The Enchanted Greenhouse by Sarah Beth Durst, 375 pages

 Terlu Perna broke the law because she was lonely. She cast a spell and created a magically sentient spider plant. As punishment, she was turned into a wooden statue and tucked away into an alcove in the North Reading Room of the Great Library of Alyssium.

This should have been the end of her story . . . Yet one day, Terlu wakes in the cold of winter on a nearly-deserted island full of hundreds of magical greenhouses. She’s starving and freezing, and the only other human on the island is a grumpy gardener. To her surprise, he offers Terlu a place to sleep, clean clothes, and freshly baked honey cakes—at least until she’s ready to sail home.

But Terlu can’t return home and doesn’t want to—the greenhouses are a dream come true, each more wondrous than the next. When she learns that the magic that sustains them is failing—causing the death of everything within them—Terlu knows she must help. Even if that means breaking the law again.

This time, though, she isn’t alone. Assisted by the gardener and a sentient rose, Terlu must unravel the secrets of a long-dead sorcerer if she wants to save the island—and have a fresh chance at happiness and love.

Sincerely, Your Inconvenient Wife by Julia Wolf, 375 pages

 I have this thing about saying ‘yes’. I do it frequently, and with abandon.

Skydiving on a whim? Yes.
A last minute getaway to Ireland? Yes!
Agreeing to a marriage of convenience with sexy and arrogant Luca Rossi for two years? Um…yes?

It should have been a simple arrangement. Luca needs a wife to clean up his image as the new CEO of Rossi Motors, and I need my mother to stop trying to fix me up on terrible dates. In two years, we’ll part amicably, no attachments or hard feelings.

Anything that happens between us will be outside the confines of our arrangement.
And by anything, I mean falling into Luca’s bed. Which I also do frequently and with abandon.

But nothing is ever as simple as it seems. It isn’t long before I fall for my motorcycle-riding, dirty-talking, sexy-as-sin husband.

I know I should be careful. This is just temporary, after all, and Luca and I want completely different futures.

The thing is, when I’m with Luca, all I want to do is say, ‘yes’, no matter how reckless that would be.

Anvils, Mallets & Dynamite: The Unauthorized Biography of Looney Tunes by Jaime Weinman, 375 pages

 Looney Tunes cartoons, writes celebrated television critic Jaime Weinman, are the high-water mark of American filmed comedy.

Surreal, irreverent, philosophical, and riotously funny, they have maintained their power over audiences for generations and inspired such giants of the cinema as Mel Brooks, Steven Spielberg, and George Lucas.

Here, finally, Weinman gives Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Yosemite Sam, Foghorn Leghorn, Tweety, Sylvester, and the whole cast of animated icons their long-awaited due. With meticulous research, he takes us inside the Warner Bros studios to unlock the mystery of how an unlikely band of directors and artists working in the shadow of Walt Disney created a wild, visually stunning and oh-so-violent brand of comedy that has never been matched for sheer volume of laughs. The result is an unexpected and fascinating story that matches the Looney Tunes themselves for energy, humor, and ingenuity.

Sensational: The Hidden History of America's "Girl Stunt Reporters" by Kim Todd, 375 pages

 In the waning years of the nineteenth century, women journalists across the United States risked reputation and their own safety to expose the hazardous conditions under which many Americans lived and worked. In various disguises, they stole into sewing factories to report on child labor, fainted in the streets to test public hospital treatment, posed as lobbyists to reveal corrupt politicians. Inventive writers whose in-depth narratives made headlines for weeks at a stretch, these "girl stunt reporters" changed laws, helped launch a labor movement, championed women’s rights, and redefined journalism for the modern age.

The 1880s and 1890s witnessed a revolution in journalism as publisher titans like Hearst and Pulitzer used weapons of innovation and scandal to battle it out for market share. As they sought new ways to draw readers in, they found their answer in young women flooding into cities to seek their fortunes. When Nellie Bly went undercover into Blackwell’s Insane Asylum for Women and emerged with a scathing indictment of what she found there, the resulting sensation created opportunity for a whole new wave of writers. In a time of few jobs and few rights for women, here was a path to lives of excitement and meaning.

After only a decade of headlines and fame, though, these trailblazers faced a vicious public backlash. Accused of practicing "yellow journalism," their popularity waned until "stunt reporter" became a badge of shame. But their influence on the field of journalism would arc across a century, from the Progressive Era "muckraking" of the 1900s to the personal "New Journalism" of the 1960s and ’70s, to the "immersion journalism" and "creative nonfiction" of today. Bold and unconventional, these writers changed how people would tell stories forever.

Bite Me by Shelly Laurenston, 375 pages

 Livy Kowalski has no time for idiots. When you shapeshift into a honey badger, getting through life’s irritants is a finely honed skill. Until she gets stuck housing her nutso cousin and dealing with her dad’s untimely and unexplained demise.

That’s where Vic Barinov comes in—or his house does. Vic can’t step outside without coming back to find Livy devouring his honey stash and getting the TV remote sticky. It gets his animal instincts all riled up. But he’ll have to woo her at high speed: all hell is breaking loose, and Livy is leading the charge… 

Dumplin' by Julie Murphy, 375 pages

This was a truly outstanding teen read. A Texas teen has to face if she is truly comfortable in her plus size body, even if it means entering the local beauty pageant. I can't recommend this enough to everyone to read.

Stealing Snow by Danielle Paige, 375 pages

I'd really enjoyed the new twist on the Wizard of Oz story by this author, so I had to pick up her newest book. Kind of Snow White, but not, very different. I'm not as big a fan on this book.