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  • Category: Upcoming Books

    • Upcoming Books! [23]

      Posted at 12:00 pm by Laura, on June 24, 2012

      Title: Between the Lines
      Author: Jodi Picoult, Samantha van Leer
      Genre: young adult
      Publisher: Simon Pulse
      Publishing Date: June 26
      Summary: What happens when happily ever after…isn’t?
      Delilah is a bit of a loner who prefers spending her time in the school library with her head in a book—one book in particular. Between the Lines may be a fairy tale, but it feels real. Prince Oliver is brave, adventurous, and loving. He really speaks to Delilah.
      And then one day Oliver actually speaks to her. Turns out, Oliver is more than a one-dimensional storybook prince. He’s a restless teen who feels trapped by his literary existence and hates that his entire life is predetermined. He’s sure there’s more for him out there in the real world, and Delilah might just be his key to freedom.
      Delilah and Oliver work together to attempt to get Oliver out of his book, a challenging task that forces them to examine their perceptions of fate, the world, and their places in it. And as their attraction to each other grows along the way, a romance blossoms that is anything but a fairy tale.

      This looks like it’s going to be a neat book. The idea was all Picoult’s daughter’s, van Leer. They wrote this across several years together during her winter and summer breaks. Pretty cool!

      ~

      Title: One Breath Away
      Author: Heather Gudenkauf
      Genre: suspense, mystery
      Publisher: Mira
      Publishing Date: June 26
      Summary: In the midst of a sudden spring snowstorm, an unknown man armed with a gun walks into an elementary school classroom. Outside the school, the town of Broken Branch watches and waits.
      Officer Meg Barrett holds the responsibility for the town’s children in her hands. Will Thwaite, reluctantly entrusted with the care of his two grandchildren by the daughter who left home years earlier, stands by helplessly and wonders if he has failed his child again. Trapped in her classroom, Evelyn Oliver watches for an opportunity to rescue the children in her care. And thirteen-year-old Augie Baker, already struggling with the aftermath of a terrible accident that has has brought her to Broken Branch, will risk her own safety to protect her little brother.
      As tension mounts with each passing minute, the hidden fears and grudges of the small town are revealed as the people of Broken Branch race to uncover the identity of the stranger who holds their children hostage.

      ~

      Title: The Receptionist
      Author: Janet Groth
      Genre: memoir, nonfiction
      Publisher: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
      Publishing Date: June 26
      Summary: Thanks to a successful interview with the painfully shy E.B. White, a beautiful, 19-year-old, blue-eyed blonde from the cornfields of Iowa lands a job as a receptionist at “The New Yorker” magazine. There she stays two decades, becoming general all-around factotum–watching and registering the comings and goings, marriages and divorces, scandalous affairs, failures, triumphs, and tragedies of the eccentric inhabitants of the 18th floor. Though she dreamed of becoming a writer, she never advanced at the magazine. This memoir of a particular time and place is as much about why that was so as it is about Groth’s fascinating relationships with John Berryman, Joseph Mitchell, Muriel Spark, as well as E.J. Kahn, Calvin Trillin, Renata Adler, Peter DeVries, Charles Addams, and many other “New Yorker” contributors and bohemian denizens of Greenwich Village in its heyday. Eventually, Groth would have to leave “The New Yorker” in order to find herself.

      Posted in Upcoming Books | 0 Comments | Tagged genre: adult fiction, genre: fiction, genre: mystery, genre: nonfiction, genre: romance, genre: young adult, upcoming books
    • Upcoming Books! [22]

      Posted at 10:09 am by Laura, on June 18, 2012

      Title: Existence
      Author: David Brin
      Genre: sci-fi
      Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
      Publishing Date: June 19
      Summary: Gerald Livingston is an orbital garbage collector. For a hundred years, people have been abandoning things in space, and someone has to clean it up. But there’s something spinning a little bit higher than he expects, something that isn’t on the decades’ old orbital maps. An hour after he grabs it and brings it in, rumors fill Earth’s infomesh about an “alien artifact.”
      Thrown into the maelstrom of worldwide shared experience, the Artifact is a game-changer. A message in a bottle; an alien capsule that wants to communicate. The world reacts as humans always do: with fear and hope and selfishness and love and violence. And insatiable curiosity.

      ~

      Title: This is Not a Test
      Author: Courtney Summers
      Genre: young adult, post-apocalyptic
      Publisher: St Martin’s Griffin
      Publishing Date: June 19
      Summary: It’s the end of the world. Six students have taken cover in Cortege High but shelter is little comfort when the dead outside won’t stop pounding on the doors. One bite is all it takes to kill a person and bring them back as a monstrous version of their former self.
      To Sloane Price, that doesn’t sound so bad. Six months ago, her world collapsed and since then, she’s failed to find a reason to keep going. Now seems like the perfect time to give up. As Sloane eagerly waits for the barricades to fall, she’s forced to witness the apocalypse through the eyes of five people who actually want to live.
      But as the days crawl by, the motivations for survival change in startling ways and soon the group’s fate is determined less and less by what’s happening outside and more and more by the unpredictable and violent bids for life—and death—inside.
      When everything is gone, what do you hold on to?

      ~

      Title: Mrs. Robinson’s Disgrace: The Private Diary of a Victorian Lady
      Author: Kate Summerscale
      Genre: history, nonfiction
      Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
      Publishing Date: June 19
      Summary: Headstrong, high-spirited, and already widowed, Isabella Walker became Mrs. Henry Robinson at age 31 in 1844. Her first husband had died suddenly, leaving his estate to a son from a previous marriage, so she inherited nothing. A successful civil engineer, Henry moved them, by then with two sons, to Edinburgh’s elegant society in 1850. But Henry traveled often and was cold and remote when home, leaving Isabella to her fantasies.
      No doubt thousands of Victorian women faced the same circumstances, but Isabella chose to record her innermost thoughts—and especially her infatuation with a married Dr. Edward Lane—in her diary. Over five years the entries mounted—passionate, sensual, suggestive. One fateful day in 1858 Henry chanced on the diary and, broaching its privacy, read Isabella’s intimate entries. Aghast at his wife’s perceived infidelity, Henry petitioned for divorce on the grounds of adultery. Until that year, divorce had been illegal in England, the marital bond being a cornerstone of English life. Their trial would be a cause celebre, threatening the foundations of Victorian society with the specter of “a new and disturbing figure: a middle class wife who was restless, unhappy, avid for arousal.” Her diary, read in court, was as explosive as Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, just published in France but considered too scandalous to be translated into English until the 1880s.

      Posted in Upcoming Books | 0 Comments | Tagged books, genre: adult fiction, genre: fiction, genre: history, genre: nonfiction, genre: sci-fi, genre: young adult, upcoming books
    • Upcoming Books! [21]

      Posted at 9:16 pm by Laura, on June 10, 2012

      Title: The Forever Marriage
      Author: Ann Bauer
      Genre: fiction, mystery
      Publisher: Overlook Hardcover
      Publishing Date: June 14
      Summary: Carmen wishes Jobe, the husband she never loved, dead –only to fall in love with him after he is gone. As she helps her three children grieve, she discovers, after a tryst with her most recent lover, that her own life may be in danger. Heremotions reeling, Carmen reflects on the fateful days of her youth that made her the person she has become: privileged suburban wife, unfaithful widow, mother of a child with Down syndrome, fierce friend.

      ~

      Title: Mission to Paris
      Author: Alan Furst
      Genre: historical fiction, mystery
      Publisher: Random House
      Publishing Date: June 12
      Summary: It is the late summer of 1938, Europe is about to explode, the Hollywood film star Fredric Stahl is on his way to Paris to make a movie for Paramount France. The Nazis know he’s coming—a secret bureau within the Reich Foreign Ministry has for years been waging political warfare against France, using bribery, intimidation, and corrupt newspapers to weaken French morale and degrade France’s will to defend herself.
      For their purposes, Fredric Stahl is a perfect agent of influence, and they attack him. What they don’t know is that Stahl, horrified by the Nazi war on Jews and intellectuals, has become part of an informal spy service being run out of the American embassy in Paris.

      ~

      Title: Keeping the Castle
      Author: Patrice Kindl
      Genre: historical fiction, young adult
      Publisher: Viking Children’s Books
      Publishing Date: June 14
      Summary: Seventeen-year-old Althea is the sole support of her entire family, and she must marry well. But there are few wealthy suitors–or suitors of any kind–in their small Yorkshire town of Lesser Hoo. Then, the young and attractive (and very rich) Lord Boring arrives, and Althea sets her plans in motion. There’s only one problem; his friend and business manager Mr. Fredericks keeps getting in the way. And, as it turns out, Fredericks has his own set of plans . . . This witty take on the classic Regency–Patrice Kindl’s first novel in a decade–is like literary champagne!

      Posted in Upcoming Books | 0 Comments | Tagged genre: fiction, genre: history, genre: young adult, upcoming books
    • Upcoming Books! [20]

      Posted at 4:53 pm by Laura, on June 3, 2012

      Title: Little Night
      Author: Luanne Rice
      Genre: fiction, drama, family
      Publisher: Pamela Dorman Books
      Publishing Date: June 5
      Summary: Clare Burke’s life took a devastating turn when she tried to protect her sister, Anne, from an abusive and controlling husband and ended up serving prison time for assault. The verdict largely hinged on Anne’s defense of her spouse—all lies—and the sisters have been estranged ever since. Nearly twenty years later, Clare is living a quiet life in Manhattan as an urban birder and nature blogger, when her niece, Grit, turns up on her doorstep.
      The two long for a relationship with each other, but they’ll have to dig deep into their family’s difficult past in order to build one. Together they face the wounds inflicted by Anne and find in their new connection a place of healing. When Clare begins to suspect her sister might be in New York, she and her niece hold out hope for a long-awaited reunion with her.

      ~

      Title: Monument 14
      Author: Emmy Laybourne
      Genre: young adult, dystopian, post-apocalyptic
      Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
      Publishing Date: June 5
      Summary: Your mother hollers that you’re going to miss the bus. She can see it coming down the street. You don’t stop and hug her and tell her you love her. You don’t thank her for being a good, kind, patient mother. Of course not—you launch yourself down the stairs and make a run for the corner.
      Only, if it’s the last time you’ll ever see your mother, you sort of start to wish you’d stopped and did those things. Maybe even missed the bus.
      But the bus was barreling down our street, so I ran.
      Fourteen kids. One superstore. A million things that go wrong.
      In Emmy Laybourne’s action-packed debut novel, six high school kids (some popular, some not), two eighth graders (one a tech genius), and six little kids trapped together in a chain superstore build a refuge for themselves inside. While outside, a series of escalating disasters, beginning with a monster hailstorm and ending with a chemical weapons spill, seems to be tearing the world—as they know it—apart.

      ~

      Title: Dead Scared
      Author: SJ Bolton
      Genre: mystery, thriller
      Publisher: St Martin’s Press
      Publishing Date: June 5
      Summary: When a rash of suicides tears through Cambridge University, DI Mark Joesbury recruits DC Lacey Flint to go undercover as a student to investigate. Although each student’s death appears to be a suicide, the psychological histories, social networks, and online activities of the students involved share remarkable similarities, and the London police are not convinced that the victims acted alone. They believe that someone might be preying on lonely and insecure students and either encouraging them to take their own lives or actually luring them to their deaths. As long as Lacey can play the role of a vulnerable young woman, she may be able to stop these deaths, but is it just a role for her? With her fragile past, is she drawing out the killers, or is she herself being drawn into a deadly game where she’s a perfect victim?

      ~

      Happy reading! What are you reading this week? I’ve started Insurgent by Veronica Roth, and I think I’ll either start The Meaning of Night by Michael Cox or The House of Velvet and Glass by Katherine Howe after.

      Posted in Upcoming Books | 0 Comments | Tagged books, genre: adult fiction, genre: dystopian, genre: fiction, genre: mystery, genre: young adult, upcoming books
    • Upcoming Books! [19]

      Posted at 12:00 pm by Laura, on May 27, 2012

      Title: Changeling
      Author: Philippa Gregory
      Genre: young adult, historical fiction, fantasy
      Publisher: Simon Pulse
      Publishing Date: May 29
      Summary: Italy, 1453. Seventeen-year-old Luca Vero is brilliant, gorgeous—and accused of heresy. Cast out of his religious order for using the new science to question old superstitious beliefs, Luca is recruited into a secret sect: The Order of the Dragon, commissioned by Pope Nicholas V to investigate evil and danger in its many forms, and strange occurrences across Europe, in this year—the end of days.
      Isolde is a seventeen-year-old girl shut up in a nunnery so she can’t inherit any of her father’s estate. As the nuns walk in their sleep and see strange visions, Isolde is accused of witchcraft—and Luca is sent to investigate her, but finds himself plotting her escape.
      Despite their vows, despite themselves, love grows between Luca and Isolde as they travel across Europe with their faithful companions, Freize and Ishraq. The four young people encounter werewolves, alchemists, witches, and death-dancers as they head toward a real-life historical figure who holds the boundaries of Christendom and the secrets of the Order of the Dragon.

      ~

      Title: The Yard
      Author: Alex Grecian
      Genre: mystery, historical fiction
      Publisher: Putnam Books
      Publishing Date: May 29
      Summary: Victorian London is a cesspool of crime, and Scotland Yard has only twelve detectives—known as “The Murder Squad”—to investigate countless murders every month. Created after the Metropolitan Police’s spectacular failure to capture Jack the Ripper, The Murder Squad suffers rampant public contempt. They have failed their citizens. But no one can anticipate the brutal murder of one of their own . . . one of the twelve . . .When Walter Day, the squad’s newest hire, is assigned the case of the murdered detective, he finds a strange ally in the Yard’s first forensic pathologist, Dr. Bernard Kingsley. Together they track the killer, who clearly is not finished with The Murder Squad . . . but why?

      ~

      Title: The Watchers
      Author: Jon Steele
      Genre: mystery, thriller
      Publisher: Blue Rider Press
      Publishing Date: May 29
      Summary: Meet Marc Rochat, a man-child who has devoted his life to being the bell ringer at the Gothic Lausanne Cathedral, one of the greatest architectural structures in the world. Eerie things have been going on in and around his church, including tremblings in the underground crypt and a variety of gruesomely murdered bodies showing up in nearby streets. Across the square from the cathedral lives Katherine Taylor, a beautiful young American woman who is making phenomenal money as one of the highest-priced call girls in Switzerland; she’s a bit too introspective for her own good and, unfortunately, much too observant of her clients’ peccadilloes. Rochat’s and Taylor’s lives collide with Jay Harper, a British private eye who has been sent to investigate the killings and other strange doings; alas, he has no memory of who hired him or precisely why he was chosen for the job. And now all the clues are pointing skyward, where fallen angels are said to haunt Lausanne.

      ~

      Some books to look forward to publication later in 2012 and early 2013 include

      • Stephanie Thornton’s THE SECRET HISTORY, in which a theater tart-turned-Constantinople’s premier courtesan must decide what’s more important: pleasing the emperor who claims to love her or keeping the son he can never know about.
      • Mary Miley’s THE IMPERSONATOR, featuring a young vaudeville actress who takes on the role of a lifetime when she impersonates a missing heiress.
      • Benjamin Percy’s THE DEAD LANDS, a post-apocalyptic reinvention of Lewis and Clark’s epic journey across the West.

      Happy reading!

      Major thanks to several publishing houses, Goodreads, and Publishers Lunch for providing weekly updates!

      Posted in Upcoming Books | 0 Comments | Tagged books, genre: adult fiction, genre: fantasy, genre: fiction, genre: history, genre: mystery, genre: young adult, upcoming books
    • Upcoming Books! [18]

      Posted at 12:00 pm by Laura, on May 20, 2012

      Title: Of Poseidon
      Author: Anna Banks
      Genre: young adult, fantasy
      Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
      Publishing Date: May 22
      Summary: Galen, a Syrena prince, searches land for a girl he’s heard can communicate with fish. It’s while Emma is on vacation at the beach that she meets Galen. Although their connection is immediate and powerful, Galen’s not fully convinced that Emma’s the one he’s been looking for. That is, until a deadly encounter with a shark proves  that Emma and her Gift may be the only thing that can save his kingdom. He needs her help–no matter what the risk.

      ~

      Title: Jane Austen Marriage Manual
      Author: Kim Izzo
      Genre: fiction
      Publisher: St Martin’s Press
      Publishing Date: May 22
      Summary: Katherine Shaw—Kate— is happy with her life. She has supportive friends, a glamorous magazine career, and a love of all things Jane Austen. But when she loses her job, her beloved grandmother falls ill and a financial disaster forces a sale on the family home, Kate finds herself facing a crisis that would test even the most stalwart of Austen heroines.
      Friends rally round, connecting her to freelance gigs, and presenting her with a birthday gift— title to land in Scotland—that’s about to come in very handy. Turns out that Kate’s first freelance assignment is to test an Austen-inspired theory: in the toughest economic times is a wealthy man the only must-have accessory? What begins as an article turns into an opportunity as Kate—now Lady Kate—jet-sets to Palm Beach, St Moritz and London where, in keeping company with the elite, she meets prospects who make Mr. Darcy look like an amateur. But will rubbing shoulders with men of good fortune ever actually lead her to love? And will Kate be able to choose between Mr. Rich and Mr. Right?

      ~

      Title: The Enchantress
      Author: Michael Scott
      Genre: young adult, fantasy
      Publisher: Delacorte Press fror Young Readers
      Publishing Date: May 22
      Summary: Sixth and final book in the series “The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel.”
      San Francisco:
      Nicholas and Perenelle Flamel have one day left to live, and one job left to do. They must defend San Francisco. The monsters gathered on Alcatraz Island have been released and are heading toward the city. If they are not stopped, they will destroy everyone and everything in their path.
      But even with the help of two of the greatest warriors from history and myth, will the Sorceress and the legendary Alchemyst be able to defend the city? Or is it the beginning of the end of the human race?
      Danu Talis:
      Sophie and Josh Newman traveled ten thousand years into the past to Danu Talis when they followed Dr. John Dee and Virginia Dare. And it’s on this legendary island that the battle for the world begins and ends.
      Scathach, Prometheus, Palamedes, Shakespeare, Saint-Germain, and Joan of Arc are also on the island. And no one is sure what—or who—the twins will be fighting for.
      Today the battle for Danu Talis will be won or lost.
      But will the twins of legend stand together?
      Or will they stand apart—
      one to save the world and one to destroy it?

      ~

      Happy reading!

      Posted in Upcoming Books | 0 Comments | Tagged genre: adult fiction, genre: fantasy, genre: fiction, genre: young adult, upcoming books
    • Upcoming Books! [17]

      Posted at 8:51 pm by Laura, on May 13, 2012

      Title: A Confusion of Princes
      Author: Garth Nix
      Genre: young adult, sci-fi, fantasy
      Publisher: HarperCollins Children’s Books
      Publishing Date: May 15
      Summary: You’d think being a privileged Prince in a vast intergalactic Empire would be about as good as it gets. But it isn’t as great as it sounds. For one thing, Princes are always in danger. Their greatest threat? Other Princes. Khemri discovers that the moment he is proclaimed a Prince.
      He also discovers mysteries within the hidden workings of the Empire. Dispatched on a secret mission, Khemri comes across the ruins of a space battle. In the midst of it all he meets a young woman named Raine, who will challenge his view of the Empire, of Princes, and of himself.

      ~

      Title: The Chemistry of Tears
      Author: Peter Carey
      Genre: historical fiction
      Publisher: Knopf Doubleday
      Publishing Date: May 15
      Summary: London 2010: Catherine Gehrig, conservator at the Swinburne museum, learns of the sudden death of her colleague and lover of thirteen years. As the mistress of a married man, she must struggle to keep the depth of her anguish to herself. The one other person who knows Catherine’s secret—her boss—arranges for her to be given a special project away from prying eyes in the museum’s Annexe. Usually controlled and rational, but now mad with grief, Catherine reluctantly unpacks an extraordinary, eerie automaton that she has been charged with bringing back to life.
      As she begins to piece together the clockwork puzzle, she also uncovers a series of notebooks written by the mechanical creature’s original owner: a nineteenth-century Englishman, Henry Brandling, who traveled to Germany to commission it as a magical amusement for his consumptive son. But it is Catherine, nearly two hundred years later, who will find comfort and wonder in Henry’s story. And it is the automaton, in its beautiful, uncanny imitation of life, that will link two strangers confronted with the mysteries of creation, the miracle and catastrophe of human invention, and the body’s astonishing chemistry of love and feeling.

      ~

      Title: As the Crow Flies
      Author: Craig Johnson
      Genre: mystery
      Publisher: Viking Adult
      Publishing Date: May 15
      Summary: Embarking on his eighth adventure, Wyoming Sheriff Walt Longmire has a more important matter on his mind than cowboys and criminals. His daughter, Cady, is getting married to the brother of his undersheriff, Victoria Moretti. Walt and old friend Henry Standing Bear are the de facto wedding planners and fear Cady’s wrath when the wedding locale arrangements go up in smoke two weeks before the big event.
      The pair set out to find a new site for the nuptials on the Cheyenne Reservation, but their scouting expedition ends in horror as they witness a young Crow woman plummeting from Painted Warrior’s majestic cliffs. It’s not Walt’s turf, but the newly appointed tribal police chief and Iraqi war veteran, the beautiful Lolo Long, shanghais him into helping with the investigation. Walt is stretched thin as he mentors Lolo, attempts to catch the bad guys, and performs the role of father of the bride.

      ~

      Happy reading!

      Posted in Upcoming Books | 0 Comments | Tagged genre: adult fiction, genre: fantasy, genre: fiction, genre: history, genre: mystery, genre: sci-fi, genre: young adult, upcoming books
    • Upcoming Books! [16]

      Posted at 9:14 pm by Laura, on May 6, 2012

      Title: City of Lost Souls
      Author: Cassandra Clare
      Genre: fantasy, young adult
      Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry
      Publishing Date: May 8
      Summary: The demon Lilith has been destroyed and Jace has been freed from her captivity. But when the Shadowhunters arrive to rescue him, they find only blood and broken glass. Not only is the boy Clary loves missing–but so is the boy she hates, Sebastian, the son of her father Valentine: a son determined to succeed where their father failed, and bring the Shadowhunters to their knees.
      No magic the Clave can summon can locate either boy, but Jace cannot stay away—not from Clary. When they meet again Clary discovers the horror Lilith’s dying magic has wrought—Jace is no longer the boy she loved. He and Sebastian are now bound to each other, and Jace has become what he most feared: a true servant of Valentine’s evil. The Clave is determined to destroy Sebastian, but there is no way to harm one boy without destroying the other. Will the Shadowhunters hesitate to kill one of their own?
      Only a small band of Clary and Jace’s friends and family believe that Jace can still be saved — and that the fate of the Shadowhunters’ future may hinge on that salvation. They must defy the Clave and strike out on their own. Alec, Magnus, Simon and Isabelle must work together to save Jace: bargaining with the sinister Faerie Queen, contemplating deals with demons, and turning at last to the Iron Sisters, the reclusive and merciless weapons makers for the Shadowhunters, who tell them that no weapon on this earth can sever the bond between Sebastian and Jace. Their only chance of cutting Jace free is to challenge Heaven and Hell — a risk that could claim any, or all, of their lives.
      And they must do it without Clary. For Clary has gone into the heart of darkness, to play a dangerous game utterly alone. The price of losing the game is not just her own life, but Jace’s soul. She’s willing to do anything for Jace, but can she even still trust him? Or is he truly lost? What price is too high to pay, even for love?

      ~

      Title: Home
      Author: Toni Morrison
      Genre: historical fiction
      Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
      Publishing Date: May 8
      Summary: Frank Money is an angry, self-loathing veteran of the Korean War who, after traumatic experiences on the front lines, finds himself back in racist America with more than just physical scars. His home may seem alien to him, but he is shocked out of his crippling apathy by the need to rescue his medically abused younger sister and take her back to the small Georgia town they come from and that he’s hated all his life. As Frank revisits his memories from childhood and the war that have left him questioning his sense of self, he discovers a profound courage he had thought he could never possess again.

      ~

      Title: Bring Up the Bodies
      Author: Hilary Mantel
      Genre: historical fiction
      Publisher: Henry Holt & Company, Inc
      Publishing Date: May 8
      Summary: Though he battled for seven years to marry her, Henry is disenchanted with Anne Boleyn. She has failed to give him a son and her sharp intelligence and audacious will alienate his old friends and the noble families of England. When the discarded Katherine dies in exile from the court, Anne stands starkly exposed, the focus of gossip and malice.
      At a word from Henry, Thomas Cromwell is ready to bring her down. Over three terrifying weeks, Anne is ensnared in a web of conspiracy, while the demure Jane Seymour stands waiting her turn for the poisoned wedding ring. But Anne and her powerful family will not yield without a ferocious struggle. Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies follows the dramatic trial of the queen and her suitors for adultery and treason. To defeat the Boleyns, Cromwell must ally with his natural enemies, the papist aristocracy. What price will he pay for Anne’s head?

      Woo! Happy reading!

      Posted in Upcoming Books | 0 Comments | Tagged genre: adult fiction, genre: fantasy, genre: fiction, genre: history, genre: young adult, upcoming books
    • Upcoming Books! [15]

      Posted at 3:28 pm by Laura, on April 29, 2012

      Title: Insurgent
      Author: Veronica Roth
      Genre: young adult, dystopian
      Publisher: HarperTeen
      Publishing Date: May 1
      Summary: One choice can transform you—or it can destroy you. But every choice has consequences, and as unrest surges in the factions all around her, Tris Prior must continue trying to save those she loves—and herself—while grappling with haunting questions of grief and forgiveness, identity and loyalty, politics and love.
      Tris’s initiation day should have been marked by celebration and victory with her chosen faction; instead, the day ended with unspeakable horrors. War now looms as conflict between the factions and their ideologies grows. And in times of war, sides must be chosen, secrets will emerge, and choices will become even more irrevocable—and even more powerful. Transformed by her own decisions but also by haunting grief and guilt, radical new discoveries, and shifting relationships, Tris must fully embrace her Divergence, even if she does not know what she may lose by doing so.
      See my review of the first book in this trilogy, Divergent!

      ~

      Title: The Proposal
      Author: Mary Balogh
      Genre: historical fiction, romance
      Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
      Publishing Date: May 1
      Summary: Gwendoline, Lady Muir, has seen her share of tragedy, especially since a freak accident took her husband much too soon. Content in a quiet life with friends and family, the young widow has no desire to marry again. But when Hugo, Lord Trentham, scoops her up in his arms after a fall, she feels a sensation that both shocks and emboldens her.
      Hugo never intends to kiss Lady Muir, and frankly, he judges her to be a spoiled, frivolous—if beautiful—aristocrat. He is a gentleman in name only: a soldier whose bravery earned him a title; a merchant’s son who inherited his wealth. He is happiest when working the land, but duty and title now demand that he finds a wife. He doesn’t wish to court Lady Muir, nor have any role in the society games her kind thrives upon. Yet Hugo has never craved a woman more; Gwen’s guileless manner, infectious laugh, and lovely face have ruined him for any other woman. He wants her, but will she have him?

      ~

      Title: Death Comes Silently
      Author: Carolyn Hart
      Genre: mystery
      Publisher: Berkley Hardcover
      Publishing Date: May 2
      Summary: Winter has arrived in Broward’s Rock, South Carolina, and business has slowed for Annie Darling, owner of mystery bookstore Death on Demand. So when the island’s resident writer publishes the latest in her popular mystery series, Annie jumps at the chance to host a book signing, even though it conflicts with her shift at the local charity shop, Better Tomorrow.
      Luckily, fellow volunteer Gretchen Burkholt agrees to sub for her. The signing goes well, but Gretchen interrupts the event multiple times, leaving voice mails about scandalous news she’s dying to share. Even though Gretchen tends to be excitable, Annie heads over to Better Tomorrow, where she finds Gretchen dead on the floor, an axe by her side.
      Annie enlists the help of her husband, Max, to piece together a puzzle involving an overturned kayak, a stolen motorboat, a troubled love affair, and a reckless teenager. And she must tread carefully in her investigation, because a killer is on the loose, and that killer works well in the foggy days of winter…

      ~

      Happy reading!

      Posted in books, Upcoming Books | 0 Comments | Tagged books, genre: adult fiction, genre: dystopian, genre: fiction, genre: history, genre: mystery, genre: romance, genre: young adult, upcoming books
    • Upcoming Books! [14]

      Posted at 7:30 am by Laura, on April 22, 2012

      Title: The Good Father
      Author: Diane Chamberlain
      Genre: fiction
      Publisher: Mira
      Publishing Date: April 24
      Summary: Four years ago, nineteen-year-old Travis Brown made a choice: to raise his newborn daughter on his own. While most of his friends were out partying and meeting girls, Travis was at home, changing diapers and worrying about keeping food on the table. But he’s never regretted his decision. Bella is the light of his life. The reason behind every move he makes. And so far, she is fed. Cared for. Safe.But when Travis loses his construction job and his home, the security he’s worked so hard to create for Bella begins to crumble….
      Then a miracle.
      A job in Raleigh has the power to turn their fortunes around. It has to. But when Travis arrives in Raleigh, there is no job, only an offer to participate in a onetime criminal act that promises quick money and no repercussions.With nowhere else to turn, Travis must make another choice for his daughter’s sake. Even if it means he might lose her.

      ~

      Title: Unraveling
      Author: Elizabeth Norris
      Genre: young adult, paranormal
      Publisher: Balzer + Bray
      Publishing Date: April 24
      Summary: Two days before the start of her junior year, seventeen-year-old Janelle Tenner is hit by a pickup truck and killed—as in blinding light, scenes of her life flashing before her, and then nothing. Except the next thing she knows, she’s opening her eyes to find Ben Michaels, a loner from her high school whom Janelle has never talked to, leaning over her. And even though it isn’t possible, she knows—with every fiber of her being—that Ben has somehow brought her back to life.
      But her revival, and Ben’s possible role in it, is only the first of the puzzles that Janelle must solve. While snooping in her FBI agent father’s files for clues about her accident, she uncovers a clock that seems to be counting down to something—but to what? And when someone close to Janelle is killed, she can no longer deny what’s right in front of her: Everything that’s happened—the accident, the murder, the countdown clock, Ben’s sudden appearance in her life—points to the end of life as she knows it. And as the clock ticks down, she realizes that if she wants to put a stop to the end of the world, she’s going to need to uncover Ben’s secrets—and keep from falling in love with him in the process.

      ~

      Title: The Elizabethans
      Author: A.N. Wilson
      Genre: history, nonfiction
      Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
      Publishing Date: April 24
      Summary: The acknowledged master of the all-encompassing single volume of history demonstrates the profound impact the Elizabethan age has had on contemporary Britain.
      With all the panoramic sweep of his bestselling study of The Victorians, A. N. Wilson relates the exhilarating story of the Elizabethan Age. It was a time of exceptional creativity, wealth creation and political expansion. It was also a period of English history more remarkable than any other for the technicolour personalities of its leading participants.

      ~

      Books to look forward to later in 2012 and in 2013!

      • Laura L. McNeal’s Dollbaby, a debut novel pitched as in the tradition of The Secret Life of Bees and The Help, set in 1964, in which a girl from the Pacific Northwest visits her estranged grandmother in New Orleans and meets Dollbaby, the maid who guides her through the ghosts of her grandmother’s past and the racial turmoil that may tear the family apart
      • Erin Kelly’s third novel The Burning Air, a psychological thriller about the family of a private school headmaster and the child he passes over for a scholarship, who spends years constructing a spectacular revenge plot against the entire family
      • Charles Graeber’s The Good Nurse, the explosive story about serial killing nurse Charles Cullen and the nine hospitals that covered up his crimes over 15 years

      Happy reading!

      Posted in Upcoming Books | 0 Comments | Tagged books, genre: adult fiction, genre: fantasy, genre: fiction, genre: history, genre: nonfiction, genre: young adult, upcoming books
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    • Hello, I’m Laura!

      I'm a bookish bookworm and book hoarder. By day I'm a literary agent, and by night I'm forever rearranging my bookshelves. I could talk your ear off about Gothic literature, and in my past life people thought I'd become a professional musician. I have a fluffy black cat named Rossetti, I love to knit, tea is my drink of choice, British TV is the best, and I'm obsessed with popcorn. Welcome to Scribbles & Wanderlust! Grab your favorite hot beverage and let's chat books!
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