Hello friends and welcome to the last week of March, when all the lions have left and the spring rains are, well, they're here, but they're not as warm and soft as we'd like. Another few days of reading with cozy socks before we can start mulching and digging up the rose beds. And here are some new books to carry you through.
First up is Stephen Graham Jones's The Angel of Indian Lake, the third book in his horror trilogy about the curse on Proofrock, Idaho, and the role Jade Daniels plays in its blood-soaked finale. Horror doesn't lend itself to trilogies, but Jones has managed to pull off a spectacular stunt with these three books, each one building off the previous one while also standing on its own. We're excited to see how he wraps this all up. Highly recommended.
And speaking of highly anticipated titles, Fareed Zakaria has taken some time off from all his media pundrity (punditizing?) to write an incisive and fascinating book about revolutions—past and present—and how they operate the push-pull mechanism that is the growth of civilization. It's a topic that could easily stultify the audience with dry academic rigor, but Zakaria brings his same élan and approachability to Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present as he does his night-time pundit segments. Recommended.
And speaking of rolling around in history, here is Ferdia Lennon's googly-eyed Glorious Exploits, which is the story of two unemployed potters who, in the aftermath of the Athenian defeat at Syracuse during the Peloponnesian War, decide they want to hear a little poetry before these Athenian prisoners are executed. "Hey, anyone know any Euripides?" is how it goes. Naturally, things veer off the rails from there.
Glorious Exploits is told in a contemporary Irish dialect, by the way. Your expression may mirror that of the statue on the cover for a few moments as you adjust, but hey, it's part of the charm.
Oh, hey! Here's a new book by J. R. R.—oh, wait. It's yet another graphic novel version of The Hobbit. Never mind. But if you have that completionist's itch in regard to all things Middle-Earth, we got one for you.
Meanwhile, Oliver Darkshire's memoir about bookselling, Once Upon a Tome: The Misadventures of a Rare Bookseller, is out in paperback. This was shortlisted for Inc.'s Non-Obvious Book Award last year, which is a dubious distinction we suppose, but one that Darkshire probably found amusing.
Anyway, show up for the book talk; stick around for the ghost stories and unhinged stories of antiquarian bookselling. Yes, please.
And speaking of books in paperback, Shannon Chakraborty's The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi is out this week. Set a thousand years before Chakraborty's delightful City of Brass trilogy, The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi is a marvelous story about pirate queens, lost treasure, and the wild adventures that can happen at sea. Highly recommended.
And here is Joanna Wallace's You'd Look Better as a Ghost, a darkly comic thriller about a part-time serial killer who is being blackmailed. Here's the thing: maybe you shouldn't put the screws on the earnest artist who is merely trying to get their art career started, but who has been taking out their frustration by whacking people. The last frustrated artist who gave up painting for murder went on quite the killing spree, after all.
Anyway, show up for the quirky serial killer; stick around for the cat-and-mouse. We think this one is going to be a sleeper hit.
And speaking of the odd body here and there, here is Kristen Perrin's How to Solve Your Own Murder, which is the story of Frances Adams, who, in 1965, visits the local fair, where she is informed by the fortune-teller that she will be murdered. Someday. Fabulous, thinks Frances, and she spends the next sixty years annoying the neighbors with her doom-and-gloom about her upcoming demise.
Then, one morning, she is, indeed, found dead, and it's up to her great-niece, Annie Adams, to solve the case. The investigation in this quaint English town gets tricky when Annie discovers that her great-aunt had a penchant for snooping and digging in gardens that weren't hers. Maybe the old lady was murdered, and the killer is still out there . . .
And we're delighted to see another Penelope Rex book by Ryan T. Higgins. In Penelope Rex and the Problem with Pets, young Penelope learns how complicated it can be to have a pet, in this case, a saber-toothed tiger named "Mittens." We're sure the goldfish has buried themselves in the sand at the bottom of the fish bowl and is never coming up for air.
And finally, here is Mike Chase's How to Become a Federal Criminal: An Illustrated Handbook for the Aspiring Offender. Now, while you might be inclined to take this book at face value, you should know that it's mostly an irreverent compendium of the bizarre Federal laws that are still on the books. Like selling Swiss Cheese without enough holes, or mailing a mongoose, or—most horrifically—clogging a toilet in a national park. Six months in federal lock-up for the last one there. This isn't just a bathroom read (at least, not in a national park); this is a gold mine for source material for cozy mysteries. Calling Mick Herron: "Hey, so what if MI5 reassigns some Slow Horses to the US in an intelligence sharing operation . . . ?"
And that's the list for the week. Keep an eye on the skies. Find all the eggs this weekend. Enjoy whatever spring vacation you can quietly wrangle. We'll see you at the bookstore.
