Lift and Separate by Jerry Scott and Rick Kirkman, 128 pages

Darryl and Wanda have the parenting thing down all right, but they still continue to be surprised by the delightfully devilish antics of their two live-wire children. From first steps to bedtime snacks, from shopping adventures to sibling rivalry, Zoe and Hamish keep their parents on the move and the rest of us in stitches.

If I'm a Stay-At-Home Mom, Why Am I Always in the Car by Rick Kirkman & Jerry Scott, 128 pages

  Darryl and Wanda MacPherson have come a long way since little Zoe was born. Back then, they agonized over Wanda's transition from career woman to stay-at-home mom. They struggled with the great breast-feeding-in-public debate. They learned that mommy spit was the universal solvent and determined those all-important child-safe cuss words. These days, they're more mature, more experienced. With Zoe now playing the big sister to baby Hammie who's started to walk, the MacPhersons are calm parental units.

  Don't be too sure! In If I'm a Stay-At-Home Mom..., Rick Kirkman and Jerry Scott show us the reality of Darryl and Wanda's world. Consider what the MacPhersons found out: one four-year-old voice is louder than 200 adult voices in a crowded restaurant; a flushing toilet and the word "Oops!" (heard together) produce more anxiety than any sounds in nature; and bribery is not only not wrong, it's totally necessary.

And Only To Deceive by Tasha Alexander, 320 pages

Emily agreed to wed Philip, the Viscount Ashton, primarily to escape her overbearing mother. Philip's death while on safari soon after their wedding left Emily feeling little grief, for she barely knew the dashing stranger.

But her discovery of his journals nearly two years later reveals a far different man than she imagined-a gentleman scholar and antiquities collector who apparently loved his new wife deeply. Emily's desire to learn more about her late husband leads her through the quiet corners of the British Museum and into a dangerous mystery involving rare stolen artifacts. To complicate matters, she's juggling two very prominent and wealthy suitors, one of whose intentions may go beyond matrimony into darker realms.

The Complete Funky Winkerbean, Volume 6 1987-1989, 595 pages

Working my way through back strips. I hadn't realized how old this strip was.

The Queen's Accomplice by Susan Elia MacNeal, 353 pages

England, 1942. The Nazis relentless Blitz may have paused, but London's nightly blackouts continue. Now, under the cover of darkness, a madman is brutally killing and mutilating young women in eerie and exact re-creations of Jack the Ripper's crimes. What s more, he's targeting women who are reporting for duty to be Winston Churchill's spies and saboteurs abroad. The officers at MI-5 quickly realize they need the help of special agent Maggie Hope to find the killer dubbed the Blackout Beast. A trap is set. But once the murderer has his sights on Maggie, not even Buckingham Palace can protect the resourceful spy from her fate. 

My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite, 226 pages

Satire meets slasher in this short, darkly funny hand grenade of a novel about a Nigerian woman whose younger sister has a very inconvenient habit of killing her boyfriends.
"Femi makes three, you know. Three and they label you a serial killer."

Korede is bitter. How could she not be? Her sister, Ayoola, is many things: the favorite child, the beautiful one, possibly sociopathic. And now Ayoola's third boyfriend in a row is dead. Korede's practicality is the sisters' saving grace. She knows the best solutions for cleaning blood, the trunk of her car is big enough for a body, and she keeps Ayoola from posting pictures of her dinner to Instagram when she should be mourning her "missing" boyfriend. Not that she gets any credit.
A kind, handsome doctor at the hospital where Korede works, is the bright spot in her life. She dreams of the day when he will realize they're perfect for each other. But one day Ayoola shows up to the hospital uninvited and he takes notice. When he asks Korede for Ayoola's phone number, she must reckon with what her sister has become and what she will do about it.
Sharp as nails and full of deadpan wit, Oyinkan Braithwaite has written a deliciously deadly debut that's as fun as it is frightening.

This was a really enjoyable read. The format was intriguing, the shape and layout of the book was interesting, including the page number fonts, and the whole experience was great. I definitely recommend this book.

Operation Columba: The Secret Pigeon Service by Gordon Corera, 334 pages

Between 1941 and 1944, sixteen thousand plucky homing pigeons were dropped in an arc from Bordeaux to Copenhagen as part of 'Columba' – a secret British operation to bring back intelligence from those living under Nazi occupation. The messages flooded back written on tiny pieces of rice paper tucked into canisters and tied to the legs of the birds. Authentic voices from rural France, the Netherlands and Belgium – they were sometimes comic, often tragic and occasionally invaluable with details of German troop movements and fortifications, new Nazi weapons, radar system or the deployment of the feared V-1 and V-2 rockets that terrorized London.

Who were the people who provided this rich seam of intelligence? Many were not trained agents nor, with a few exceptions, people with any experience of spying. At the centre of this book is the ‘Leopold Vindictive’ network – a small group of Belgian villagers prepared to take huge risks. They were led by an extraordinary priest, Joseph Raskin – a man connected to royalty and whose intelligence was so valuable it was shown to Churchill, leading MI6 to parachute agents in to assist him.

A powerful and tragic tale of wartime espionage, the book brings together the British and Belgian sides of the Leopold Vindictive’s story and reveals for the first time the wider history of a quirky, quarrelsome band of spy masters and their special wartime operations, as well as how bitter rivalries in London placed the lives of secret agents at risk. It is a book not so much about pigeons as the remarkable people living in occupied Europe who were faced with the choice of how to respond to a call for help, and took the decision to resist.