Different author, different title, same subject but likely darker if this original was a children‘s title.

You can listen to “Catz of the Undead” with your Audible account through the 9/20. My guess is this is an English indie horror as it is very, very English, characters & such.

I would caution there is ALL KINDZ of demise, including cats & zombie cats. And a very evil English witch.

Who knew squirels suffer from paranoia?

Every fall someone steals all the leaves off your tree & leaves you nothing but pumpkin spice flavor lattes? 😢

🌬️🌿🍃🍃🍃 🐿️

“Would you like to hear a scary story?”

Amend that: Would you like to hear a silly story? A vampire eats a pb&j sandwich, thinking red jam was something more palpable than strawberries. So they flee, infecting said sandwich as a jelly vampire.

So, you must cover all your jam bottles & say, NO TERRANCE!”

Other than that narrative non sequitar it‘s a cute enough story book.

New to me: I know “peanuts” as cacahuete but in Puerto Rico & Cuba it‘s maní.

The story is of the girl Coqui whose family comes to Decauter, Georgia from Havana, Cuba. She misses much of her home, especially the Maní man. BUT loves beisball too & gets to meet Hank Aaron—and a new American peanut vendor.

Here‘s one thing to remember: No matter how big the Mole‘s heart his eyesight isn‘t the best.

He almost strikes out at tee-ball until Bear umpire lends him a pair of glasses.

HOMERUN!! (Even if he ran the bases the wrong direction. 😹)

ALL the stars!!!

⭐️✨🌟✨⭐️

Everyday Bean as the main character young hedgehog who lives with her grandma.

If hedgehogs went houseplant shopping which would be the best choice?

I think we can rest our case.

Adorable! I‘d feel this same way when I was little. All the animals are my friends and I worried about them in inclement weather, only that was Iowa. Cold & snow but not wind & waves.

But here, his animal friends came inside to check on his safety too!

🐤🦦🐰🐻

I‘m having difficulty with this one. It‘s lovely with the perfect art although I‘m sure I could draw similar if I went back to drawing which I used to do but gave up when I saw I wasn‘t the best at it. I didn‘t take any art classes in high school as I thought what was more important was academics.

But I digress. The story is about the boy & his grandfather who would regularly visit Pebble Beach to each choose a pebble then paint them.

⬇️

When I started this I assumed it was bout a new kid at school being bullied; It‘s not.

Santi is spending summer with his abuela (grandmother) who‘s a Spanish speaker. Santi‘s first language was English & he feels less Colombian since his Spanish is poor. He‘s doing immersion with abuela but often hesitant to “speak up.”

This shows dual languages so would be great for those working on their Spanish comprehension.

!Es un libro tan excelente!

Too cute for words! 🐭🐢

Here‘s the tale: Tortoise & Mouse are best friends & share a burrow. When their burrow floods tortoise digs them a new burrow…only more & more friends come needing a place to stay.

Here‘s the long list: Rabbit, Spotted Skunk, the Mole Skinks, Wolf Spider, Cricket, Frog, the Moth clan, Scarab Beetle, Snake & Fly.

Happy home, right? Only Mouse is nowhere to be seen so Tortoise is heartbroken. 💧😔💧

👇

The pic is the book I read that‘s not in our system yet. The Doxie is named Duke & Duke wears a bow tie

The series features a detail-oriented wedding planner that comes back to her hometown Carlyle Cove, Maine to help her elderly aunt run her cafe. Their regular coffee drinker is retired detective Elinor Brooks & her detective emeritus Duke. The upcoming first in series is The Polaroid Murder by Vivian Keyes. You can catch the ARC on Booksprout.

Avi‘s mother is a mad scientist with great but often amiss ideas. Today, too much dirty laundry. Why wash clothes when you can make at time machine to travel back two weeks & swap them out? Great idea! 💡

Into an updated washing time machine that takes you back not two weeks but to the Cretacious?

That misaccomplished how to scare off the T-Rex that wants to eat you? Rather surreptitious the dinosaur is scared off by the smell of your t-shirt?

Another Book Drop children‘s recommendation, featuring the “Forest Inventors”, Honey Bunny the rabbit & Muk Muk the moose. Honey is cute & sweet, Muk Muk is a more measured creator. If you can‘t guess the fellow forest dwellers are their clients.

Their first book presents their Triple-Decker Hunger Wrecker which is…tater tot french fry medley stacked on a hot dog, cheese-bean taco, PB& J, pizza & spaghetti meatballs on marbled cupcake frosting.

Another Book Drop suggestion for young readers. This is the 8th in the series. The interlocutor covers his face as he ever stumbles into humiliating trips & other experiences

In JJ‘s water park he earns name & imfanity as “Widdle Baby.” The rides include a lazy river floaty ride, journey into an ice cube, swimming with puppies & getting flushed down a toilet

This makes the experience sounds fun until Wittle Baby gets rescued by a rogue 🧜🏼‍♀️

I‘m not sure how I started reading these other than Book Drop, again.

In this particular series the musical instruments themselves go to Band Camp. Fairly silly. Book 3, the instruments get bullied by cooler instruments & participate in the Camp talent show, only…their talent skills tend to be lacking. I‘ve already checked out volumes 2 & 3, being as I‘m a completist.

Let‘s see where they go. It‘s gentle humor for gentle readers.

Another Book Drop recommendation. This is volume 12 in the series. Mindy Kim is Korean & that‘s a major element of her identity. Her father has recently married Julie then came baby brother Charlie.

Their first family vacation is to Jeju, a volcanic island in South Korea. The thing Mindy most wants to see is Hallasan or English Mount Halla.

After a setback baby fart from Charlie all is well again. Pic here is with a hareubang, “grandfather.”

Gorgeous book that I‘d get for my kid had I any. There are fold out flaps that prevent my efforts to take great photos sadly. Educational too!Bioluminescious, fluorescence, unihemispheric—which new to me is what sleeping whales do.

All the stars I have to give. ✨⭐️🌟⭐️✨

A delightful book for children. Might as well start teaching them early what castings are and why they‘re so beneficial in our gardens.

Worms aren‘t scary or ugly. I have no trouble saving them from pavement fry after a hard rain.

💝🪱

You can see Richard Lasher‘s car & the dirt bike he was able to flee the approaching ash cloud on.

I was alive when St Helen‘s happened but was too young & too far away from WA to remember. I wish the book would have gone right to covering the event & not the years before background & its players.

I do remember the elderly man that refused to heed warnings & condemned 16 cats to eruption death. You also get perished dogs & horses. Humans too. 💧

Not the best book on the 1916 New Jersey shark attacks but still a decent fictionalized read

The tale ended up dragging on too long with characters you don‘t much care about but the details on the time period were the best part: coming WWI with evil German u-boot Deutschland (Maybe GERMAN SHARKS! 😟), scandalous flapper bobs, scary polio epidemic, etc etc

It is much layed out like what Jaws is with ppl panicking & killing any shark they find…

Horror galore!! 😰

This starts out as you would expect; a group of kids head out on a back-to-nature camping trip. One of the guys is into a silly Bigfoot Hunters show he‘s teased ruthlessly by his friend over. In the crew is a big party-drinker & a very fake Native American for chicks guy. Only things go sideways; when you think all is lost they are saved by the Bigfoot Hunter guys for…reasons. 👀

Here‘s the bigger shock: Bigfoots with rabies.

Wow. I couldn‘t get the pic centered correctly but here‘s the closing:

The world needs you.

You belong.

Recommended by The Book Drop for *everyone*.

If you‘re a school librarian add this to your catalogue.

⭐️✨🌟✨⭐️

Now this one is specifically about the Fourth of July & makes a point of being inclusive.

Also going with your family to watch the fireworks together in a community spirit so that‘s nice. 🇺🇸

Also a The Book Drop recommendation.

Very sparse text. What lovely lights you can see in the summertime. Green gold white in county fairs, carnivals. Nothing on fireworks on Independence Day/Fourth of July which doesn‘t always bring happy thoughts for those it rang hollow for. Shauntay Grant teaches creative writing at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia so Canadian not from the US.

Perfect for children drawn to pretty, colorful drawings.

Another recommendation from The Book Drop.

A caution: DO NOT do an image search for said monster. The Montauk Monster is apparently a real cryptid in the area. The images are real but not a cryptid. Can I stop there?

I‘m not native to the NY area so this is new to me. Can we do Chessie or Bigfoot next? Okay, we‘re doing Bigfoot next🤞🏼

This volume gets gory, I‘m fine as it‘s fiction but animal experimentation that I‘m a big NO on.

Fun throwaway scary if you‘re in the mood though.

Cute book for kiddies which could have gone sad “peddlers don‘t have homes” but with friends & ingenuity you‘ve won 🏆

I‘m reading through suggested books for little one readers by The Book Drop.

Anyone else? I wish I could afford to do the adult book category suggestions. I‘m limited to Middle Grade, 13+, graphic novel & a puzzle. Partner is angry about the puzzle, I should probably downgrade.

Just above. Too many words to not need to edit it down.

Incredibly informative & perfect for a preteen & older@to learn about how marine researchers work and learn their craft.

Realize that secret turtle life is full of hazards & of a nest of 100s only a small number of sea turtles get to survive to the ocean & from the predators of the babies there.

It's also sad so many sea turtle species are currently critically endangered or threatened.

Learn, youngs. Not all you learn is good news though.

This is gonna be a 1136 page thrill ride. 😒

Hey, let's go to outer space! That'd be fun, right?!
No, you lunatic. Space is the setting for horror in space. Such as here.

Your main character is trying to hide out from authorities due to her activism so she takes a cush if boring job hauling cryogenic bodies.

How scary could that be? They're dead, right?
RIGHT?! 😟

Sadly this is the closest Gencraft could get to this image: “Setting is a forest in the Pacific Northwest. A human cult chases after a weightlifter in purple Zubaz pants. A fortune teller holds a crystal ball and a dowsing rod. A little Bigfoot girl is wearing a dress and bows in her fur and she stands in front of a human tent and eating candy. A enormous octopus has his tentacles coming out of a nearby body of water. | This is a funny picture.”

I‘ve never done competitive swimming but know I would have been terribly gracious to my momma‘s ingrown flotation device IYKYK

Plus my school didn‘t have a pool until I graduated. Bad luck as I do enjoy swimming & no longer have access

A great YA graphic with some bullying, social class conflict (rich dad/poor dad). I also covers the racism Black girls have had to deal with their own access to pool use

You see horrible, bullying teacher here.

1. Mostly between anxiety & despair.

2. I don‘t have any that I come back to but know this: You are not alone! Whatever you‘re struggling with trying to cope with life on Hellhole #47 you are not alone. We are not alone.

This Country belongs to you, to me, to US, not Hellbound #47. To OUR history & traditions, both the good & the bad.

To US. It‘ll always be what we have the grace to make of it together, going forward.

A dark book yet a great read. I had to expedite myself to the end as the main character got aggravating.

How many bad choices can one woman make when she's well-aware that's what she's doing?

It's a book that I expect to live with me awhile.

This is the first Daredevil graphic I‘ve read. It seems a bit contrary a blind person can dive through a window as that will generally cripple or kill most able-bodied people.

Beyond that, may this be a the birth of a native-born Chinese undocumented immigrant? Coz that‘d be awesome.

The book did bring up the difficulties the undocumented have to deal with no matter how much they deserve to be citizens.

We definitely more of that message.

This would make so much sense for me if I‘d ever played this game. Other than that so chaotic & not very pretty either.

Cube animals? Interesting…maybe?

Here‘s the background: “IDW Publishing, an American comic publisher which has published tie-in comic books to Hasbro properties since 2005, began to publish monthly My Little Pony comics beginning in November 2012”

Still going strong for thirteen years. Bright pretty colors with ponies, pegasusi & unicorns. For all the bronnies & broettes…or pipsqueaks? I know who none of these characters are, have had neither a real pony or Little Pony figure.

Growing old is terrible. Growing old is scary.
This book isn't terrible but it is scary.

Highly recommended though.

Remember—ACK! ACK! Aliens are no one's savior.

Some things that struck me here. The main characters and locations are Swedish. It doesn't take away anything from the story but helps to acknowledge the differences.

The story: a bit derivative but you cope, just affected the flow of the story. The twist here holds until about 80% through. You gotta wonder how so many pretty Swedish lasses are such emotional basketcases.

BUT decent read. Yes I would recommend to thriller/ suspense readers.

Author: Riley James

Was published 2024 but not available yet in the US; had to have it shipped in from Sydney.

Has anyone read this yet?

One of my yet unfulfilled dreams is being able to fly into Australia once a month to go shopping for Ben Hobson‘s book club reads.

https://www.trybooking.com/events/landing/1351297

Same author, different graphic.

Hob‘s Lane #1 of 3. Lovecraftian horror from Kickstarter

“All is quiet on Hob's Lane until a couple stumbles upon an unconscious homeless man. Upon further
examination, the man has been killed in a gruesome and shocking fashion with nearly half of his body destroyed.”

“Widowed theoretical physicist John Tate is sure he can bring his murdered wife back from the abyss, but the abyss has other ideas.”

Titan Comics printing their best Snoopy daily prints from 1955-1962.

1. The majestic daffodil. Yellow hope overload.

2. I won entirely too many ARCs I‘m now obligated to read. Got to cancel some preorders though.

Just checked: Twenty ARCs from NetGalley. First up is tagged. A have 6-7 indies though as well, just lesser priority.

#WondrousWednesday

Same author, different graphic.

“Nuclear Power is a darkly poignant alternate history of the Cuban Missile Crisis that posits lengths to what an authoritarian government will go to deceive its citizens. Nuclear Power was written by Desirée Proctor & Erica Harrell (Marvel's Comunidades, Mercy), illustrated by Lynne Yoshii (DC's Gotham Garage, 2017 DC Comics New Lynne Yoshii (DC's Gotham Garage, 2017 DC Comics New Talent Workshop).

Bright and cute and silly!

“So there's a marshmallow, a pizza slice, a donut and a potato, all living in the same house. Don't ask - just don't. After the arch way the mallow introduces the pizza slice to us the reader - and not the other way round, note - there's a drama where all the characters lose their cherished pets. Then one where the mallow gains a scooter that has a surprising attachment, leading to surprising destinations aplenty.”

It intrigued me but…strange?

“Bunny and Chick” may be a current children‘s tv series. Here🅾️🚛🚛 the story is there‘s a Megga Easter Egg Hunt and Bunny is eager to win. They are paired with apartners

I‘ve read a few Sally Garland books, such as The Chalk Garland.

Light childrens‘ storybooks with an uplifting tale to tell. Here Toby the puppy has an injured paw and can‘t go outside. His person Tilly can‘t go outside either as the weather is poor.

Toby brings his leash to Tilly and they discover an indoor adventure collecting outdoor toys and formerly lost or forgotten toys.

So stop bitching, kid & puppy. You can play indoors, damnit!

Same author, different book. I should be ashamed. 😳

Savagely Mated: A Dark Wolf Shifter Romance 🐺

I wish I was wearing more than my school pajamas. Even at twenty years old, these things are juvenile. They‘re really not the attire to be facing three very large, very frightening men who are looking at me with competitive, possessive lust in their handsome gazes.

I‘m used to getting in trouble, but not like this.

#FirstLineFridays