The Beginner's Quilt

I received an advanced review copy of The Beginner's Quilt from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review. The book will be released next month. I love Wanda Brunstetter's novels. She writes Amish fiction and has 147 books under her belt. The Beginner's Quilt is a prequel to Brunstetter's Half-Stitched Amish Quilting Club series. This series "focuses on Emma Bontrager 's journey from disinterest in domestic skills to finding a new passion and facing heartbreak, all while learning to quilt a Tree of Life quilt block pattern." Emma's mother hopes that she will learn how to be an Amish wife.

Emma is a tomboy who loves fishing, baseball and any outdoors activity. Her mother sends her to her grandmother’s house in Arthur, IL for the summer in order to learn to cook and sew. Emma's grandmother is a great cook and seamstress. She soon meets grandma's friend Ida Mae Yoder who is an accomplished quilter. After admiring one of Ida Mae's Quilts she is offered lessons. Emma accepts immediately. Emma's is shy and has many inhibitions. When she meets Ida Mae's son Ivan, Emma feels an attraction but isn't cognizant of it. She only knows that she is tongue tied around him. Ivan, on the other hand, is bold in speaking and asserting his desires. They are opposites but are attracted to each other.

This story is strictly romance. There are no modern problems involved in the plot which we have seen from earlier Brunstetter novels. It is a relaxing story to read. 4 out of 5 stars.

February Armchair Travel Plans

I am only traveling to three international countries this month. Thailand, Singapore and Russia are on my list. Ann Bennett's Bamboo Island takes place in Thailand. It is a WWII historical fiction novel of the Thai-Burma Railway that POWs built.

I will then fly to Singapore to read Aunty Lee's Delights. This Ovidua Yu novel has been on my tbr list for quite awhile. Juhea Kim's City of Night Birds takes place in St. Petersburg, Russia. It rounds out my armchair travel in February. I had intended to read the book last month but fell short of the goal. This story is about a ballerina. The rest of my armchair travels are in the U. S. for several mysteries. I am definitely visiting Boston and Amish country in Shipshewana, IN and Arthur, IL. 

Where are you traveling this month?

2026 Purrfect Reading Challenge

I have never participated in this challenge before. Since there are several cat themed mysteries on my tbr list, I decided to join in on the fun. The Socrates Book Reviews Blog is the challenge host. Below are the rules:

1.  The challenge will begin on January 1, 2026 and end on December 31, 2026.

2.  Any book read for this challenge has to be a mystery and have a cat that plays a major role in the book.

3.  You may make a list of books at the beginning of the challenge or you can just list them as you find them.

4.  Book titles may be swapped out at anytime for those who make a list in advance.

5.  Crossovers with other challenges are permitted and encouraged.

6.  Books can be in any format of your choice (print, audio, ebooks)

7.  You don't have to have a blog or write a review, but you can if you want to. If you don't have a blog, just post in the comment section that you'd like to join. You can post your books in there.

8.  To sign up, choose one of the levels from the below list and use the Mister Linky on the challenge page. There will be links for reviews and wrap posts later.

Participation Levels

Purring - Read 1-10 cat mysteries (my level of participation)

Kneading - Read 11-20 cat mysteries

Meowing - Read 21-30 cat mysteries

Catnip - Go crazy and read at least 31 and go as high as you'd like - the sky is the limit!

Book of the Month: January

I read a lot of books this month. Sixteen to be exact. I had quite a few books from 2025 that I wanted to get through and the freezing cold weather early in the month was supportive of this. Three of them were historical fiction, four were graphic novels, one was literary fiction and the rest were mysteries. My top read was between Mindy Quigley's At Death's Dough, Syou Ishida's We'll Prescribe You a Cat and Gary McAvoy's The Hildegard Seeds. The Hildegard Seeds won out. It is the best book McAvoy has written in his Vatican Secret Archives Mystery series. 

In the Hildegard Seeds, Hana Sinclair inherited a medieval botanical manuscript written by Hildegard von Bingen. Hana believes that the book contains the key to curing some of humanity’s most devastating diseases. Of course, Big Pharma is determined to ensure her secrets stay buried. If patients are cured, these companies lose money because no one will need their meds. This is a short summary of a complex plot that takes the characters to France, Italy and Germany.

Captivating Character of the Month: January

This meme is hosted by Carol at the Reading Ladies blog. On the last Friday of the month, she writes a post about her most captivating character of the month and creates a Link Party on that post. 

The priestess Joia in Ken Follett's Circle of Days is my most captivating character for January. Joia was appropriately named. She is a joyful person who believes that anything is possible. If it wasn't for this trait Stonehenge would never have been built.

Some background on the story is necessary. Circle of Days takes place in 2500 BCE in England. It is a fictional account of how Stonehenge could have been constructed. The book opens with the character Seft experiencing abuse from his flint making father and brothers. He decides to escape his family and runs toward the herding community. Seft settles there and marries the love of his life Neen. Neen’s sister is Joia. Joia becomes prominent in the book when she decides to join the priestesses who dance around a wooden monument.

After the wooden monument is destroyed, Joia dreams of building a new one, one that is permanent. However, the lead priestess opposes the idea. When the leader of the priestesses dies, Joia campaigns to take her place. She gets her wish when the priestesses elect her to be their leader. One of the reasons why Joia is overwhelmingly elected is her friendliness toward her fellow priestesses. They all love her. 

Joia is a woman with vision and an ability to lead. Her vision of a stone monument inspires Seft to come up with ideas on how it could be built. Her fellow priestesses follow her wholeheartedly in this challenge. All of us know someone like Joia so it stands to reason that she is my favorite character of the month.

#CaptivatingCharacters26 

Book Cover of the Month: January

There was no competition this month for my top book cover. We'll Prescribe You a Cat features a cat in a pill bottle on it's cover in a pleasing blue and orange color palette. The cover for the English edition features illustrations by German artist Alissa Levy. Levy is known for her cat illustrations. Her Instagram page shows many of them as does her website. Levy also designed the book cover for the sequel, We'll Prescribe You Another Cat. In addition, she offers to create a custom digital portrait of your own cat. 

Alissa Levy was born in Kiev, Ukraine but emigrated with her family to Dortmund, Germany when she was six years old. Her artwork focuses on the simple moments of everyday life, often featuring female characters, plants, and animals. Her style is characterized by a delicate palette of warm, soft tones and organic lines. 

The Red Mother Volume One

The Red Mother Volume 1 is a fantastic comic psychological horror story by Jeremy Haun. In Volume 1 Daisy McDonough loses one eye and the man she loves in a brutal mugging. As she tries to put the pieces of her life back together, Daisy gets a glass eye to match the other.  Just when she begins to think she can move on, she begins to see strange things through her new prosthetic eye. Daisy sees everything in red in the prosthetic eye. Her doctor says she has Charles Bonnet Syndrome. Charles Bonnet Syndrome (CBS) is a condition that causes vivid, complex visual hallucinations in people who have lost significant vision, where the brain creates images to fill the visual void, similar to phantom limb pain. These hallucinations are purely visual (no sounds/smells), the person knows they aren't real, and they typically involve patterns, people, or landscapes, lessening over time as the brain adapts, though no specific cure exists.

Daisy is a puzzle designer but she hasn't worked in months because of the accident. She receives a puzzle in the shape of a heart by delivery and easily solves the puzzle. The name and phone number in the puzzle refers her to Leland Black. After meeting him Daisy has another red hallucination. Something strange then happened. She was asked by a passerby if she had seen the red mother. This is where the story ended. I wish I had picked up the next Volume because this cliff hanger was intense. 

I liked all of the characters. Daisy is very sympathetic. The drawings of her show how much pain she had to endure. They also show her going to endless doctor appointments. Her life was on hiatus as she recovered from her injuries. I liked that her career was as a puzzle maker. It's an interesting field and I am looking forward to reading more about it in future installments of the series. Daisy's best friend Pari is supportive, always trying to get Daisy to go out for dinner or even business meetings. They work together in a puzzle business. Pari is very likable. Daisy's boyfriend Luke was not featured much. Daisy was told that he was lost after the mugging.

Volume 1 is a fun start to the Red Mother series. It is a clean story, no sex or foul language. 5 out of 5 stars.

The High Desert

I selected this graphic novel because it has won several awards.The book won the 2022 ALA Alex Award and the 2023 Cartoonist Studio Prize for Print Comics. In addition, it was one of The Washington Post's 10 Best Graphic Novels of 2022, one of New York Public Library's Best Books of 2022 and a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2022.  I had high expectations for it. However, I did not like it much. 

High Desert is a coming-of-age graphic memoir by the creator of Afro-punk, James Spooner. We read about him as a teenaged African American boy who has to deal with identity, racism, teen love and belonging in the isolated California desert that he lived in with his white single mother. James searches for community by being punk. James thinks going to a new high school will bring him new friends but he finds that he is just one out of 15 African American students at the school. The African Americans are gangbangers while the white students are racist. Some are skinheads. James doesn't know where he fits until he meets Ty, a young black punk who introduces him to the school outsiders, skaters and unhappy young rebels caught up in the punk groundswell sweeping the country. His life changes with a new punk haircut and becoming a bass player in a band. 

I did not understand the slang. After looking up several pages worth of slang I gave up. The story was actually judge dialogue between James and his fellow students at various moments in school. There was no plot. I felt sorry for James, though. He had a rough adjustment to his new community and didn't feel his mother understood him. I read several reviews of this book and all were positive. These reviewers had the same life experiences as James. While I didn't like the book I would definitely recommend it for my friends' kids who might be feeling just like James.

We'll Prescribe You a Cat

When I saw this book in my Amazon feed I immediately knew I was going to buy it. The title is not only cute but I believe if doctor's prescribed cats instead of meds, we all would recover from whatever ails us. I knew the story would be good. It was! I loved this novel written in the 1970s in Japan and translated into English in 2024. It has now been translated into seventeen languages.

The publisher's summary:

A cat a day keeps the doctor away…

Discover the award-winning, bestselling Japanese novel that has become an international sensation in this utterly charming, vibrant celebration of the healing power of cats.

Tucked away in an old building at the end of a narrow alley in Kyoto, the Kokoro Clinic for the Soul can only be found by people who are struggling in their lives and genuinely need help. The mysterious clinic offers a unique treatment to those who find their way there: it prescribes cats as medication. Patients are often puzzled by this unconventional prescription, but when they “take” their cat for the recommended duration, they witness profound transformations in their lives, guided by the playful, empathetic, occasionally challenging yet endearing cats.

Throughout the pages, the power of the human-animal bond is revealed as a disheartened businessman finds unexpected joy in physical labor, a young girl navigates the complexities of elementary school cliques, a middle-aged man struggles to stay relevant at work and home, a hardened bag designer seeks emotional balance, and a geisha finds herself unable to move on from the memory of her lost cat. As the clinic’s patients navigate their inner turmoil and seek resolution, their feline companions lead them toward healing, self-discovery, and newfound hope.

The book contains five short stories about a Kyoto psychiatrist who prescribes a cat to every patient as a unique form of therapy for people with life problems. The prescription is always for ten days after which the cat must be returned to the doctor. The stories showcase the healing power of animals with a touch of fantasy thrown in for good measure. As the summary above states, only people in deep emotional pain can open the door to the clinic and this is where the fantasy comes in. Not everyone can see the alleyway where the business practice is located.

Some of the characters are in more than one story but each features a new patient. Every story begins the same with a frazzled employee receiving a referral to a mental health clinic from a friend of a friend of a friend.The clinic is run by Doctor Nikke and Nurse Chitose. And SPOILER, they're cats that have taken human form. Chitose and Nikke were born in a breeding house in terrible conditions and were saved by Dr. Suda of the Suda Animal Hospital. The hospital is located down the same street as the Clinic. Both are in every story. The plot premise for each story are mentioned above and do not need to be repeated.

We'll Prescribe You a Cat is a must read! I cannot recommend it more highly. 5 out of 5 stars.

Can't Wait Wednesday #45

My first Can't Wait Wednesday of 2026! This weekly meme is hosted by the Wishful Endings blog. The meme spotlights the books that we are excited about but have yet to read. Generally, they're books that have yet to be released. 

The 20th Cotton Malone novel will be published in about a month, on February 17, 2026. The Devil's Bible was written by Steve Berry, one of my favorite authors. He  has written twenty Cotton Malone novels, six stand-alone thrillers, two Luke Daniels adventures, and several works of short fiction. The Cotton Malone novels are treasure hunt mysteries. Cotton's character is a former Justice Department operative.

In this installment of the series Malone is called to Sweden when the younger sister of King Wilhelm I is kidnapped. The ransom demand? Hand over an 800-year-old book, the Codex Gigas—the largest illuminated medieval manuscript in the world. Claimed as war loot from Bohemia in 1648, it’s been kept in Stockholm for nearly 400 years. Along the way it also acquired another more mysterious moniker ... The Devil’s Bible.

The Codex Gigas actually exists and is located in Stockholm. The name Gigas means giant, so it's a giant codex. Per Wikipedia, "Housed in the National Library of Sweden, this colossal book (nearly a meter tall and weighing 75 kg) is renowned for its sheer size, intricate illumination, and the mysterious story surrounding its creation, making it a significant artifact in medieval history and popular legend."  The book contains a large green faced devil portrait inside. The myth states a monk, condemned to death, promised to create the book in one night; failing, he prayed to the Devil, who finished it, thus earning his depiction.

I love it when fiction is based upon fact and cannot wait to read The Devil's Bible.

The Storm

The Storm was just published a week or so ago on January 6, 2026. I selected the book as my first entry for this year's Calendar of Crime Reading Challenge. The book is a suspense thriller told in a dual timeline that unravels a decades old murder mystery tied to a hurricane. 

The publisher's summary:  

Simple

St. Medard’s Bay, Alabama is famous for three things: the deadly hurricanes that regularly sweep into town, the Rosalie Inn, a century-old hotel that’s survived every one of those storms, and Lo Bailey, the local girl infamously accused of the murder of her lover, political scion Landon Fitzroy, during Hurricane Marie in 1984.

When Geneva Corliss, the current owner of the Rosalie Inn, hears a writer is coming to town to research the crime that put St. Medard’s Bay on the map, she’s less interested in solving a whodunnit than in how a successful true crime book might help the struggling inn’s bottom line. But to her surprise, August Fletcher doesn’t come to St. Medard’s Bay alone. With him is none other than Lo Bailey herself. Lo says she’s returned to her hometown to clear her name once and for all, but the closer Geneva gets to both Lo and August, the more she wonders if Lo is actually back to settle old scores.

As the summer heats up and another monster storm begins twisting its way towards St. Medard’s Bay, Geneva learns that some people can be just as destructive―and as deadly―as any hurricane, and that the truth of what happened to Landon Fitzroy may not be the only secret Lo is keeping…

 

I stumbled over the first couple of chapters because the story is narrated by the way people talk, not the way they would write. I adjusted though. August was a dull character but Lo more than made up for him. At age 60, Lo is still attractive with a vibrant personality. How she viewed this old hometown of hers was interesting to read about. Her perception of the changes and the things that did not change were what pushed the plot forward. In the beginning I thought Geneva was the main character since she owned the hotel but Lo was the character that was the most prominent. She is the one that all of the other characters responded to. 

The setting was well described. It was a southern Alabama beach where residents are always looking at the sky in fear of another hurricane arriving on their shores. Thunder, lightning and rain made everyone nervous. You can feel the fear and the tension in them. In this respect, I would call the book an atmospheric mystery. I have never enjoyed an atmospheric story before but The Storm pulled me in. The characters spoke southern, yes it's a language, but it made following the mystery more difficult for me. I was looking for the promise in the summary that a hurricane murder mystery would be solved but my reading speed was sidelined by all of the southernisms. 

The history of the prior hurricanes in Alabama were recited by the characters but Hurricane Marie was one that they only discussed in whispers. This hurricane was the worst and the death of the governor's son Landon Fitzroy made it all the more dramatic.

The Storm was an interesting mystery but a very slow read. 3 out of 5 stars.

The Locked Door

Freida McFadden might be the best psychologist thriller author of our times.  You can always expect a good read from her. After reading the first chapter of the book I was hooked. However, I got up to make coffee and grab a snack because I knew once I started reading that I would not stop until the book was finished. That is pretty much what happened. Below are a few details about the plot.

The publisher's summary:

While eleven-year-old Nora Davis was up in her bedroom doing homework, she had no idea her father was killing women in the basement.

Until the day the police arrived at their front door.

Decades later, Nora’s father is spending his life behind bars, and Nora is a successful surgeon with a quiet, solitary existence. Nobody knows her father was a notorious serial killer. And she intends to keep it that way.

Then Nora discovers one of her young female patients has been murdered. In the same unique and horrific manner that her father used to kill his victims.

Somebody knows who Nora is. Somebody wants her to take the fall for this unthinkable crime. But she’s not a killer like her father. The police can’t pin anything on her.

As long as they don’t look in her basement.

 

All I can say is wow! This is a gripping, fast paced thriller with a surprising ending. The short chapters help to maintain the suspense level which starts high, stays high and ends high. It's the perfect psychological thriller, which is what I think I said about McFadden's last novel. The story is told in a dual timeline: the present time and 26 years earlier. When the story begins it is the 26th anniversary of Nora turning in her father to the police. He killed at least 30 women in the basement of their home. The basement door was locked at all times, At the present time, someone begins killing women in the same manner that her father used. The police think that Nora is guilty but there is no evidence. 26 years ago Nora had a childhood friend named Marjorie who was bullied by every other kid at school. Marjorie was a loner with no friends and her character fit this stereotype perfectly. When Nora suggests that they play a game called Hunter and Prey, I thought that she would kill Marjorie. This game was fairly aggressive. 

I liked the characters. Nora is interesting because it seems that she might have desires to kill or at the very least is afraid that she has the same desire to kill that her father had. Her personality has been sorely affected by a childhood with a killer parent. I half expected her to turn out to be a killer too. Nora's college boyfriend Brady was creepy. He was highly educated but was working as a bartender so there is a story there that made Nora nervous. Every conversation that Nora had with him made her think that Brady was dangerous. While she slept with him a few times she was also running away from him. Go figure.

Several secondary characters are possible killers of two of Nora's patients. Brady was my main suspect and until the last chapter I thought that he was. One of Nora's patients, Henry Callahan, was another suspect because Nora believed that he was following her home after work.Toward the end of the story Nora's business partner Philip Corey looked suspicious too. The reveal of the whodunnit was shocking.

When I began reading the book I said "OMG." When I finished the book I said it again. I cannot recommend this book more highly. It is a fantastic story.  5 out of 5 stars.

Spasm

Robin Cook's latest medical thriller Spasm was recently published on December 9, 2025. It is his 42nd novel to date and the 15th novel featuring medical examiners Jack Stapleton and Laurie Montgomery. The medical mystery to be solved in this novel involves prions, ie, proteins and infections, that cause dementia symptoms and muscle spasms. 

The publisher's summary:

When Laurie Montgomery temporarily steps down from her position as Chief Medical Examiner, she and Jack find themselves uncharacteristically free for a couple of weeks. And the timing couldn’t be better when they receive a call from Jack’s former medical school classmate, Robert Neilson, who is the sole family practitioner in Essex Falls, an idyllic town tucked away in New York State’s Adirondack Mountains. Serving also as the Hamilton County coroner, Dr. Neilson is in over his head trying to explain the sudden death of a young, healthy pest control worker on top of an outbreak of rapidly progressive Alzheimer’s-like cases, and he pleads with Jack and Laurie to come lend a professional hand. Unable to resist a good mystery and a vacation in one, Laurie and Jack agree to help and head upstate.

Essex Falls is beautiful enough and their accommodations are even better than they imagined. But they soon learn the town has suffered a major economic and social setback, which has shaken its residents to their cores. When the body of the pest control worker disappears without a trace just prior to an autopsy, Jack’s penchant for solving forensic conundrums launches him into a full-scale investigation that uncovers the most frightening modus operandi of his career so far.

I am pleased that this novel does not involve Laurie being her husband Jack’s boss. I don't think that those stories were as successful as others. In Spasm, they are once again working together to solve a death investigation. It is nice that they are on a vacation of sorts, a working one. The usual stress of working at the New York Medical Examiner Office is removed. What the reader gets is just the mystery, which is all I am ever interested in. 

The investigation was different from earlier novels. In the past, Cook had his characters searching for a cause of death. In Spasm, Jack and his friend Bob Neilson know pretty quickly that prions are the reason two people died and several others developed alzheimer-related symptoms and died shortly thereafter. What Jack doesn't know is how the people of Essex Falls are getting prion infections. It's not an airborne infection. The investigation in this story is into how the prions were released in Essex Falls and how did the corpse of a pest control worker and local militiaman Ethan Jameson disappear from Dr. Neilson's morgue. While the intensity of the investigation is decreased, there is still a mystery to resolve. I read the book in one sitting. It was not any less riveting for me because the medical investigation was not a howdunnit but a whodunnit.

The story is timely. Ethan Jameson was the president of a local militia in Essex Falls. His group, the Diehard Patriots, are a ragtag group of seventeen men who mainly drink beer and shoot off their rifles in the early hours of the night when most people are asleep.  However, on this particular week Ethan hired four Russian men to train them in combat maneuvers. The Russians slipped into the U.S. from Canada fairly easily. They walked across the border. Two of these men were more interested in brewing beer than teaching the Diehard Patriots. Yes, it was not beer they were brewing but a biological weapon.

I enjoyed this book and am rating it 5 out of 5 stars.