genre: young adult | Scribbles & Wanderlust | Page 21

Tag: genre: young adult
- 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
- 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
- Book Review: “Matched” by Ally Condie
  
  Posted at 9:41 am by Laura, on June 19, 2012
  
  Matched by Ally Condie
  
  Cassia has always trusted the Society to make the right choices for her: what to read, what to watch, what to believe. So when Xander’s face appears on-screen at her Matching ceremony, Cassia knows with complete certainty that he is her ideal mate… until she sees Ky Markham’s face flash for an instant before the screen fades to black.
  
  The Society tells her it’s a glitch, a rare malfunction, and that she should focus on the happy life she’s destined to lead with Xander. But Cassia can’t stop thinking about Ky, and as they slowly fall in love, Cassia begins to doubt the Society’s infallibility and is faced with an impossible choice: between Xander and Ky, between the only life she’s known and a path that no one else has dared to follow.
  
  Once again, do not be led astray by the summary! It is a love story, certainly, but it’s within a social system like that of Huxley’s Brave New World. Everything from minimal information for citizens, the color of uniforms to denote class and position, and little pills that will aid or hinder your functioning. Unlike Brave New World, where everything is based on pleasure, the Society in Matched is on perfection: the perfect vocation, the perfect age for death, the perfect body size and calorie intake, the perfect person to Match with (or even the option to be the perfect Single). It’s down to an art, and a fascinating one at that, but to what cost?
  
  It’s clear that Cassia has never come across a glitch in the Society’s well-oiled machine of a system, because she was perfectly content with her situation and surroundings prior to reading a microcard. This, as well as her grandfather’s heavy hints at a better, freer life filled with choices, causes her to question everything. Cassia becomes a skeptic, allowing the reader to became wary and anxious along with her.
  
  The Society is incredibly fascinating! A part of me wondered what it would be like to live in such a place. It seemed so…well, perfect, and wonderful. Here, you don’t have to know loads of information about random stuff. If you’re not math-inclined, for example, don’t worry about it – someone else will take care of everything. If you can’t remember details of events in history, don’t worry – you only need to know one hundred lessons. But then the heartbreaking things happen: someone else chose which one hundred songs, poems, books, and lessons; someone else chooses your vocation based on your talents rather than your interests. Would you like to know more about the poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson? There’s no way to find out – because his works did not make it to the One Hundred Poems and knowing his name alone would cause suspicion and incite an Infraction.
  
  You cannot be curious in this society. You cannot be a creator. You can only take what you’re given and become a doer. It’s these glitches that cause Cassia to rebel, to question everything, and to wonder who she would really fall in love with if given the choice.
  
  Rating: ★★★★★ of 5
  Goodreads: 3.79 of 5
  
  Posted in books, Reviews 2012 | 0 Comments | Tagged book review, books, genre: dystopian, genre: young adult, goodreads, review
- 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
- Book Review: “Changeling” by Philippa Gregory
  
  Posted at 9:45 pm by Laura, on June 10, 2012
  
  Changeling by Philippa Gregory
  
  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.
  
  Don’t let the summary fool you! This first book is more of an adventure than a love story. Two seemingly demon-related mysteries plague medieval Italy and Luca is on a mission to discover the truth and either rid the world of the Devil or find (early) scientific reason for the phenomena. Each character was distinctive and an absolute joy to read! Luca’s level-headed reason, Freize’s comical and loving commentary, Ishraq’s fierce and loyal defense, and Isolde’s quiet yet passionate demeanor.
  
  Luca and Isolde experience two adventures together in this first book: witchcraft mystery and accusations, and later a werewolf accusation in a nearby village. Nothing truly surprised me in this book, bits of it were predictable, but I thoroughly enjoyed the reasoning behind the justice and truth in the 1400s mindset. God is first for these people. He is their religion, their politics, their lifestyle. Any difference in beliefs or lifestyle calls into question heresy or, as the Pope is fearing, the end of the world, the coming of the Devil himself.
  
  Complete with chapter drawings and maps, this young adult adventure was a thrill to read and an absolute joy for my day!
  
  Rating: ★★★★ of 5
  Goodreads: 3.46 of 5
  
  Posted in books, Reviews 2012 | 0 Comments | Tagged book review, books, genre: history, genre: young adult, goodreads, review
- 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
- Book Review: “Insurgent” by Veronica Roth
  
  Posted at 6:55 pm by Laura, on June 9, 2012
  
  Insurgent by Veronica Roth
  
  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.
  
  I really wanted to love this second installment of Roth’s “Divergent” trilogy, but I couldn’t. In fact, so much of the action and muddled motivations behind characters’ responses could have been cut from the story entirely. The end of the book — heck, the last ten pages — could have been placed in the first book!
  
  My initial reactions started on the very first page: Tris’s guilt over the death of Will. I could not for the life of me remember Will or his significance in Tris’s life. I remember Al and Christina because they had very distinct personalities and importance in the first book. Understandably, Tris is bothered by this “friend” she has killed, and her character seems to stumble along between stability and instability throughout the rest of the book. If Roth was shooting for PTSD or shock from war and gunshots, it was weak and poorly written. While Collins’s “Mockingjay” accurately portrayed PTSD and thoroughly explained the motivations and thought process behind Katniss’s decisions, not once did I see a good, plausible explanation for Tris. Her distrust of Tobias (and his with her) was weak, whiny, and difficult to understand. The things they fought over did not have any sort of basis — it was as if Roth wanted to create a tension between these two because it’s expected in a second installment of a trilogy.
  
  Which, truthfully, there doesn’t need to be tension between the romantic couple in second installments! Everything else that’s going on around them — politics, economics, familial issues — is enough to cause tension for the reader. I applaud Roth for not creating a love triangle, but I have to shake my head at the weak arguments between Tobias and Tris, the constant back-and-forth over extremely petty issues.
  
  Another bit that I was let down or bothered by was all the effort to kill others or protect others for a piece of information no one knew anything about! It was irksome to keep reading about how the characters don’t know “what’s beyond the fence” or why “Divergents are dangerous” or even what a Divergent was, but they were going to fight for or protect this mysterious information because it would either strengthen or destroy this society. I knew from the previous book that a Divergent is an individual whose test does not conclusively say in which faction they belong — that answers include two and sometimes three factions. To the reader, all I can think is pshh, big deal. Yet all the characters were nervous and never fully explained why it scared them. It wasn’t until the very end of this novel that we finally find out what is beyond the fence, why these people are contained within the fence, and what being a Divergent means.
  
  All of the alliance switches, unexplained actions, loads of violence, Tris’s “selfless” and “selfish” acts, indistinguishable characters that I lacked any sort of attachment to or could differentiate from, built up into this difficult and rather sloppy second book. I expected so much more from Roth, since I truly enjoyed Divergent. To have this dystopian universe and create characters that are distinguishable and meaningful to the main character and the reader, the author should spend more time developing the world and properly understanding her own characters and plotline. This felt like a writing exercise gone awry. The last few chapters should have belonged in the first book instead.
  
  I’m curious to see the third installment now.
  
  Rating: ★★ of 5
  Goodreads: 4.39 of 5
  
  Posted in books, Reviews 2012 | 0 Comments | Tagged book review, books, genre: dystopian, genre: young adult, goodreads, review
- BEA ’12: Diversity Rules YA Buzz Panel
  
  Posted at 6:12 pm by Laura, on June 7, 2012
  
  Book Expo America 2012: Diversity Rules at YA Editors’ Buzz Panel – Publisher’s Weekly – Carolyn Juris
  
  For those of you interested in the goings-on of the BEA 2012, here’s an article that tackles the big dystopia quesiton: do we really need another trilogy? Yes.
  
  …the [young adult] genre has plenty of room for dystopias, realistic fiction, thrillers—provided they present authentic teenage voices that readers can relate to.
  
  …It’s the authentic teenage voice, [Karre] adds, that makes a novel successful, no matter the subject. “If the story lacks the teenage voice, it lacks life,” Karre said. “Whether you set a novel in Dubuque or District 12, there’s a universal teenager at the core of every YA novel.”
  
  I think this is very true. YA goes through trends — a few years ago, it was all about vampires and werewolves. Now it’s mostly dystopias/post-apocalyptic, which taps into the political climate across the world today. No matter what trend the YA fiction follows, it should still speak to the teenager (or adult, truly) in the midst of discovering their identity.
  
  Posted in books, Link | 0 Comments | Tagged books, genre: dystopian, genre: young adult, magazine, news
- 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
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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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