Books Read in February 2026

 

This was another good reading month. Mostly mysteries this month, but that is OK. I read a very long, very heavy graphic memoir, but it was worth it. I read a book from my Classics list, in eBook format. And a mystery by a Canadian, set in Saskatchewan.

So, here are the books I read:

Graphic Memoir

You Can Never Die (2025) by Harry Bliss

This is a graphic memoir by Harry Bliss. My husband and I and both read this one. It is 400 pages and very heavy. But even with all the text, it is a relatively fast read. Initially I thought this book was mostly about his dog, Penny, that he had for 17 years. And there is a lot here about the grief that Harry Bliss experienced after Penny died. But there is a lot more about his life than that. His parents and siblings, what his childhood was like. The  writing is good, and I love Bliss's art. But in some cases I think he shared too much. He had a very difficult childhood; his parents were abusive and fought a lot; and he had drug abuse problems. Still I am very glad I read it and it is a book I will enjoy reading again.

Fiction, Classic

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961) by Muriel Spark

I did not enjoy reading this book at all. In retrospect, I can appreciate the good points of the book; it had a unique structure with shifts in time both backwards and forward, which at times was confusing. I can understand why most people have a higher opinion of the book than I did. Read my review here.

Crime Fiction

Going to Beautiful (2022) by Anthony Bidulka

This book was the 2023 winner of the Crime Writers of Canada Award for Best Crime Novel. It is a mystery, but the overarching story is about a man working through his grief after his husband of thirty years dies, and I found it very compelling. The mystery plot sort of sneaks up on you. The story starts out in Toronto, but it is set mostly in Saskatchewan. See my review here.

Violent Ward (1993) by Len Deighton

Len Deighton is best known for his spy fiction, but this book is not in that genre at all, it is comedic crime fiction, and very well written. The setting is Los Angeles, around the time of the Rodney King trial; the main character, Mickey Murphy, is a very shady lawyer in financial trouble. He has gotten himself involved financially with an old acquaintance primarily because he used to be madly in love with the man's wife. A man is killed and the police suspect that Mickey killed him. I enjoyed this book; it was a lot of fun. 

Flair for Murder (2024) by Frances Lockridge and Richard Lockridge

Frances and Richard Lockridge wrote three mystery series together starting in 1936 and ending in 1963: The Mr. and Mrs. North series, the Capt. Heimrich series,  and the Nathan Shapiro series.  Richard continued writing two of those series after Frances's death. This short story book consists of 13 short stories, one about Mr. and Mrs. North, and the others all about Capt. Heimrich. In this post I reviewed the first three stories in the book. In a more recent post, I talked more generally about the other stories in the book. Most of the stories were under 10 pages long.

Death at Greenway (2021) by Lori Rader-Day

I read this book because I wanted a book that had Agatha Christie as a character, but not acting as a sleuth; this fit the bill perfectly. And also because Glen had given me his copy of the book a few years ago. Greenway was Agatha Christie's home in Devon and this mystery is about a group of evacuees living a Greenway during the war. This is a fictionalized version but there really were ten young evacuees, some of them infants, moved to Greenway during the war along with two nurses. There are lots of details about living in a country house in Devon, and how the war affected the people who lived in the area. The mystery revolves around a stranger in the area who is murdered shortly after the evacuees arrive. This book was very well written, possible a bit long at 450 pages, and I enjoyed it very much.

Murder of a Lady (1931) by Anthony Wynne

This book is a vintage mystery and a locked-room mystery. So if you like mysteries about impossible crimes, this could be for you. I felt that this story spent too much time on the locked-room aspect, and not enough on the characters, but still I mostly enjoyed the book. And the setting in Scotland in the early 1930s was interesting. See my review here.

Shanghai (2024) by Joseph Kanon

This book is set in pre-World War II Shanghai in 1938, at the time many European Jews were emigrating to Shanghai because it was the only place that would take them. In December 2025, I reread Shanghai Moon by S.J. Rozan, which was partially set in Shanghai at the same time, and I was motivated to read more about that time and place. Kanon's book is set almost entirely in Shanghai prior to World War II. This is only the second book I have read by Kanon, and I will be reading more by him.

The photos at the top and bottom of this post were taken recently when we went for a walk at Alice Keck Park Memorial Garden. The garden has several lovely Hong Kong Orchid trees and Glen took photos of the pink flowers on those trees. The decorated stones were in a creek there. After our walk, we went to a favorite café nearby. The photo below was my son's breakfast (French toast), which he always orders there. Click on the images for the best viewing quality.

Annual Book Sale 2025: My Husband's Books

 

Every year in September we attend the Planned Parenthood book sale, which lasts ten days. This time we visited five times, as usual. My husband's special interests at the sale are photography, architecture, and performing arts; books about history; and fiction, including mysteries and science fiction.

These are seven of the books my husband found at the book sale this year.

Dr. Johnson's Apple Orchard: The Story of America's First Pet Cemetery by Edward C. Martin, Jr.

Published in 1997, this 120-page, coffee-table size book features over 200 photographs of the historic Hartsdale Pet Cemetery, established in 1896 by a New York veterinarian.

Description from the dust jacket: 

What was once the summer retreat of a famous Manhattan veterinarian has been the home of America's first pet cemetery for over one hundred years. The Hartsdale Canine Cemetery is now the resting place for pets of every description, from parakeets to a lion cub, from the loyal dog of a blind newsman to the pampered pets of famous celebrities and a former vice president of the United States. Its carefully tended trees and crystal-clear stream have made it a community treasure in the small hamlet of Hartsdale, just north of New York City. Over the years it has grown like a stream around a boulder. In this 100-year Centennial tribute, Co-Director Ed Martin captures the dignity and compassion that has marked the cemetery's famous history. Through magnificent photography and personal reflection, he has created a feast for the eyes as well as the heart. Within its pages, you will discover stories of simple devotion, outrageous eccentricity and remarkable heroism. 

Ghost of a Smile: Stories by Deborah Boliver Boehm

From the description at Goodreads:

Ghost of a Smile is a funny, erotic, scary collection of stories set in modern-day Tokyo and incorporating elements from Japanese ghost stories. Author Deborah Boehm turns modern Tokyo into a shadow world where life and death are simply matters of perspective, and where love, longing and sexual desire last beyond the grave. In this supernaturally enhanced city, the ordinary boundaries of identity—country, gender, even whether one is human or a spirit—are blurred. Ghosts can seduce, trick and even love mortals, and so the familiar problems related to dating and falling in love may be compounded by the discovery that a partner isn't human at all.

The 99% Invisible City: A Field Guide to Hidden World of Everyday Design by Roman Mars and Kurt Kohlstedt

This book is based on the podcast titled 99% Invisible. Based on reviews I have read, a lot of the content is from the podcast, but for those who have never listened to it, this sounds like a very interesting book.

From the description at Goodreads:

A beautifully designed guidebook to the unnoticed yet essential elements of our cities, from the creators of the wildly popular 99% Invisible podcast

Have you ever wondered what those bright, squiggly graffiti marks on the sidewalk mean?

Or stopped to consider why you don't see metal fire escapes on new buildings?

Or pondered the story behind those dancing inflatable figures in car dealerships?

99% Invisible is a big-ideas podcast about small-seeming things, revealing stories baked into the buildings we inhabit, the streets we drive, and the sidewalks we traverse. The show celebrates design and architecture in all of its functional glory and accidental absurdity, with intriguing tales of both designers and the people impacted by their designs.

Now, in The 99% Invisible City: A Field Guide to Hidden World of Everyday Design, host Roman Mars and coauthor Kurt Kohlstedt zoom in on the various elements that make our cities work, exploring the origins and other fascinating stories behind everything from power grids and fire escapes to drinking fountains and street signs. With deeply researched entries and beautiful line drawings throughout,

The 99% Invisible City will captivate devoted fans of the show and anyone curious about design, urban environments, and the unsung marvels of the world around them.

The Dark Queens: The Bloody Rivalry That Forged the Medieval World by Shelley Puhak

From the description at Goodreads:

The remarkable, little-known story of two trailblazing women in the Early Middle Ages who wielded immense power, only to be vilified for daring to rule.

Brunhild was a Spanish princess, raised to be married off for the sake of alliance-building. Her sister-in-law Fredegund started out as a lowly palace slave. And yet—in the 6th-century Merovingian Empire, where women were excluded from noble succession and royal politics was a blood sport—these two iron-willed strategists reigned over vast realms for decades, changing the face of Europe.

The two queens commanded armies and negotiated with kings and popes. They formed coalitions and broke them, mothered children and lost them. They fought a years-long civil war—against each other. With ingenuity and skill, they battled to stay alive in the game of statecraft, and in the process laid the foundations of what would one day be Charlemagne’s empire. Yet after Brunhild and Fredegund’s deaths—one gentle, the other horrific—their stories were rewritten, their names consigned to slander and legend.

In The Dark Queens, award-winning writer Shelley Puhak sets the record straight. She resurrects two very real women in all their complexity, painting a richly detailed portrait of an unfamiliar time and striking at the roots of some of our culture’s stubbornest myths about female power. The Dark Queens offers proof that the relationships between women can transform the world.

Prisoners of the Castle: An Epic Story of Survival and Escape from Colditz, the Nazis' Fortress Prison by Ben Macintyre

My husband read this book soon after he purchased it at the book sale in mid-September. As with all the books he has read by Macintyre, he enjoyed the book and gave it a high rating.

From the description at Goodreads:

In this gripping narrative, Ben Macintyre tackles one of the most famous prison stories in history and makes it utterly his own. During World War II, the German army used the towering Colditz Castle to hold the most defiant Allied prisoners. For four years, these prisoners of the castle tested its walls and its guards with ingenious escape attempts that would become legend.

But as Macintyre shows, the story of Colditz was about much more than escape. Its population represented a society in miniature, full of heroes and traitors, class conflicts and secret alliances, and the full range of human joy and despair. In Macintyre’s telling, Colditz’s most famous names—like the indomitable Pat Reid—share glory with lesser known but equally remarkable characters like Indian doctor Birendranath Mazumdar whose ill treatment, hunger strike, and eventual escape read like fiction; Florimond Duke, America’s oldest paratrooper and least successful secret agent; and Christopher Clayton Hutton, the brilliant inventor employed by British intelligence to manufacture covert escape aids for POWs.

 

A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World by Tony Horwitz

My husband is currently reading this book. He discovered that he previously had a copy and never read it, and then bought another copy at the book sale. The only other book he has read by Tony Horwitz is Confederates in the Attic.

From the description at Goodreads:

On a chance visit to Plymouth Rock, Tony Horwitz realizes he's mislaid more than a century of American history, from Columbus’s sail in 1492 to Jamestown's founding in 16-oh-something. Did nothing happen in between? Determined to find out, he embarks on a journey of rediscovery, following in the footsteps of the many Europeans who preceded the Pilgrims to America.

An irresistible blend of history, myth, and misadventure, A Voyage Long and Strange captures the wonder and drama of first contact. Vikings, conquistadors, French voyageurs — these and many others roamed an unknown continent in quest of grapes, gold, converts, even a cure for syphilis. Though most failed, their remarkable exploits left an enduring mark on the land and people encountered by late-arriving English settlers.

Tracing this legacy with his own epic trek — from Florida's Fountain of Youth to Plymouth's sacred Rock, from desert pueblos to subarctic sweat lodges, Tony Horwitz explores the revealing gap between what we enshrine and what we forget. Displaying his trademark talent for humor, narrative, and historical insight, A Voyage Long and Strange allows us to rediscover the New World for ourselves.

You Can Never Die: A Graphic Memoir by Harry Bliss

This is another book that Glen has read since he got it at the book sale. It is actually a book that we co-own since we both like the author's writing and the drawings. He liked this one very much.

From the description at Goodreads:

A poignant and witty graphic memoir from New Yorker cover artist, internationally syndicated cartoonist, and New York Times bestselling author Harry Bliss capturing his reflections on life and his relationship with Penny, his beloved dog.

... As Harry grieves Penny’s loss, he reflects on his parents in their later years, his love for his wife and home, and the colorful artists, friends, and mentors who have shaped him.

With humor and gut-wrenching honesty, You Can Never Die is an intimate portrayal of a man making sense of the beautiful and painful world around him. This singular memoir integrates sharply crafted, witty stories with hundreds of gorgeous cartoons and never-seen-before sketches from Bliss’s career.

Books Read in September and October 2024

I read 12 books in September and October. I enjoyed all of them. Seven of the books were mysteries; five were in other genres.

Humor / Cartoon Collection

A Wealth of Pigeons: A Cartoon Collection (2020) by Harry Bliss and Steve Martin

In this book, Steve Martin partnered with the cartoonist Harry Bliss to create a collection of cartoons and comic strips. Steve provided caption and cartoon ideas, and Harry created the artwork. It was a fun read.

Fiction

My Ántonia (1918) by Willa Cather

The story, which is narrated by Jim Burden, focuses primarily on Ántonia Shimerda, the daughter of Bohemian immigrant parents who have settled on a farm on the Nebraska prairies. Jim and Ántonia were both children when they arrived in Nebraska, on the same train. See my review here.

Where'd You Go, Bernadette (2012) by Maria Semple

Bernadette Fox and Elgin Branch have promised their daughter a trip to Antarctica if she makes excellent grades. She succeeds, but unfortunately Bernadette get so mired down in the preparations that everything falls to pieces in their already precarious marriage. This is a real mishmash of a book, and there were many times that I was totally lost. Fortunately, it was worth the effort getting to the end. Bee Branch, their daughter, was my favorite character. The story is told partially through emails and documents.

Orbital (2023) by Samantha Harvey

Although I did have a few nitpicks when reading this book, I loved it. I was very pleased and surprised when it won the Booker Prize. It depicts one day in the life of six astronauts on the space station, watching the sunrises and sunsets and monitoring a typhoon threatening inhabited islands. The reader is privy to their thoughts, and watches their activities and their regimen. It is short, about 200 pages, and very meditative. It inspired me to read more about the space station, and I wish it had been longer.

Fiction / Short Stories

Ladies' Lunch: and Other Stories (2017) by Lore Segal

This book of short stories was published by Lore Segal in 2023 on her 95th birthday. Ten of the sixteen stories in the book are about a group of older women, now in their 90s, who have been meeting for lunch for thirty years or more. See my review here.

Crime Fiction

The White Lioness (1993) by Henning Mankell

This is the third book in the acclaimed Kurt Wallander series. Henning Mankell is a Swedish author. This book is set mostly in Sweden but there are also sections of the book set in South Africa. See my review here.

Silent Voices (2011) by Ann Cleeves

This is the fourth book in the Vera Stanhope series. DI Vera Stanhope is relaxing in the spa of a health club, after swimming laps in the pool. I know this doesn't sound like Vera at all but her doctor has strongly recommended some exercise, and this is what she can manage. She discovers the dead body of a woman in the spa with her. This series has great characters; I like Vera's relationship with Sergeant Joe Ashworth, her 2nd in command, and the way she works with her team of investigators. The setting is very nice too.

The Mayors of New York (2023) by S.J. Rozan

I am a big fan of Rozan's Lydia Chin and Bill Smith series, totaling 15 books; this is the newest one. The first book was published in 1994. I started reading the books in 2008; since then I have read all the books in the series. See my review here.

Winter Work (2022) by Dan Fesperman

I regret not having the time to review Winter Work. This is the third book to feature Claire Saylor, an agent for the CIA. Safe Houses was the first book in the series, set in 1979 (Berlin)and 2014 (US), and it was fantastic. The second book, The Cover Wife is set in 1999. This book goes back to 1990; it is set in Berlin after the fall of Berlin Wall. The trilogy features strong female characters and intelligent plots.

The Hamlet Trap (1987) by Kate Wilhelm

Kate Wilhelm, who wrote both science fiction and mysteries, published her first novels in the 1960s and published her last novel in 2017. She was married to Damon Knight, a well-known science fiction author. This book is the first one in the Constance Leidl and Charlie Meiklejohn mystery series. The story is set in Ashland, Oregon and the story revolves around preparation for a play to be performed there, and the people involved in creating it, the author, director, set designers, etc. The story is excellent, very complex, with lots of characters. I have two more books in the series to read.

Then We Take Berlin (2013) by John Lawton

This is the first book in the Joe Wilderness series. Wilderness's real name is John Holderness; he is sometimes an agent for MI6 and sometimes a con-man and thief. I learned a lot about Berlin during the time immediately following World War II, when the city was divided up into four sectors. It was a good, although very confusing, story up until the end, which was a cliffhanger. I will be reading book 2 in the series.

Big Sky (2019) by Kate Atkinson

This is the 5th book in the Jackson Brodie series. Reading mysteries by Atkinson can be confounding. They just seem to meander along and several unrelated threads come together to resolve themselves. Nevertheless, I love them. The fourth books in the series, Started Early, Took My Dog, was published in 2010, and I read it in 2011. Big Sky did not come out until 2019, and I just read it this year, so after 14 years I had forgotten a lot about the series. But I settled into Atkinson's quirky approach very easily, and was certain that I would be satisfied with the experience and the ending. It was a wonderful book full of eccentric characters and I have bought the 6th book, Death at the Sign of the Rook, to read sometime in 2025.

Currently reading

A Darker Domain by Val McDermid, the second book in the Inspector Karen Pirie series. Karen Pirie investigates cold cases. I am about a third of the way in, and I am loving the book. It grabbed me immediately. In 2007, a woman reports that her father has been missing for over 20 years, from the time of the Miner’s Strike of 1984. At the time he left, the family thought that he had deserted the family and did not look for him, but now she needs to find him desperately because her son is dying. 

The three photos at the beginning and end of this post are ones my husband took while we were walking around in downtown Santa Barbara. The ones directly above are from a bridal shop in 2014. The top photo was taken in 2010. Click on the images for best viewing quality.