Go ahead - fascinate me!

Kelley Armstrong, Death at a Highland Wedding (2025)

Latest novel in the Rip Through Time series, in which a Vancouver B.C. police detective finds herself transported to 1870 Edinburgh, where she falls in with an undertaker who does forensic pathology work on the side, and they solve crimes together. This one is something like novel 5 in the series (with several additional novellas).

I wrote the... *checks AO3 to confirm* ...yes, still the only fic for Mallory and Gray (the Canadian detective and the Scottish undertaker). And every year since I wrote it, I know when a new novel has been published because there's a small influx of readers who turn to AO3 to self-medicate for the fact that Mallory and Gray still haven't gotten together yet. So I already knew from this year's comments that they don't get together in this book, either!

AND YET.

AND YET. (spoilers)

Gray proposes a marriage of convenience, Mallory turns it down because she's holding out for a love match, Gray begins to say something about maybe in time she will develop feelings for him -- but cannily phrased, so that she doesn't realize HE ALREADY HAS feelings for HER, and she storms out. AND THEN. He writes her a letter explaining all! Which she doesn't get because of murder mystery shenanigans! Which is very Jane Austen of him, but he NEVER REWRITES THE LETTER, NOR CONFESSES WHAT WAS IN IT, and we're left with them deciding on the last page that if they can't come up with a better option by the time his sister gets married, he and Mallory will do a marriage of convenience after all -- WHICH IS VERY PINING IDIOTS OF BOTH OF THEM AND I WOULD GO AND BITCH TO THE ONLY PERSON ON AO3 WHO WROTE FIC ABOUT THEM. EXCEPT THAT PERSON IS ME. SO HERE I AM. BITCHING TO YOU.

Yes, I'll read the next book in the series. No, they still won't have gotten together. Yes, I'll be as mad about it as I am right now. ARGH. (grrlpup finds my frustration very amusing.)


E. Pauline Johnson (Mohawk), The Moccasin Maker (1913)

I have the impression that if I was Canadian I might have been more familiar with Johnson before this, as she was an early light on Canada's literary scene. She was more famed for her poetry than her stories, but I first heard of her because Chelsea Vowell (Metis) recommended the story "A Red Girl's Reasoning", which is included in this collection.

Johnson was mixed race herself, and a fair number of these stories feature protagonists in mixed-race marriages, sometimes happy, sometimes not. A lot of her characterizations are idealized, but I found the stories entertaining and sometimes thought-provoking. I very much enjoyed how often she centered indigenous women, and how she routinely insisted on their agency and dignity -- "A Red Girl's Reasoning" is a prime example.

I also enjoyed that chinuk wawa made the occasional appearance! Johnson lived her later life in Vancouver, British Columbia, which was within the region in which chinuk was commonly spoken. Her use of the language is a little different than what I was taught down here, but still entirely comprehensible to me. (And for people unfamiliar with chinuk wawa, she explains the terms that can't be deduced from context).

Warning for those who check out the Gutenberg edition: the included foreword about Johnson is as racist as all get out.


Rachel Poliquin (illus. Nicholas John Frith), The Superpower Field Guide: BEAVERS (2018)

Breathless, dynamic, humorous, chock-full-of-facts middle-readers book about why beavers are extraordinary. I learned a bunch of stuff, and have to agree: beavers are extraordinary! The illustrations are in a deft, mid-twentieth-century cartooning style that I found charming. Will definitely check out other books in the series.