currently reading: Oh, this is a good reading week! Last week, I wasn’t able to get to all of my mysteries that were released, so tomorrow I will be talking about the The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections. It’s so good. An assistant director in the library of the university of Toronto has to take over for her boss when he has a stroke. But once she takes over, she realizes that the rare books he had just purchased have gone missing from the safe where they were supposed to be. Now Liesl has to figure out what happened to the books to protect the reputation of the library. The tone is a little more sophisticated than a cozy, but it’s really readable. I can’t wait to find out more! I’m also reading a couple of books that come out Tuesday. These Deadly Games is about a group of high schoolers who play the online game MortalDusk. They’re good enough to play in the tournament for big money, like life-changing money, but one of the team, Crystal, starts getting weird messages from someone going by An0nym0us1. They claim to have her little sister (they have a video of her tied up) and say that they will kill her if Crystal doesn’t do exactly what they say. She can’t go to the police or ask anyone else for help or they will kill her sister for that too. While Crystal is running around, following their directions, she’s also trying to figure out who would put her in this position and why. It’s hard to put down, and if you’re into thrillers, you need to put this one on your radar. And for something different, there is a rom com coming out called Lease on Love, and I’m immediately sucked into this one. Badass financial whiz Sadie Green gets passed over for the promotion she’d been working overtime for, and she loses her cool in the meeting. She gets let go and realizes she’ll have to downgrade her lifestyle to fit her new circumstances. She finds a room in a Park Slope brownstone that she can afford, and then she realizes that maybe this is the time she should go after her dreams, to open her own flower shop. It’s fun and charming and filled with characters that you’d want to hang out with (if you are young and lived in or near Brooklyn).

up next: Finlay Donovan is back with Finlay Donovan Knocks ‘Em Dead, and I am so in! I love these characters and can’t wait to find out what happens this time! And looking ahead to next month, I will be reading the new Hamish Macbeth mystery, Death of a Green-Eyed Monster, and Katrine Engberg’s latest book about the exploits of Copenhagen officers Jeppe Korner and Anette Werner, The Harbor. And because I don’t have any new book photos to show off this week, here is one of my cat DonDon, who is waiting on me right now to play ribbons with him.