Hello friends. Now that was a week, wasn’t it? All that anticipation for weather. Some of it showed up; some of it didn’t. All the ice went somewhere (oh, we know where), and some trucks got packed and some didn’t. It was sort of Dickensian, if you will. It was the iciest of times, it was the warmest of times, it was the age of corporate accumulation, it was the age of—anyway, it was that sort of week.
But the books kept coming, and we’ve got some new things on the shelves. Let’s take a peek.
Here is RuNyx’s Gothikana, a coming of age novel set in a gothic castle where Corvina Clemm meets Professor Vad Deverell (of the University of Verenmore), and the pair embark on an adventure that is mysterious, morbid, and macabre. It’s Beauty and the Beast meets Dracula with fancy sprayed edges and “deliciously moody art.” Definitely exotic and spicy.
And Janice Hallett is back this week with The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels. True crime author Amanda Bailey is investigating the history of a cult who brainwashed a young woman into thinking her baby was a Device of the End Times. The woman thought, “Hmmm, this is wonky,” and called the police. The police showed up, the cult took themselves out of the picture, and mother and baby disappeared. Of course, nothing is as it seems, especially with Hallett’s penchant for writing books that are filled with emails, news clippings, excerpts from reports, and other sorts of “No, you figure it out” ephemera. Recommended, but you’ll definitely need your thinking caps.
And speaking of things not being what they seem to be, here is Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr!, the story of an orphaned son, who hears the voices of artists, poets, and kings. These voices—are they real? are they imaginary?—lead him to a painter who is filled with secrets. Booklist calls Martyr! “bedazzling and profound,” and The Washington Post raves that it is “sensual, oneiric, and wonderfully strange.”
Oh, Washington Post, you had us at “oneiric.”
And here is Elizabeth Gonzalez James’s The Bullet Swallower, which is equal parts dusty Western and equal parts blood and magic. It’s the story of a tragic outlaw, who once upon a time embarked on a journey of vengeance that may have damned his eternal soul. It’s also the story of his grandson who discovers he may be the one who has to pay for his grandfather’s crimes. Recommended.
And speaking of generational trauma and bruised sunsets, James Lee Burke has a new collection of short fiction out this week. The eight stories of Harbor Lights (including a never-before-published novella) have all the hallmarks of Burke’s dazzling prose and nuanced characters. An easy way to discover why Burke is the “reigning champion of nostalgia noir” (according to The New York Times Book Review).
And here is Kemper Donovan’s The Busy Body, a delightfully twisty mystery novel about a ghostwriter who lands the gig of a lifetime, which turns out to be much more complicated than taking notes and transcribing them later. This one is definitely for fans of Richard Osman and Anthony Horowitz.
And speaking of dead bodies (okay, so this is true of almost every book this week), here is Venita Blackburn’s Dead in Long Beach, California, which is another book that lures you in with a promise of one thing and then socks you in the face with another. (There’s a lot of that this week too!) Coral has the misfortune of finding her brother’s body in the wake of his suicide. Inexplicably, she pockets his cell phone, and when people start texting her dead brother, she starts replying as him. Things, of course, get weirder from there, as Blackburn takes on a journey of self-discovery and radical phenomenology.
And here’s something a little less complicated. In Catie Murphy’s Death by Irish Whiskey, there’s a murder—no wait, there are two murders! Okay, so it’s already more complicated than we thought. Either way, amateur sleuth Megan Malone is on the case! She’s determined to find the killer before they knock off any more contestants at an Irish whiskey festival.
And while we’re in the area, let’s wander over to Scotland, where Paige Shelton’s delightful bookseller Delany Nichols finds herself on a literary tour that has turned deadly. In Fateful Words, Delany is called upon to run the yearly literary walk around Edinburgh, and the first night of the tour ends with someone falling off the roof. Then, one of the tour members disappears, and now we’ve got a mystery!
And finally, here is Kate Alice Marshall’s No One Can Know, which is the story of two murders, three sisters, and a whole bunch of small-town secrets. The big one is that, fourteen years ago, Emma, Juliette, and Daphne left town. Why? Because their parents had been murdered. The crime was never solved, and the family house was never sold. Now, for various reasons, Emma and her husband are coming home, and once home, all those family skeletons start falling out of the closets.
And that’s the list this week. There’s a full moon tonight—a Wolf Moon, in fact—which probably goes a long way in explaining the underlying thematic tone of this week’s newsletter. But don’t let that keep you from bundling up and going outside! Don’t forget to wear warm socks.
Ed. Note: Page Turner Books, our fellow local bookseller in Kent, was dramatically hit by the weather last week. Burst pipes and lots of water ruined some of their stock, and they're having to move. They've set up a GoFundMe to assist with their unexpected expenses, and once they get settled, they'll be eager to rebuild their genre collections (SF! Horror! Fantasy! Used!).
