Once again, I’m running out of time to schedule posts, so I love that for me. Man, what I would give for a pair of proper working hands! I don’t have them, so I have to work with what I have. To add to it, my blog stats are the lowest they have ever been in years, but I don’t know why it’s happening. I questioned myself as to whether I would still blog if no one reads it? Call it my ego, but the answer is yes. I’m a curious person, and I love to share what I’ve learned. Today, I’m doing an easy one, as in a book tag and recommending some books. Keeping it on theme with yesterday, I’m doing The Pumpkin Book Tag. The original creator is LiteraryGladiators
Pumpkin – A writer you always make a point to read in October
My go-to is the Murder in the Mix series by Addison Moore; it’s a cosy mystery series, and we have a new release about every few months to once a year. I’m featuring Christmas Fudge Fatality since it’s currently free on Amazon.
Goodreads Blurb:
A baker who sees the dead. One too many suitors. And a killer. Living in Honey Hollow can be murder.
MURDER IN THE MIX Cozy Mystery Christmas Special
A laugh out loud standalone cozy mystery by New York Times Bestseller Addison Moore ***Includes RECIPE***
My name is Lottie Lemon, and I see dead people. Okay, so I rarely see dead people, mostly I see furry creatures of the dearly departed variety, who have come back from the other side to warn me of their previous owner’s impending doom.
The holidays have arrived, and the Jolly Holly Tree Lot is hosting a special event that has pets and people alike bustling to get a picture with the jolly old elf himself. My sweet cats are just as anxious as I am to get to the front of the line, but that body I stumble upon threatens to take the joy right out of the season.
Lottie Lemon has a brand new bakery to tend to, a budding romance with perhaps one too many suitors, and she has the supernatural ability to see the dead—which are always harbingers for ominous things to come. Throw in a string of murders, and her insatiable thirst for justice, and you’ll have more chaos than you know what to do with.
Living in the small town of Honey Hollow can be murder.
Pumpkin Spice – A book you would read to impress a millennial
To be honest, I would like to discuss it with them and see how it affected them compared to myself.
Goodreads Blurb:
A life affirming story of rehabilitation and hope after prison. The third novel from multi-award-winning Danielle Jawando, perfect for fans of Angie Thomas and Elizabeth Acevedo.
‘Jawando’s writing is incredibly raw and real; I felt completely immersed’ Alice Oseman, author of the Heartstopper series
When fifteen-year-old Tyrell Forrester gets caught up in a high-profile armed robbery, he’s sentenced to eighteen months in a young offenders’ prison. Now he’s getting out, and he’s determined to turn his life around. Despite his release, systemic discrimination makes it difficult for Ty to truly be free. Inspired by a visiting poet while inside, Ty discovers a whole new world through spoken word and is finally finding his voice. But will society ever see him as anything other than a criminal?
Pumpkin Pie – A book that makes you think of autumn
Time to confess, I haven’t read this yet, but I got it yesterday, and since I’m reading at random, it will happen soon.
Goodreads Blurb:
Kari doesn’t have time for love when she’s opening her new cat café. Renovating an old restaurant, hiring employees, fighting with the health inspector – oh, and welcoming 16 shelter cats – keeps her plenty busy. She’s doing this for the cats, the community, and most of all her family. The café will give her sister, Marley, a job worthy of her baking skills. Then a tattooed military vet wanders in claiming to be a master baker himself. The café doesn’t need another baker, but maybe Marley needs a man. Surely she’ll fall for a guy this sweet, this sexy, this tasty. Colin has other ideas. It’s Kari who makes him want to pour on the sugar and turn up the heat. But he’s spent the last two years recovering from physical and psychological wounds. Is he really ready for a relationship? He’s not even sure he should commit to Samson, the fluffy marshmallow of a cat who steals his heart.
Pumpkin Cheesecake – A book that was challenging to read, but was a rewarding experience
I read Moonflower by Kacen Callender in 2022 when it came out, and I bawled my eyes out but the story is beautiful.
Goodreads Blurb:
Moon has been plunged into a swill of uncertainty and confusion. They travel to the spirit realms every night, hoping never to return to the world of the living.
But when the realm is threatened, it’s up to Moon to save the spirit world, which sparks their own healing journey through the powerful, baffling, landscape that depression can cause.
From this novel’s very first utterance, author Kacen Callender puts us behind Moon’s eyes so that we, too, are engulfed by Moon’s troubling exploration through mental illness.
Moon’s mom is trying her best, but is clueless about what to do to reach the ugly roiling of her child’s inner struggles. At the same time, though, there are those who see Moon for who they are – Blue, the Keeper, the Magician, Wolf. These creature-guides help Moon find a way out of darkness. The ethereal aspects of the story are brilliantly blended with real-world glimmers of light. Slowly, Moon grows toward hope and wholeness, showing all children that each and every one of us has a tree growing inside. That our souls emerge when we discover, and fully accept, ourselves.
Pumpkin Bread – An underrated book from a well-known writer
Goodreads Blurb:
Before he was a household name, Cassius Clay was a kid with struggles like any other. Kwame Alexander and James Patterson join forces to vividly depict his life up to age seventeen in both prose and verse, including his childhood friends, struggles in school, the racism he faced, and his discovery of boxing. Readers will learn about Cassius’ family and neighbors in Louisville, Kentucky, and how, after a thief stole his bike, Cassius began training as an amateur boxer at age twelve. Before long, he won his first Golden Gloves bout and began his transformation into the unrivaled Muhammad Ali.
Pumpkin Soup – A work that you first enjoyed, but then lost interest
When my mum got the series, I read them so quickly, and I loved it. However, if I read it now, it would be like a 2-star book.
Goodreads:
DAY 5 MONDAY 23 JULY 2001 5.53AM
The sun is shining through the bars of my window on what must be a glorious summer day. I’ve been incarcerated in a cell five paces by three for twelve and a half hours, and will not be let out again until midday; eighteen and a half hours of solitary confinement. There is a child of seventeen in the cell below me who has been charged with shoplifting – his first offence, not even convicted – and he is being locked up for eighteen and a half hours, unable to speak to anyone. This is Great Britain in the twenty-first century, not Turkey, not Nigeria, not Kosovo, but Britain.
On Thursday 19 July 2001, after a perjury trial lasting seven weeks, Jeffrey Archer was sentenced to four years in jail. He was to spend the first twenty-two days and fourteen hours in HMP Belmarsh, a double A-Category high-security prison in South London, which houses some of Britain ‘s most violent criminals. This is the author’s daily record of the time he spent there.
Pumpkin Doughnut – A light, five-star read
Goodreads Blurb:
Cuban-born eleven-year-old Oriol lives in Santa Barbara, California, where she struggles to belong. But most of the time that’s okay, because she enjoys helping her parents care for the many injured animals at their veterinary clinic.
Then Gabriela Mistral, the first Latin American winner of a Nobel Prize in Literature, moves to town, and aspiring writer Oriol finds herself opening up. As she begins to create a world of words for herself, Oriol learns it will take courage to stay true to herself and do what she thinks is right–attempting to rescue a baby elephant in need–even if it means keeping secrets from those she loves.
Pumpkin Picking – Within the last year, in which genre did you purchase the most books?
For sure, it has to be LGBTI+ Contemporary fiction.
Pumpkin Carving – A work that could have been trimmed down
I felt that some things were unnecessary here, but I might be missing something.
Goodreads Blurb:
Pumpkin Painting – A book with magnificent illustrations
The artwork here is beautiful.
Goodreads Blurb:
Maisie is on her way to Fancon! She’s looking forward to meeting her idol, Kara Bufano, the action hero from her favorite TV show, who has a lower-leg amputation, just like Maisie. But when Maisie and her mom arrive at the convention center, she is stopped in her tracks by Ollie, a cute volunteer working the show. They are kind, charming, and geek out about nerd culture just as much as Maisie does. And as the day wears on, Maisie notices feelings for Ollie that she’s never had before. Is this what it feels like to fall in love?
Pumpkin Ice Cream – The most random book you would recommend
The most random book I read this week is Mysterious Deaths: 100 True Stories of Strange Endings by Eslam Abd Elwahed, and if you like true crime, this one is for you.
Amazon Blurb:
In the shadowed corners of history, where the line between the ordinary and the inexplicable blurs, lie the haunting tales of those who met death in ways that defy understanding, from the silent streets of fog-choked cities to the windswept cliffs of remote coastlines, where a simple misstep or a seemingly ordinary evening spiraled into tragedy so bewildering that the witnesses themselves questioned the reality of what they had seen, where brilliant minds were snatched away in the prime of their lives under circumstances so bizarre that rumors and legends grew faster than the facts, where a solitary traveler vanished from a bustling train station leaving behind only a scarf fluttering in the breeze, and a famous artist was discovered in his studio, lifeless, a cryptic symbol scrawled on the wall above him, the authorities baffled and the press feverish, where a wealthy heiress was found in her opulent mansion, eyes wide with terror, yet no sign of struggle, and a prominent politician collapsed during a speech, leaving behind an air of conspiracy that would linger for decades, where children disappeared from quiet suburban neighborhoods without a trace, prompting frantic searches that yielded nothing but whispered theories and the persistent sense that something unseen was watching, and in small villages, elders spoke of deaths that came suddenly and inexplicably, of villagers succumbing to faint illnesses that doctors could not diagnose or of those who, after encountering strange figures in the night, were found lifeless by morning, all these stories converged into a tapestry of unease, a relentless procession of the uncanny that defied logic, each death a riddle, each ending a puzzle that left the world gasping for explanations, from the frozen expanses of the Arctic where explorers perished in their tents under mysterious circumstances, to the depths of the Amazon where travelers vanished amid the dense foliage, leaving only footprints that abruptly stopped, to the isolated deserts where caravans were swallowed by heat and sand, all recounted in whispers and newspaper headlines, each narrative more unsettling than the last, each family, each witness, each community forever marked by the inexplicable nature of the deaths that claimed their loved ones, creating a chilling panorama of mortality that teetered between natural misfortune and otherworldly interference, drawing readers into a relentless journey through the darkest corridors of human experience, where every chapter exposes the fragility of life, the unpredictability of fate, and the haunting reality that, sometimes, death arrives not with warning, not with reason, but in ways that leave the living questioning not only what happened but whether the truth can ever truly be known.
What is your favorite way to enjoy pumpkin/what is your favorite dish where pumpkin is the main ingredient?
The savoury pumpkin, typically made with pumpkins, rice, and tuna, but I would like to taste the sweet pie since I’ve never had it.
Pumpkin Patch – Who do you tag?
Keeper of the Wood Between Worlds
Alex
Mybookworld24 