Tag: genre: adult fiction

• Upcoming Books! [33]

  Posted at 6:18 pm by Laura, on September 2, 2012

  

  Title: Wilderness
  Author: Lance Weller
  Genre: historical fiction
  Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
  Publishing Date: September 4
  Summary: Thirty years after the Civil War’s Battle of the Wilderness left him maimed, Abel Truman has found his way to the edge of the continent, the rugged, majestic coast of Washington State, where he lives alone in a driftwood shack with his beloved dog. Wilderness is the story of Abel, now an old and ailing man, and his heroic final journey over the snowbound Olympic Mountains. It’s a quest he has little hope of completing but still must undertake to settle matters of the heart that predate even the horrors of the war.
  As Abel makes his way into the foothills, the violence he endures at the hands of two thugs who are after his dog is crosscut with his memories of the horrors of the war, the friends he lost, and the savagery he took part in and witnessed. And yet, darkness is cut by light, especially in the people who have touched his life-from Jane Dao-Ming Poole, the daughter of murdered Chinese immigrants, to Hypatia, an escaped slave who nursed him back to life, and finally to the unbearable memory of the wife and child he lost as a young man. Haunted by tragedy, loss, and unspeakable brutality, Abel has somehow managed to hold on to his humanity, finding way stations of kindness along his tortured and ultimately redemptive path.

  ~

  Title: NW
  Author: Zadie Smith
  Genre: fiction
  Publisher: Penguin Press
  Publishing Date: September 4
  Summary: This is the story of a city.
  The northwest corner of a city. Here you’ll find guests and hosts, those with power and those without it, people who live somewhere special and others who live nowhere at all.  And many people in between.
  Every city is like this. Cheek-by-jowl living. Separate worlds.
  And then there are the visitations: the rare times a stranger crosses a threshold without permission or warning, causing a disruption in the whole system. Like the April afternoon a woman came to Leah Hanwell’s door, seeking help, disturbing the peace, forcing Leah out of her isolation…

  ~

  Happy reading! I’m really looking forward to this week because I’ll finally begin my graduate classes. Ready to learn more about publishing!

  Posted in Upcoming Books | 0 Comments | Tagged genre: adult fiction, genre: fiction, genre: history, upcoming books

• Book Review: “Shadow of Night” by Deborah Harkness

  Posted at 6:38 pm by Laura, on August 29, 2012

  

  We’re going to try a new formatting from now on for book reviews. Just to provide some more information if you were curious.
  

  ~

  Shadow of Night by Deborah Harkness

  Publisher: Viking Adult
  Genre: fantasy, historical fiction, fiction
  ISBN: 9780670023486
  Goodreads: 4.06
  Rating: ★★★★★

  Picking up from A Discovery of Witches’ cliffhanger ending, Shadow of Night plunges Diana and Matthew into Elizabethan London, a world of spies, subterfuge, and a coterie of Matthew’s old friends, the mysterious School of Night that includes Christopher Marlowe and Walter Raleigh. Here, Diana must locate a witch to tutor her in magic, Matthew is forced to confront a past he thought he had put to rest, and the mystery of Ashmole 782 deepens.

  A whirlwind, mind-bending, fantastical experience of a read! So much is thrown into the second installment of the All Souls Trilogy, and Harkness accomplished it without overwhelming the reader with information and twists. There truly is so much in this novel to work with. First, the characters not only travel to Elizabethan London, but also to France and Czechoslovakia (at the time, the Holy Roman Empire or Bohemia). Names are dropped constantly, and depending on your background you may recognize them: Marlowe, Raleigh, Bacon, Rudolf II. Never fear — Harkness provides an index at the end of the book to inform the reader of historically acknowledged characters and what they were known for to help you understand their role in the novel. Diana even experiences moments of memory tugging, attempting to remember why she recognizes certain names and what they were known for.

  Plenty is revealed about Diana and Matthew’s characters as well. Questions about Diana’s power are answered, and unfold into spectacular and terrifying results. Matthew’s over-protective behavior and sometimes cold, unfeeling actions are explained when they meet his father, Philippe. The history of vampires and witches and daemons, the ways they are connected, and ways Diana and Matthew’s connection could help and harm history and the modern era are explored seamlessly.

  Harkness also provides an equal balance between the search for truth and the romantic relationship. For once, a trilogy does not involve a love triangle. Instead, Matthew and Diana face hardships of their own. Neither fails in loving the other, which is wonderful. They are a mature couple working through the kinks of the relationship as they discover each other, their personal histories, and their roles as vampire and witch in both modern and historical society. It’s absolutely amazing, and incredibly refreshing to read this sort of relationship.

  This novel needs proper attention and care when reading. There is so much depth — with history, with fantasy, with characters’ personal growth — that mindless reading will leave the reader boggled rather than enlightened and entertained. I cannot wait for the third installment! It will be brilliant. This plot continues to build and strengthen with each page, and I have no doubt Harkness will end this with a bang!

  Posted in books, Reviews 2012 | 0 Comments | Tagged book review, books, genre: adult fiction, genre: fantasy, genre: fiction, genre: history, genre: romance, review

• Book Review: “The Meaning of Night” by Michael Cox

  Posted at 5:31 pm by Laura, on July 8, 2012

  

  The Meaning of Night by Michael Cox

  After killing the red-haired man, I took myself off to Quinn’s for an oyster supper.

  So begins the story of Edward Glyver, booklover, scholar, and murderer. A chance discovery convinces Glyver that greatness awaits him. His path to win back what is rightfully his leads him to Evenwood, one of England’s most enchanting country houses, and a woman who will become his obsession.

  I fell in love with the first chapter of this book after reading the summary. It was everything I could ever want in a great novel: Victorian England, gothic setting, murder, mystery, story-telling, love, scandal, the highs and lows of London life — and yet, I could not love this book as much as I wanted to.

  Cox certainly needs to be applauded, though! If Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens were still alive today, I think they would congratulate him on his writing abilities and perfect imitation of literature of the time. Cox wrote this piece as if an editor had discovered a long-lost autobiography, complete with footnotes, snatches of parchment covered in poetry, dreams written down after opium and laudanum intake, and of course, the ability to tell a story in “too many words.” This could certainly have been a serial story if such things still existed today.

  However, as brilliant as the writing is and the thorough research put into this piece, I was saddened by my thoughts as I read it. I kept thinking, when will this end? Just get to the point. Collins and Dickens always had surprises and plot twists and sidebars to keep the readers entertained during the major plot, but Cox seemed to lack this. Everything connected together almost too well. After a while I became less and less sympathetic towards Edward Glyver/Glapthorn (his name changes frequently depending on whom he speaks with) and his mission.

  My favorite moments were moments of Edward’s vulnerability: his time in Evenwood. Every chapter with him there brings about a certain humanity. It’s more than his love for Emily Carteret, it’s more than his revenge on Daunt, and it’s more than his personal connection to the estate. Something about it makes him more human, more likeable, and more vulnerable. I looked forward to those chapters and relished it — sadly, there weren’t enough of them.

  I would recommend this book to history buffs and hardcore Dickens fans, as it contains everything one would love. Sadly, for me, I may have just had extremely high expectations.

  Rating: ★★
  Goodreads: 3.64

  Posted in books, Reviews 2012 | 0 Comments | Tagged book review, books, genre: adult fiction, genre: fiction, genre: gothic, goodreads, review

• Book Review: “Romancing Miss Brontë” by Juliet Gael

  Posted at 11:02 pm by Laura, on June 29, 2012

  

  Romancing Miss Brontë by Juliet Gael

  During the two years that she studied in Brussels, Charlotte had a taste of life’s splendors—travel, literature, and art. Now, back home in the Yorkshire moors, duty-bound to a blind father and an alcoholic brother, an ambitious Charlotte refuses to sink into hopelessness. With her sisters, Emily and Anne, Charlotte conceives a plan to earn money and pursue a dream: The Brontës will publish. In childhood the Brontë children created fantastical imaginary worlds; now the sisters craft novels quite unlike anything written before. Transforming her loneliness and personal sorrow into a triumph of literary art, Charlotte pens her 1847 masterpiece, Jane Eyre.

  Charlotte’s novel becomes an overwhelming literary success, catapulting the shy and awkward young woman into the spotlight of London’s fashionable literary scene—and into the arms of her new publisher, George Smith, an irresistibly handsome young man whose interest in his fiercely intelligent and spirited new author seems to go beyond professional duty. But just as life begins to hold new promise, unspeakable tragedy descends on the Brontë household, throwing London and George into the background and leaving Charlotte to fear that the only romance she will ever find is at the tip of her pen.

  But another man waits in the Brontës’ Haworth parsonage—the quiet but determined curate Arthur Nicholls. After secretly pining for Charlotte since he first came to work for her father, Arthur suddenly reveals his heart to her.

  Usually when an author takes liberties to devise a fictional account of another’s life, it’s poorly written, cheesy, and extremely wild and romantic in its imaginings. Sometimes the truth is twisted to fit the author’s wish for a better outcome. This happens constantly with Jane Austen, but so far I’ve read two books (including this one) that portray Charlotte Brontë as true to life as possible based on literary and academic scholarship (the other: Jude Morgan’s Charlotte and Emily), no frills added, and so strikingly similar to one another and all the research that, to a fan and Brontë scholar, must speak the truth.

  And for that, I have to say this is one of my favorite books.

  Charlotte led such a hard life and I find her and the family utterly fascinating. They each desired love and affection, passions that would throw them off their feet, and yet also desired to be reclusive and alone. This duality speaks to me as an individual – and for someone who may not feel the same, Gael did an excellent job describing Charlotte’s dilemmas. Not a moment of the book was rushed, which is such a blessing. This spans across a decade of Charlotte’s life, and everyone who shaped her eventually shaped her novels. The influence is key to every moment of her life, and any subject – such as her crush on her publisher, the way she snubbed the curate and later fell in love, the way she portrayed herself to various friends in her letters – was given its proper justice and detail.

  Academic and literary truth aside, it was still vastly entertaining! We learn more about Emily, Anne, and Branwell; the insecurities Charlotte felt about her appearance; the overbearing clergyman father; the duties of the curate Arthur; the stardom the “Bell brothers” faced and who they met – far more interesting than reading a biographical description! The language is beautiful as well, and truly mimics the way Charlotte wrote in her letters. Each character had a distinct personality without exaggeration, and despite knowing how everyone’s story ended, I was anxious to see how it would be written. An author that tackles a topic wherein the reader already knows the ending is certainly an author to admire – the fact Gael kept me on the edge of my seat deserves an award!

  Finally, I’m so glad Gael gave life and breath to Arthur. She had little information to work from, but what information she had were derived from first-hand accounts recorded by Charlotte and Arthur’s friends and neighbors. The language of the time would suggest criticism or flattery, and I think Gael did a wonderful job of shaping just the right kind of man he must have been. He was no random, ordinary man who waltzed into the home and asked for her hand in marriage; no, he was there throughout all  of her joys and sorrows, on the edge, waiting for the perfect moment, and gave her the happiest last few months of her life.

  Fantastic book. Utterly beautiful.

  Rating: ★★★★★ of 5
  Goodreads: 3.81

  Posted in books, Reviews 2012 | 0 Comments | Tagged authors, book review, books, genre: adult fiction, genre: classics, genre: fiction, genre: history, history, review

• 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! [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

• Book Review: “Faithful Place” by Tana French

  Posted at 4:23 pm by Laura, on June 3, 2012

  

  Faithful Place by Tana French

  Back in 1985, Frank Mackey was nineteen, growing up poor in Dublin’s inner city, and living crammed into a small flat with his family on Faithful Place. But he had his sights set on a lot more. He and Rosie Daly were all ready to run away to London together, get married, get good jobs, break away from factory work and poverty and their old lives.

  But on the winter night when they were supposed to leave, Rosie didn’t show. Frank took it for granted that she’d dumped him-probably because of his alcoholic father, nutcase mother, and generally dysfunctional family. He never went home again.

  Neither did Rosie. Everyone thought she had gone to England on her own and was over there living a shiny new life. Then, twenty-two years later, Rosie’s suitcase shows up behind a fireplace in a derelict house on Faithful Place, and Frank is going home whether he likes it or not.

  Getting sucked in is a lot easier than getting out again. Frank finds himself straight back in the dark tangle of relationships he left behind. The cops working the case want him out of the way, in case loyalty to his family and community makes him a liability. Faithful Place wants him out because he’s a detective now, and the Place has never liked cops. Frank just wants to find out what happened to Rosie Daly-and he’s willing to do whatever it takes, to himself or anyone else, to get the job done.

  This third installment of the Dublin Murder series was better than the first book (In the Woods) and not as fantastic as the second book (The Likeness). It is a mixture of the two, with personal dilemmas like the first and loads of intrigue and mystery like the second. Faithful Place is first and foremost a love story, discovering the past and revealing mysterious incidents through vengeance. Frank Mackey is quite the charmer, and stops at nothing to discover what happened to his old girlfriend (and later, his brother).

  Rather than taking place in offices and solving the mystery through crime lab results and scientific data, Frank discovers everything “old school.” He’s always at the scene of the crime, back home, or visiting old friends’ places and having multiple conversations with others. At first the conversations seemed to drag – I wondered what the point was for all the dialogue – but once it seemed to be too much, Frank (and the reader) could immediately make connections to other conversations and incidents from the past. Tana French was very clever in her subtle hints and twists in the plot.

  What was incredibly fascinating was the internal switch in my mental accent. The voice reading in my head was no longer a midwestern American, but an Irish voice that I’m sure was a terrible mimicry of a true Dublin accent. The slang, phrasing, and deliberate misspellings in the dialogue begged to be read with the accent in mind! It certainly became entertaining, and easier to read once I got the hang of it.

  Filled with intrigue, old-fashioned word-of-mouth mystery-solving, folklore, and Irish homeliness, I would recommend this book to anyone who deeply enjoyed The Likeness (which Frank makes repeated appearances in) or wants a good heartbreaking love story that ended in murder. The relationships between the characters are entertaining, the conversations and class divides interesting, and the atmosphere intoxicating.

  Rating: ★★★★★
  Goodreads: 3.89 of 5

  Posted in books, Reviews 2012 | 0 Comments | Tagged book review, books, genre: adult fiction, genre: fiction, genre: mystery, goodreads, review

• 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

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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 travel, tea is my drink of choice, British TV is the best, and I'm always down for chips-and-queso nights. Welcome to Scribbles & Wanderlust! Grab your favorite hot beverage and let's chat books!

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