August reads

First, the grown-up reads!

📖 Mountain of the Dead: The Dyatlov Pass Incident (secular, nonfiction)... My most recent obsession subject! I always loved the story of Roanoke as a kid, then later the Mary Celeste and the missing prince sons of King Edward IV. This story might be my favorite unsolved mystery of all. A group of Russian hikers set out in the 1950s and were all found dead but in ways that didn't make sense. They had slashed through their tent from the inside rather than using the opening, run out into extreme cold without the shoes and winter gear inside the tent, and "froze to death" nearby but several of them with massive and fatal internal injuries yet no matching external injuries. But there's even more to it! And no true answers, just theories. I'll have to work really hard not to read more books on the subject 😅

📖 Natural Childbirth the Bradley Way (secular, nonfiction)... Self-explanatory, I'm sure. I overall liked this one. I think it might be a re-read but i can't remember for sure.

📖 Shaped by the Waves (Christian, fiction)... I just adore Christina Suzann Nelson novels! She's one of my favorite Christian fiction authors. There are domestic violence trigger warnings for this one but oh man, was it a good read! Cassie is back in her hometown in Oregon to be the caretaker for her ailing aunt (dementia and Parkinson's) and reading through an anonymous story that seems to connect to her own life. Meanwhile, Nora is pregnant with gestational diabetes and looking for her biological family to understand family history. Slowly seeing how things are connected was such a treat!

For my kids' shelves:

📖 Aedyn Chronicles series (Christian, middle grade, fantasy)... Not a very favorite fantasy but a soft hit nevertheless

📖 Frightful's Mountain (secular, middle grade, fiction, TGTB book list)... This third book in the trilogy is primarily focused on Frightful (the falcon). I liked it, I think more than the second.

📖 Jack Zulu and the Girl With the Golden Wings (Christian, middle grade, fantasy)... This is the second in this series and was a big hit! We love SD Smith around here! Lots of good vs evil battles.

📖 Son of Angels series (Christian, middle grade, fantasy)... This series is about a boy who discovers he's part fallen angel. There are lots of good vs evil battles and this series quickly became a new favorite for one of my kids.  

📖 Sylvia and Aki (secular, middle grade, fictionalized biography, TGTB)... I absolutely loved this story about Japanese internment camps and race. It reminded me a lot of one storyline from Echo!