Happy Friday, all!

We’ve been House of Plague over here (not Covid plague, mercifully; just good old fashioned preschool is a germ pit plague), so it seemed time for a good seasonal escapist fantasy– and no one does those better than Trisha Ashley.  In between mopping fevered brows (and mopping other less pleasant things), I’ve been escaping to Trisha Ashley’s One More Christmas at the Castle, in which our heroine is hired to cater a house party for an elderly autocrat at Mitras Castle, never knowing that Mrs. Powys might have an ulterior motive in hiring her, one steeped in family secrets….  As always, there are lots of wonderful descriptions of food, charmingly dotty side characters, the unexpected reappearance of a teenage crush, and, yes, more food.

After that, I stayed seasonal with the holiday installment of Charlotte MacLeod’s Janet and Madoc Rhys series, Murder Goes Mumming, in which the newly engaged Janet and Madoc are invited to a house party at a remote Canadian castle (sense a castle house party theme here?), but the holiday gaiety is dampened by– why, yes, how did you guess?– murder.  Good thing they’ve got a Mountie on the scene!

Of course, I’m also re-reading the Pink Carnation Christmas novella, “Ivy & Intrigue: A Very Selwick Christmas”, for next Tuesday’s Read Along Zoom with super special guest host Stephanie Barron!  If you haven’t registered yet, just click here to get to the registration form.  You can find the free PDF of the novella here.  It’s also available for purchase in physical form or as an ebook.

To wind up the week, I just finished reading through the proofs of the fourth Team W collaboration, The Lost Summers of Newport!  Usually when I go through proofs, I wonder which monkey got hold of my keyboard while I was supposedly writing, but I really, really love this one (and caught twelve typos!  Huzzah!).  Lost Summers of Newport will be coming your way on May 17th, 2022.

What have you been reading this week?