Forthcoming in 2013
As usual, I am not going to be ready to post my Best of 2012 lists until 2013. (There are three more weeks left in December! Do you know how many great books I might read in them?) Naturally, this has not stopped me from anticipating what's coming out next year.
A partial list of books I already want
Images and book descriptions are taken from Goodreads, except for the Natsuo Kirino books, whose information is taken from Amazon.co.uk.
JANUARY
Meredith Duran, That Scandalous Summer
In the social whirl of Regency England, Elizabeth Chudderley is at the top of every guest list, the life of every party, and the belle of every ball. But her friends and admirers would be stunned to know the truth: that the merriest widow in London is also the loneliest. Behind the gaiety and smiles lies a secret longing-for something, or someone, to whisk her away.
Raised in scandal, Lord Michael de Grey is convinced that love is a losing gamble-and seduction the only game worth playing. But when duty threatens to trump everything he desires, the only way out is marriage to a woman of his brother’s choosing. Elizabeth Chudderley is delightful, delicious-and distressingly attractive. With such a captivating opponent, Michael isn’t quite sure who is winning the game. How can such passionate players negotiate a marriage of necessity-when their hearts have needs of their own?
Duran is my favorite of the new wave of romance writers whose writing, perhaps influenced by the work of Laura Kinsale, Judy Cuevas/Judith Ivory, and Patricia Gaffney, emphasizes complex characterization, difficult heroines, and distinctive prose. (I'd put Sherry Thomas and Courtney Milan in the same group.) Romance novel descriptions are almost useless, but I liked the excerpt included with Duran's new novella: the heroine drinks too much and enjoys sex even when it's casual. I cannot begin to explain how extraordinary this is for a romance heroine.
Moto Hagio, Heart of Thomas
The setting: A boys' boarding school in Germany, sometime in the latter 20th Century. Fourteen year-old Thomas Werner falls from a lonely pedestrian overpass to his death immediately after sending a single, brief letter to a schoolmate:
To Juli, one last time
This is my love
This is the sound of my heart
Surely you must understand
Thus begins the legendary and enigmatic Heart of Thomas, by Moto Hagio. Inspired by Jean Delannoy's 1964 film, Les Amitiés Particulières, The Heart of Thomas was nearly cancelled early in its serialization, in 1974, until Hagio's first trade paperback, The Poe Clan, Volume 1, sold out in a single day, giving her new series a new lease on life. The result was a story more complex, less accessible, and yet so compelling it can be found near or at the top of any list of classic shōjo manga. Translated by manga scholar Matt Thorn and packaged with the same loving attention to detail as Hagio's Eisner Award nominated A Drunken Dream, The Heart of Thomas is already the most eagerly anticipated manga translation of the new decade.
I have had this on pre-order since it showed up for sale. Despite the cover copy's attempt to make this sound like the most boring Serious Important Work in the history of ever (and also its unnecessary commas), I remain tremendously excited about finally getting to read it.
Natsuo Kirino, The Goddess Chronicle
In a place like no other, on an island in the shape of a tear drop, two sisters are born into a family of the oracle. Kamikuu, with creamy skin and almond eyes, is admired far and wide; Namima, small but headstrong, learns to live in her sister's shadow. On her sixth birthday, Kamikuu is presented with a feast of sea-serpent egg soup, sashimi and salted fish, and a string of pure pearls. Kamikuu has been chosen as the next Oracle, while Namima is shocked to discover she must serve the goddess of darkness. So begins an adventure that will take Namima from her first experience of love to the darkness of the underworld. But what happens when she returns to the island for revenge? Natsuo Kirino, the queen of Japanese crime fiction, turns her hand to an exquisitely dark tale based on the Japanese myth of Izanami and Izanagi. A fantastical, fabulous tour-de-force, it is a tale as old as the earth about ferocious love and bitter revenge.
FEBRUARY
Angélica Gorodischer, Trafalgar
Don't rush Trafalgar Medrano when he starts telling you about his latest intergalactic sales trip. He likes to stretch things out over precisely seven coffees. No one knows whether he actu-ally travels to the stars, but he tells the best tall tales in the city, so why doubt him? Trafalgar is Angélica Gorodischer's second novel to be translated into English. Her first, Kalpa Imperial, was selected for the New York Times summer reading list.
Karen Lord,The Best of All Possible Worlds
A proud and reserved alien society finds its homeland destroyed in an unprovoked act of aggression, and the survivors have no choice but to reach out to the indigenous humanoids of their adopted world, to whom they are distantly related. They wish to preserve their cherished way of life but come to discover that in order to preserve their culture, they may have to change it forever.
Now a man and a woman from these two clashing societies must work together to save this vanishing race-and end up uncovering ancient mysteries with far-reaching ramifications. As their mission hangs in the balance, this unlikely team-one cool and cerebral, the other fiery and impulsive-just may find in each other their own destinies . . . and a force that transcends all.
I love anthropological sf--not necessarily sf featuring anthropologists, but sf that explores alien or invented cultures and investigates how culture shapes individuals. I have been worried about the apparent decline in its numbers, so I'm excited to see a new example of it by a writer whose first novel was very entertaining.
Shigeru Mizuki, Kitaro
Meet Kitaro. He’s just like any other boy, except for a few small differences: he only has one eye, his hair is an antenna that senses paranormal activity, his geta sandals are jet-powered, and he can blend into his surroundings like a chameleon. Oh, and he’s a three-hundred-and-fifty-year-old yokai (spirit monster). With all the offbeat humor of an Addams Family story, Kitaro is a lighthearted romp in which the bad guys always get what’s coming to them.
Kitaro is bestselling manga-ka Shigeru Mizuki’s most famous creation. The Kitaro series was inspired by a kamishibai, or storycard theater, entitled Kitaro of the Graveyard. Mizuki began work on his interpretation of Kitaro in 1959. Originally the series was intended for boys, but once it was picked up by the influential Shonen magazine it quickly became a cultural landmark for young and old alike. Kitaro inspired half a dozen TV shows, plus numerous video games and films, and his cultural importance cannot be overstated. Presented to North American audiences for the first time in this lavish format, Mizuki’s photo-realist landscapes and cartoony characters blend the eerie with the comic.
This is another manga I've been hoping to see licensed for years.
MARCH
Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling (eds.), Queen Victoria's Book of Spells
From the extraordinary award-winning editor duo, Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, comes an anthology with Gaslamp Fantasy as the theme. Furthermore, it will have 18 brand-new Tales not published before.
The Line-up:
“The Fairy Enterprise” by Jeffrey Ford
“From the Catalogue of the Pavilion of the Uncanny and Marvelous, Scheduled for Premiere at the Great Exhibition (Before the Fire)” by Genevieve Valentine
“The Memory Book” by Maureen McHugh
“Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells” by Delia Sherman
“La Reine D’Enfer” by Kathe Koja
“Briar Rose” by Elizabeth Wein
“The Governess” by Elizabeth Bear
“Smithfield” by James P. Blaylock
“The Unwanted Women of Surrey” by Kaaron Warren
“Charged” by Leanna Renee Hieber
“Mr. Splitfoot” by Dale Bailey
“Phosphorus” by Veronica Schanoes
“We Without Us Were Shadows” by Catherynne M. Valente
“The Vital Importance of the Superficial” by Ellen Kushner and Caroline Stevermer
“The Jewel in the Toad Queen’s Crown” by Jane Yolen
“A Few Twigs He Left Behind” by Gregory Maguire
“Their Monstrous Minds” by Tanith Lee
“Estella Saves the Village” by Theodora Goss
This has enough writers whose work I like that it overcomes my growing discontent with 19th-century England as a setting.
APRIL
Sofia Samatar, A Stranger in Olondria
Jevick, the pepper merchant's son, has been raised on stories of Olondria, a distant land where books are as common as they are rare in his home. When his father dies and Jevick takes his place on the yearly selling trip to Olondria, Jevick's life is as close to perfect as he can imagine. But just as he revels in Olondria's Rabelaisian Feast of Birds, he is pulled drastically off course and becomes haunted by the ghost of an illiterate young girl.
In desperation, Jevick seeks the aid of Olondrian priests and quickly becomes a pawn in the struggle between the empire's two most powerful cults. Yet even as the country shimmers on the cusp of war, he must face his ghost and learn her story before he has any chance of becoming free by setting her free: an ordeal that challenges his understanding of art and life, home and exile, and the limits of that seductive necromancy, reading.
Samatar has a great gift for describing the unique pleasures of the books she reads. I'm looking forward to trying her fiction.
Cat Winters, In the Shadow of Blackbirds
In 1918, the world seems on the verge of apocalypse. Americans roam the streets in gauze masks to ward off the deadly Spanish influenza, and the government ships young men to the front lines of a brutal war, creating an atmosphere of fear and confusion. Sixteen-year-old Mary Shelley Black watches as desperate mourners flock to séances and spirit photographers for comfort, but she herself has never believed in ghosts. During her bleakest moment, however, she’s forced to rethink her entire way of looking at life and death, for her first love-a boy who died in battle-returns in spirit form. But what does he want from her?
Featuring haunting archival early-twentieth-century photographs, this is a tense, romantic story set in a past that is eerily like our own time.
It features haunting archival early-twentieth-century photographs! How could I pass it up?
MAY
Holly Black, Doll Bones
Three kids - Zachary, Poppy and Alice - who go on a journey, despite their own uncertain friendship, to bury a doll that may or may not be made from human bones.
Susan Palwick, Mending the Moon
Melinda Soto, aged sixty-four, vacationing in Mexico, is murdered by a fellow American tourist.
Back in her hometown of Reno, Nevada, she leaves behind her adopted son, Jeremy, whom she rescued from war-torn Guatamala when he was a toddler-just one of her many causes over the years. And she leaves behind a circle of friends: Veronique, the academic stuck in a teaching job from which she can't retire; Rosemary, who's losing her husband to Alzheimer's and who's trying to lose herself in volunteer work; Henrietta, the priest at Rosemary's and Melinda's church.
Jeremy already had a fraught relationship with his charismatic mother and the people in her orbit. Now her death is tearing him apart, and he can barely stand the rituals of remembrance that ensue among his mother’s friends. Then the police reveal who killed Melinda: a Seattle teenager who flew home to his parents and drowned himself just days later.
It's too much. Jeremy's not the only one who can't deal. Friendships fray. But the unexpected happens: an invitation to them all, from the murderer's mother, to come to Seattle for his memorial. It's ridiculous. And yet, somehow, each of them begins to see in it a chance to heal. Aided, in peculiar ways, by Jeremy's years-long obsession with the comic-book hero Comrade Cosmos, and the immense cult of online commentary it's spawned.
Shot through with feeling and inventiveness, this is a novel of the odd paths that lead to home.
The description doesn't particularly appeal to me, but it is the marvelous and underrated Susan Palwick, so I will read it.
JUNE
Holly Black, Curse Workers #4
I'm not convinced this listing isn't a mistake. But if there's a fourth Curse Workers book, I will read it. [Mistake.]
Kate Elliott, Cold Steel
Trouble, treachery, and magic just won't stop plaguing Cat Barahal. The Master of the Wild Hunt has stolen her husband Andevai. The ruler of the Taino kingdom blames her for his mother's murder. The infamous General Camjiata insists she join his army to help defeat the cold mages who rule Europa. An enraged fire mage wants to kill her. And Cat, her cousin Bee, and her half-brother Rory, aren't even back in Europa yet, where revolution is burning up the streets.
Revolutions to plot. Enemies to crush. Handsome men to rescue.
Cat and Bee have their work cut out for them.
Natsuo Kirino, In
R is the other woman. Labelled simply with one initial, her identity in the famous 1940s novel that recounts the damage she did to her lover's family remains shrouded in mystery. The novelist who carried out an illicit relationship with her, and then used her as material for his work, became a celebrated writer. But R never had the chance to put her side of the story.
Tamaki is determined to find out who R really was. A writer herself, she is working on a book about R and begins to uncover clues about the real story behind the novel, and the great tragedy of the novelist's life. While she throws herself into her research she's aware that her own imperfect relationships are also up for scrutiny. Her ex-lover, Seiji, is gravely ill in hospital and her reminiscences about their long affair strike echoes with the subject of her work.
In this compelling and moving novel, prize-winning author, Natsuo Kirino explores the themes of love and death, and the significance of fiction.
Two new books from Natsuo Kirino in English! I am SO HAPPY.
JULY
Susan Fletcher, Falcon in the Glass
Eleven-year-old Renzo must teach himself to blow glass with the help of a girl who has a mysterious connection to her falcon.
Rachel Hartman, Drachomachia (Seraphina #2)
I wasn't as impressed by Seraphina as most readers seemed to be, but I certainly liked it enough to read the sequel. Also, if you can get your hands on it, Amy Unbounded, the comic book set in the same world, is marvelous.
Deborah Noyes, Plague in the Mirror
It was meant to be a diversion - a summer in Florence with her best friend, Liam, and his travel-writer mom, doing historical research between breaks for gelato. A chance to forget that back in Vermont, May’s parents, and all semblance of safety, were breaking up. But when May wakes one night sensing someone in her room, only to find her ghostly twin staring back at her, normalcy becomes a distant memory. And when later she follows the menacing Cristofana through a portale to fourteenth-century Florence, May never expects to find safety in the eyes of Marco, a soulful painter who awakens in her a burning desire and makes her feel truly seen. The wily Cristofana wants nothing less of May than to inhabit each other’s lives, but with the Black Death ravaging Old Florence, can May’s longing for Marco’s touch be anything but madness? Lush with atmosphere both passionate and eerie, this evocative tale follows a girl on the brink of womanhood as she dares to transcend the familiar - and discovers her sensual power.
I'll need to read an excerpt before I commit to getting this, but I have fond memories of timeslip fantasies from my childhood. Well, mostly I have vague but fond memories of Mary Stolz's Cat in the Mirror. But this sounds tempting.
AUGUST
Sarah Rees Brennan, Untold
Sequel to Unspoken, which I loved.
cups brewed at DW
A partial list of books I already want
Images and book descriptions are taken from Goodreads, except for the Natsuo Kirino books, whose information is taken from Amazon.co.uk.
JANUARY
Meredith Duran, That Scandalous Summer
In the social whirl of Regency England, Elizabeth Chudderley is at the top of every guest list, the life of every party, and the belle of every ball. But her friends and admirers would be stunned to know the truth: that the merriest widow in London is also the loneliest. Behind the gaiety and smiles lies a secret longing-for something, or someone, to whisk her away.
Raised in scandal, Lord Michael de Grey is convinced that love is a losing gamble-and seduction the only game worth playing. But when duty threatens to trump everything he desires, the only way out is marriage to a woman of his brother’s choosing. Elizabeth Chudderley is delightful, delicious-and distressingly attractive. With such a captivating opponent, Michael isn’t quite sure who is winning the game. How can such passionate players negotiate a marriage of necessity-when their hearts have needs of their own?
Duran is my favorite of the new wave of romance writers whose writing, perhaps influenced by the work of Laura Kinsale, Judy Cuevas/Judith Ivory, and Patricia Gaffney, emphasizes complex characterization, difficult heroines, and distinctive prose. (I'd put Sherry Thomas and Courtney Milan in the same group.) Romance novel descriptions are almost useless, but I liked the excerpt included with Duran's new novella: the heroine drinks too much and enjoys sex even when it's casual. I cannot begin to explain how extraordinary this is for a romance heroine.
Moto Hagio, Heart of Thomas
The setting: A boys' boarding school in Germany, sometime in the latter 20th Century. Fourteen year-old Thomas Werner falls from a lonely pedestrian overpass to his death immediately after sending a single, brief letter to a schoolmate:
To Juli, one last time
This is my love
This is the sound of my heart
Surely you must understand
Thus begins the legendary and enigmatic Heart of Thomas, by Moto Hagio. Inspired by Jean Delannoy's 1964 film, Les Amitiés Particulières, The Heart of Thomas was nearly cancelled early in its serialization, in 1974, until Hagio's first trade paperback, The Poe Clan, Volume 1, sold out in a single day, giving her new series a new lease on life. The result was a story more complex, less accessible, and yet so compelling it can be found near or at the top of any list of classic shōjo manga. Translated by manga scholar Matt Thorn and packaged with the same loving attention to detail as Hagio's Eisner Award nominated A Drunken Dream, The Heart of Thomas is already the most eagerly anticipated manga translation of the new decade.
I have had this on pre-order since it showed up for sale. Despite the cover copy's attempt to make this sound like the most boring Serious Important Work in the history of ever (and also its unnecessary commas), I remain tremendously excited about finally getting to read it.
Natsuo Kirino, The Goddess Chronicle
In a place like no other, on an island in the shape of a tear drop, two sisters are born into a family of the oracle. Kamikuu, with creamy skin and almond eyes, is admired far and wide; Namima, small but headstrong, learns to live in her sister's shadow. On her sixth birthday, Kamikuu is presented with a feast of sea-serpent egg soup, sashimi and salted fish, and a string of pure pearls. Kamikuu has been chosen as the next Oracle, while Namima is shocked to discover she must serve the goddess of darkness. So begins an adventure that will take Namima from her first experience of love to the darkness of the underworld. But what happens when she returns to the island for revenge? Natsuo Kirino, the queen of Japanese crime fiction, turns her hand to an exquisitely dark tale based on the Japanese myth of Izanami and Izanagi. A fantastical, fabulous tour-de-force, it is a tale as old as the earth about ferocious love and bitter revenge.
FEBRUARY
Angélica Gorodischer, Trafalgar
Don't rush Trafalgar Medrano when he starts telling you about his latest intergalactic sales trip. He likes to stretch things out over precisely seven coffees. No one knows whether he actu-ally travels to the stars, but he tells the best tall tales in the city, so why doubt him? Trafalgar is Angélica Gorodischer's second novel to be translated into English. Her first, Kalpa Imperial, was selected for the New York Times summer reading list.
Karen Lord,The Best of All Possible Worlds
A proud and reserved alien society finds its homeland destroyed in an unprovoked act of aggression, and the survivors have no choice but to reach out to the indigenous humanoids of their adopted world, to whom they are distantly related. They wish to preserve their cherished way of life but come to discover that in order to preserve their culture, they may have to change it forever.
Now a man and a woman from these two clashing societies must work together to save this vanishing race-and end up uncovering ancient mysteries with far-reaching ramifications. As their mission hangs in the balance, this unlikely team-one cool and cerebral, the other fiery and impulsive-just may find in each other their own destinies . . . and a force that transcends all.
I love anthropological sf--not necessarily sf featuring anthropologists, but sf that explores alien or invented cultures and investigates how culture shapes individuals. I have been worried about the apparent decline in its numbers, so I'm excited to see a new example of it by a writer whose first novel was very entertaining.
Shigeru Mizuki, Kitaro
Meet Kitaro. He’s just like any other boy, except for a few small differences: he only has one eye, his hair is an antenna that senses paranormal activity, his geta sandals are jet-powered, and he can blend into his surroundings like a chameleon. Oh, and he’s a three-hundred-and-fifty-year-old yokai (spirit monster). With all the offbeat humor of an Addams Family story, Kitaro is a lighthearted romp in which the bad guys always get what’s coming to them.
Kitaro is bestselling manga-ka Shigeru Mizuki’s most famous creation. The Kitaro series was inspired by a kamishibai, or storycard theater, entitled Kitaro of the Graveyard. Mizuki began work on his interpretation of Kitaro in 1959. Originally the series was intended for boys, but once it was picked up by the influential Shonen magazine it quickly became a cultural landmark for young and old alike. Kitaro inspired half a dozen TV shows, plus numerous video games and films, and his cultural importance cannot be overstated. Presented to North American audiences for the first time in this lavish format, Mizuki’s photo-realist landscapes and cartoony characters blend the eerie with the comic.
This is another manga I've been hoping to see licensed for years.
MARCH
Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling (eds.), Queen Victoria's Book of Spells
From the extraordinary award-winning editor duo, Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, comes an anthology with Gaslamp Fantasy as the theme. Furthermore, it will have 18 brand-new Tales not published before.
The Line-up:
“The Fairy Enterprise” by Jeffrey Ford
“From the Catalogue of the Pavilion of the Uncanny and Marvelous, Scheduled for Premiere at the Great Exhibition (Before the Fire)” by Genevieve Valentine
“The Memory Book” by Maureen McHugh
“Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells” by Delia Sherman
“La Reine D’Enfer” by Kathe Koja
“Briar Rose” by Elizabeth Wein
“The Governess” by Elizabeth Bear
“Smithfield” by James P. Blaylock
“The Unwanted Women of Surrey” by Kaaron Warren
“Charged” by Leanna Renee Hieber
“Mr. Splitfoot” by Dale Bailey
“Phosphorus” by Veronica Schanoes
“We Without Us Were Shadows” by Catherynne M. Valente
“The Vital Importance of the Superficial” by Ellen Kushner and Caroline Stevermer
“The Jewel in the Toad Queen’s Crown” by Jane Yolen
“A Few Twigs He Left Behind” by Gregory Maguire
“Their Monstrous Minds” by Tanith Lee
“Estella Saves the Village” by Theodora Goss
This has enough writers whose work I like that it overcomes my growing discontent with 19th-century England as a setting.
APRIL
Sofia Samatar, A Stranger in Olondria
Jevick, the pepper merchant's son, has been raised on stories of Olondria, a distant land where books are as common as they are rare in his home. When his father dies and Jevick takes his place on the yearly selling trip to Olondria, Jevick's life is as close to perfect as he can imagine. But just as he revels in Olondria's Rabelaisian Feast of Birds, he is pulled drastically off course and becomes haunted by the ghost of an illiterate young girl.
In desperation, Jevick seeks the aid of Olondrian priests and quickly becomes a pawn in the struggle between the empire's two most powerful cults. Yet even as the country shimmers on the cusp of war, he must face his ghost and learn her story before he has any chance of becoming free by setting her free: an ordeal that challenges his understanding of art and life, home and exile, and the limits of that seductive necromancy, reading.
Samatar has a great gift for describing the unique pleasures of the books she reads. I'm looking forward to trying her fiction.
Cat Winters, In the Shadow of Blackbirds
In 1918, the world seems on the verge of apocalypse. Americans roam the streets in gauze masks to ward off the deadly Spanish influenza, and the government ships young men to the front lines of a brutal war, creating an atmosphere of fear and confusion. Sixteen-year-old Mary Shelley Black watches as desperate mourners flock to séances and spirit photographers for comfort, but she herself has never believed in ghosts. During her bleakest moment, however, she’s forced to rethink her entire way of looking at life and death, for her first love-a boy who died in battle-returns in spirit form. But what does he want from her?
Featuring haunting archival early-twentieth-century photographs, this is a tense, romantic story set in a past that is eerily like our own time.
It features haunting archival early-twentieth-century photographs! How could I pass it up?
MAY
Holly Black, Doll Bones
Three kids - Zachary, Poppy and Alice - who go on a journey, despite their own uncertain friendship, to bury a doll that may or may not be made from human bones.
Susan Palwick, Mending the Moon
Melinda Soto, aged sixty-four, vacationing in Mexico, is murdered by a fellow American tourist.
Back in her hometown of Reno, Nevada, she leaves behind her adopted son, Jeremy, whom she rescued from war-torn Guatamala when he was a toddler-just one of her many causes over the years. And she leaves behind a circle of friends: Veronique, the academic stuck in a teaching job from which she can't retire; Rosemary, who's losing her husband to Alzheimer's and who's trying to lose herself in volunteer work; Henrietta, the priest at Rosemary's and Melinda's church.
Jeremy already had a fraught relationship with his charismatic mother and the people in her orbit. Now her death is tearing him apart, and he can barely stand the rituals of remembrance that ensue among his mother’s friends. Then the police reveal who killed Melinda: a Seattle teenager who flew home to his parents and drowned himself just days later.
It's too much. Jeremy's not the only one who can't deal. Friendships fray. But the unexpected happens: an invitation to them all, from the murderer's mother, to come to Seattle for his memorial. It's ridiculous. And yet, somehow, each of them begins to see in it a chance to heal. Aided, in peculiar ways, by Jeremy's years-long obsession with the comic-book hero Comrade Cosmos, and the immense cult of online commentary it's spawned.
Shot through with feeling and inventiveness, this is a novel of the odd paths that lead to home.
The description doesn't particularly appeal to me, but it is the marvelous and underrated Susan Palwick, so I will read it.
JUNE
Holly Black, Curse Workers #4
I'm not convinced this listing isn't a mistake. But if there's a fourth Curse Workers book, I will read it. [Mistake.]
Kate Elliott, Cold Steel
Trouble, treachery, and magic just won't stop plaguing Cat Barahal. The Master of the Wild Hunt has stolen her husband Andevai. The ruler of the Taino kingdom blames her for his mother's murder. The infamous General Camjiata insists she join his army to help defeat the cold mages who rule Europa. An enraged fire mage wants to kill her. And Cat, her cousin Bee, and her half-brother Rory, aren't even back in Europa yet, where revolution is burning up the streets.
Revolutions to plot. Enemies to crush. Handsome men to rescue.
Cat and Bee have their work cut out for them.
Natsuo Kirino, In
R is the other woman. Labelled simply with one initial, her identity in the famous 1940s novel that recounts the damage she did to her lover's family remains shrouded in mystery. The novelist who carried out an illicit relationship with her, and then used her as material for his work, became a celebrated writer. But R never had the chance to put her side of the story.
Tamaki is determined to find out who R really was. A writer herself, she is working on a book about R and begins to uncover clues about the real story behind the novel, and the great tragedy of the novelist's life. While she throws herself into her research she's aware that her own imperfect relationships are also up for scrutiny. Her ex-lover, Seiji, is gravely ill in hospital and her reminiscences about their long affair strike echoes with the subject of her work.
In this compelling and moving novel, prize-winning author, Natsuo Kirino explores the themes of love and death, and the significance of fiction.
Two new books from Natsuo Kirino in English! I am SO HAPPY.
JULY
Susan Fletcher, Falcon in the Glass
Eleven-year-old Renzo must teach himself to blow glass with the help of a girl who has a mysterious connection to her falcon.
Rachel Hartman, Drachomachia (Seraphina #2)
I wasn't as impressed by Seraphina as most readers seemed to be, but I certainly liked it enough to read the sequel. Also, if you can get your hands on it, Amy Unbounded, the comic book set in the same world, is marvelous.
Deborah Noyes, Plague in the Mirror
It was meant to be a diversion - a summer in Florence with her best friend, Liam, and his travel-writer mom, doing historical research between breaks for gelato. A chance to forget that back in Vermont, May’s parents, and all semblance of safety, were breaking up. But when May wakes one night sensing someone in her room, only to find her ghostly twin staring back at her, normalcy becomes a distant memory. And when later she follows the menacing Cristofana through a portale to fourteenth-century Florence, May never expects to find safety in the eyes of Marco, a soulful painter who awakens in her a burning desire and makes her feel truly seen. The wily Cristofana wants nothing less of May than to inhabit each other’s lives, but with the Black Death ravaging Old Florence, can May’s longing for Marco’s touch be anything but madness? Lush with atmosphere both passionate and eerie, this evocative tale follows a girl on the brink of womanhood as she dares to transcend the familiar - and discovers her sensual power.
I'll need to read an excerpt before I commit to getting this, but I have fond memories of timeslip fantasies from my childhood. Well, mostly I have vague but fond memories of Mary Stolz's Cat in the Mirror. But this sounds tempting.
AUGUST
Sarah Rees Brennan, Untold
Sequel to Unspoken, which I loved.
cups brewed at DW