Steve Smith is recently out of prison. He’s sworn he’s not going back to his old life, not going back to prison again. He has an adult son he’s never met. And Steve has memories of the book he found on a bus that led to a favorite teacher disappearing when he was 14. We follow Steve through transcripts of recorded notes he left on his phone. Because in trying to find out what happened to Miss Iles (or “missiles” per the transcription software) Steve falls down the vast Twyford Code conspiracy rabbit hole. Was Twyford just a children’s author? Or a spy who hid messages to other WWII spies in her books? Maybe she was a double agent? Did she help the Nazis steal Britain’s gold reserves? Or did she save the gold via bluffs and double bluffs? Her code (does it even exist?) leads to the stolen (or possibly saved) gold. Or to a supervirus and it’s vaccine. Or aliens. Or it’s the biggest internet conspiracy hoax ever. Who knows what? Who’s lying about what they know? And what did happen to Miss Iles in 1983?

Mary Kenney is a video game developer writing to encourage girls and women to bring their talents to her industry. She addresses Gamergate and her own experience with misogyny in gaming early on. The women included go back to Mabel Addis Mergardt who designed a game for an IBM educational program in 1963. Kenney’s message is clear: women have been integral to the video game industry from day 1. The only thing I dislike about this book is the order. The short bios seem arranged in whatever order Kenney thought of the women to include. Maybe chronologically would have made more sense.

I’m slowly making my way through the series. I loved ACOTAR and thought this series would be right up there with it, but I’ve been let down. There is a lot in the book that’s just page filler that’s unnecessary

Absolutely loved it!! Did not disappoint and I’ve now found a new favorite authors. This book kept me guessing and had me gasping out loud. Pulled on the heart strings so hard but just enough to be pleasant.

Very good book just like filthy rich fae ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………11111

This is always an ongoing read for me. I bought the special edition from b&n years ago and read it with my teen and tween

Romeo and Juliet (one of my least favorite plays) set in the forest community of Shady Hollow. He’s a hardworking otter, she’s a (former) beaver heiress. Their parents can’t agree on much, but do believe the couple need to split up. The otter patriarch dies during a very dramatic, very public fight at the top of Twilight Falls. Vera Vixen, reporter, is as horrified as everyone else, but she’s the only one who feels the whole scene was . . . wrong. All clues and an anonymous note point to the young beaver lass. But her beau insists they were together in the woods and surely he wouldn’t lie to protect his father’s killer.

Adam Kay recounts some of the highs and lows of his medical career. Six years after leaving medicine to become a writer and script editor, Adam finds the diaries he kept while a junior doctor. He changed the names and dates, so there’s no violation of medical privacy. Most of what he shares has humor, but it’s a dark often gallows humor. And there’s no glimmer of mirth in the final entry that marked the beginning of the end for him in OB-GYN.

What’s true? Dorothy Sayers founded the Detection Club for the best of the best mystery fiction writers of the time. May Daniels, a young English nurse, disappeared while on a day trip to France. Sayers and her reporter husband, Mac, investigated May’s disappearance and probable murder. Marie Benedict takes these facts and creates a locked room mystery solved by the all-star Queens of Crime: Sayers, Agatha Christie, Emma Orczy, Ngaio Marsh, and Margery Allingham. At first the investigation is a bit of a lark, a way to prove their worth by solving a mystery the police and their fellow (male) mystery writers can’t. But the queens bond as they learn about the sweet, naive person May was. The press describe a very different woman, turning public opinion against the victim. She had it coming. The police jump at any excuse to unofficially stop investigating (since they aren’t getting anywhere). Only the Queens care about justice for May, and all of the expendable young women like her.

I will for sure read this book again. I received it as a birthday gift because of my love of hockey smut and was completely engulfed while reading. Sleep was lost but pages needed to be read.