Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #317
by muffy
Savvy, in-the-know readers are already queuing up for Chris Pavone's The Expats * *, coming out in March.
When her husband Dexter tells her they are relocating to Luxembourg for his new job as security consultant for an international bank, Kate is happy to hand in her notice, pack up her DC house, her young sons, and looks forward to living the expat life with weekends in Paris and skiing in the Alps. Once they are settled, things begin to unravel as Dexter's secrecy (not even the name of his employer), his frequent trips abroad (destinations unknown), and the suspiciously curious American couple who is determined to befriend them, trigger a trained response in Kate that uncovers layers of deceit and threatens to expose her own well-guarded secret.
In this "intricate, riveting and surprising" debut thriller, no one is who they seem to be, and no one is to be trusted, especially the guys in white hats. Twisty, suspenseful and downright tricky, with 50-million euros (not to mention lives and limbs) at stake, watch your steps!
"Standing on the shoulders of such giants as Robert Littell, Gayle Lynds, Eric Ambler, Helen MacInnes, and Daniel Silva, first-time novelist Pavone displays the best characteristics of the form and will earn a faithful and yearning readership."
* * = starred reviews
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #316
by muffy
Debut novelist Tupelo Hassman's Girlchild * will not fail to elicit strong emotions in the reader. You will feel pain, rage, sadness, fear, and despair but it is the small measures of joy, love, and indestructible sense of optimism that will bear you through. In the meantime, you will fall in love with our young narrator, the "girlchild" Rory Dawn - "Brash, sassy, vulnerable, wise, and terrified".
Calle de las Flores, a trailer park of dilapidated double-wides and single-wides at the outskirts of Reno is home to three generations of Hendrixes. Grandma Shirley Rose had 4 babies before she turned 21. Mama, a hard-luck bartender didn't fare much better. The men are mostly absent. The ones that drift in and out are likely predators. Rory Dawn had been told that she is sure to follow the road to whoredom, but she is determined to prove the county and her own family wrong.
From diary entries, social workers' reports, half-recalled memories, arrest records, family lore, Supreme Court opinions, and her grandmother's letters, Rory crafts a devastating collage that shows us her world even as she searches for the way out of it. Her only compass - a well-used copy of the Girl Scouts Handbook that dispenses surreal advice like: The Right Use of Your Body; Finding Your Way When Lost.
"A heart-stopping and original debut". Beautifully written, you will find yourself lingering to admire the powerful language, keen insight and clever page-layouts. Not an easy book to read but one you are not likely to forget. Readalike to National Book Award winner Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward.
* = starred review
Blog Post
Nebula Award Nominees announced
by lucroe
The Nebula Awards are one of several prestigious prizes for writing granted within the scifi/fantasy genre. They are nominated by members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc. and this is the 47th year in doing so. Award winners will be announced on May 19th. Categories of awards include best adult novel as well as one for best young adult scifi/fantasy novel.
The nominees for best adult novel are:
Among Others, Jo Walton
Embassytown, China Miéville
Firebird, Jack McDevitt
God’s War, Kameron Hurley
Mechanique, Genevieve Valentine
Kingdom of Gods, N.K. Jemisin
The nominees for best young adult novel are:
Akata Witch, Nnedi Okorafor
Chime, Franny Billingsley
Daughter of Smoke and Bone, Laini Taylor
Everybody Sees the Ants, A.S. King
Boy at the End of the World, Greg van Eekhout
The Freedom Maze, Delia Sherman
Girl of Fire and Thorns, Rae Carson
Ultraviolet, R.J. Anderson
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #315
by muffy
From Detroit native Saladin Ahmed, a finalist for the Nebula and Campbell Awards, comes one of this year's most anticipated debuts:Throne of the Crescent Moon * * *, "a fantasy adventure with all the magic of The Arabian Nights".
The Crescent Moon Kingdoms, home to jinns and ghouls, holy warriors and heretics, are in the grip of a power struggle between the iron-fisted Khalif and the mysterious master thief known as the Falcon Prince. At the same time, a series of brutal supernatural murders strikes fear in the hearts of the citizens of the great city of Dhamsawaat. It is up to a handful of heroes to learn the truth behind these killings.
Chief among them, Doctor Adoulla Makhslood, an aged and weary ghoul (ghul) hunter drawn out of retirement by the murders. Raseed bas Raseed, Adoulla's young assistant, a holy warrior whose prowess is matched only by his piety, that is until he crosses paths with the lion-shaped tribeswoman Zamia Badawi who lives to avenge her father's death.
As these warriors race against time to save the life of a vicious despot, they discover a far more sinister plot that would spell doom and threatens to turn Dhamsawaat and the world itself, into a blood-soaked ruin.
~ "Ahmed's debut masterfully paints a world both bright and terrible... Arab-influenced setting is full of vibrant description, characters, and religious expressions that will delight readers weary of pseudo-European epics."
~ "An arresting, sumptuous and thoroughly satisfying debut (of a projected trilogy)."
* * * = Starred reviews
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #314
by muffy
The Spy Who Jumped Off the Screen * has it all.
- Ty Hunter: A Hollywood leading man, a soldier and a spy "in the tradition of James Bond and Jason Bourne" - a wounded hero who is tough, smart and devilishly sexy.
- Ian Santel and Philip Frost: An enigmatic billionaire and his nefarious protege, two supremely sophisticated adversaries.
- Isabella Cavill: An alluring jewelry designer closely tied to these men.
- A global catastrophe hanging in the balance - in the form of three Soviet nuclear warheads.
And then, there is the non-stop action, intrigue, suspense, surprises, glamor and romance. Never mind that "wordiness, brand name-dropping, and sometimes trite dialog" could at times, test one's patience.
This worthy thriller also boasts something quite rare - an introduction by President Bill Clinton who just happened to be the author Thomas (Tommy) Caplan's lifelong friend since their freshman days at Georgetown, and whose "good lines and clever retorts" made it into Mr. Clinton's presidential inaugural addresses.
An obvious readalike to Ian Fleming. Readers familiar with Trevanian's Shibumi (1979) featuring the international assassin Nicholaï Hel and Barry Eisler's John Rain series might find Ty Hunter a new protagonist-to-watch in hopefully, a new series.
* = starred review
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #313
by muffy
Rod Rees' highly imaginative The Demi-Monde : Winter * * kicks off a "brilliant, high concept series that blends science fiction and thriller, steampunk and dystopian vision. "
Demi-Monde, a computer-simulated military training virtual world is dominated by history’s most ruthless and bloodthirsty psychopaths—from Holocaust architect Reinhard Heydrich to Tomas de Torquemada, the Spanish Inquisition’s pitiless torturer, to Stalin’s bloodthirsty right-hand man/monster, the infamous Lavrentiy Beria.
When the U.S. President's daughter, Norma Williams, becomes trapped in the Demi-Monde, a young jazz singer named Ella Thomas accepts the assignment to enter the computer-generated world to rescue her. But when Ella stumbles upon a plot to merge the real world with the Demi-Monde, her mission suddenly expands from a simple retrieval to the survival of the real world.
Fans of The Matrix; Philip Jose Farmer's classic Riverworld series; and Tad William's Otherland series will find this "elegantly constructed, skillfully written" page-turner irresistible. As we move into the second week in February, could Spring be far behind?
* * = Starred reviews
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #312
by muffy
Seré Prince Halverson's debut novel - The Underside of Joy quietly and immediately draws the reader in with : “For three years, I did back flips in the deep end of happiness. The joy was palpable and often loud. Other times it softened..... I also know now, years later, something else: The most genuine happiness cannot be so pure, so deep, and so blind."
Ella Beene's back flips in happiness are named Joe, Annie and Zach. She met Joe as she stopped at Elbow, a small, funky town along the Redwoods River in North California and never left, becoming stepmother to Joe's children when they married. When Joe died, Ella's grief was compounded with Paige, the children's biological mother showing up at the funeral.
As a bitter custody battle raged between the two women, long-buried secrets which Joe took great pains to hide from Ella came to light. Joe's once close-knit Italian-American family initially supportive, took sides, leaving Ella feeling abandoned.
"Weaving a rich fictional tapestry abundantly alive with the glorious natural beauty of the novel's setting, Halverson is a captivating guide through the flora and fauna of human emotion-grief and anger, shame and forgiveness, happiness and its shadow complement . . . the underside of joy."
'A poignant debut about mothers, secrets and sacrifices. "
Readers who enjoyed Jacquelyn Mitchard's A Theory of Relativity (2001); Marisa De Los Santo's Love Walked In (2006) and Belong to Me (2008); and Caroline Leavitt's Pictures of You (2011) will find much to like with this debut novel.
Blog Post
"Bitten & Smitten"
by articia
One of the many perks of working in a library includes shelving books. It's often during shelving that I find some of my favorite reads that I'd likely not come across otherwise. One of those books (and the rest in the series) is Bitten & Smitten by Michelle Rowen. The bright cover caught my eye and the witty summary sucked me in (pun fully intended).
Sarah Dearly, the saucy yet reluctant heroine, finds herself just trying to live through what she has dubbed the "world's worst blind date" when she suddenly wakes up to find herself being buried, almost undead, in a shallow grave. She escapes only to witness her blind date being "taken care of" by what she soon learns are vampire hunters. Unfortunately, thanks to the "love bites" left by her undead date, she now has to escape the hunters or wind up sharing more than just a bad night with her toothy date.
Her escape leads her to Thierry de Bennicoeur, a moody vampire master who helps her evade the stakes of her stalkers. After stumbling through her first "undead days," Sarah realizes she's going to need a little more help than she thought when it comes to navigating the night. Michelle Rowen draws the reader into this light read with suspense and quick one liners.
Blog Post
Teen Novel Soars On Wings of Quirkiness, Love and Friendship
by annevm
If you are sick and tired of reading – or even just hearing about – teen novels centered on vampires, zombies, suicide, and alienation, here’s a fresh and extremely worthwhile alternative: The Summer I Learned to Fly, by Dana Reinhardt.
The star is Drew Robin Solo, sometimes known as Birdie, a cautious and loner-ish adolescent trying hard to separate from her ADD mom who runs a trendy cheese shop in a sleepy town on the California coast. Drew has a pet rat, her dead father’s Book of Lists, and a big crush on Nick, the surfer guy who works at the cheese shop. The sweet, steady, engaging action of this novel takes place the summer Drew is going into eighth grade. When Drew meets enigmatic Emmett Crane in the alley behind the cheese shop, her life changes subtly and enormously, as she moves swiftly towards more confidence and the first real friendship of her life.
I couldn’t put this coming-of-age novel down until all 216 pages had been flipped. Now I’m eager to read Reinhardt’s other books, The Things a Brother Knows, How to Build a House, Harmless, and A Brief Chapter in My Impossible Life.
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #311
by muffy
When it comes to thrillers, I am a hard one to please. But Chris Morgan Jones's debut The Silent Oligarch * * * really hits the mark.
First published in Britain as An Agent of Deceit, this financial puzzler zigzags across datelines, geography and glittery lifestyles, global politics and ruthless business schemes, base instincts and noble courage as an intelligence agent pursues a money launderer to expose the dealings of a shadowy Russian oligarch.
It is not clear how a minor government bureaucrat like Konstantin Malin could control half of Russia's oil industry, command a vast fortune and absolute fear from those he deals with, including Richard Lock, a hapless money launderer bound to Malin by marriage, complacency, and greed. Benjamin Webster intends to find out.
A journalist turned corporate espionage investigator, Webster is hired by a swindled financier to ruin Malin. A more personal motivation might be to settle the score for the gruesome death of a colleague years ago in a remote Kazakh jail.
As Webster's investigation closes in on Malin's game and Lock's colleagues begin dying mysteriously, he goes on the run.
"With a mysterious, complex plot and terrific local color, this novel resonates to the pounding heartbeats of the boldly drawn main characters. John Le Carre, Martin Cruz Smith, and Brent Ghelfi will be inching over in the book display so readers in search of erudite, elegant international intrigue can spot the newcomer."
~ "smart first novel, a taut thriller"
* * * = Starred reviews