three shorts from the Magic & Mystery collection

I was delighted to try out a couple of these shorts as part of the “Magic & Mystery” collection of Amazon originals. (I am not thrilled about Amazon but I do want Baldree, Fawcett, and Durst, so here we are.)

Travis Baldree’s “Miss Gentle and the Case of the Very Flat Monk” is a mystery with a mystery within it. Abbot Listrum has a dead monk on his grounds whom nobody liked, and a bishop on the way. But when he puts his trust in an odd, suit-of-armored old woman (??) who calls herself Miss Gentle, the questions seem only to multiply. This story offers Baldree’s usual sense of ridiculousness and fun, even when the monk is indeed very flat. There is less space for comraderie and developing relationships, but I’m standing by for more. Preferably from Viv and the rest of the Legends and Lattes gang!

Heather Fawcett’s “A Labyrinth of Honeybees” contains perhaps still more a sense of mischief, even though the stakes are at least as high for the priestess of the Goddess of the Garden, in a world where the king has outlawed that Goddess and all the rest of the eighty-three (or eighty-four, depending on who’s counting) of the gods that the people have long respected. Upon a visit from the royal inquisitor, the priestess must use her wits to sidestep difficult questions. Luckily, the garden itself has a role to play. I found this one a little darker than I generally expect from Fawcett: less light-hearted and playful, more sinister, but every bit as delicious. I’m reminded of course of “St. Valentine, St. Abigail, St. Brigid”, another short, by C. L. Polk, that also involved honeybees and darkness. I’d happily return to this world.

Finally, I think my personal favorite of these three was “The Wednesday Witches Book Club” by Sarah Beth Durst, perhaps because, while magical, it approached most closely a world I live in. Ashley believes absolutely that “Every witch needs a book club,” and following a divorce and cross-country move, she’s ready to give one a try, even if her new acquaintances, and the home they meet in, are uncomfortably put-together and awfully… beige. They have some very interesting problems, however, and in facing them together, Ashley finds a book club and a new group of friends. Despite some serious themes (friendship, belonging) and stakes (remaining human), this story of the three had by far the greatest sense of fun, which is often something I seek, especially in fantasy.

I am glad to take some small bites from several authors whose writings I am always eagerly, anxiously awaiting. These were enjoyable, but I’m still so much looking forward to more full-length works from each!


Rating: 7 ears.

The Warbler by Sarah Beth Durst (audio)

I have followed Sarah Beth Durst through cozy fantasies (The Spellshop and its sequels), darker ones (The Queen of Blood and her fellows), and now here, to a deeply imaginative and deliciously weird look at the choices we make and those we may try to make for others.

Different chapters focus on three different women in three timelines, but it is Elisa who steps forward as protagonist. She has never lived anywhere longer than ten months, and lives by an elaborate set of rules and strategies, taught by her mother, to leave no trace and take no souvenirs. A family curse, passed from mother to daughter, decrees that if she ever “puts down roots,” that concept will be come literal. Elisa will turn into a tree, as her mother did before her. In alternate chapters, we see Lori, also on the run, and Rose, who always wanted to leave her hometown but never got a chance. Is a home something to be desired, sought after, built, and cherished? Or is a home a cage? We meet many weird, twisting, fascinating characters: a handsome bookstore owner, a moon-eyed lover in Paris, a possibly suicidal woman dressed entirely in pink, a gloomy pair of young women, a mystical trio of blue-haired old ones, and a bird-obsessed recluse, among others. I am over the moon that Margaret Atwood’s The Edible Woman gets a cameo here, because that’s the book this one reminds me of – it may even inspire a reread.

The tension between staying and going, and what each of us fears and yearns for among these options, occupies much of the book. Also the gifts and the chains that come out of a mother’s love for her daughter, and the question of what power we have and should have to choose for others. There is romance, and there is some ‘light’ fantasy, but mostly, there is an examination of these big questions, absolutely within the gendered constructs of a society that historically encouraged women to care for husband, children, and home, and what it does and does not encourage now. But it’s not a pointed study, because it’s couched within mysteries, creepy bird collectors, the fine art of dumpster diving, the handsome bookstore owner, etc. I had the best time! And my appreciation of Durst’s work only grows. Onward.


Rating: 8 reels of microfiche.

Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter by Heather Fawcett

Despite not being particularly fond of cats myself, I was charmed by this novel, which offers a few of my favorite Fawcett features: magic, family, wholesomeness, and a gentle arc from prickly acquaintances toward romance, in a cozy package.

Agnes Aubert runs a cat shelter in Montreal, in a version of that city where magic is present, but mostly hidden and only tolerated. She lost her beloved husband a few years ago, and his memory and her mission to save all the city’s cats (!) keep her going; her existence is rather spartan, and highly (you might say pathologically) organized. As a cash-strapped cat shelter (not the most attractive of tenants), she is having trouble finding new lodgings after a magical mishap destroyed her last rental. So she takes – with some misgivings – a suspiciously affordable place that turns out to hide an illegal magic shop in its basement. This results in her acquaintance with Havelock Renard, also known as the Witch King, the world’s most powerful magician. Agnes accuses him of selfishness, and he calls her sanctimonious and condescending. Despite his reputation, Agnes begins to consider that perhaps he is not a ‘dark’ magician after all. For his part, Havelock insists that he would most prefer to be left alone with his novels and magical experiments. She responds that she should at least be allowed to organize his collection of artefacts. Havelock is both allergic to cats and rather like one himself: solitary, contrary, and perhaps in need of rescue.

It turns out that the fate of the cat shelter may well be tied up with the fate of the very world. And notwithstanding Havelock’s unparalleled powers, it may be Agnes – insignificant, unmagical Agnes – who holds the key.

This was laugh-out-loud fun, deeply sweet without hitting (for my tastes) the saccharine, and moving. I will buy whatever Heather Fawcett cares to write next.


Rating: 8 opulent scarves.

Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan (audio)

This was a wild one, recommended by Liz, and very deservingly so. I’ve been putting off writing this review and have realized I just need to come to terms with not doing it justice. Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore is about the intersections and tensions between literature and technology; about love and friendship and belonging; about problem-solving and teamwork; and about the big questions of life.

In contemporary, post-Covid times, we meet Clay Jannon, who after art school went to work for NewBagel in an initially promising techy design/PR/marketing career position, but NewBagel (following an attempted rebranding as the Old Jerusalem Bagel Company) went bust, and Clay’s been out of work at a rough time to be out of work in San Francisco. Then he happens upon Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, where he is hired by the elderly, twinkling, mysterious Penumbra as a night clerk. From 10pm until 6am, Clay sits at the front desk among the short shelves of used books, which he very infrequently sells to the very infrequent customer. A little more regularly, he is called upon to help card-carrying members of an enigmatic club to access the very different volumes on what he thinks of as the Waybacklist. The bookstore is long, skinny, and vertical, with very tall shadowy shelves accessible by vertiginous ladders. The books on those shelves are in code.

Clay is an engrossing narrator of this story, so self-deprecating that the reader is nearly as late as he is to realize that he can be quite a resourceful problem-solver. He is lucky (or is it luck?) to be surrounded by an assortment of talented, eccentric friends: his best friend since sixth grade, the once-doofy now-millionaire CEO of Anatomix; his roommate, a special effects wizard; the cute girl he meets along the way, a Google-employed genius; a fellow Penumbra clerk and archaeology graduate student; and more. These are just some of the characters (in every sense of the word) who come to Clay’s aid as he tried to solve the many, layered mysteries of Penumbra’s. What is in the coded books in the Waybacklist? Who are the people who come in the night to borrow them? Each question’s answer only unlocks more questions, and the stakes keep getting higher. It evolves into a quest narrative, reaching beyond Penumbra’s compelling bookstore. Clay and company wind up chasing, among other things, a centuries-old and seemingly insoluble riddle, which will involve Clay’s childhood favorite sci fi/fantasy series, a secret society, and the history of one of the world’s best-known typefaces.

At just 8 hours audio (or around 300 pages), Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore feels far more all-encompassing than such a neat package would imply. It’s one of those stories that feels like it’s about everything at once, which I love. Also, books and bibliophilia, even in the face of wild technologic advances: what’s not to love? Ari Fliakos narrates with great energy and personality; I wholeheartedly pass on Liz’s recommendation of the format as well as the book itself. I’ll be looking for more in the Penumbraverse.


Rating: 9 red t-shirts.

An Arcane Inheritance by Kamilah Cole

“…it was nice to have [him] remind her that there was more to her life than school and murders.”
Dark academia, smoldering romance, mystery, fantasy, and examinations of systemic concerns to do with race and class: An Arcane Inheritance is a compelling, plot-driven story to get lost in, mostly. There were a few snippets that could have used another round of edits, but I’m still glad I spent my time this way, and I was definitely hungry for a sequel that doesn’t seem to exist. At least not yet!

Ellory Morgan is a Jamaican immigrant to Queens, where she lives with her Aunt Carol, only rarely hearing from her parents who remain in their home country. An accomplished student, she was accepted to Ivy League schools, but they remained out of financial reach, so Ellory had been working two jobs, caring for Carol (who is in poor health), and wishing for more, when she received an unexpected and unsolicited letter from the ninth Ivy: Warren University. They want to give her a full ride. Flash forward to three weeks in. She’s drowning in her con law class and beefing with the handsome, arrogant, privileged Hudson Graves (whose family name is on the Graves Library where she studies), when a strange thing happens. She steps into another realm, or hallucinates, or – could it be magic? – sees impossible things. And it’s not even the first time. For Ellory, Warren’s campus is filled with half-memories, déjà vu, and an increasing sense of danger. She could swear she’s been here before.

Ellory is drawn to journalism, to research and the quest for truth, so it’s not a great leap for her to begin investigating Warren’s history, especially the more disturbing chapters, like Warren’s ties to the esoteric, to old magic, and the Lost Eight: students of color who disappeared without a trace, over the course of years. To find answers, she finds herself allying with Hudson Graves, who remains both magnetic and highly irritating. What they discover together will threaten lives.

I’ll stop here to acknowledge the small things that, however minor, did detract from my experience. There is a humidifier running in the rare books room of a college library. Rare books generally need dehumidifying. The ideal humidity is nonzero, so you could conceivably find yourself in a place where they need more humidity, but that would be an awfully dry place, and I suspect not Connecticut. The rare books room is also unstaffed, and we’re watching these undergrads just idly drag their hands along the spines, which is not good rare-books-room behavior. Look, I know these are nitpicky little silly details, but they took me out of the story. If the author doesn’t have library background, no sweat – that’s why the publishing house has editors.

Check this one out:

This hidden balcony was barely large enough for three men of Hudson’s size, but it was perfect for the two of them; she placed her hands on the railing with almost enough room between them to open an umbrella.

I kept coming back to this sentence. It’s hilarious to me. There are not three men in this scene, of any size. There is a young man and a young woman. It is also not raining, and no umbrella appears within several chapters of this action. Why on earth are there three hypothetical men of Hudson’s size, let alone a random umbrella (which is anyway what, a pocket umbrella? a golf umbrella? This is like saying “the size of a car” when cars come in Smart and Excursion) on this balcony? It has that whole “don’t think about a pink elephant” effect.

I took such hang-ups with good humor, I promise I did. I like Ellory, her story mattered, I felt stress when the author wanted me to – there are definitely some running-through-the-woods, body-horror, life-on-the-line scenes that worked well. There were some less polished moments, but this is a well conceived plot and mostly very well written. And oh! I almost forget to mention a lovely design element: the page edges are decorated with some fairly intricate art, which is really nicely executed and makes for a genuinely gorgeous package. Not deckled edges (my archnemesis)! Like I said, I’d buy a sequel. Looking forward to more from Cole.


Rating: 7 glasses of white wine.

Secrets of the First School by T. L. Huchu

The fifth and final book in Huchu’s Edinburgh Nights series, Secrets of the First School does indeed pull things together and wrap them up neatly (though not overly so). Since The Legacy of Arniston House, Ropa has been through a lot and learned a lot. She continues to evince a teenager’s quick-changing moods and loyalties, but if this is occasionally jarring or even a little irritating, that’s not unlike “real” teenagers, is it. And she’s going through it: the loyalties unto her have taken some jarring turns, too. Avoiding spoilers, I will say we learn some shocking truths about Ropa’s own past, which challenge her relationship with everything and everyone around her.

Ropa dwells in a dystopian and at least mildly post-apocalyptic Scotland heavily influenced by her family’s Zimbabwean roots, in which magic is real and fairly complex. Ropa has special powers to communicate with the dead, who inhabit several afterworlds with varying levels of porosity with her own living one, and she has an unusual ability to travel in between. I admit I never fully grasped the details of the rules of this fictional sphere; I let it all float by me when things got a little confusing, which is often how I handle fantasy and sci fi – a personal failing? or maybe a way many of us read these genres? Not sure. At any rate, I think this is something the real world sometimes asks of us, too, and it’s always felt okay to me. I’m not sure I ‘get’ everything Ropa encounters, but who among us does? Which is all to say: this is a highly detailed act of worldbuilding. Ropa and her crew feel quirky and odd at times – like real people do. I cared deeply about what happened to her. I’ll miss her.


Rating: 7 bodies.

The Legacy of Arniston House by T.L. Huchu

Following The Mystery at Dunvegan Castle, this novel makes the fourth in Huchu’s Edinburgh Nights series. In some respects, we continue in the same vein: Ropa possesses a drive to help others, but fights it in favor of her higher priority to help her own first, meaning her little sister Izwi, their Gran, and herself. She is employed by big fancy powerful magic–in this instance, the English Sorcerer Royal, Lord Samarasinghe–who does not treat her as well as they should, but she puts up with a lot in the interest of providing for her household. She must solve mysteries and problems outside of her own personal purview, which often do come to affect her personally. In this installment, however, Ropa suffers the greatest tragedy that Huchu has put her through to date. (No spoilers, but it’s hard enough that I held it against the author for a bit.) She also gets a nudge toward some secrets about her own family history that may bear on present problems. And boy, does this one end on a drastic cliffhanger.

I continue to find Ropa’s voice and persona intriguing. She is a type unto herself, a mix of hardnosed and naive, swaggering and vulnerable. The Scottish slang adds significant flavor: I had to look up oxters, haar and wazzocks in the course of just a few lines. Her Edinburgh is a world to get lost in, even as the finer points of this magical universe remain a bit hazy for me – I’m not sure that’s not the case for Ropa, too. As I finish this one, I’m feeling Ropa’s loss, and concerned for her future. Still in.


Rating: 7 beanies with dreadful pom poms.

When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill (audio)

I don’t recall where I got this title from, but I loved this book, and am grateful to whatever review or list sent it my way. Also to my lovely partner who gifted it to me for the long drive from Texas to West Virginia.

When Women Were Dragons: Being the Truthful Accounting of the Life of Alex Green–Physicist, Professor, Activist. Still Human. A memoir, of sorts is a living, breathing tale, ever expanding, filled with metaphor that reshapes itself with the reader’s interpretation. It opens with a strange letter from a Nebraska housewife in 1898 to her mother, shortly before the woman spontaneously dragoned. Next we have an excerpt from the opening statement given by Dr. Henry Gantz to the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1957. Then we get into the first-person narration of Alex Green, who will tell most of this story, with brief insertions mostly from Dr. Gantz’s work – bit of an epistolary format. (The audiobook is narrated by Kimberly Farr, as Alex Green, and Mark Bramhall, as Dr. Gantz, which I thought was a great choice.) “I was four years old when I first met a dragon. I didn’t tell my mother. I didn’t think she’d understand.”

I think this must be right around 1950. Alex grows up in small-town Wisconsin, in a pretty 1950s world: there are many things we just don’t talk about, including cancer, menstruation and most aspects of girlhood and womanhood, what to expect on one’s wedding night, diversity in sexual orientation and gender expression, our feelings, and dragons. When Alex is a little girl, her mother goes away for some time – months – and no one explains or even acknowledges the change; likewise when her mother returns, gaunt, weak, different (she doesn’t even smell right). The reader understands better than little-girl Alex when her mother’s chest is glimpsed, missing breasts, two scars like smiles. This world is recognizably our own except for the dragons. Women in this world can dragon (that’s a verb), or become dragons, at which point they sometimes eat their husbands (this seems to happen frequently with very unlikeable, not to say abusive, husbands) before flying away. Dragoning is a poorly understood phenomenon because, as with much that is female or feminine, society judges it too shameful to examine, and science mostly averts its gaze. Dr. Gantz is a rare exception: he believes in the scientific mandate to learn, whatever truths are revealed. Biology should never be shameful. His research articles and responses to an oppressive world are useful seasonings to this story, and he is himself a delightful character, alongside the heroic librarian Mrs. Gyzinska.

And oh, Alex’s auntie Marla, a wonderful woman who comes and cares for her while her mother is away in cancer treatment, a big powerful woman who flies airplanes during the war and works as a car mechanic and wears men’s clothes and takes very little shit, and who we lose to the Mass Dragoning of 1955. When Marla dragons, she leaves behind an infant daughter, Alex’s cousin Beatrice, who from here on is raised as Alex’s sister. Such is the gaslighting of Alex’s family and world that she learns to really believe – almost – that she has no aunt, that Beatrice has always been her sister. (Echoes of 1984. We have always been at war with Eastasia.) And boy, the time Alex has raising her younger sister, Beatrice, a delightful dragon of a child if there ever was one.

Despite all I’ve just thrown at you, I’ve barely scraped the surface of this remarkable novel. It contains many stories and many layers, much that is very recognizable from our ‘real’ world, and lots of potential metaphors to ponder. I wondered at different times if dragoning were a metaphor for menstruation; for puberty; for “un-american activities” (certainly, HUAC seems to conflate them); for simply being independent, self-determining, and female (except that those who dragon are overwhelmingly but not universally girls and women). This story tackles the way we handle difference, and especially gender, sexuality, and gender expression. It contains such maddening (if entirely realistic) renderings of sexism that it was sometimes hard to listen to. It contains transcendent moments of personal discovery, joyful academic inquiry, love and coming-of-age, and some lovely iterations of family and built family, which I always appreciate. “Sometimes,” confides Alex at an advanced age, “the expansive nature of family takes my breath away.” There is such good fun; I especially liked the line “If that dragon was hoping for sympathy, she was crying in front of the wrong teenager,” which I got to share with my favorite dragon-loving teenager. It considers the looping of time and relationships. It’s got science and wonder, a bit like A Tale for the Time Being, but I liked this better. I’m a bit over the moon about it, and am giving it a perfect score. Also, I loved the audio format, with the one caveat that I wish I could pull more quotations that I loved.

Do give it a go, and let me know what you think.


Rating: 10 military-issued boots.

Cape Fever by Nadia Davids

A lonely colonial woman offers to write letters to the fiancé of her maid and the two become disturbingly intertwined in this evocative gothic tale of race, class, and spirits.

“I come highly recommended to Mrs. Hattingh through sentences I tell her I cannot read.” South African novelist Nadia Davids’s twisting gothic drama Cape Fever, her U.S. debut, opens by highlighting narrator Soraya’s ability to read, which she keeps from her employer. Soraya goes to work for the settler Mrs. Hattingh in 1920: hired as a combined cleaner and cook, the younger woman understands that the elder is not as wealthy as she wishes to appear. In the colonial city in which Mrs. Hattingh reigns over a large, lonely home, Soraya’s close-knit, loving family lives in the nearby Muslim quarter; Soraya is permitted by her employer to visit only rarely. Her father is an artist in religious calligraphy, creating beautiful works of prayer and devotion. The word “proclaim,” he instructs her, is “also read, recite. You see? For us, to read, to recite, is one,” and “The person is a pen. The person is paper.” Soraya’s fiancé, Nour, is an accomplished scholar who works on a farm while saving for teachers’ college.

There are moments in which Soraya feels something like fellowship with her employer, when she intuits that “every woman, rich or poor, madam or maid, dreams of escape.” But working for and living with Mrs. Hattingh, under power structures bigger than the individual, is deeply unpleasant. “She’s never understood the scale of what she wants and asks for.” Soraya retreats, in her small room, into the stories and characters that have come to her all her life: the Gray Women, as she terms the spirits that she alone can see; a seawoman with ink for blood; a woman who makes a baby out of soap. She finds Mrs. Hattingh’s house is teeming with spirits.

Mrs. Hattingh introduces a new comfort and stressor when she offers to write to Nour on Soraya’s behalf. As one woman takes the voice of the other–and intercepts the correspondence that arrives in return–their identities blur in disturbing ways. Soraya holds what she can of her own life in private and cherishes her visits to her family’s home, until even these are forbidden. In the increasingly claustrophobic manor, the tension between the two women builds, resulting in complex layers of psychological intrigue amid themes of class, race, love, grief, and haunting. In Soraya’s compelling voice, Davids blends mysticism, quiet power and resistance, and pain born of a long stretch of history in this unsettling tale of suspense. Cape Fever is beautiful, discomfiting, and moving.


This review originally ran as a *starred review* in the October 28, 2025 issue of Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade. To subscribe, click here.


Rating: 7 pickled lemons.

The Midnight Bargain by C. L. Polk

As much as I loved the Kingston Cycle, it’s tempting to say this is my favorite Polk yet. I am really digging the combination of historical setting (including lots of lush clothing detail – not really my area but it’s surprising, richly enjoyable in Polk’s capable writing hands), romance and strong feeling, with a fantasy / speculative framing but around very approachable values. This author has mastered that combination, and it is extremely satisfying to this reader.

In this case, please meet Beatrice Clayborn, the elder daughter of a banker father who has squandered the family’s wealth, and a magician mother who has been collared, literally, so that she cannot practice magic. This is the cost of marriage for female practitioners in the culture Beatrice has been born into. Men have the opportunity to study and improve their practice; women are bound. Beatrice chafes at this rule; she has been practicing her magic in secret, searching for the coded grimoire that will allow her to become a mage. If she succeeds, she will make herself unmarriageable, thereby disappointing her father, but she will also be able to help him improve the family’s financial situation. If she fails, she will be married off to a man of her father’s choosing, collared, denied her true self. We are introduced to Beatrice on the cusp of the bargaining season: she is being presented to high society as an ingenue (read debutante), for the purpose of attracting a suitor (preferably several) and eventually an advantageous marital match.

Bargaining season involves all the primping (clothes! and maquillage), dancing, preening, and social chess you can possibly imagine. It is profoundly not Beatrice’s scene; but it is very much Harriet’s. Harriet is Beatrice’s younger sister, and although she can be a little hard on Beatrice’s nerves, she is also one of the elder sister’s greatest concerns. Beatrice knows that if she fails at bargaining season – if she reveals herself as a “difficult woman,” undesirable, fails to make a match – she will cost Harriet her own chance at the same. Harriet is actually good at these games, and likes them, and deserves her own shot. Beatrice needs to become a mage and prevent her own marriage – but not appear to fail at the social game. It’s complicated.

So she’s struggling to be attractive but not too attractive, and never objectionable (even when the most objectionable men are thrown at her, and even when they are unspeakably rude), and meanwhile she’s struggling to train herself to a very high level of magical performance – and she’s made a new enemy, who might be becoming a friend, and whose brother is interesting. Powerful, wealthy, gorgeous, a capable magician – and he shows a surprising capacity to listen to Beatrice’s opinions on women’s rights. But if Beatrice marries, even for love, even to a man of her own choosing, she will lose her magic forever. She might just wind up facing a lose/lose set of options. But what if there were another way?

I appreciate that Polk’s alt-historical setting feels accurate and real, and the issues at stake – women’s rights, mostly – are both modern and at home in her setting. (Feminism is not new, is it, nor the need.) And I guess part of the reason I find all those period-clothing details so interesting is that they are, in fact, about class and gender and those bargaining season politics. And maybe it’s just a little bit fun to read about the frills and lace and stomachers and fichus and other things I had to look up – I have no time for it in my real life, but part of the fun of reading is to experience other lives, isn’t it? At any rate. This novel was fun and wrenching and powerful and just absorbing, and I would read another twenty-five of them by this author; I hope they are writing furiously and keep doing it for a long time. What’s next??


Rating: 9 picnic baskets.