Tag: genre: fiction

• Book Review: “Tiger Lily” by Jodi Lynn Anderson

  Posted at 9:26 pm by Laura, on August 9, 2012

  

  Tiger Lily by Jodi Lynn Anderson

  Fifteen-year-old Tiger Lily doesn’t believe in love stories or happy endings. Then she meets the alluring teenage Peter Pan in the forbidden woods of Neverland and immediately falls under his spell.

  Peter is unlike anyone she’s ever known. Impetuous and brave, he both scares and enthralls her. As the leader of the Lost Boys, the most fearsome of Neverland’s inhabitants, Peter is an unthinkable match for Tiger Lily. Soon, she is risking everything–her family, her future–to be with him. When she is faced with marriage to a terrible man in her own tribe, she must choose between the life she’s always known and running away to an uncertain future with Peter.

  With enemies threatening to tear them apart, the lovers seem doomed. But it’s the arrival of Wendy Darling, an English girl who’s everything Tiger Lily is not, that leads Tiger Lily to discover that the most dangerous enemies can live inside even the most loyal and loving heart.

  Before Wendy, there was Tiger Lily. This lovely tale is told to the reader through Tink’s observations. Tink is witty, honest, and such a fiery and perceptive sprite who cares far more about the well-being of her dear Tiger Lily than her status as near-bug. Tink leaves her family in the swamps to observe this quiet, stone-like girl and her growing relationship with the forbidden Pan and his lost boys.

  Such a neat twist to the original story! Tinker Bell is not the jealous fairy we’ve all known, Tiger Lily isn’t unintelligent, Hook isn’t mad but is certainly ill, Smee isn’t a blubbering idiot but rather a man with an agenda, and Wendy is the epitome of unwanted colonization.

  It’s an interesting young adult book with so many adult concepts packed within. Wendy and, prior to her arrival, Phillip, demonstrate the English’s desire to colonize natives of a new land. Phillip’s talk of religion and Wendy’s need to show the “proper” gender roles and take the boys home to a “safe” environment all echo every colonization story and history. Tiger Lily’s camp’s response fits the typical swaying and dissent natives would react towards colonizers. And then, of course, there’s the love story: the concept of various kinds of love, who is “right” for whom, the first love not always the best love. Tiger Lily and Peter Pan love one another, without really knowing what love is and what they want from each other. It’s not until Wendy arrives that both truly begin to understand that love comes in many forms for many reasons.

  Apart from this analytical outlook and late night ramblings, I really did enjoy this. I’d highly recommend it to anyone who wants to read twists on fairy tales and twists on classic literature (without it destroying the original story). Fun thing to note: Tink’s description of fairies evolving from dragon flies left such a deep image in my mind that I found it endearing and enchanting all at once!

  Rating: ★★★★
  Goodreads: 4.05

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

• Upcoming Books! [28]

  Posted at 12:00 pm by Laura, on July 29, 2012

  

  Hello all! You may have noticed that I’m back from my vacation, as I was able to publish some book reviews. However, the progress of this blog from hiatus back to full news status will take a few more weeks. This coming week I’m preparing my move out east, and then it’ll be a bit before I have internet access full-time again. Graduate school and my whole new life is coming so quickly!

  Meanwhile, I will do my best to publish Upcoming Books and Book Reviews until I’m back in the full swing of things. Thank you for your patience, and for following this blog!

  ~

  Title: The Light Between Oceans
  Author: M.L. Stedman
  Genre: historical fiction
  Publisher: Scribner
  Publishing Date: July 31
  Summary: In 1918, after four harrowing years on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia to take a job as the lighthouse keeper on remote Janus Rock. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes only four times a year and shore leaves are granted every other year at best, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel. Three years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel is tending the grave of her newly lost infant when she hears a baby’s cries on the wind. A boat has washed up on shore carrying a dead man and a living baby. Tom, whose records as a lighthouse keeper are meticulous and whose moral principles have withstood a horrific war, wants to report the dead man and the infant immediately. But Isabel has taken the tiny baby to her breast. Against Tom’s judgment, they claim the child as their own and name her Lucy, but a rift begins to grow between them. When Lucy is two, Tom and Isabel return to the mainland and are reminded that there are other people in the world…and one of them is desperate to find her lost baby.

  ~

  Title: The Brontës: Wild Genius on the Moors: The Story of Three Sisters
  Author: Juliet Barker
  Genre: nonfiction
  Publisher: Pegasus Books
  Publishing Date: August 1
  Summary: In a revised and updated edition, the real story of the Brontë sisters, by distinguished scholar and historian Juliet Barker.
  The story of the tragic Brontë family is familiar to everyone: we all know about the half-mad, repressive father, the drunken, drug-addicted wastrel of a brother, wildly romantic Emily, unrequited Anne, and “poor Charlotte.” Or do we? These stereotypes of the popular imagination are precisely that—imaginary—created by amateur biographers like Elizabeth Gaskell who were primarily novelists and were attracted by the tale of an apparently doomed family of genius.
  Juliet Barker’s landmark book is the first definitive history of the Brontës. It demolishes the myths, yet provides startling new information that is just as compelling—but true. Based on firsthand research among all the Brontë manuscripts and among contemporary historical documents never before used by Brontë biographers, this book is both scholarly and compulsively readable.
  The Brontës is a revolutionary picture of the world’s favorite literary family.

  Beyond beyond BEYOND excited for this one!!! If I was working on a literature PhD, it would be Brontë studies! To see Barker’s ranking of the novels, see this link.

  Posted in Upcoming Books | 2 Comments | Tagged genre: fiction, genre: history, genre: nonfiction, upcoming books

• Book Review: “The Mermaid” by Carolyn Turgeon

  Posted at 10:57 am by Laura, on July 26, 2012

  

  The Mermaid: A Twist on the Classic Tale by Carolyn Turgeon

  Princess Margrethe has been hidden away while her kingdom is at war. One gloomy, windswept morning, as she stands in a convent garden overlooking the icy sea, she witnesses a miracle: a glittering mermaid emerging from the waves, a nearly drowned man in her arms. By the time Margrethe reaches the shore, the mermaid has disappeared into the sea. As Margrethe nurses the handsome stranger back to health, she learns that not only is he a prince, he is also the son of her father’s greatest rival. Sure that the mermaid brought this man to her for a reason, Margrethe devises a plan to bring peace to her kingdom.

  Meanwhile, the mermaid princess Lenia longs to return to the human man she carried to safety. She is willing to trade her home, her voice, and even her health for legs and the chance to win his heart…

  I had seen so many poor and mediocre reviews for this book, but the cover and the fairy twist kept calling to me. I’ve read Yolen’s “Briar Rose” and Murphy’s “Hansel and Gretel” and really enjoyed those, so I thought I’d give Turgeon a try.

  If I had not been on vacation, I may not have had patience for this book. Simple writing – almost read like a parent telling a bedtime story to a child. The characters were flawed in that they only had one goal in mind, and the main emotions that consumed them were love and jealousy. Margarethe was consumed with love for Prince Christopher (without even truly knowing him at all) and intense jealousy towards Lenia’s mermaid form; Lenia was consumed with love for Christopher (again, without truly knowing him) and jealous of Margarethe’s human form; and Christopher was an arrogant charmer (this is a euphemism for a more blunt and crude word) with no loving qualities whatsoever.

  And yet, I continued reading. It was a dark tale, with vastly different settings and worlds, surrounded with politics, mythology, and religion. I wanted to know the twist, what made this different from Anderson’s (and Disney’s) Little Mermaid. And boy, every difference was a painful one, and quite the shocker. Instead of losing her voice, Lenia loses her tongue. Sacrifices are made, on land and in the sea, for every action Lenia and Margrethe make towards their competition for the prince’s affections. It is not a happy ending, but if one were to experience the story as if it were a legend, then the happier version we know and love could easily be conceivable. We could visualize how the story transformed from “what really happened” to “what I wish had happened.” It was an interesting concept.

  Rating: ★★★
  Goodreads: 3.5

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

• Upcoming Books! [25]

  Posted at 10:45 am by Laura, on July 8, 2012

  

  I will be away the following two Sundays, so there will be no updates for Upcoming Books (or book reviews and publishing news). I have three books here that will be published Tuesday, and one in particular later this month simply because I adore this author. Yes. I can have some bias here!

  ~

  Title: The Absolutist
  Author: John Boyne
  Genre: historical fiction
  Publisher: Other Press
  Publishing Date: July 10
  Summary: It is September 1919: twenty-one-year-old Tristan Sadler takes a train from London to Norwich to deliver a package of letters to the sister of Will Bancroft, the man he fought alongside during the Great War.
  But the letters are not the real reason for Tristan’s visit. He can no longer keep a secret and has finally found the courage to unburden himself of it. As Tristan recounts the horrific details of what to him became a senseless war, he also speaks of his friendship with Will–from their first meeting on the training grounds at Aldershot to their farewell in the trenches of northern France. The intensity of their bond brought Tristan happiness and self-discovery as well as confusion and unbearable pain.

  ~

  Title: Lies, Knives, and Girls in Red Dresses
  Author: Ron Koertge
  Genre: young adult, fairy tales, short stories
  Publisher: Candlewick Press
  Publishing Date: July 10
  Summary: Once upon a time, there was a strung-out match girl who sold CDs to stoners. Twelve impetuous sisters escaped King Daddy’s clutches to jiggle and cavort and wear out their shoes. A fickle Thumbelina searched for a tiny husband, leaving bodies in her wake. And Little Red Riding Hood confessed that she kind of wanted to know what it’s like to be swallowed whole. From bloodied and blinded stepsisters (they were duped) to a chopped-off finger flying into a heroine’s cleavage, this is fairy tale world turned upside down. Ron Koertge knows what really happened to all those wolves and maidens, ogres and orphans, kings and piglets, and he knows about the Ever After. So come closer
  – he wants to whisper in your ear.

  ~

  Title: Playing With Matches
  Author: Carolyn Wall
  Genre:  fiction
  Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
  Publishing Date: July 10
  Summary: Growing up in False River, Mississippi, Clea Shine learned early that a small town is no place for big secrets. Having fled years ago in the wake of a tragedy and now settled with a family of her own, she faces a turning point in her marriage and seeks refuge in the one place she vowed never to return.
  Clea’s homecoming is bittersweet. Reunited with Jerusha Lovemore, the kindly neighbor who raised her, Clea gains a sense of love and comfort, but still cannot escape the ghosts of her past: the abandonment by her disreputable mother, her constant search for belonging, the truth behind that fateful night from long ago. Once outspoken and impulsive, Clea now seeks only redemption and peace of mind. And as a hurricane threatens to hit False River, everything she has tried to forget may finally be exposed once and for all.

  ~

  Title: Broken Harbor
  Author: Tana French
  Genre: mystery
  Publisher: Penguin Group
  Publishing Date: July 24
  Summary: “Scorcher” Kennedy, the brash cop from Tana French’s bestselling Faithful Place, plays by the book and plays hard. That’s what’s made him the Murder squad’s top detective—and that’s what puts the biggest case of the year into his hands.
  On one of the half-built, half-abandoned “luxury” developments that litter Ireland, Patrick Spain and his two young children are dead. His wife, Jenny, is in intensive care.
  At first, Scorcher and his rookie partner, Richie, think it’s going to be an easy solve. But too many small things can’t be explained. The half dozen baby monitors, their cameras pointing at holes smashed in the Spains’ walls. The files erased from the Spains’ computer. The story Jenny told her sister about a shadowy intruder who was slipping past all the locks.
  And Broken Harbor holds memories for Scorcher. Seeing the case on the news sends his sister Dina off the rails again, and she’s resurrecting something that Scorcher thought he had tightly under control: what happened to their family one summer at Broken Harbor, back when they were children.

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

• Upcoming Books! [24]

  Posted at 9:30 am by Laura, on July 2, 2012

  

  Apologies for the late post! Good thing they come out on Tuesdays, yeah?

  ~

  Title: Gold
  Author: Chris Cleave
  Genre: fiction
  Publisher: Simon & Schuster
  Publishing Date: July 3
  Summary: Gold is the story of Zoe and Kate, world-class athletes who have been friends and rivals since their first day of Elite training. They’ve loved, fought, betrayed, forgiven, consoled, gloried, and grown up together. Now on the eve of London 2012, their last Olympics, both women will be tested to their physical and emotional limits. They must confront each other and their own mortality to decide, when lives are at stake: What would you sacrifice for the people you love, if it meant giving up the thing that was most important to you in the world?

  ~

  Title: Thomas Becket: Warrior, Priest, Rebel
  Author: John Guy
  Genre: biography
  Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
  Publishing Date: July 3
  Summary: Becket’s life story has been often told but never so incisively reexamined and vividly rendered as it is in John Guy’s hands. The son of middle-class Norman parents, Becket rose against all odds to become the second most powerful man in England. As King Henry II’s chancellor, Becket charmed potentates and popes, tamed overmighty barons, and even personally led knights into battle. After his royal patron elevated him to archbishop of Canterbury in 1162, however, Becket clashed with the King. Forced to choose between fealty to the crown and the values of his faith, he repeatedly challenged Henry’s authority to bring the church to heel. Drawing on the full panoply of medieval sources, Guy sheds new light on the relationship between the two men, separates truth from centuries of mythmaking, and casts doubt on the long-held assumption that the headstrong rivals were once close friends. He also provides the fullest accounting yet for Becket’s seemingly radical transformation from worldly bureaucrat to devout man of God.

  ~

  Title: Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone
  Author: Kat Rosenfield
  Genre: young adult
  Publisher: Dutton Juvenile
  Publishing Date: July 5
  Summary: Becca has always longed to break free from her small, backwater hometown. But the discovery of an unidentified dead girl on the side of a dirt road sends the town–and Becca–into a tailspin. Unable to make sense of the violence of the outside world creeping into her backyard, Becca finds herself retreating inward, paralyzed from moving forward for the first time in her life.
  Short chapters detailing the last days of Amelia Anne Richardson’s life are intercut with Becca’s own summer as the parallel stories of two young women struggling with self-identity and relationships on the edge twist the reader closer and closer to the truth about Amelia’s death.

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

• 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! [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

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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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