This is always a great resource. You can find out whether authors you love have new books coming out and can also perhaps find titles to explore that will lead you in new directions. There are lists and lists along with excerpts from a number of forthcoming titles. I noted that Beatriz Williams, Michiko Kakutani, Megan Abbott, Anne Tyler, Cristina Alger, Louise Candlish and Sophie Hannah all have books coming soon. These may be of interest to you or you may flag completely different titles. Either way, there is lots of good reading ahead for the summer. Note that this can be accessed on amazon.
Category: Uncategorized
E-book bargains (Stewart and Belfer)
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Mary Stewart, a British author, wrote her books roughly between 1954 and 1997. Her first novel was Madam Will You Talk while today’s e-book bargain, The Gabriel Hounds, was published in 1967. This author wrote clever, engaging novels of romantic suspense. Often the chapters began with quotes from Shakespeare. Her heroines were generally engaging, the stories took place in scenic locations and reading them was pretty pleasurable. This one takes place in Lebanon. A teaser:
The deep blue oblong of sky above the open court was pricking already with brilliant stars. No ugly diffusion of city light spoiled the deep velvet of that sky; even hanging as it was above the glittering and crowded richness of the Damascus oasis, it spoke of the desert and the vast empty silence beyond the last palm tree.
Let the adventure begin. Of note, many years ago Hayley Mills starred in several movies based on Mary Stewart’s books. The books have recently become available as e-books; each has a beautiful cover. Many are available for $1.99 or $2.99.
I read Lauren Belfer‘s book when it first came out. It is an historical novel and one that kept me turning the pages. I read it a while ago so borrow a review below:
From Booklist
*Starred Review* Through the story of divorced 36-year-old Life photojournalist Claire Shiply, Belfer blends fact and fiction to describe the development of penicillin as a weapon of war in the 1940s. Seeing an early trial of the green-mold medicine—in which a dying man is miraculously cured of his infection, then dies when the medication runs out—Shiply is drawn to the story because of the earlier death of her young daughter from septicemia. She is drawn, too, to head researcher Dr. James Stanton, who is soon tapped to be national scientific coordinator to provide penicillin to treat battlefield infections. While Stanton travels to war zones, Claire is asked by government officials to watch for pharmaceutical companies neglecting production of unpatented penicillin to develop “cousin” antibacterials, even after her wealthy father has taken over one of the companies involved. Belfer (City of Light, 2003) combines life-and-death scenarios, romance, murder, and wartime reality at home and abroad, while satirizing industrialists who profit by dubious means and salve their consciences through philanthropy; and she warns that resistance to antibiotics could return us “to the era when otherwise healthy adults died from a scratch on the knee.” An engrossing and ambitious novel that vividly portrays a critical time in American history. –Michele Leber
This book is worth a look.
Summer School (Forster, Woolf, Hurston and Fitzgerald)
I am very excited to have started a five-week summer class on the “modern” novel. I have read all of these books before but am looking forward to re-reading and discussing them. How do all of you feel about re-reading? I think that each time I read a book I get something different from it. Do you?
We have started with A Room With A View; this book is a perfect summer read for the armchair traveler who gets to spend time in both Italy and the English countryside. Forster is witty but also has something to say. What does it mean to want A Room With A View? How can the young protagonist, Lucy Honeychurch, open her world and grow and is this a worthwhile quest? What does it mean to begin to trust one’s own perceptions and to perhaps step away from society’s dictates? Of amusing note are the character’s names which seem to reflect personality traits; there is Miss Bartlett who is kind of like a hothouse pear, the Emersons who are philosophical like Ralsph Waldo, Miss Lavish who indulges herself, etc. If you have not read this novel, I definitely recommend it. Next for the class will be Mrs. Dalloway….I will write more soon.
Dare to dream and look at what can be done! (Brooks)
This is a truly wonderful book with engaging illustrations. The author presents brief biographies of men who have done just about anything that you can imagine. From Confucious to Louis Braille, from Daniel Anthony (father of Susan B) to David Attenborough, from Patch Adams to Galileo and more, the list of boys who became men that followed their dreams goes on and on. There are men you have already heard of and men that you will be so pleased to meet. This is genuinely a book that tells young boys that they can do anything they set their minds and hearts to. While this book is written for boys, I believe that girls and adults of all persuasions will relish this testimony to what the human spirit can achieve. Thanks for this book NetGalley. It is sooo good.
#StoriesForBoysWhoDareToBeDifferent #NetGalley
Medieval e-book bargains (Peters)
Ellis Peters is the well–known and highly regarded author of the Brother Cadfael series. The novels were made into a televison series starring Derek Jacobi. Many of these books are now on sale for either $1.99 or $2.99. I’ve copied some covers below but there are even more at the bargain price right now. I have not read Brother Cadfael books yet but am about to purchase a few!
Note that the author has also written the Felse series which is a series of contemporary police procedurals with recurring characters. I have blogged on these previously. So…two good series from one excellent author!
Fairy tales for modern readers (Weinstein)
Do you like fairy tales or enjoy reading them to a youngster in your life? Do you like stories in which girls and women are strong characters with independent lives? If the answer is yes, you might enjoy reading this book with a grade school child that you know. The author has taken well-known fairy tale heroines and given them lives that have more roles than just princess/bride. From detectives to environmentalists, these girls want to accomplish things.
I very much enjoyed the concept of the book. At times though, I think that the book was a little too heavy handed. On the other hand, the author is trying to make up for years of a certain kind of fairy tale, so I can see where this is a matter of taste. I would give this book three stars although others might rate it more highly.
#PowerToThePrincess #NetGalley
E-book bargains (Truss and Watson)
Bargain 1:
Before Girl on a Train, there was Before I Go to Sleep, a thriller by S.J. Watson. This was an excellent and suspenseful read. I read this a while ago, so am borrowing from the blurb for the book below. This is currently an e-book bargain.
Amazon Best Books of the Month, June 2011: Every day Christine wakes up not knowing where she is. Her memories disappear every time she falls asleep. Her husband, Ben, is a stranger to her, and he’s obligated to explain their life together on a daily basis–all the result of a mysterious accident that made Christine an amnesiac. With the encouragement of her doctor, Christine starts a journal to help jog her memory every day. One morning, she opens it and sees that she’s written three unexpected and terrifying words: “Don’t trust Ben.” Suddenly everything her husband has told her falls under suspicion. What kind of accident caused her condition? Who can she trust? Why is Ben lying to her? And, for the reader: Can Christine’s story be trusted? At the heart of S. J. Watson’s Before I Go To Sleep is the petrifying question: How can anyone function when they can’t even trust themselves? Suspenseful from start to finish, the strength of Watson’s writing allows Before I Go to Sleep to transcend the basic premise and present profound questions about memory and identity. One of the best debut literary thrillers in recent years, Before I Go to Sleep deserves to be one of the major blockbusters of the summer. –Miriam Landis
The novel was later was a movie starring Nicole Kidman. I have not seen this but understand that the novel was better.
Bargain 2:
If you would like to learn more about grammar in the most fun and least painful way, pick up Lynn Truss’s Eats, Shoots & Leaves. It is a bargain today and worth a look. The title: Eats, shoots and leaves means something very different from Eats shoots and leaves. If you get that, maybe you don’t need the book but you will enjoy it!
E-book bargain (Albert)
I have blogged on this author before. I have read and enjoyed every book in this series. I love the characters of China, the lawyer turned herb shop owner; Ruby, new age person; McQuaid, a former cop and China’s love interest and the many others who live in Pecan Springs, Texas. This book in the series is currently an e-book bargain. The books are best read in order but you could buy this and eventually catch up with it. There are many novels in the series.
Book Bargains (Cleeves and Hannah)
![The Mystery of Three Quarters: The New Hercule Poirot Mystery (Hercule Poirot Mysteries) by [Hannah, Sophie]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51BjWHASlAL.jpg)
I think that Ann Cleeves writes smart, absorbing mysteries with recurring characters that I am always happy to spend time with. These two novels are part of the author’s Jimmy Perez mystery series, which are set on the island of Shetland. There are currently seven books in the series and the eighth will be coming soon. I read these a while ago but highly recommend them. Each currently costs $2.99 for the e-book edition. Please note that there has also been a Shetland TV series starring Douglas Henshall.
On Raven Black:
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Set in the remote Scottish Shetland Islands, Cleeves’s taut, atmospheric thriller, the first in a new series, will keep readers guessing until the last page. Det. Insp. Jimmy Perez investigates the murder of teenage Catherine Ross, found strangled on a snowy hillside shortly after New Year’s. While the police and citizens alike are quick to lay the blame on local eccentric Magnus Tait, who was not only the last person to see Catherine alive but also the prime suspect in the disappearance eight years earlier of another girl, Perez has his doubts. He’s soon drawn into an intricate web of lies as he unearths the long-buried secrets of everyone from a roguish playboy to Catherine’s only school friend. Cleeves, winner of the CWA’s Duncan Lawrie Dagger Award (formerly the Gold Dagger), masterfully paints Perez as an empathetic hero and sprinkles the story with a lively cast of supporting characters who help bring the Shetlands alive. When the shocking identity of the murderer is revealed, readers will be as chilled as the harsh winds that batter the isolated islands.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
On White Nights
From Booklist
Everyone is a bit mad during midsummer in the Shetland Islands, they say. Detective Jimmy Perez (making his second appearance, following last year’s Raven Black, in what Cleeves bills as the Shetland Island Quartet) is unsettled with the prospect of a new romance. Meanwhile, Perez’s love interest, an artist, is a shambles at the prospect of having her work exhibited for the first time at a local gallery opening. But these small anxieties pale beside the spectacle of a man who falls to his knees, weeping, in front of a painting at the exhibit. This same man, a tourist, is later found hanged in a fishing hut, his face obscured by a clown mask. Cleeves knows how to do eerie—from the clown mask motif that moves disturbingly throughout the novel, to her depiction of the rough beauty of the Shetland Islands, and all the way through her plotting, which mixes the disturbingly dreamlike with the realistically grotesque. Gripping from start to finish. –Connie Fletcher
As to Sophie Hannah, she has been updating the Hercule Poirot mysteries with the permission of the Agatha Christie estate. Today, you can place a pre-order for the e-book coming out in hardback in August. It will cost just $4.99. A blurb is below.
“We Agatha Christie fans read her stories–and particularly her Poirot novels–because the mysteries are invariably equal parts charming and ingenious, dark and quirky and utterly engaging. Sophie Hannah had a massive challenge in reviving the beloved Poirot, and she met it with heart and no small amount of little grey cells. I was thrilled to see the Belgian detective in such very, very good hands. Reading The Monogram Murders was like returning to a favorite room of a long-lost home.”
— Gillian Flynn, author of Gone Girl
— Gillian Flynn, author of Gone Girl
A gentle book for children (Coehlo)
This is a short, sweet and lovely picture book about a young girl’s love for her grandfather and the memories that they build together. The grandfather’s death is gently implied in the story; the reader watches as his granddaughter is sustained by her memories and his gifts to her. The illustrations are appealing and warm. This book is a good one for parents to read to young children who are coping with loss. It is a gentle and affirming story.
Joyce's mystery and fiction book reviews with some non-fiction too! 