When a girl born to a mountaintop village of deaf people suddenly starts to hear, she sets in motion a series of events to help her people survive their hard life on the top of an inaccessible mountain. It's an interesting premise and the characters are charming, but Mead spends so much time telling you what is happening, or over-explaining, or re-phrasing Fei's thoughts multiple times, it gets exhausting. The world building was non existent for the greater part of the book; explanations do come in, but they are too little, too late. I liked that it was based on a Chinese myth; it made me want to read more stories like that.

Bay Winchester has found herself in the middle of another murder mystery -- and not just the one that her small Michigan town is putting on for the fall tourists. This volume is full of the same ineffable sarcasm levels and delightful antics as the first, with another crazy mystery and more romance. I was thrilled to get to learn more about the Winchester witches women in this delightful mystery.

Bay Winchester is a small town journalist who lives with her two cousins in the guesthouse of the inn that her mother and two aunts run. Oh, and they're all witches -- so when a body turns up in a cornfield, Bay sets out to find the ghost and solve the mystery before someone else gets murdered. Lee crafts an absolutely hilarious tale full of outrageous family members, small town craziness, and mystery. (Not to mention a really cute biker.)

Bryson takes his discerning eye and a few suitcases of sarcasm on a trip around the US to relive his childhood and rediscover his homeland (he grew up in Iowa but moved to Great Britain as an adult). He shows the best and worst parts of America, and seems to take equal pleasure in describing both the miseries of his journey and the joys of it. His books make me wish I could sit in the car with him as he travels.

The Winchester women are in disarray this winter: there's a blizzard, a deadbeat dad, romance, hilarious and nail-biting family hijinks, and another mystery in town. Lee's trademark sense of humor is on display again as Bay realizes that Landon just might accept her for who she is -- and Aunt Tillie might be her best ally, as well as her worst enemy. I even appreciated the cliffhanger ending.

This series has such heart. It's hard to describe how much I love every single one of these characters without gushing, so all I can say is please read them. In this volume, Bay makes some more dangerous decisions but saves the day. That part may be simple, but the path is anything but!

This is the best of the Winchester witches books yet -- Landon's family is in town, wreaking havoc on the inn and Bay's emotions (never very steady to start with), and on top of it all, a body is found in the backyard of the Overlook and Aunt Tillie is the prime suspect. You get to see more character interactions than before, and Landon and Tillie's characters are both developed in new, delightful, and laugh out loud funny ways. Can't recommend enough!

Lev, a moody Jew, and Kolya, a brash Cossack, are saved from death because one powerful man needs their thief skills to acquire a dozen eggs for his daughter's wedding cake. What follows is a race against time through the streets of St. Petersburg as it is blockaded by Nazis, where Kolya gets laid often and Lev gets sad often and they travel together on their absurd quest for nonexistent eggs. Benioff writes the most soulful lines as if they were punctuation for a harsh and cold truth. His story is not pretty, nor poetic, nor beautiful, but it is honest and brutal and necessary. I hate books about world war 2, but this one was worth the read.

Bay hated high school, and she finds herself regressing as her former classmates are back in town for a reunion. Unfortunately for the town (and maybe fortunately for Bay), a bank robber is in town and Clove's boyfriend is the main suspect. Bay is finally starting to mature in both her relationship with Landon and her self esteem issues, but she still threatens to make her cousins' eat dirt so she still manages to maintain her delightful immaturity in most instances. I definitely didn't see the end coming in this one.