Under Vixen’s Mere is one of those novels that quietly gets under your skin and then refuses to leave.
From the opening pages, the prose immediately stood out to me. It’s spare without ever feeling sparse—clean, confident, and quietly assured. Dialogue and description are held in careful balance, each doing its work without calling attention to itself. Nothing strains for effect, and that sense of restraint builds trust early on, inviting the reader to settle in and follow where the story leads.
What makes this book especially satisfying is its sensory richness. The attention to detail is so precise you can practically smell the bread cooling on the racks, the sharpness of cheese, the damp stone after rain. It is comfort reading with substance: sunshine and laughter paired with the everyday complications life throws at us, and the quiet resilience required to meet them.
This is not a book about capital-H heroes. Instead, it centers on people who engage in small acts of service, kindness, and yes, heroism—not for recognition or glory, but because it was the right thing to do in the moment. These are stories of people showing up when it would have been easier not to.
The Locked Room is clever, cozy without being complacent, and deeply satisfying for puzzle-lovers. If you adore classic detective fiction but crave a fresh perspective, Harriet White deserves a place on your shelf—and very likely, in your reading rotation for a long while to come.
About the Book: A Treatise on Martian Chiropractic Manipulation and Other Satirical Tales Human beings are flawed creatures, and humor is the perfect means to exploit the endless fodder of our shortcomings. This multi-genre collection of twenty-one short satirical stories will leave you smirking, chuckling, scratching your head, and maybe even muttering to yourself […]
It’s several days late, and doesn’t even apply to this post, but I wanted to leave a reply where I knew you’d see it. :)
Re: Not writing much–
It’s not EQ, it’s more just that I don’t feel like I have anything to write about lately. I can only gripe about work so much before it starts to get old, tiresome, and boring–you know, the point where people start saying, “At least you HAVE a job!” Plus, with the whole business thing…busy.
I’m hoping to get back into it. I’m driving up to Seattle in a few weeks, going up along 1/101 on the coast, so hopefully there’ll be a sort of travelogue that’ll get me interested and feeling like I have more to write about than just being generally cranky.
Sorry to spam your comments here with a reply, too. :)
Afraid that upon receiving my invitation I snatched their hands off, hope that doesn’t make me a bad person :(