The month of September’s reading has been great so far! I’m reading and listening to audiobooks and I’m enjoying both mediums-of course. Yesterday, I finished listening to The Lost World (Professor Challenger, #1) by Arthur Conan Doyle and it is such a great adventure story! I highly recommend checking it out, especially if you like reading classics. Today, I’ve started listening to an Ai generated audiobook on Youtube called After the Moon by colin Jacobson. I can’t say how I feel about it yet and I may or may not write a review for the story. If I don’t, I will be sure to say how I feel about it (a little) in other reader’s log post.

The physical books I’m currently reading are Mystery Play by Elizabeth Kostova (for review), The Strawberry House by Rachel Burton, and Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry. So far, I’m enjoying all three and as you can see, I’m a mood reader. Usually, I have several books going at a time. Sometimes, when a story grabs me, I will focus on that book, then pick back up with the others. What book(s) are you currently reading? -Stephanie

After the Moon by colin Jacobson (book cover not provided) Description:

When an asteroid strikes the Moon with unimaginable force, humanity initially believes it has witnessed a spectacular astronomical event.

They are wrong.

The impact sends the Moon slowly drifting away from Earth, unraveling billions of years of gravitational balance. Oceans become unpredictable. Weather patterns lose their rhythm. Wildlife senses change long before humans do. Civilization struggles to adapt as scientists race to understand a world whose most fundamental assumptions are quietly disappearing.

High in the remote Canadian Rocky Mountains, retired mechanical engineer Zach Cliverton watches the catastrophe unfold from the solitude of his mountain cabin. Armed with little more than decades of engineering experience, careful observation, and an unshakable respect for the laws of physics, Zach begins documenting strange phenomena that few others notice—oscillating rivers, silent forests, shifting stars, and mysterious objects appearing near the departing Moon.

As governments lose certainty and the familiar world slips beyond recognition, Zach discovers that survival depends not only on food, fuel, and shelter, but on understanding a planet that is becoming something entirely new.

Blending believable science with relentless suspense, After the Moon is an eerie, atmospheric journey into one of humanity’s greatest imaginable disasters—a story of isolation, resilience, and the unsettling realization that the universe owes us no permanence.

Sometimes the end of the world doesn’t arrive in a single moment.

Sometimes it quietly drifts away.

Mystery Play by Elizabeth Kostova

Expected publication October 13, 2026 by Ballantine Books

The youngest son in a family of historians who has been hunted by dark forces associated with Dracula finds himself in peril at the hands of a new threat—a thrilling novel from the bestselling author of The Historian.

The youngest son in a family of historians who has been hunted by dark forces associated with Dracula finds himself in peril at the hands of a new threat—a thrilling novel from the bestselling author of The Historian.

When his mother passes away suddenly, Jay Turner finds himself at a crossroads. She was always secretive, raising him alone in Boston and staying single until her death. Returning to their brownstone to clear out her possessions, he finds two unusual objects: a partially burned scrap of newspaper bearing the name “Gael Brogan,” and a small antique volume bound in leather.

The sight of the volume is chilling. As a young scholar, his mother had been given the medieval book—one of a set commissioned by Vlad Tepes, otherwise known as Dracula, just before his death in 1477.  She’d always warned Jay of how dangerous it was and had donated it to a museum before she died . . . yet here it sits before him.

Taking leave from his position as a history instructor at a boys’ boarding school, Jay sets out to learn more about Gael Brogan, a prominent nineteenth century actor whose last and most famous role was the Count himself in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. As Jay begins to dig deeper—helped by a mysterious woman named Rhiannon he meets along the way—he uncovers a frightening story of a young actress who fell under Brogan’s sway long ago.  And before long, Jay and Rhiannon realize that something similarly implacable is also pursuing them.

Hypnotic and atmospheric, Mystery Play is a novel richly steeped in lore, pulsating with tension as it chronicles a dark secret history of rituals, religion, and immortality.

The Strawberry House by Rachel Burton

Published March 4, 2026 by Boldwood Books

1938: For Camilla Kerrigan, life at her family’s Oxford manor is a delicate balancing act – between duty to her family and a yearning for something more. When her brother Anthony returns for the summer, bringing with him a new friend, Camilla recognises a kindred spirit. Like her, Henry is thoughtful, restless and uncertain of his future.

But the arrival of four strangers – among them a gifted artist determined to paint Camilla’s sister Mabel – soon shatters the fragile peace of the manor. In the shimmering heat, desires are stirred and one impulsive act will set in motion a tragedy that echoes for decades.

1952: Haunted by war and the memory of that long-ago summer, the last thing Henry wants is to return to Montagu Manor. But when a photograph arrives, showing the painting he thought destroyed – the portrait that ruined so many lives – he is drawn back into the past.

Now, Henry and Camilla must face the secrets that shaped them, and the love that refuses to fade.

Port William

Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry

Published August 30, 2001 by Counterpoint

“This is a book about Heaven,” says Jayber Crow, “but I must say too that . . . I have wondered sometimes if it would not finally turn out to be a book about Hell.” It is 1932 and he has returned to his native Port William to become the town’s barber. Orphaned at age ten, Jayber Crow’s acquaintance with loneliness and want have made him a patient observer of the human animal, in both its goodness and frailty. He began his search as a “pre-ministerial student” at Pigeonville College. There, freedom met with new burdens and a young man needed more than a mirror to find himself. But the beginning of that finding was a short conversation with “Old Grit,” his profound professor of New Testament Greek.

“You have been given questions to which you cannot be given answers. You will have to live them out―perhaps a little at a time.”

“And how long is that going to take?”

“I don’t know. As long as you live, perhaps.”

“That could be a long time.”

“I will tell you a further mystery,” he said. “It may take longer.” Wendell Berry’s clear-sighted depiction of humanity’s gifts―love and loss, joy and despair―is seen though his intimate knowledge of the Port William Membership.