Hello friends. How are you this week? How about that weather? Or the weather that wasn't? Or the weather that may yet be. Nature is fickle, most definitely, and there's an uncertainty in the air these days that makes us wonder if we should throw on extra layers or just stay home.
Joke's on Nature, because our TBR piles are filled with all sorts of good things, aren't they?
Well, if you do venture out (and do wear extra layers, regardless), we have new things to add to that pile. So, while you're stocking up on hand warmers and pie and tins of smoked meats, don't forget to get a few books.
Like, Katee Roberts's Midnight Ruin, the latest in her super spicy Dark Olympus series. This time around, Roberts is updating the story of Eurydice, Orpheus, and Charon. It's good girl meets bad boy meets bad boy who wants to be good. "Three hearts. Three futures. Countless ways to get it wrong." Sizzling!
And speaking of sizzle, how about an epistolary novel? Which Brings Me To You: A Novel in Confessions is co-written by Julianna Baggott and Steve Almond, and it's about a couple who meet during a dull wedding and who decide to not get all spicy in a deserted coatroom. Wait! you say. Where's the sizzle in that? Well, dear readers, what they do instead is share the stories of all their past love affairs. It's an interesting premise, delivered with aplomb by a pair of deft writers.
And speaking of shocking secrets in our pasts, here is Derek B. Miller's The Curse of Pietro Houdini, the story of a young man, orphaned during WWII, who is befriended by a mysterious man in the basement of a Benedictine Abbey. This mysterious man has a plan to steal several priceless Titian paintings and smuggle them out of Italy before everything is consumed by the war. Along with a sack of gold, because, you know, Nazis. Along the way, they fall in with a nurse with a nefarious past, a café owner with murder on his resumé, a pair of lovers, and a mule. It's a coming-of-age / heist novel. Think All The Light We Cannot See meets The Monuments Men. Recommended.
And speaking of recommendations, here is a new novella from Ray Naylor. This one is called The Tusks of Extinction, and it is about mammoths, digitized consciousness, and the difference between learning and learned behavior. Nayler's previous book, The Mountain in the Sea, went deep into discourse about consciousness and some of the peculiarities that make humans human, and we suspect The Tusks of Extinction is more than just an exploration of what makes a mammoth.
And speaking of strange new things, Heather Fawcett's delightful curmudgeon Emily Wilde is back this week in Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands. Since we last saw Professor Wilde (in Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Faeries), she's started work on a map of the fey realms. Well, it's more of a sketch than a map because she hasn't yet found a door. In Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands, she and her not-quite-human paramour Wendell Bambleby are off to the Austrian Alps, where they hope to find a portal to other places. Of course, their journey is complicated by magical assassins sent to kill Bambleby, who—OMG!—has secrets.
Relationships are hard, dear reader. Even in academia.
And speaking of protagonists who think it'll be easier if they go it alone, here is Thomas Perry's Hero, which is what happens to Justine Poole after she prevents a brazen Beverly Hills bank robbery. Poole, a private security consultant, does her job well, but the man behind the robbery is miffed at having plans ruined by a mere girl. He overreacts and hires the world's deadliest assassin to deal with this troublesome lady. The world's deadliest assassin turns on the news and sees the media coverage of Poole's act of daring and thinks: "Well, gee, I can be done with this job by dinner."
Haha. Joke's on him.
Perry's been writing clever cat-and-mouse thrillers for awhile, and after The Old Man (which was turned into a fabulous show starring our favorite dude), we know we're in for a ride with Hero.
And speaking of cat-and-mouse, Alex Michaelides returns with The Fury, a psychological thriller about a reclusive movie star, her famous friends, and a terrible trip to a private island. The flap copy goes like this: "This is a tale of murder. Or maybe that's not quite true. At its heart, it's a love story, isn't it? I tell you this because you may think you know this story. My name is Elliot Chase, and I'm going to tell you a story unlike any you've ever heard."
Michaelides's first novel, The Silent Patient, has sold more than 6.5 million copies, in more than fifty countries. So, yeah, apparently, there's something to his method. "I'm going to tell you a story, during which I'm going to lie constantly and forget to tell you all sorts of things that are, in fact, wildly pertinent, but OMG! you're never going to believe the twist ending!" Plan accordingly.
And while we're in this mood, here is Stacy Willingham's Only If You're Lucky, which is a psychological thriller about friends, loyalty, and murder. Who's playing whom? Which one did it? Did anyone else see the body of the one who "died"? Hold your questions until the end, because nothing is quite what it is seems . . .
If this all sounds way more complicated than you're up for, that's okay. Our pals at Brass Monkey have the perfect solution: the Part-Time Adult Undated Daily Planner. We know it's hard to commit to a "yearly" planner, and this one may look like a regular planner—it's even got important dates (like celebrity birthdays and random reminders of holidays you don't even bother observing)—but it's totally open to whatever date you want to put on it. Heck, you can even just mark it with the days of the weeks and fill it with doodles. That's our plan.
And speaking of plans, we've had a few folks ask about Write Night, the little get-together we used to run for writers. And you know? Sure, let's do that again. On Sunday, the 21st, we'll push Mark over to Electric Coffee from 3 PM - 6 PM for some parallel play style writing. Show up, bring your writing tools, and make some words. It'll be relatively unstructured (we are talking about writers, after all), and there may be a handout. And if it feels fun and productive, we'll do again next month (third Sundays; mark your, er, undated calendars).
*Parallel Play is a style of writing time where you ignore everyone for 45 minutes and then you make eye contact for 15. So, if you show up after the top of the hour and no one seems to notice your arrival, it's not because we don't love you, but because we're trying really hard to write in public.
