and Tess’s ex-boyfriend being a wet blanket, the hapless couple was bound to butt heads more than Millie’s Boer goats. But when Ben tragically dies in a mysterious fire, Millie wonders if someone in her hometown of Harvest, Ohio, wanted Ben out of the wedding picture altogether . . . 

With the help of her quilting buddies, and her outspoken Englischer friend Lois, Millie is determined to patch together all the clues without even dropping a stitch. She only hopes it won’t be the death of her . . .

What are you reading these days? Are you planning to join in the upcoming October novenas? I'd love to hear from you in the comments!

A reading list as we head into Labor Day weekend...

Happy early September all, and somehow we are moving into the weekend that heralds the unofficial end of summer. I will grant, this was the most emotionally exhausting summer of my life, and I'm thinking you all feel the same. I will admit to feeling a bit discouraged at this time. I'm trying not to dwell on it too much because there is literally nothing I can do about it that I'm not already doing. And getting myself re-upset is not helping me or anybody else. So I'm trying. 

I've been reading more, and as a librarian and lifetime lover of books, I realized how much I had gotten away from it since the pandemic started, yet how valuable it is for my mental health. It's like my brain has a harder time shutting real life down now so that I can escape to my happy cozy fiction worlds. I've been making more of an effort to do that, and keeping up with these little reading lists here on the blog is motivating me to keep moving through my Kindle queue (which is CONSIDERABLE :-0). 

So this week I finished Botched Butterscotch (which was a novella, so super short! Very cute too, involved a theft, not a murder), and embarked on the next book in the series (the newest installment!), which is Marshmallow Malice:

Caught in a sticky situation . . . 

With Juliet Brody and Reverend Brook tying the knot in Ohio’s Amish Country’s most anticipated nuptials of the year, Bailey King is determined to do everything in her power to make the event a sweet success. Except midsummer heat waves and outdoor ceremonies don’t mix, and an exasperated Bailey soon finds herself struggling to fulfill bridesmaid duties and keep her stunning marshmallow-frosted wedding cake from becoming a gooey disaster. Then much to everyone’s shock, the entire ceremony crumbles when a guest drops dead, and the cause isn’t sunstroke . . . 

Turns out, the uninvited victim came equipped with lots of dirt on the devout reverend’s hidden past. As Reverend Brook tops the murder suspect list on what should have been the happiest day of his life, Bailey and her sheriff’s deputy boyfriend vow to clear his name. Can the duo boil down a series of baffling clues before Juliet considers her marriage a bad mistake—or the killer whips up another deadly surprise? 

Recipe Included!

This book is just delightful. I love the setting and the characters. I'm already about 25% of the way through! 

Also this week, I have a new download, which is Grilled for Murder (a Country Store Mystery): 

Robbie Jordan may have had reservations about the murder victim, but she still needs to turn up the heat on a killer if she wants to keep her new restaurant open for business . . .

In the charming small town of South Lick, Indiana, Robbie has transformed a rundown country store into the runaway hit Pans ’N Pancakes. But the most popular destination for miles around can also invite trouble. Erica Shermer may be the widow of handsome local lawyer Jim Shermer’s brother, but she doesn’t appear to be in mourning. At a homecoming party held in Robbie’s store, Erica is alternately obnoxious and flirtatious—even batting her eyelashes at Jim. When Erica turns up dead in the store the next morning, apparently clobbered with cookware, the police suspect Robbie’s friend Phil, who closed up after the party. To clear Phil and calm her customers, Robbie needs to step out from behind the counter and find the real killer in short order . . .

This is just $1.99 right now for Kindle, and I found out about it via the Kindle Daily Deals newsletter, so if you're not signed up for those already, you may want to consider doing so. ;-) I love finding new books for less than $2!

Are you reading anything new this week? Have any plans for Labor Day weekend? I'm planning to plot our fall community novenas next week, so stay tuned for next Friday's post on that topic! :-)

Catholic Book Club: Advent of a Mystery

Happy book club Wednesday everyone! Today I am pleased to be reviewing a title that fits in perfectly with the season, Advent of a Mystery, by Marilyn Leach. I received this book as a gift, but it is officially out of print, and available only on Amazon Marketplace. I found out, however, that is has been reissued as Candle for a Corpse (A Berdie Elliott Mystery, Book 1). The happy news is that if you didn't read this book already, and my review intrigues you, you can now buy it in print and get two day shipping with your Amazon Prime membership, or download it to your Kindle or Kindle app for 99 cents! Pretty awesome, and thank you to Ashley for letting me know about this!

Ok, so let's get right into the scoop. This is a light-hearted mystery featuring an Anglican vicar and his wife in a small English village, and as the title indicates, set during Advent. The book begins with a large Christmas party hosted by the couple for the members of their parish, and we are introduced to a motley assortment of characters. One of the parishoners (an eccentric sort who engenders mixed feelings among the group) is later murdered. Who is the culprit?

I really liked this book, and found that I breezed through it, as one would expect for a cozy mystery. My only constructive criticism is that I found the characters hard to keep track of, there were a lot of them. I had to flip back several times to remind myself of who was who. But the heroine, Berdie, is quite endearing and I liked her very well. She and her good friend Lillie get themselves into all sorts of trouble by poking around on their own to try and figure out what happened. The murder actually ties in the victim's Advent wreath, which I found a nice touch. :) And again, this is all in good fun, it is a light mystery. In contrast to last month, it is very easy to remember that this is fiction. There is a romance brewing for Lillie, which was a sweet side story, and general happenings involving Berdie and her husband acclimating to the parish and its accompanying village since this is a very new assignment for them.

This is a cute, cute book, and I really enjoyed reading it. I had my suspicions about the murderer, which likely means it was easy to tell, since I'm terrible at that. But that did not ruin my enjoyment of the book. I loved the characters and the setting. An enjoyable seasonal read, and I definitely recommend this book to cozy mystery lovers.

The author has published a new title in this series, which is Up From the Grave: A Berdie Elliott Lenten Mystery. I mean. :0

It too is 99 cents for Kindle, and man! I may have to download this one. In fact, I just did. :) It's now happily residing on my Kindle. A British cozy mystery set during Lent? Can't pass that one up, my friends! I'm very excited to read it this spring. :) I may very well make this an official book club selection to review here on the blog. We'll see!

Just a side note on Kindles: I have an older model of the small Kindle e-reader, the one with a 4-way controller. That thing is a workhorse and I adore it. The controller, rather than a touchscreen, is a pain in the backside, but I rarely use it. I download books from my phone and send them to my Kindle. Then they automatically download when WIFI is connected, easy peasy. But the reason I'm mentioning this is that the Kindle e-readers are on sale right now, in this pre-Christmas sales bonanza time, and the deal is amazing. They are normally $79 (also dirt cheap for what you're getting, really) and are marked down to $59. That's a heck of a deal. These are the new versions, with a touchscreen, although lacking lighting of any kind (but the Kindle Paperwhite is now on sale for $99, just fyi). But at any rate, I know a lot of people use the Kindle app, which is convenient and easy and all of that, but this is just a quick plug from the librarian about the beauty of a dedicated e-reader device. ;-) LOVE. The e-ink is just gorgeous and so easy on your eyes. I actually prefer reading books on my Kindle to reading print books anymore, for fiction especially. Some non-fiction I still prefer print due to illustrations and such, but the e-reader is a gem. I always have a ton of books on there, no worries about clogging up your bookshelf, and I love how easy it is on my aging eyes to read with it. There's your Librarian Public Service Announcement of the day. :)

Back to books! If you've read either Advent of a Mystery or Candle for a Corpse, do chime in in the comments! Next month we're back to non-fiction with Blessed Mother Teresa's Come Be My Light. Join us January 28th for the discussion!