ARC Review: Sunflower Season by Danica Nava

Sunflower Season
Author: Danica Nava
Publication: Berkley (November 3, 2026)

Description: Fed up and burnt-out, a woman leaves the city to take on the challenge of owning a sunflower farm but finds that her biggest trial is facing her first love in this charming second-chance romance by USA Today bestselling author Danica Nava.

Drained by her high-pressure tech job, June Walker finds an escape in homesteading videos and the fantasy of a quieter life. When she finally hits her breaking point, she does the only reasonable thing: She quits her job and buys a crumbling sunflower farm in rural Oklahoma, where she grew up.

June thought her biggest challenge in restoring Sunshine Farm would be the rotting fences but soon comes to the crushing realization that “positive vibes” are not a business plan. Nothing, however, tests her resolve quite like running into her first love, the boy she left behind after her world imploded when she was seventeen. She’s back for a fresh start, not to unpack old heartbreaks.

Noah Abbott never left Love County. Between his family, his job with the local fire brigade, and a town that knows him inside and out, he has everything he needs—except answers. So when June Walker returns as the new owner of Sunshine Farm, Noah is determined to find out why the girl who once meant everything to him vanished without a word.

As old wounds crack open and attraction flares back to life, June and Noah are forced to reckon with their past and decide whether first love is a memory best left buried or the one thing worth replanting.

My Thoughts: This second chance romance stars June Walker who has quit her high-pressure tech job to come home and restore Sunflower Farm which is a place filled with happy childhood memories. It also stars Noah Abbott who never left the area and who is now a firefighter for the local brigade. The two were childhood sweethearts who were ripped apart when June's grandmother dies and her brother sells everything and takes her back to Dartmouth with him so that he can continue college.

June is a high school senior who has already been accepted at UC Berkley when her grandmother dies. She wants to accept Noah's proposal of marriage, but her brother prevails. These stresses trigger a series of anxiety attacks which have plagued her in the years since and plague her still.

She is hoping that returning home and restoring Sunshine Farm will be the life change she needs to regain her health and happiness. She isn't sure what to think when Noah tries to rekindle their friendship and romance. She's sure he's moved on. 

This story is told from both Noah's and June's points of view and covers a year filled with growth and restoration along with a variety of problems and sorrows. Fans of complex romances will enjoy this one.

I received this one in exchange for an honest review from NetGalley. You can buy your copy here.

ARC Review: The Trial of Magdelena Overmorrow by Catriona Moran

The Trial of Magdelena Overmorrow
Author: Catriona Moran
Publication: G. P. Putnam's (November 3, 2026)

Description: Perfect for readers of Naomi Novik and Katherine Arden, The Trial of Magdalena Overmorrow is a sweeping enemies-to-lovers debut epic for romantasy-curious fantasy readers, fantasy-curious romantasy readers, and all lovers of slowburn romance.

Scholar. Healer. Harlot.

In her house, the villainy is her.

Magdalena Overmorrow has been called a scholar, a healer, a harlot. She carves out some measure of freedom for the women of Astoleyn, risking capture and death by caring for them and performing forbidden abortions. When she’s betrayed by a close confidante, she faces banishment to the realm’s desolate northernmost city as an accused witch. There, she must await her trial and possible doom under the watchful aegis of the Lord Proctor of Cair Gramora, a man so pious and humorless it is rumored that he has never once laughed in his life.

When she arrives, though, Magda is surprised to find that the Lord Proctor isn’t the grizzled old priest she expected but a man barely older than she is. As cold and mysterious and beautiful as the mountains at the cair’s northern border, he holds her life in his hands. One word from him could send her to the stake or worse, but she can’t help her fascination with a man and fellow scholar who is more than he appears to be, and the dangerous secrets he is clearly keeping. As her trial draws closer and the intrigue of the isolated cair threatens them both, she and the Lord Proctor must form an uneasy alliance that could either save her life or lead her to martyrdom and ruin.

My Thoughts: Magdalena Overmorrow has run afoul of the religious hierarchy of her city. She is a scholar and a healer who is known for helping women in a society that routinely abuses them. She is also a magic user and can enhance her herbal concoctions. She has been performing forbidden abortions. 

Magdalena is arrested and sent to the far north until it is time for her trial which will likely result in her burning at the stake. In the north, she is put under the care of the Lord Proctor who is noted for his piety. She finds that he is a man of secrets and she falls in love with him. He seems to return her feelings until they are caught in a compromising position and he betrays her. 

This was a huge complex fantasy which centers on Magdalena. While she is away, her friend Jula who is a lawyer is fighting to build a case to keep her from being burned. Correspondence from women Magdalena helped let the reader know more about her past actions and more about the culture she lives in. 

I liked the magic. I liked Magdalena. I didn't like the rigidly religious society in the story.

I received this one in exchange for an honest review from NetGalley. You can buy your copy here.

ARC Review: A Glimmer of Death by Laurell K. Hamilton

A Glimmer of Death
Author: Laurell K. Hamilton
Series: Merry Gentry (Book 10)
Publication: Berkley (November 3, 2026)

Description: New York Times bestselling author Laurell K. Hamilton returns for the first in a two-book epic conclusion to her genre-defining Merry Gentry Series.

I am Meredith Gentry. Princess of the realm of faerie, private investigator in the mortal land of Los Angeles, mother of triplets, and lover to my men—the royal guards sworn to protect me. With a family and a court to support back home, I can’t say no to a job investigating a string of magical attacks against up-and-coming Hollywood actresses. Not when the case raises old nightmares from my own past. This time when I find out who is responsible for all this pain, I can make him pay.

But affairs in the land of faerie keep interrupting my hunt. Aisling is supposed to be the next king of the Seelie Court, but he is doubly cursed once by beauty and once by despair. If we cannot cure him my uncle Taranis, former King of Light and Illusion, may regain the throne. If he does he will destroy me and everyone I care about. Only true love will cure Aisling of his curse but is my love true enough? If not, I will share his fate and lose myself to the haunted magic that torments him.

While we fight for one kingdom of faerie, my aunt Andais, Queen of Air and Darkness, claims my deceased best friend, Keelin, has turned up alive and well along with a child supposedly sired by her dead son. If this baby is the true child of my former rival to the Unseelie throne, my enemies might use it to take the throne from me. Mysterious fey babies, curses both ancient and new are shaking the delicate balance of the faerie courts, and I am still hunting a monster terrorizing the women of Los Angeles.

My Thoughts: Merry Gentry, queen of the Western Lands, returns in this tenth book in the series. It has been twelve years since the previous book in this series. 

We find Merry living in Los Angeles with her triplets and a bunch of lovers who are also her guards. She is still doing detective work. Her new case deals with magical rapes of up-and-coming Hollywood actresses. She needs to find the abuser, but the attacks remind her forcibly of attacks on her by Taranis a former faerie king who wants his throne back and who is claiming that Merry's triplets are his children. 

The fairy lands, both the Seelie and Unseelie courts, are changing because Merry is bringing back fertility to the notoriously infertile fae. Everyone wants her to bring back fertility to them, and they will go to great lengths to convince her. Merry also has a way of bringing back old powers long though lost to her lovers which also makes her popular.

This episode deals with old curses and new curses and old friends and lovers long presumed dead who aren't as dead as had been supposed. Be advised that the book contains enough detailed descriptions of sex and lust that I almost marked it DNF. Merry is a descendent of multiple fertility goddesses and transmits fertility and returning power through sex. 

Fans of the series won't want to miss this penultimate book in the series. It is a wonderful return to a world filled with both wonders and horrors. 

I received this one in exchange for an honest review from NetGalley. You can buy your copy here.

Audiobook Review: Knave of Diamonds by Laurie R. King

Knave of Diamonds
Author: Laurie R. King
Narrator: Amy Scanlon, Steven Crossley, Jefferson Mays
Series: Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes (Book 19)
Publication: Recorded Books (June 10, 2025)
Length: 9 hours and 39 minutes

Description: Mary Russell’s allegiances are tested by the reappearance of her long-lost uncle—and a tantalizing case not even Sherlock Holmes could solve.

When Mary Russell was a child, she adored her black sheep Uncle Jake. But she hasn’t heard from him in many years, and she assumed that his ne’er-do-well ways had brought him to a bad end somewhere—until he presents himself at her Sussex door. Yes, Jake is back, and with a load of problems for his clever niece. Not the least of which is the reason the family rejected him in the first place: He was involved—somehow—in the infamous disappearance of the Irish Crown Jewels from an impregnable safe in Dublin Castle.

It was a theft that shook a government, enraged a king, threatened the English establishment—and baffled not only the Dublin police and Scotland Yard, but Sherlock Holmes himself. And, now, Jake expects Russell to step into the middle of it all? To slip away with him, not telling Holmes what she’s up to? Knowing that the theft—unsolved, hushed-up, scandalous—must have involved Mycroft Holmes as well?

Naturally, she can do nothing of the sort. Siding with her uncle, even briefly, could only place her in opposition to both her husband-partner and his secretive and powerful brother. She has to tell Jake no.

On the other hand, this is Jake—her father’s kid brother, her childhood hero, the beloved and long-lost survivor of a much-diminished family.

Conflicting loyalties and international secrets, blatant lies and blithe deceptions: sounds like another case for Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes.

My Thoughts: Uncle Jake comes back in this 19th Sherlock Holmes/Mary Russell historical mystery. 

When Mary and Sherlock return home from Sherlock's son Damien's wedding, a visitor is waiting. Sherlock needs to travel to London to meet with his brother Mycroft. So Mary is home alone when her Uncle Jake makes his reappearance.

Uncle Jake is the family black sheep. He's a thief and a confidence man. But he is also Mary's only family and he has a problem. Some years earlier, he had been involved in the disappearance of the Irish Regalia although no one knew it at the time.

The case had all sorts of repercussions for Ireland and the British Crown. The theft threatened to open up a major scandal considering that the specter of homosexuality threatens both King and country. The jewels had never been recovered. Now, hints of their location are leaking.

Told in three viewpoints, the story details the hunt for the Irish Regalia from Mary, Jake, and Sherlock's points of view. 

This was another fun adventure for Holmes and Russell and lets us meet a character we've heard about in previous books. I enjoy the mix of real and fictional characters in this series. 

I bought this one November 1, 2025. You can buy your copy here.

ARC Review: Midnight in the House of Commons by Charles Finch

Midnight in the House of Commons
Author: Charles Finch
Series: Charles Lenox Mysteries (Book 16)
Publication: Minotaur Books (November 3, 2026)

Description: Amateur sleuth Charles Lenox investigates the murder of a Parliament member, moving through the glamorous high society of Victorian London in the next novel from acclaimed author Charles Finch.

In the spring of 1881, Lenox is caught up in the whirl of London life when his brother arrives to tell him that there’s been a murder in the House of Commons. Robert Baddeley, a charismatic, womanizing Member, has been found poisoned in the hallowed chamber itself. Suspicion immediately falls on the women in his life, including his wife and mistress, but as Lenox digs deeper, he realizes that there were more than a few people who might have wanted Baddeley dead.

Meanwhile, Lenox must balance his investigation with his family life, which has grown increasingly complicated: his ward Sari struggles with heartbreak, the Lenox household receives an odd visitor, and a young woman comes to Lenox to implore him to find her fiancé, who has mysteriously vanished.

And just when Lenox is nearing the truth of Baddeley’s murder, someone close to him is arrested for the crime―and Lenox must race to solve the case before losing everything.

Joyfully set in ballrooms, supper parties, palaces, and Parliament Midnight in the House of Commons takes Charles Lenox through his trickiest, most satisfying case yet.

My Thoughts: The sixteenth Charles Lenox mystery has as its centerpiece the murder of a Member of the House of Commons on the floor of the House. A single earring, a note, and an unplanned supper are the clues that Charles has to follow.

Robert Baddeley was a charming womanizer with surprising influence in the House despite his relatively short tenure there. The first suspects that come to mind are the women in his life. He has a wife and a series of lovers. But there might also be a political motive for his death. The vote on the Poor Bill is coming up, and it looks like the more progressive party of which Charles' brother Edmund is a shining light is going to fall short of success by one vote. Baddeley's death would give Edmund's party the win.

While this is the main case on Charles' agenda, he is also trying to help a poor young woman find out why her suitor abandoned her. He is also dealing with his ward Sari's broken heart as her suitor has also abandoned her. 

I enjoyed this mystery. I like the Victorian setting as the story takes place in 1881. I like that Charles' wife Lady Jane is very involved in the Suffrage movement. I like that Charles is in a good place in his life with a successful business and a happy family. 

I received this one in exchange for an honest review from NetGalley. You can buy your copy here.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? (October 26, 2026)

 It's Monday, What Are You Reading? is now hosted by Kathryn at The Book Date.

It’s Monday!  What Are You Reading is where we gather to share what we have read this past week and what we plan to read this week.  It is a great way to network with other bloggers, see some wonderful blogs, and put new titles on your reading list.

Want to See What I Added to My Stack? links to Stacking the Shelves hosted by Marlene at Reading Reality.

Other Than Reading...

This week was a pretty quiet one. I finished my reread of the Vorkosigan series by Lois McMaster Bujold. Now I need to concentrate on Review copies since I have a bunch being released on November 10.

I hit 30 days of listening for Audible Rewards and earned a $5 gift certificate to use at Audible. The next reward comes at 100 days of listening. I won't hit that one until February at the earliest. It does require only 5+ minutes a day of listening which is easy since I tend to listen for hours at a time. 

I added one new Review copy, two Kindle books including one to go with one of my Bujold audiobooks, and one audiobook using an Audible Credit. The review book I'm reading right now seems to me to be mislabeled. They say Romantic Comedy. However, it is reminding me a lot of a modernized version of The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown which is more suspense and what led me to adding Angels & Demons to my Audible collection all eighteen hours of it.

This week along with watching the World Series (Go, Brewers!) I'll try to concentrate on lowering my stack of Review copies which is currently sitting at 43 books. I'll also be doing some record keeping as November hits. I have my State of the Stack post to finish and updates to both my Google Sheets reading list and LibraryThing account. Since LibraryThing's changes, I'm not really looking forward to learning how to add a new collection (November) but hopefully it won't be too hard. 

Read Last Week

• The Trial of Magdalena Overmorrow by Caitriona Moran (Review, November 3) -- Epic fantasy. My review will be posted on October 29.
• Sunflower Season by Danica Nava (Review, November 3) -- Contemporary romance. My review will be posted on October 29)
• Winterfair Gifts by Lois McMaster Bujold (Kindle, Mine since December 26, 2020) -- Novella in the Vorkosigan series. 

• A Civil Campaign by Lois McMaster Bujold (Audiobook reread)
• Diplomatic Immunity by Lois McMaster Bujold (Audiobook reread)

• Captain Vorpatril's Alliance by Lois McMaster Bujold (Audiobook reread)
• Cryoburn by Lois McMaster Bujold (Audiobook reread)
• Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen by Lois McMaster Bujold (Audiobook reread)

• Loki's Wolves by K. L. Armstrong & Melissa Marr (Kindle, Mine since October 8) -- First is a middle grade fantasy based on Norse mythology. My review will be posted on October 30.
• Tonight and Always by Nora Roberts (Audiobook, Mine since September 30) -- Vintage Nora Roberts romance. My review will be posted on November 17.

Currently

• The Case of the Christie Wedding Affair by Kelly Oliver (Audiobook, Mine since October 6)
• You, Me, & the Conspiracy by Emma Barry (Review, November 10)

Next Week

• Murder of a Merry Gentleman by Celeste Connally (Review, November 10)
• Thunderbird Ranch by Laura Griffin (Review, November 10)
• Bad Company by Sara Paretsky (Review, November 10)

• Fall for a Fairytale by Isabelle Taylor (Review, November 10)
• Infinite Wisdom by Thomas R. Weaver (Review, November 10)
• The Riddle Maker by Bruce Borgos (Review, November 17)

Reviews Posted

• Enchanting the Fae Queen by Stephanie Burgis (Audiobook)
• A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan (Audiobook)
• Joy to the Bones by Carolyn Haines (Review copy)

• Murder at Pellhurst Pond by Clara McKenna (Review copy)
• Murder in the Upper Crust by Mindy Quigley (Review copy)
• The Bone Woman by Paige Shelton (Review copy)

Want to See What I Added to My Stack Last Week?

Review:

• Coffee & Conjuring by Isla Jewell (Review, February 17)

Bought:

• Angels and Demons by Dan Brown (Audiobook, Audible Credit)
• Bears Behaving Badly by MaryJanice Davidson (Kindle, $.99)
• Diplomatic Immunity by Lois McMaster Bujold (Kindle, $6.99)

What was your week like?

Audiobook Review: A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan

A Natural History of Dragons
Author: Marie Brennan

Narrator: Kate Reading
Series: A Natural History of Dragons (Book 1)
Publication: Tor Books (February 5, 2013); Macmillan Audio (November 15, 2013)

Length: 10 hours and 17 minutes

Description: First in a fantasy series combining adventure with the inquisitive spirit of the Victorian Age.

"You, dear reader, continue at your own risk. It is not for the faint of heart—no more so than the study of dragons itself. But such study offers rewards beyond compare: to stand in a dragon's presence, even for the briefest of moments—even at the risk of one's life—is a delight that, once experienced, can never be forgotten. . . ."

All the world, from Scirland to the farthest reaches of Eriga, know Isabella, Lady Trent, to be the world's preeminent dragon naturalist. She is the remarkable woman who brought the study of dragons out of the misty shadows of myth and misunderstanding into the clear light of modern science. But before she became the illustrious figure we know today, there was a bookish young woman whose passion for learning, natural history, and, yes, dragons defied the stifling conventions of her day.

Here at last, in her own words, is the true story of a pioneering spirit who risked her reputation, her prospects, and her fragile flesh and bone to satisfy her scientific curiosity; of how she sought true love and happiness despite her lamentable eccentricities; and of her thrilling expedition to the perilous mountains of Vystrana, where she made the first of many historic discoveries that would change the world forever.

My Thoughts: This historical fantasy tells the story of Isabella, Lady Trent, who is famous for her studies of dragons. It is told as a memoir in her own voice beginning from her initial enthusiasm begun as a child to her first expedition at age 19.

Set in a Victorian analog, Isabella is an unusual girl for her interest in natural history, but she is also a determined one. As an upper-class woman, her role is clear: marry and make a home for her husband. When she goes husband hunting at seventeen, she chooses a man who has an equal interest in natural history in the hopes that he will still allow her to read and study in that field.

After a miscarriage at about eighteen, her husband is offered a place in an expedition to the mountains of Vystrana and convinces the leader to take her along in the role of the expedition's secretary and artist. This story tells about her adventures and discoveries there.

This was an excellent story that works really well as an audiobook. I am eager to listen to the rest of her adventures. 

I bought this one August 20 and added the audiobook for $8.50 on September 24. You can buy your copy here.