Sunday, November 9, 2025

Mrs. Claus and the Halloween Homicide by Liz Ireland, 304 pages

 April Claus knows being married to the real Santa makes every day feel like Christmas. But when a different holiday arrives at the North Pole, so does murder...


For the first time ever, Christmastown is celebrating a strange new tradition--Halloween. But not everyone is willing to watch their dependable winter wonderland get overrun by carved pumpkins and costume parties. As a series of scary happenings hit Santaland, each one more intense than the last, April realizes having a role in the festivities could cost her family, friends--even her own life.

April isn't the only unlucky target. Outspoken elf Tiny Sparkletoe is found dead in the snow outside his cottage, crushed in the middle of what appears to be a monstrous footprint. With mayhem descending like reindeer on rooftops, April must stop the Halloween killer before the fate of Mrs. Claus becomes another creepy tale to tell in the dark...



The Goat in the Bedroom by Amy Award, 448 pages

 When your love life stinks and you’re clearly the worst at choosing someone who won’t break your heart, why not ask your best friend to find you a date?

Unless of course…you’re in love with her.

I've been friends with Artemis since high school, when we bonded over crushing on the same guy. Six years later, we’re roommates in our shiny new post college lives—she's training for the Olympics while I start my pro football career. We’ve both recently had bad break-ups and she says if she’s going to get back out there, she needs dating lessons. Naturally, she asks me—her completely platonic roommate—to teach her.

We practice eye contact. Hand holding. Cuddling during movies. Because that's what best friends do, right? Practice intimacy? For science?

She thinks I'm being helpful. I think I'm losing my mind.

Meanwhile, I'm out here sabotaging her dates, getting jealous of my own teammates, and having heart-to-hearts with our pet goats about my feelings while she's literally in the next room.

But we're definitely just friends.

The evidence we might be idiots:

• The documentary crew filming my rookie season knows.
• Our pet goats know.
• Everyone knows. EVERYONE.
• The only people who don't know? Us.

This sports romance features two bisexual dating disasters who are Olympic-level idiots for each other —a football player who falls first and pines HARD, and a curvy rugby goddess who's oblivious because she's convinced she's "too much,"— matchmaking goats with excellent taste in humans, that Bridgertons-meets-American-Football family that's about to stage an intervention unless someone snaps and locks them in a closet together first, a documentary crew catching every slip and you've got a love story everyone can see coming … except them.








Claimed by Her Monsters by Lexi Davis, 120 pages

 On Halloween night, the storm comes for me…and so do three dangerous men who swear I’m theirs.

At nineteen I’ve taken my knocks, parents gone, extended foster care, and one bad night at my group home that lands me with a court-appointed, distant “relative.” He’s a beautiful stranger in a black suit; I’m a disaster in borrowed shoes. Neither of us wants this. Still, he brings me to a mansion that breathes. The halls listen. The portraits watch. Outside, the thunder speaks my name.

He tells me to stay in my room.
I don’t.


Downstairs I meet his friends.

Mick, the big one who growls.
Caspian, the quiet one who can’t stop staring.
Alister, the grump who brought me here.


A storm rages outside. The house whispers. The lights die. They tell me I’m the key to whatever’s waking inside these walls…and inside me. I have to complete a ritual before midnight or the thing under my skin will tear me and this town apart. They say it’s simple.

Fight and die.
Yield to it, and to all of them, and live.


But in this house, nothing is what it seems, least of all me, and when the clock strikes twelve, I’ll have to decide whether to resist the monsters at my door or admit they already own my heart.



A Cold Day for Murder by Dana Stabenow, 240 pages

 Kate Shugak is a native Aleut working as a private investigator in Alaska. She's five foot, one inch tall, carries a scar that runs from ear to ear across her throat, and owns a half-wolf, half-husky dog named Mutt. Resourceful, strong-willed, defiant, Kate is tougher than your average heroine – and she needs to be to survive the worst the Alaskan wilds can throw at her.

Somewhere in twenty million acres of forest and glaciers, a ranger has disappeared: Mark Miller. Missing six weeks. It's assumed by the Alaskan Parks Department that Miller has been caught in a snowstorm and frozen to death: the typical fate of those who get lost in this vast and desolate terrain. But as a favour to his congressman father, the FBI send in an investigator: Ken Dahl. Last heard from two weeks and two days ago.

Now it's time to send in a professional. Kate Shugak: light brown eyes, black hair, five foot one with an angry scar from ear to ear. Last seen yesterday...



Spinsters in Jeopardy by Ngaio Marsh, 245 pages

 An exotic end for an English spinster

En route to a family vacation on the French Riviera, Inspector Roderick Alleyn glimpses from the train a shocking tableau. In a moonlit window a white-robed figure raises a knife to a woman's shadow. Thus begins his incognito exploration of the Chateau of the Silver Goat...where a jet-set cult's 'Way of Life' could spell death for a maiden lady of a certain age-and even for Alleyn's own young son unless he can unveil its illicit mysteries...



Saturday, November 1, 2025

World of Betty & Veronica Jumbo Comics #17, 181 pages

TWO BRAND NEW First, in "Best Friends Day," it's Riverdale Best Friends Day and a local radio station is throwing a town-wide scavenger hunt and giving away a $100 gift certificate to Pop's for the first 10 winners. Betty & Veronica decide this is the perfect thing to do on Riverdale Best Friends Day! Join them on their adventures all over Riverdale in their quest to win -- and have a fun BFF day in the process!

Then, in "Book Smarts," Jake Chang, with special guest-stars Betty and Veronica, are in a real page-turner of a mystery when they find themselves face to face with the villainous Bookworm at the Riverdale BookExpo!




Spinsters in Jeopardy by Ngaio Marsh, 245 pages

 An exotic end for an English spinster


En route to a family vacation on the French Riviera, Inspector Roderick Alleyn glimpses from the train a shocking tableau. In a moonlit window a white-robed figure raises a knife to a woman's shadow. Thus begins his incognito exploration of the Chateau of the Silver Goat...where a jet-set cult's 'Way of Life' could spell death for a maiden lady of a certain age-and even for Alleyn's own young son unless he can unveil its illicit mysteries...