Every so often a book will come into my life at exactly the right time. This week I’ve been reading Edith Eger’s The Choice and if ever there was a right book at the right time, it’s this one. I don’t even know how to process it all yet so, although it’s taking me a lot longer to read than I expected, I’m glad I don’t have to put words together in some sort of order about it yet.
In between wrapping my head around Edith’s story and her remarkable insight, I’ve been for a couple of walks on the beach. Today I was about to leave the shore but looked back one last time and saw three dolphins catching a wave! I also found the once upon a tree that I first saw in mid-June.
At the time it was gorgeous, covered with pelagic goose barnacles, but because it was beached they didn’t survive. Eventually the entire thing was covered by sand but it must have found its way to the surface again after last week’s big waves. It just goes to show how powerful the ocean is; the once upon a tree had moved much further along the beach than I thought possible.
American Horror Story is one of my current TV series binges. I’ve rewatched Murder House and Asylum so far, and have had Dominique on repeat in my head for days. Although I absolutely adore Asylum I was relieved to begin Coven last night to hopefully replace my Dominique earworm with some Stevie Nicks instead.
I’ve seen Stevie in concert a few times but being in the audience when she was accompanied by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra during her Gold Dust tour remains one of my all time concert highlights. I haven’t listened to music much recently but being reminded of how alive it makes me feel has me wanting to remedy that.
Word of the Week: Gléo-dreám. Dreám meant “joy” or “pleasure” in Old English. Gléo-dreám literally means “glee-joy,” but it specifically referred to the feeling of pleasure that comes from listening to music.
Bookish Highlight of the Week: I won a copy of The Lost Soul Atlas by Zana Fraillon in a competition hosted by Hachette Australia Children’s Books. There are so many book competitions I’m not eligible to enter because I don’t live in America so I tend to pounce on any I find that I can enter. I love book mail so much! I can’t wait for this one to arrive so I can read it. Very gently though, because it comes with a signed bookplate! 😊
Consultant psychiatrist Dr Mark Cross knows a lot about anxiety. Many of his patients are sufferers, which is hardly surprising, given anxiety is the most common mental health condition in Australia, affecting up to one in four people at some point in their lives. But Mark also knows about anxiety from another perspective, because he too has suffered from anxiety all his life.
In this book, the well-known author of Changing Minds, who featured on the award-winning ABC TV series of the same name, demystifies this mental illness in his trademark warm and friendly style. He looks at causes, treatments, both medical and natural, anxiety in the workplace and more, sharing his own experiences as well as stories from others.
Two Truths and a Lie. The girls played it all the time in their tiny cabin at Camp Nightingale. Vivian, Natalie, Allison, and first-time camper Emma Davis, the youngest of the group. The games ended when Emma sleepily watched the others sneak out of the cabin in the dead of night. The last she – or anyone – saw of them was Vivian closing the cabin door behind her, hushing Emma with a finger pressed to her lips.
Now a rising star in the New York art scene, Emma turns her past into paintings – massive canvases filled with dark leaves and gnarled branches that cover ghostly shapes in white dresses. The paintings catch the attention of Francesca Harris-White, the socialite and wealthy owner of Camp Nightingale. When Francesca implores her to return to the newly reopened camp as a painting instructor, Emma sees an opportunity to try to find out what really happened to her friends.
Yet it’s immediately clear that all is not right at Camp Nightingale. Already haunted by memories from fifteen years ago, Emma discovers a security camera pointed directly at her cabin, mounting mistrust from Francesca and, most disturbing of all, cryptic clues Vivian left behind about the camp’s twisted origins. As she digs deeper, Emma finds herself sorting through lies from the past while facing threats from both man and nature in the present.
And the closer she gets to the truth about Camp Nightingale, the more she realises it may come at a deadly price.
There is a Wild Man who lives in the deep quiet of Greenhollow, and he listens to the wood. Tobias, tethered to the forest, does not dwell on his past life, but he lives a perfectly unremarkable existence with his cottage, his cat, and his dryads.
When Greenhollow Hall acquires a handsome, intensely curious new owner in Henry Silver, everything changes. Old secrets better left buried are dug up, and Tobias is forced to reckon with his troubled past – both the green magic of the woods, and the dark things that rest in its heart.
In 1954, at the start of the Cold War, the Soviet military offered four political prisoners their freedom if they participated in an experiment requiring them to remain awake for fourteen days while under the influence of a powerful stimulant gas. The prisoners ultimately reverted to murder, self-mutilation, and madness. None survived.
In 2018, Dr. Roy Wallis, an esteemed psychology professor at UC Berkeley, is attempting to recreate the same experiment during the summer break in a soon-to-be demolished building on campus. He and two student assistants share an eight-hour rotational schedule to observe their young Australian test subjects around the clock.
What begins innocently enough, however, morphs into a nightmare beyond description that no one could have imagined – with, perhaps, the exception of Dr. Roy Wallis himself.
NetGalley
The Nazis spared their lives because they were twins.
In the summer of 1944, Eva Mozes Kor and her family arrived at Auschwitz.
Within thirty minutes, they were separated. Her parents and two older sisters were taken to the gas chambers, while Eva and her twin, Miriam, were herded into the care of the man who became known as the Angel of Death: Dr. Josef Mengele. They were 10 years old.
While twins at Auschwitz were granted the ‘privileges’ of keeping their own clothes and hair, they were also subjected to Mengele’s sadistic medical experiments. They were forced to fight daily for their own survival and many died as a result of the experiments, or from the disease and hunger rife in the concentration camp.
In a narrative told simply, with emotion and astonishing restraint, The Twins of Auschwitz shares the inspirational story of a child’s endurance and survival in the face of truly extraordinary evil.
Also included is an epilogue on Eva’s incredible recovery and her remarkable decision to publicly forgive the Nazis. Through her museum and her lectures, she dedicated her life to giving testimony on the Holocaust, providing a message of hope for people who have suffered, and worked toward goals of forgiveness, peace, and the elimination of hatred and prejudice in the world.
The love of my chocaholic life, Caramilk, returned to the shelves this week so I’ve been well and truly overdosing on it for a few days. I hadn’t seen it in a store since pre-quarantine, so by my calculations it’s been about 287 years. I have a chocolate life philosophy that is definitely grammatically correct in another universe: Chocolate make it better! It applies to every aspect of my life, with the possible exception of my long term health.
There have been some big swells at the beach this week. I went to check it out for myself yesterday. The wind was making the waves really messy and the spray was everywhere as they were breaking, and it looked amazing! I braved the wind for a closer look. The waves were closer to the sand dunes than I’ve ever seen and I looked around for a helicopter a few times because that’s the sound the waves were making.
On a sadder note, I think I’m mourning one of my favourite birds. I say ‘I think’ because there’s a group of wild birds I feed and one hasn’t visited in almost two weeks. I get a lot of the walking wounded coming in for some TLC – a couple that are missing an eye, another whose foot was so badly damaged when they were born that they couldn’t stand on it for the first couple of months.
Sometimes a bird will disappear for weeks or even months and then all of a sudden they’ll visit again, so I don’t usually worry that much if I don’t see a specific bird for a while. However, the one I haven’t seen since 4 July has a broken beak and, in the close to four years since they were injured, they’ve relied on me to feed them.
Other injured birds are still able to get their own food but I haven’t seen this one manage it. When their beak was first injured they had so much trouble eating and drinking I didn’t think they’d survive. I’m really grateful to have had four extra years with them but I think it’s going to take a while before I stop hoping they’ll be there each time I walk outside.
Word of the Week: eldritch, which means “weird and sinister or ghostly”. (from lexico.com)
Bookish Highlight of the Week: I was granted a wish on NetGalley! Granted wishes happen so infrequently that it feels like the universe has unleashed a special brand of magic whenever I get a wish notification.
Deep in a Wyoming mine, hell awaits. Nat Blackburn is given an offer he can’t refuse by President Teddy Roosevelt. Tales of gold in the abandoned mining town of Hecla abound. The only problem – those who go seeking their fortune never return. Along with his constant companion, Teta, a hired gun with a thirst for adventure, Nat travels to a barren land where even animals dare not tread. Black-eyed children, strange lights and ferocious wild men venture from the deep, dark ghost mine … as well as a sinister force hungry for fresh souls.
NetGalley
Inspired by a true story, this supernatural thriller for fans of horror and true crime follows a tale as it evolves every twenty years – with terrifying results.
Ella Louise has lived in the woods surrounding Pilot’s Creek, Virginia, for nearly a decade. Publicly, she and her daughter, Jessica, are shunned by her upper-crust family and the local residents. Privately, desperate characters visit her apothecary for a cure to what ails them – until Ella Louise is blamed for the death of a prominent customer. Accused of witchcraft, Ella Louise and Jessica are burned at the stake in the middle of the night. Ella Louise’s burial site is never found, but the little girl has the most famous grave in the South: a steel-reinforced coffin surrounded by a fence of interconnected white crosses.
Their story will take the shape of an urban legend as it’s told around a campfire by a man forever marked by his childhood encounters with Jessica. Decades later, a boy at that campfire will cast Amber Pendleton as Jessica in a ’70s horror movie inspired by the Witch Girl of Pilot’s Creek. Amber’s experiences on that set and its meta-remake in the ’90s will ripple through pop culture, ruining her life and career after she becomes the target of a witch hunt.
Amber’s best chance to break the cycle of horror comes when a true-crime investigator tracks her down to interview her for his popular podcast. But will this final act of storytelling redeem her – or will it bring the story full circle, ready to be told once again? And again. And again …
Do you remember how I told you last week that because this was the second week of some serious bill paying necessity I was not allowed to buy any books unless there was an unmissable sale? Um … I possibly shouldn’t have given myself that loophole.
So, there was kinda a Stay Inside Saturday 50% off sale at Angry Robot. And it covered every eBook on their website. And there were sort of a fair few that I’d been needing for a while. And they were so much cheaper than I’ve ever seen them. And I’ll read them one day. Promise!
So, after my bills have been paid, that’s me pretty much done for the week. Oops. But, books! I managed to find a free eBook as well this week, so that makes my binge okay, right?
In an extraordinary display of self restraint, I did stop myself from purchasing the Image comics bundle at Humble Bundle. Well, I restrained myself from buying it this week. Thankfully there are still enough days left that it will still be available when I get paid next. If you haven’t already overspent your book allocation this week and want to buy it before I can, here’s the link.
Word of the Week: oeuvre, “the complete works of a writer, painter, or other artist” (from Cambridge Dictionary)
Bookish Highlight of the Week: FREE BOOKS!!! I glanced outside my front window early this afternoon and saw a neighbour across the road doing something extremely interesting. They had placed a bookcase in their front yard and were making many trips up their driveway with books! I wondered if they were setting up a neighbourhood library but it didn’t look right as there weren’t any enclosed sides on the bookcase. Concerned about the possibility of books getting damaged by the elements and with my curiosity well and truly piqued, I ventured across the road to investigate.
You’d know what a huge deal this was for me if you knew me. I’m pretty much off the chart on the introvert scale and am almost positive I have social phobia. I don’t approach people I don’t know and I definitely don’t initiate conversations with them. I guess this is the power of books though. My need to see what books she had placed in that bookcase and my concern for their wellbeing overrode my neuroses.
I learned that most of the books were her daughter’s. Apparently at 19 she has grown out of YA. All the better for me! My neighbour gave me a really weird look when I mentioned that I, too, had grown out of YA but had since grown back into them.
Long story only slightly shorter (sorry), there were so many gems on offer. While most of the ones I haven’t read yet are already patiently waiting for me on my Kindle, there were also some that have been on my need-to-buy list for too long. And now I don’t need to! So, more money for other books! Woohoo!
Rather than list them twice, you can find my newly acquired freebies under the From Across the Road and Into My Bookcase section below.
Kady thought breaking up with Ezra was the worst thing she’d ever been through. That was before her planet was invaded. Now, with enemy fire raining down on them, Kady and Ezra are forced to fight their way onto one of the evacuating craft, with an enemy warship in hot pursuit.
But the warship could be the least of their problems. A deadly plague has broken out and is mutating, with terrifying results; the fleet’s AI, which should be protecting them, may actually be their biggest threat; and nobody in charge will say what’s really going on. As Kady plunges into a web of data hacking to get to the truth, it’s clear only one person can help her bring it all to light: Ezra.
Told through a fascinating dossier of hacked documents – including emails, schematics, military files, IMs, medical reports, interviews, and more – Illuminae is the first book in a heart-stopping, high-octane trilogy about lives interrupted, the price of truth, and the courage of everyday heroes.
Moving to a space station at the edge of the galaxy was always going to be the death of Hanna’s social life. Nobody said it might actually get her killed.
The sci-fi saga that began with the breakout bestseller Illuminae continues on board the Jump Station Heimdall, where two new characters will confront the next wave of the BeiTech assault.
Hanna is the station captain’s pampered daughter; Nik the reluctant member of a notorious crime family. But while the pair are struggling with the realities of life aboard the galaxy’s most boring space station, little do they know that Kady Grant and the Hypatia are headed right toward Heimdall, carrying news of the Kerenza invasion.
When an elite BeiTech strike team invades the station, Hanna and Nik are thrown together to defend their home. But alien predators are picking off the station residents one by one, and a malfunction in the station’s wormhole means the space-time continuum might be ripped in two before dinner. Soon Hanna and Nik aren’t just fighting for their own survival; the fate of everyone on the Hypatia – and possibly the known universe – is in their hands.
But relax. They’ve totally got this. They hope.
Kady, Ezra, Hanna, and Nik narrowly escaped with their lives from the attacks on Heimdall station and now find themselves crammed with 2,000 refugees on the container ship, Mao. With the jump station destroyed and their resources scarce, the only option is to return to Kerenza – but who knows what they’ll find seven months after the invasion?
Meanwhile, Kady’s cousin, Asha, survived the initial BeiTech assault and has joined Kerenza’s ragtag underground resistance. When Rhys – an old flame from Asha’s past – reappears on Kerenza, the two find themselves on opposite sides of the conflict. With time running out, a final battle will be waged on land and in space, heros will fall, and hearts will be broken.
Prue McKeel’s life is ordinary. At least until her brother is abducted by a murder of crows and taken to the Impassable Wilderness, a dense, tangled forest on the edge of Portland. No one’s ever gone in, or at least returned to tell of it. So begins an adventure that will take Prue and her friend, Curtis, deep into the Impassable Wilderness.
There they uncover a secret world in the midst of violent upheaval, a world full of warring creatures, peaceable mystics, and powerful figures with the darkest intentions. And what begins as a rescue mission becomes something much greater, as the two friends find themselves entwined in a struggle for the very freedom of this wilderness. A wilderness the locals call Wildwood.
It’s a night like any other on board the Icarus. Then, catastrophe strikes: the massive luxury spaceliner is yanked out of hyperspace and plummets into the nearest planet. Lilac LaRoux and Tarver Merendsen survive. And they seem to be alone.
Lilac is the daughter of the richest man in the universe. Tarver comes from nothing, a young war hero who learned long ago that girls like Lilac are more trouble than they’re worth. But with only each other to rely on, Lilac and Tarver must work together, making a tortuous journey across the eerie, deserted terrain to seek help.
Then, against all odds, Lilac and Tarver find a strange blessing in the tragedy that has thrown them into each other’s arms. Without the hope of a future together in their own world, they begin to wonder – would they be better off staying here forever?
Everything changes when they uncover the truth behind the chilling whispers that haunt their every step. Lilac and Tarver may find a way off this planet. But they won’t be the same people who landed on it.
The Starbound Trilogy: Three worlds. Three love stories. One enemy.
Jubilee Chase and Flynn Cormac should never have met.
Lee is captain of the forces sent to Avon to crush the terraformed planet’s rebellious colonists, but she has her own reasons for hating the insurgents.
Rebellion is in Flynn’s blood. Terraforming corporations make their fortune by recruiting colonists to make the inhospitable planets livable, with the promise of a better life for their children. But they never fulfilled their promise on Avon, and decades later, Flynn is leading the rebellion.
Desperate for any advantage in a bloody and unrelentingly war, Flynn does the only thing that makes sense when he and Lee cross paths: he returns to base with her as prisoner. But as his fellow rebels prepare to execute this tough-talking girl with nerves of steel, Flynn makes another choice that will change him forever. He and Lee escape the rebel base together, caught between two sides of a senseless war.
A year ago, Flynn Cormac and Jubilee Chase made the now infamous Avon Broadcast, calling on the galaxy to witness for their planet, and protect them from destruction. Some say Flynn’s a madman, others whisper about conspiracies. Nobody knows the truth. A year before that, Tarver Merendsen and Lilac LaRoux were rescued from a terrible shipwreck – now, they live a public life in front of the cameras, and a secret life away from the world’s gaze.
Now, in the center of the universe on the planet of Corinth, all four are about to collide with two new players, who will bring the fight against LaRoux Industries to a head. Gideon Marchant is an eighteen-year-old computer hacker – a whiz kid and an urban warrior. He’ll climb, abseil and worm his way past the best security measures to pull off onsite hacks that others don’t dare touch.
Sofia Quinn has a killer smile, and by the time you’re done noticing it, she’s got you offering up your wallet, your car, and anything else she desires. She holds LaRoux Industries responsible for the mysterious death of her father and is out for revenge at any cost.
When a LaRoux Industries security breach interrupts Gideon and Sofia’s separate attempts to infiltrate their headquarters, they’re forced to work together to escape. Each of them has their own reason for wanting to take down LaRoux Industries, and neither trusts the other. But working together might be the best chance they have to expose the secrets LRI is so desperate to hide.
Sussex, England. A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. Although the house he lived in is long gone, he is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock, and her mother and grandmother. He hasn’t thought of Lettie in decades, and yet as he sits by the pond (a pond that she’d claimed was an ocean) behind the ramshackle old farmhouse, the unremembered past comes flooding back. And it is a past too strange, too frightening, too dangerous to have happened to anyone, let alone a small boy.
Forty years earlier, a man committed suicide in a stolen car at this farm at the end of the road. Like a fuse on a firework, his death lit a touchpaper and resonated in unimaginable ways. The darkness was unleashed, something scary and thoroughly incomprehensible to a little boy. And Lettie – magical, comforting, wise beyond her years – promised to protect him, no matter what.
Kindle Black Hole of Good Intentions
A dinosaur detective in the land of unwanted ideas battles trauma, anxiety, and the first serial killer of imaginary friends.
Most ideas fade away when we’re done with them. Some we love enough to become Real. But what about the ones we love, and walk away from?
Tippy the triceratops was once a little girl’s imaginary friend, a dinosaur detective who could help her make sense of the world. But when her father died, Tippy fell into the Stillreal, the underbelly of the Imagination, where discarded ideas go when they’re too Real to disappear. Now, he passes time doing detective work for other unwanted ideas – until Tippy runs into The Man in the Coat, a nightmare monster who can do the impossible: kill an idea permanently. Now Tippy must overcome his own trauma and solve the case, before there’s nothing left but imaginary corpses.
In the far future, chocolate is Earth’s only unique commodity one that everyone else in the galaxy is willing to kill to get their hands, paws and tentacles on.
Latina culinary arts student, Bo Benitez, becomes a fugitive when she’s caught stealing a cacao pod from one of the heavily-defended plantations that keep chocolate, Earth’s sole valuable export, safe from a hungry galaxy.
Forces array against her including her alien boyfriend and a reptilian cop. But when she escapes onto an unmarked starship things go from bad to worse: it belongs to the race famed throughout the galaxy for eating stowaways! Surrounded by dangerous yet hunky aliens, Bo starts to uncover clues that the threat to Earth may be bigger than she first thought.
In a galaxy where chocolate is literally addictive, one celebrity chef is fighting back, in the delicious sequel to Free Chocolate.
To save everyone she loves, Bo Bonitez is touring Zant, home of the murderous, shark-toothed aliens who so recently tried to eat her. In the midst of her stint as Galactic paparazzi princess, she discovers that Earth has been exporting tainted chocolate to the galaxy, and getting aliens hooked on cocoa. Bo must choose whether to go public, or just smile for the cameras and make it home alive. She’s already struggling with her withdrawal from the Invincible Heart, and her love life has a life of its own, but when insidious mind worms intervene, things start to get complicated!
Mummies, grave-robbing ghouls, hopping vampires, and evil monks beset a young archaeologist, in this fast-paced Indiana Jones-style adventure.
Saqqara, Egypt, 1888, and in the booby-trapped tomb of an ancient sorcerer, Rom, a young Egyptologist, makes the discovery of a lifetime: five coffins and an eerie, oversized sarcophagus. But the expedition seems cursed, for after unearthing the mummies, all but Rom die horribly. He faithfully returns to America with his disturbing cargo, continuing by train to Los Angeles, home of his reclusive sponsor. When the train is hijacked by murderous banditos in the Arizona desert, who steal the mummies and flee over the border, Rom – with his benefactor’s rebellious daughter, an orphaned Chinese busboy, and a cold-blooded gunslinger – must ride into Mexico to bring the malevolent mummies back. If only mummies were their biggest problem …
A mysterious explorer hires a team of adventurers to join him in a hunt for a monstrous beast, in this rip-roaring sequel to Fury From the Tomb.
When Egyptologist Rom Hardy receives a strange letter from his old friend, the bounty-hunting sniper Rex McTroy, he finds himself drawn into a chilling mystery. In the mountains of New Mexico, a bloodthirsty creature is on the loose, leaving a trail of bodies in its wake. Now, a wealthy big game hunter has offered a staggering reward for its capture, and Rom’s patron – the headstrong and brilliant Evangeline Waterston – has signed the team up for the challenge. Awaiting them are blizzards, cold-blooded trappers, remorseless hunters, a mad doctor, wild animals and a monster so fearsome and terrifying, it must be a legend come to life.
FLEX: Distilled magic in crystal form. The most dangerous drug in the world. Snort it, and you can create incredible coincidences to live the life of your dreams.
FLUX: The backlash from snorting Flex. The universe hates magic and tries to rebalance the odds; maybe you survive the horrendous accidents the Flex inflicts, maybe you don’t.
PAUL TSABO: The obsessed bureaucromancer who’s turned paperwork into a magical Beast that can rewrite rental agreements, conjure rented cars from nowhere, track down anyone who’s ever filled out a form.
But when all of his formulaic magic can’t save his burned daughter, Paul must enter the dangerous world of Flex dealers to heal her. Except he’s never done this before – and the punishment for brewing Flex is army conscription and a total brain-wipe.
Love something enough, and your obsession will punch holes through the laws of physics. That devotion creates unique magics: videogamemancers. Origamimancers. Culinomancers.
But when ‘mancers battle, cities tremble …
ALIYAH TSABO-DAWSON: The world’s most dangerous eight-year-old girl. Burned by a terrorist’s magic, gifted strange powers beyond measure. She’s furious that she has to hide her abilities from her friends, her teachers, even her mother – and her temper tantrums can kill.
PAUL TSABO: Bureaucromancer. Magical drug-dealer. Desperate father. He’s gone toe-to-toe with the government’s conscription squads of brain-burned Unimancers, and he’ll lie to anyone to keep Aliyah out of their hands – whether Aliyah likes it or not.
THE KING OF NEW YORK: The mysterious power player hell-bent on capturing the two of them. A man packing a private army of illegal ‘mancers.
Paul’s family is the key to keep the King’s crumbling empire afloat. But offering them paradise is the catalyst that inflames Aliyah’s deadly rebellious streak …
America’s long sent its best SMASH agents overseas to deal with the European crisis. As of today, they decided dismantling your operation was more important than containing the Bastogne Broach. Now you’re dealing with the real professionals.
PAUL TSABO: Bureaucromancer. Political activist. Loving father. His efforts to decriminalize magic have made him the government’s #1 enemy – and his fugitive existence has robbed his daughter of a normal life.
ALIYAH TSABO-DAWSON: Videogamemancer. Gifted unearthly powers by a terrorist’s magic. Raised by a family of magicians, she’s the world’s loneliest teenager – because her powers might kill anyone she befriends.
THE UNIMANCERS: Brain-burned zombies. Former ‘mancers, tortured into becoming agents of the government’s anti-‘mancer squad. An unstoppable hive-mind.
When Paul accidentally opens up the first unsealed dimensional broach on American soil, the Unimancers lead his family in a cat-and-mouse pursuit all the way to the demon-haunted ruins of Europe – where Aliyah is slowly corrupted by the siren call of the Unimancers …
It’s Supernatural meets Men in Black in a darkly humorous urban fantasy from the author of Nekropolis.
When you dream, you visit the Maelstrom. Dream long enough and hard enough, and your dreams can break through into the living world. So, alas, can your nightmares.
And who’s there to catch the dreams and nightmares as they fall into reality? Meet the Shadow Watch.
Pray you never need them …
A new drug – Shut-Eye – has been developed in the dreamland, and smuggled into our world. It’s addictive, and dangerous, and Shadow Watch agents Audra and Mr Jinx are on the case, preparing new recruits to deal with the problem.
Meanwhile, a wave of ancient, bodiless Incubi are entering the dreams of humans in an attempt to possess them and live new lives. Only the criminally insane would ever risk a confrontation with them.
Stan Markowski is a Detective Sergeant on the Scranton PD’s Supernatural Crimes Investigation Unit.
Like the rest of America, Scranton’s got an uneasy ‘live and let unlive’ relationship with the supernatural. But when a vamp puts the bite on an unwilling victim, or some witch casts the wrong kind of spell, that’s when they call Markowski. He carries a badge.
Also, a crucifix, some wooden stakes, a big vial of holy water, and a 9mm Beretta loaded with silver bullets.
My name’s Markowski. I carry a badge. Also, a crucifix, some wooden stakes, a big vial of holy water, and a 9mm Beretta loaded with silver bullets.
A series of seemingly motiveless murders of supernatural creatures points to a vigilante targeting the supe community. Markowski wouldn’t normally have much of a problem with that, but his daughter may be next on the killer’s list …
“My name’s Markowski. I carry a badge. Also, a crucifix, some wooden stakes, a big vial of holy water, and a 9mm Beretta loaded with silver bullets.
“A new supernatural gang is intent on invading Scranton and it looks like I’m going to have to work with the current mob to prevent a demonic gang war.
“If there’s one thing I hate more than living with supernatural scumbags, it’s working with them! But you know that they say, better the devil you know …”
Tony Prosdocimi lives in the bustling Metropolis of San Ventura – a city gripped in fear, a city under siege by the hooded supervillain, The Cowl.
When Tony develops super-powers and acts to take down The Cowl, however, he finds that the local superhero team Seven Wonders aren’t as grateful as he assumed they’d be …
It was a typical all-American backwater – until the night the monsters came.
When four employees of KMRT Radio investigate an unearthly light that cuts off communication with the outside world, they discover that something has taken the place of their friends and fellow townfolk, and imbued them with malign intentions.
Little do they know, the phenomenon is not unique to the town of Jesman’s Bend …
After accidentally summoning a demon while playing poker, the normally mild-mannered Chesney Anstruther refuses to sell his soul … which leads through various confusions to, well, Hell going on strike. Which means that nothing bad ever happens in the world – and that actually turns out to be a really bad thing.
There’s only one thing for it. Satan offers Chesney the ultimate deal – sign the damned contract, and he can have his heart’s desire. And thus the strangest superhero duo ever seen – in Hell or on Earth – is born!
Chesney’s efforts to ‘Save the Day’ and ‘Win the Girl’ make slow progress. This superhero lark is a bit more complicated than he thought.
But even as Chesney is trying to learn the ropes, Boss Greeley has made a deal with the Devil. A deal that is making Greeley stronger by the minute. Soon he will be untouchable. Meanwhile Reverend Hardacre digs deeper and finds that not everything in reality is quite what it seems …
Now Chesney, the one-time actuary-turned superhero must continue the fight.
Meet Chesney Arnstruther. Once a mild-mannered insurance actuary, now a full-time crime-fighting superhero, it’s all he can do to kick bad-guy ass while at the same time holding down a steady relationship with the gorgeous Melda. Something is going on.
Meet Xaphan, wise-cracking demon and the source of (almost) all of Chesney’s powers. He’s been asked by his infernal master to give Chesney whatever he needs … but surely stopping bad guys is not in Hell’s plan? Something is definitely going on.
Meet Arthur Wrigley, a modest yet charming older gentleman whose nasty little hobby is fleecing innocent widows. Meet Simon Magus, ancient mystic and magician from Biblical times now very much enamoured of Vegas, baby. And pray you never meet the Chikkichikk, a proud and ancient race of, well, warrior dinosaurs, from the universe that God made then rejected before He started monkeying around with this one.
There is no Whispering Girl. She doesn’t exist. Marieka Evers knows this for a fact because she was there when Miles Faber created her. The cellphone photograph, the melodramatic tale of his encounter in the woods – all fake. The elaborate family history, the found diary – pure fiction. It was all an experiment, part of a study on belief and gullibility and the behaviour of crowds. He wanted to see how far it would go. Only now it seems his experiment has gotten out of hand. Real people have gone missing in the Georgia woods, and every day, more and more followers of whisperinggirl.com report their own encounters with the fabled Ghost of Jasper County. Is it possible that the fiction isn’t fiction anymore?
When a body turns up in the woods, brutally murdered, and one of his followers begins posting under the name of Whisper Blue, Miles loses his grip and it falls to Marieka to try and save him from his own paranoid delusion. But is it a delusion? There’s a real mystery in the woods, and the closer Marieka gets to the heart of it, the more she may wish she’d never started.
Amber Hawthorne and Jolene Morris, business partners and roommates at the Hawthorne Funeral Home, are drowning in debt. People are complaining about the makeup jobs they’re giving deceased loved ones – the word clownish has been used – and both young women have a little trouble keeping their partying habits in line.
When they start selling body parts on the black market to keep their business alive (Jolene much more reluctantly than Amber), their new buyers seem friendly and trustworthy enough at first. That is until the dead gangster they’ve recently parted up turns out to have been full of disease. Now Amber and Jolene’s buyers want something else to make up for lost profits, leaving the two undertakers to learn sometimes running your own business can cost you an arm and a leg. Literally.
NetGalley
How can we make sense of our lives when we do not know where we come from? This was a pressing question for the youngest survivors of the Holocaust, whose prewar memories were vague or nonexistent. In this beautifully written account, Rebecca Clifford follows the lives of one hundred Jewish children out of the ruins of conflict through their adulthood and into old age.
Drawing on archives and interviews, Clifford charts the experiences of these child survivors and those who cared for them – as well as those who studied them, such as Anna Freud. Survivors explores the aftermath of the Holocaust in the long term, and reveals how these children – often branded “the lucky ones” – had to struggle to be able to call themselves “survivors” at all. Challenging our assumptions about trauma, Clifford’s powerful and surprising narrative helps us understand what it was like living after, and living with, childhoods marked by rupture and loss.
My book hauling activities have been limited this week by the antithesis to book buying paradise – bills. Ugh! Next week is a big bill week as well so, unless something I’ve needed for a very long time has an unmissable sale, I’m going to have to restrain myself.
When I haven’t been reading this week I’ve been bingeing some TV series I have on loan from the library. I’ve fallen in love with Atypical and Doom Patrol.
I’ve also been for a few walks on the beach and managed to see some whales! They’re migrating north up the coast at the moment and one of the ones I saw a couple of days ago was closer to the shore than I’d ever seen before. I watched it do a fin slap and a whole pile of tail slaps. Now I want to visit the beach each day until the last whale has passed my part of the coastline.
Word of the Week: cognoscenti. I found this in the Ghostbusters book I read this week and loved it even before I knew what it meant – “People who are considered to be especially well informed about a particular subject.“ (from lexico.com)
Bookish Highlight of the Week: I found Joe Hill’s NOS4A2 on a one day sale so I broke my ‘I can’t buy any books this week’ pact with myself. If you’re going to break a promise to yourself, it might as well be for a good cause. 😃
Until next time, happy reading!
Kindle Black Hole of Good Intentions
Victoria McQueen has a secret gift for finding things: a misplaced bracelet, a missing photograph, answers to unanswerable questions. On her Raleigh Tuff Burner bike, she makes her way to a rickety covered bridge that, within moments, takes her wherever she needs to go, whether it’s across Massachusetts or across the country.
Charles Talent Manx has a way with children. He likes to take them for rides in his 1938 Rolls-Royce Wraith with the NOS4A2 vanity plate. With his old car, he can slip right out of the everyday world, and onto the hidden roads that transport them to an astonishing – and terrifying – playground of amusements he calls “Christmasland.”
Then, one day, Vic goes looking for trouble – and finds Manx. That was a lifetime ago. Now Vic, the only kid to ever escape Manx’s unmitigated evil, is all grown up and desperate to forget. But Charlie Manx never stopped thinking about Victoria McQueen. He’s on the road again and he’s picked up a new passenger: Vic’s own son.
Berlin is Never Berlin by Marko Kloos
Khan only had one job: chauffeur and guard an American wealthy socialite and her friends. When his client Natalie Scuderi gets nabbed by the Georgian mafia, this joker-ace has no choice but to go underground and rescue her. “Losing the man’s daughter on the job would be a fatal black mark on his professional resume. Khan had never lost a client, and he wasn’t about to start a habit.”
Benjamin 2073 by Rjurik Davidson
In the year 2073, humanity is making progress toward restoring the environment and fixing the mistakes of the past. Ellie has spent the last ten years going even further by working to resurrect the thylacine, extinct since 1936. But with no results and increasingly impatient bureaucrats threatening to pull their funding, the thylacine’s future – and Ellie’s – is in danger of reaching the point of no return.
Beyond the Dragon’s Gate by Yoon Ha Lee
Former Academician Anna Kim’s research into AI cost her everything. Now, years later, the military has need of her expertise in order to prevent the destruction of their AI-powered fleet.
The Tourist by Alex Sherman
A young academic has been granted permission to travel to a mining outpost on a small planetoid far from the sun to study the culture of a small squatter population that lives in total darkness.
We’re Here, We’re Here by K.M. Szpara
Joining a boyband gave Tyler everything he ever dreamed of. A close-knit group of friends, the chance to model a beautiful masculinity, and a vocal implant that lets him sing even better than he did before transitioning. But deep on tour, Tyler realises he wants more from one of his bandmates, yearns for a love that would never fit the image that has been carefully crafted for him. His manager wants him to be the heartthrob: available, wholesome, and pure. And since his manager gave Tyler his voice, he can always take it away again.
Two Truths and a Lie by Sarah Pinsker
Stella thought she’d made up a lie on the spot, asking her childhood friend if he remembered the strange public broadcast TV show with the unsettling host she and all the neighborhood kids appeared on years ago. But he does remember. And so does her mum. Why doesn’t Stella? The more she investigates the show and the grip it has on her hometown, the eerier the mystery grows.
The Night Soil Salvagers by Gregory Norman Bossert
The Night Soil Salvagers no longer need to perform the service they have provided for longer than memory can account for. Instead, they pass the nights in playful and profound acts of artistry, music, trickery, gardening, and honoring the city they know and belong to more so than anyone. Uncover the heart of this mysterious community through the tales they tell each other, the tales that others tell of them, and the scores of their Dadaesque nocturnes, as they strive to lessen the burden of the city on the Earth.
Word of the Week: Weltschmerz, a German word literally meaning ‘world pain’. “Sadness or melancholy at the evils of the world; world-weariness.” (Collins English Dictionary)
Bookish Highlight of the Week: After dragging myself through a highly anticipated read last week, I managed to get my reading joy back this week. I smiled my way through Gabby Hutchinson Crouch’s second book in the Darkwood series, Such Big Teeth.
Until next time, happy reading!
Edelweiss
The essential guide to Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters II! Exploring everything from the pioneering special effects to the set design and the unforgettable soundtrack. This authorised book tells the exhaustive behind-the-scenes story of how Dan Aykroyd’s original concept evolved into a movie phenomenon.
The guide is packed with hundreds of fascinating production photos, concept art and rare behind-the-scenes images, while new interviews with the cast and crew, including Dan Aykroyd, Ivan Reitman, Annie Potts, Richard Edlund and many more, reveal how they overcame numerous challenges to create one of the best-loved movie franchises of the 1980s.
NetGalley
In a matter of weeks, Massachusetts has been overrun by an insidious rabies-like virus that is spread by saliva. But unlike rabies, the disease has a terrifyingly short incubation period of an hour or less. Those infected quickly lose their minds and are driven to bite and infect as many others as they can before they inevitably succumb. Hospitals are inundated with the sick and dying, and hysteria has taken hold. To try to limit its spread, the commonwealth is under quarantine and curfew. But society is breaking down and the government’s emergency protocols are faltering.
Dr. Ramola “Rams” Sherman, a soft-spoken pediatrician in her mid-thirties, receives a frantic phone call from Natalie, a friend who is eight months pregnant. Natalie’s husband has been killed – viciously attacked by an infected neighbour – and in a failed attempt to save him, Natalie, too, was bitten. Natalie’s only chance of survival is to get to a hospital as quickly as possible to receive a rabies vaccine. The clock is ticking for her and for her unborn child.
Natalie’s fight for life becomes a desperate odyssey as she and Rams make their way through a hostile landscape filled with dangers beyond their worst nightmares – terrifying, strange, and sometimes deadly challenges that push them to the brink.
Paul Tremblay once again demonstrates his mastery in this chilling and all-too-plausible novel that will leave readers racing through the pages … and shake them to their core.
Ugh! This reading week sucked! It felt more like a fortnight. Do you ever start reading one of your most anticipated reads and discover it wasn’t the highlight of the year you’d hoped for? That was me this week.
I had been looking forward to Veronica Roth’s Chosen Ones for months and ended up dragging my feet. It took me ten days to read so now I’m behind on all of my other June reading commitments. I don’t always fare so well with bestsellers, which makes me wonder what’s wrong with me, but this book’s reviews pretty much cover the spectrum so it’s not just me this time.
I’m someone who expects every read to be a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ one and tend to become various shades of bewildered when this isn’t the case. I’m looking forward to my next couple of reads, so here’s hoping …
Word of the Week: pelagic, which means “of, relating to, or living or occurring in the open sea”. I came across one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen washed up on the beach this week. Google told me these little creatures growing from this once upon a tree are called pelagic goose barnacles. I also found ‘pelagic’ in this week’s read so it had to become the word of the week.
Bookish Highlight of the Week: My NetGalley request for Edith Eger’s upcoming release was approved. I haven’t read The Choice yet but plan to read it before The Gift.
Until next time, happy reading!
Kindle Black Hole of Good Intentions
It is mankind’s most abominable crime: murder. No one is better acquainted with the subject and its wrenching challenges than John Douglas, the FBI’s pioneer of criminal profiling, and the model for Agent Jack Crawford in The Silence of the Lambs.
In this provocative and deeply personal book, the most prominent criminal investigator of our time offers a rare look into the workings not only of the justice system – but of his own heart and mind. Writing with award-winning partner Mark Olshaker, Douglas opens up about his most notorious and baffling cases – and shows what it’s like to confront evil in its most monstrous form.
Two hearts. Twice as vulnerable.
Manhattan, 1850. Born out of wedlock to a wealthy socialite and a nameless immigrant, Cora Lee can mingle with the rich just as easily as she can slip unnoticed into the slums and graveyards of the city. As the only female resurrectionist in New York, she’s carved out a niche procuring bodies afflicted with the strangest of anomalies. Anatomists will pay exorbitant sums for such specimens – dissecting and displaying them for the eager public.
Cora’s specialty is not only profitable, it’s a means to keep a finger on the pulse of those searching for her. She’s the girl born with two hearts – a legend among grave robbers and anatomists – sought after as an endangered prize.
Now, as a series of murders unfolds closer and closer to Cora, she can no longer trust those she holds dear, including the young medical student she’s fallen for. Because someone has no intention of waiting for Cora to die a natural death.
At the dawn of the next world war, a plane crashes on an uncharted island, stranding a group of schoolboys. At first, with no adult supervision, their freedom is something to celebrate; this far from civilisation the boys can do anything they want. Anything. They attempt to forge their own society, failing, however, in the face of terror, sin and evil.
And as order collapses, as strange howls echo in the night, as terror begins its reign, the hope of adventure seems as far from reality as the hope of being rescued. Labeled a parable, an allegory, a myth, a morality tale, a parody, a political treatise, even a vision of the apocalypse, Lord of the Flies is perhaps our most memorable novel about “the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart.”
NetGalley
Determined to be the world’s greatest detective, Zaiba is always on the lookout for a crime to solve!
Zaiba can’t wait for the school summer fair where she’s going to run a detective trail to help train other potential agents! But when the head teacher is poisoned during the highly competitive cake competition, Zaiba’s own skills are put to the test. With a whole host of suspects and a busy crime scene, Zaiba needs to stay focused if she’s going to get to the bottom of the cake catastrophe …
This practical and inspirational guide to healing from the bestselling author of The Choice shows us how to release your self-limiting beliefs and embrace your potential.
The prison is in your mind. The key is in your pocket.
In the end, it’s not what happens to us that matters most – it’s what we choose to do with it. We all face suffering – sadness, loss, despair, fear, anxiety, failure. But we also have a choice; to give in and give up in the face of trauma or difficulties, or to live every moment as a gift.
Celebrated therapist and Holocaust survivor, Dr Edith Eger, provides a hands-on guide that gently encourages us to change the imprisoning thoughts and destructive behaviours that may be holding us back. Accompanied by stories from Eger’s own life and the lives of her patients her empowering lessons help you to see your darkest moments as your greatest teachers and find freedom through the strength that lies within.
I loved Kate DiCamillo’s Three Rancheros series but until this week I hadn’t read any other books she’s written. I was fortunate enough to secure an ARC of Stella Endicott and the Anything-Is-Possible Poem, the fifth book of the Tales from Deckawoo Drive series, from NetGalley. I had planned on reading all of the other books in the series, as well as the Mercy Watson series, in the lead up to the release of Stella Endicott. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to source these in time. Hopefully I’ll find copies in the not too distant future.
Bookish Highlight of the Week: One of the reasons I started this blog was because I kept seeing blog tours for books I loved and wished I could be a part of them. Yesterday I participated in my very first blog tour and it was so much fun! I was given the opportunity to interview Tara Gilboy, the author of the Unwritten series, about Rewritten, which was released in April 2020. If you missed it yesterday, you can find my interview here.
Word of the Week: hleów-feðer, which means “shelter-feather”, but is used figuratively in some Old English literature to refer to a protecting arm put around someone.
Until next time, happy reading!
Kindle Black Hole of Good Intentions
The definitive, dramatic untold story of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster, based on original reporting and new archival research.
April 25, 1986, in Chernobyl, was a turning point in world history. The disaster not only changed the world’s perception of nuclear power and the science that spawned it, but also our understanding of the planet’s delicate ecology. With the images of the abandoned homes and playgrounds beyond the barbed wire of the 30-kilometer Exclusion Zone, the rusting graveyards of contaminated trucks and helicopters, the farmland lashed with black rain, the event fixed for all time the notion of radiation as an invisible killer.
Chernobyl was also a key event in the destruction of the Soviet Union, and, with it, the United States’ victory in the Cold War. For Moscow, it was a political and financial catastrophe as much as an environmental and scientific one. With a total cost of 18 billion rubles – at the time equivalent to $18 billion – Chernobyl bankrupted an already teetering economy and revealed to its population a state built upon a pillar of lies.
The full story of the events that started that night in the control room of Reactor No.4 of the V.I. Lenin Nuclear Power Plant has never been told – until now. Through two decades of reporting, new archival information, and firsthand interviews with witnesses, journalist Adam Higginbotham tells the full dramatic story, including Alexander Akimov and Anatoli Dyatlov, who represented the best and worst of Soviet life; denizens of a vanished world of secret policemen, internal passports, food lines, and heroic self-sacrifice for the Motherland. Midnight in Chernobyl, award-worthy nonfiction that reads like sci-fi, shows not only the final epic struggle of a dying empire but also the story of individual heroism and desperate, ingenious technical improvisation joining forces against a new kind of enemy.
“A haunting story that reimagines the consequences of Shakespeare’s The Tempest.”
After the tempest, after the reunion, after her father drowned his books, Miranda was meant to enter a brave new world. Naples awaited her, and Ferdinand, and a throne. Instead she finds herself in Milan, in her father’s castle, surrounded by hostile servants who treat her like a ghost. Whispers cling to her like spiderwebs, whispers that carry her dead mother’s name. And though he promised to give away his power, Milan is once again contorting around Prospero’s dark arts. With only Dorothea, her sole companion and confidant to aid her, Miranda must cut through the mystery and find the truth about her father, her mother, and herself.
Years ago, Old Earth sent forth sisters and brothers into the vast dark of the prodigal colonies armed only with crucifixes and iron faith. Now, the sisters of the Order of Saint Rita are on an interstellar mission of mercy aboard Our Lady of Impossible Constellations, a living, breathing ship which seems determined to develop a will of its own.
When the order receives a distress call from a newly-formed colony, the sisters discover that the bodies and souls in their care – and that of the galactic diaspora – are in danger. And not from void beyond, but from the nascent Central Governance and the Church itself.
Since leaving his homeland, the earthbound demigod Demane has been labeled a sorcerer. With his ancestors’ artifacts in hand, the Sorcerer follows the Captain, a beautiful man with song for a voice and hair that drinks the sunlight.
The two of them are the descendants of the gods who abandoned the Earth for Heaven, and they will need all the gifts those divine ancestors left to them to keep their caravan brothers alive.
The one safe road between the northern oasis and southern kingdom is stalked by a necromantic terror. Demane may have to master his wild powers and trade humanity for godhood if he is to keep his brothers and his beloved captain alive.
My ability to concentrate disappeared this week so most of my planned reads are still waiting for me to get my act together. What’s been going on in America, from George Floyd’s murder to everything that’s happened since, has paralysed my productivity. I can’t reconcile my own values with the racism I’ve been reading about and witnessing this week.
Some of the time I would have usually spent reading has instead been spent watching TV, playing games and watching the seven infant burrowing owls on San Diego zoo’s live camera feeds test out their wings.
Bookish Highlight of the Week: The ConZealand Hugo voter’s packet became available this week! Because the voting period is so short this year and because I may have committed to reviewing too many other books recently, I’m not going to get to most of the Hugo finalists in time to vote. I’m crossing my fingers that I will have time for a Hugo binge later in the year.
Word of the Week: Someone I know always has a word of the week and whenever I talk to them I try to remember to ask them what the current one is. Their word this week is marginalia. I love this word so much and have been reading up on its history. ThisAtlas Obscura article grabbed my attention.
Until next time, happy reading!
Kindle Black Hole of Good Intentions
Still recovering from the shocking revelations they uncovered deep in uncharted territory in the Grand Canyon, American myth and legend investigator Nolan Moore and his team take on a new mission, investigating a rumoured case of witchcraft and possession.
Nolan hopes their new case, in a quaint village in the middle of the woods, will prove much more like those he and his team investigated prior to their trip to Kincaid’s cavern. But as the residents accounts of strange phenomena add up, Nolan and company begin to suspect something all too real and dangerous may be at play. A force that may not be willing to let them escape the village unscathed.
They wake on a deserted island. Fiona and Miles, high school enemies now stranded together. No memory of how they got there. No plan to follow, no hope to hold on to.
Each step forward reveals the mystery behind the forces that brought them here. And soon, the most chilling discovery: something else is on the island with them.
Something that won’t let them leave alive.
How do you put yourself back together when it seems like you’ve lost it all?
May is a survivor. But she doesn’t feel like one. She feels angry. And lost. And alone. Eleven months after the school shooting that killed her twin brother, May still doesn’t know why she was the only one to walk out of the band room that day. No one gets what she went through – no one saw and heard what she did. No one can possibly understand how it feels to be her.
Zach lost his old life when his mother decided to defend the shooter. His girlfriend dumped him, his friends bailed, and now he spends his time hanging out with his little sister … and the one faithful friend who stuck around. His best friend is needy and demanding, but he won’t let Zach disappear into himself. Which is how Zach ends up at band practice that night. The same night May goes with her best friend to audition for a new band.
Which is how May meets Zach. And how Zach meets May. And how both might figure out that surviving could be an option after all.
Mia Corvere, gladiatii, escaped slave and infamous assassin, is on the run.
After the greatest games in Godsgrave’s history ended with the most audacious murders in the history of the Itreyan Republic, Mia finds herself pursued by Blades of the Red Church and soldiers of the Luminatii legion. She may never escape the City of Bridges and Bones alive.
Her mentor Mercurio is now in the clutches of her enemies. Her own family wishes her dead. And her nemesis, Consul Julius Scaeva, stands but a breath from total dominance over the Republic.
But beneath the city, a dark secret awaits. Together with her lover Ashlinn, brother Jonnen and a mysterious benefactor returned from beyond the veil of death, she must undertake a perilous journey across the Republic, seeking the final answer to the riddle of her life. Truedark approaches.
Night is falling on the Republic for perhaps the final time.
On the eve of her wedding to Nicholas Young, heir to one of the greatest fortunes in Asia, Rachel should be over the moon. She has a flawless Asscher-cut diamond from JAR, a wedding dress she loves more than anything found in the salons of Paris, and a fiance willing to sacrifice his entire inheritance in order to marry her. But Rachel still mourns the fact that her birthfather, a man she never knew, won’t be able to walk her down the aisle. Until: a shocking revelation draws Rachel into a world of Shanghai splendor beyond anything she has ever imagined.
Here we meet Carlton, a Ferrari-crashing bad boy known for Prince Harry-like antics; Colette, a celebrity girlfriend chased by fevered paparazzi; and the man Rachel has spent her entire life waiting to meet: her father. Meanwhile, Singapore’s It Girl, Astrid Leong, is shocked to discover that there is a downside to having a newly minted tech billionaire husband. A romp through Asia’s most exclusive clubs, auction houses, and estates, China Rich Girlfriend brings us into the elite circles of Mainland China, introducing a captivating cast of characters, and offering an inside glimpse at what it’s like to be gloriously, crazily, China-rich.
NetGalley
When a strange hole materialises in a storage room, would-be poet Nicholas and his feral lover Nakota allow their curiosity to lead them into the depths of terror.
“Wouldn’t it be wild to go down there?” says Nakota.
Nicholas says, “We’re not.”
But no one is in control, and their experiments lead to obsession, violence, and a very final transformation for everyone who gets too close to the Funhole.
My blog baby is four weeks old today and while part of me is proud of myself for finally getting my act together, another part is wondering why I didn’t do this years ago.
I purchased my 2021 Hugo Awards supporting membership this week. DisCon III membership prices increase on 1 June 2020 so if you’re interested, it’s definitely a good time to purchase your membership.
I had planned on reading more of the books that are finalists in this year’s Hugo Awards than I managed last year. Like everyone else I’m still waiting for this year’s Voter Packet so it’s probably going to be a scramble to binge as many books as I can when it arrives. If I remember correctly, the Voter Packet became available in April last year but nothing is like April last year.
I can’t even imagine the enormity of the task facing the people organising the online CoNZealand so I’m more focused on being grateful I’ll get a Voter Packet at all. In the meantime I get to try to get ahead of my non-Hugo TBR pile, which is huge!
Bookish Highlight of the Week: What Unbreakable Looks Like. I only finished reading this a couple of hours ago and I’m pretty wiped out from all of the ugly crying but I already know that Lex, the main character, is going to stay with me.
Until next time, happy reading!
Kindle Black Hole of Good Intentions
Witness the fate of beloved heroes – and enemies.
THE BALANCE OF POWER HAS FINALLY TIPPED …
The precarious equilibrium among four Londons has reached its breaking point. Once brimming with the red vivacity of magic, darkness casts a shadow over the Maresh Empire, leaving a space for another London to rise.
WHO WILL CRUMBLE?
Kell – once assumed to be the last surviving Antari – begins to waver under the pressure of competing loyalties. And in the wake of tragedy, can Arnes survive?
WHO WILL RISE?
Lila Bard, once a commonplace – but never common – thief, has survived and flourished through a series of magical trials. But now she must learn to control the magic, before it bleeds her dry. Meanwhile, the disgraced Captain Alucard Emery of the Night Spire collects his crew, attempting a race against time to acquire the impossible.
WHO WILL TAKE CONTROL?
And an ancient enemy returns to claim a crown while a fallen hero tries to save a world in decay.
The sequel to Vicious, V.E. Schwab’s first adult novel.
Sydney once had Serena – beloved sister, betrayed enemy, powerful ally. But now she is alone, except for her thrice-dead dog, Dol, and then there’s Victor, who thinks Sydney doesn’t know about his most recent act of vengeance.
Victor himself is under the radar these days – being buried and re-animated can strike concern even if one has superhuman powers. But despite his own worries, his anger remains. And Eli Ever still has yet to pay for the evil he has done.
NetGalley
A decade ago near Chicago, five teenagers defeated the otherworldly enemy known as the Dark One, whose reign of terror brought widespread destruction and death. The seemingly un-extraordinary teens – Sloane, Matt, Ines, Albie, and Esther – had been brought together by a clandestine government agency because one of them was fated to be the “Chosen One,” prophesised to save the world. With the goal achieved, humankind celebrated the victors and began to mourn their lost loved ones.
Ten years later, though the champions remain celebrities, the world has moved forward and a whole, younger generation doesn’t seem to recall the days of endless fear. But Sloane remembers. It’s impossible for her to forget when the paparazzi haunt her every step just as the Dark One still haunts her dreams. Unlike everyone else, she hasn’t moved on; she’s adrift – no direction, no goals, no purpose. On the eve of the Ten Year Celebration of Peace, a new trauma hits the Chosen: the death of one of their own. And when they gather for the funeral at the enshrined site of their triumph, they discover to their horror that the Dark One’s reign never really ended.
Stink’s spider phobia spurs his sister, Judy, and friend Webster to try some desensitisation techniques – until a real-life encounter takes them by surprise – in a hilarious episode offering a bonus origami activity.
Creepy! Crawly! Criminy! Everyone knows that Stink is bonkers about most scientific things. But there’s one exception: dangle a spider in front of him and he goes berserk! Stink is so freaked out by spiders that he can’t read about them. He can’t look at them. He can’t think about them. And he for sure can’t touch them! Stink has arachnophobia (a fear of spiders), and he has it bad. But when a hairy backyard emergency arises, Stink is forced to face his fear – and eight beady eyes – head-on. Will he manage to tame the heebie-jeebies, or will he remain stuck in his web of terror? Arachno-fans will love the comics sprinkled throughout with facts about spiders as well as a hands-on origami challenge.
Last week I found a Joe Hill comic book bundle at Humble Bundle. There are currently 13 days left for you to get this bundle for yourself if you’re interested.
I learned last week that people who are eligible to vote for this year’s Hugo Awards are also eligible to vote in New Zealand’s Sir Julius Vogel Awards. I’ve started downloading the files that are currently available in the Voter Packet. The list of the finalists and the link that provides instructions for the Voter Packet can be found here.
Yesterday I found some freebie Natasha Preston books. They are now floating around in my Kindle Black Hole of Good Intentions.
Bookish Highlight of the Week: I managed to snag an ARC of Alix E. Harrow’s The Once and Future Witches, one of my most anticipated reads of the year. Alix’s The Ten Thousand Doors of January was one of my favourite reads last year, one I loved so much I nominated it for this year’s Hugo Awards. Of course, I take personal responsibility for it being a finalist. 😜 A Witch’s Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies is also one of my favourite short stories. So, long story short, I can’t wait to fall in love with this new book!
Until next time, happy reading!
Joe Hill Comic Book Bundle
Comedy is Hard … but Dying is Easy!
The debut of an all-new creation by Joe Hill (Locke & Key) and Martin Simmonds (Punks Not Dead)! Meet Syd “Sh*t-Talk” Homes, a disgraced ex-cop turned bitter stand-up comic turned … possible felon?!
In Part 1 of Dying is Easy, Carl Dixon is on the verge of comedy superstardom and he got there the dirty way: by stealing jokes. He’s got a killer act, an ugly past, and more enemies than punch-lines. So when someone asks Syd Homes how much it would cost to have Dixon killed, Syd isn’t surprised in the slightest. He’s already got a figure in mind …
From the powerhouse team of Joe Hill (Locke & Key) and Martin Simmonds (Punks Not Dead) comes the second chapter in the inaugural Syd “Sh*t-Talk” Homes mystery!
Comedy may be hard and dying may be easy, but getting yourself off the hook for murder? For Syd Homes, that’s looking damn near impossible. The prime suspect in the death of joke stealer and general thief Carl Dixon, Syd’s on the run, and it’s going to take all of his investigative chops to suss out the real killer before he gets caught. And thrown in jail. With all the guys he locked up.
Luckily, he’s already got a couple of suspects in mind …
It’s 1969 and the war in Vietnam rages on. Captain Chase, a Medevac helicopter pilot for the US Army, is shot down over enemy territory. He and his crew are in a fight for their lives as they play a deadly game of cat and mouse with the Vietcong. We soon learn that machine guns and grenades aren’t the only scary things hiding in the jungle.
Find out what happens in this origin prequel to last year’s Eisner Award-nominated hit, with story by Joe Hill and Jason Ciaramella, and art and colors by Nelson Daniel (Road Rage, The Cape). Explore your dark side.
Every little boy dreams about putting on a cape and soaring up, up, and away … but “what if” one day that dream were to come true?
Eric was like every other eight-year-old boy, until a tragic accident changed his life forever. The Cape explores the dark side of power, as the adult Eric – a confused and broken man – takes to the skies … and sets out to exact a terrible vengeance on everyone who ever disappointed him.
This critically acclaimed, Eisner-Award nominated story, written by Jason Ciaramella, based on the short story by New York Times bestselling author Joe Hill, with art by Zach Howard and Nelson Daniel, will linger with you long after you turn the last page, and force you to ask yourself the question: “What if?”
If power corrupts, then surely with great power comes even greater corruption. Writer Jason Ciaramella and artist Zach Howard uncovers new folds in Hill’s cautionary anti-superhero tale with a story that takes place between the scenes of the original series. Eric’s already killed his ex-girlfriend and (spoiler alert) soon he’ll go after his mom and brother. But first he’ll go missing for three torturous days. What other atrocities will Eric commit? What violent secrets does the Cape still hide? There’s no telling, but the answers to those questions will further underline The Cape’s central theme – that no amount of power will make a bad person good.
Private Mallory Grennan had done terrible things as an Abu Ghraib prison worker. After being discharged from the army, Mal thought she was leaving her sins behind to start a new life back home. But some things can’t be left behind – some things don’t want to be left behind.
By Joe Hill and Jason Ciaramella, the writing team that brought you the Eisner-award nominated one-shot, The Cape, with art by Vic Malhotra. Thumbprint will turn your guts inside out.
Locke & Key tells of Keyhouse, an unlikely New England mansion, with fantastic doors that transform all who dare to walk through them.
Home to a hate-filled and relentless creature that will not rest until it forces open the most terrible door of them all …
Following a shocking death that dredges up memories of their father’s murder, Kinsey and Tyler Locke are thrown into choppy emotional waters, and turn to their new friend, Zack Wells, for support, little suspecting Zack’s dark secret.
Meanwhile, six-year-old Bode Locke tries to puzzle out the secret of the head key, and Uncle Duncan is jarred into the past by a disturbingly familiar face.
Open your mind – the head games are just getting started.
The dead plot against the living, the darkness closes in on Keyhouse, and a woman is shattered beyond repair, in the third storyline of the Eisner-nominated series, Locke & Key!
Dodge continues his relentless quest to find the key to the black door, and raises an army of shadows to wipe out anyone who might get in his way. Surrounded and outnumbered, the Locke children find themselves fighting a desperate battle, all alone, in a world where the night itself has become their enemy.
Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez’s Locke & Key unwinds into its fourth volume in Keys to the Kingdom.
With more keys making themselves known, and the depths of the Locke family’s mystery ever-expanding, Dodge’s desperation to end his shadowy quest drives the inhabitants of Keyhouse ever closer to a revealing conclusion.
Locke & Key tells of Keyhouse, an unlikely New England mansion, with fantastic doors that transform all who dare to walk through them … and home to a hate-filled and relentless creature that will not rest until it forces open the most terrible door of them all … ! After the gruesome murder of their father, the Locke kids, Tyler, Kinsey and Bode move with their mother Nina to the ancestral family home, Keyhouse. They soon discover that the house is full of secrets when they start finding magical keys which hold impossible powers such as turning people into ghosts, or being able to erase someone’s memories. They are not the only ones who know of the keys; a demonic creature known as Dodge is also after the keys, with the goal of opening the Black Door, which will allow the demons of hell to enter our world. The sprawling tale of the Locke family and their mastery of the ‘whispering steel’ thunders to new heights as the true history of the family is revealed to Tyler and Kinsey. Zack Wells assumes a new form, Tyler and Kinsey travel through time.
Tyler and Kinsey Locke have no idea that their now-deceased nemesis, Lucas “Dodge” Caravaggio, has taken over the body of their younger brother, Bode. With unrestricted access to Keyhouse, Dodge’s ruthless quest to find the Omega Key and open the Black Door is almost complete. But Tyler and Kinsey have a dangerous key of their own – one that can unlock all the secrets of Keyhouse by opening a gateway to the past. The time has come for the Lockes to face theri own legacy and the darkness behind the Black Door. Because if they don’t learn from their family history, they may be doomed to repeat it, and time is running out!
Colonel Adam Crais’s minutemen are literally trapped between a rock and a hard place; in the first days of the Revolutionary War, they find themselves hiding beneath 120 feet of New England stone, with a full regiment of redcoats waiting for them in the daylight … and a door into hell in the cavern below. The black door is open, and it’s up to a 16-year-old smith named Ben Locke to find a way to close it. The biggest mysteries of the Locke & Key series are resolved as Clockworks opens, not with a bang, but with the thunderous crash of English cannons.
The shadows have never been darker and the end has never been closer. Turn the key and open the last door; it’s time to say goodbye.
The final arc of New York Times bestselling Locke & Key comes to a thundrous and compelling conclusion.
An event not to be missed!
Three years after wrapping up their award-winning, best-selling Locke & Key saga, the team that built Keyhouse returns to Lovecraft, Massachusetts with a new tale of terror and suspense!
An impossible birthday gift for two little girls unexpectedly throws open a door to a monster on eight legs!
Two new stories by creators Joe Hill & Gabriel Rodriguez – “Nailed It” and “Dog Days” – plus an 8-page preview of an all-new series by Hill and artist Martin Simmonds, too!
Three never-before-collected additions to the series the A.V. Club called a “modern masterpiece,” showcasing the depths of depravity and the beautifully heart-breaking heights New York Times best-selling author Joe Hill and artist Gabriel Rodriguez have to offer.
This special deluxe release finally reprints the oft-requested and long-denied Eisner-winning one-shot, “Open the Moon!” Plus the other long-sold-out one-shot, “Grindhouse!” PLUS, the even more hard-to-find IDW 10th anniversary Locke & Key tale, “In the Can!” And additional covers, behind-the-scenes photos and more.
On the isolated road of the American highway … terror rides on 18 wheels! Tales of diesel fueled fear from the masters of horror fiction.
With Throttle, acclaimed novelist/Eisner-winning graphic novelist Joe Hill collaborates with his father, Stephen King, for the first time on a tale that pays tribute to Richard Matheson‘s classic short story, Duel. Now, IDW is proud to present comic book versions of both stories in Road Rage, adapted by Chris Ryall with art by Nelson Danieland Rafa Garres.
In Shadow Show, acclaimed writers and artists such as Joe Hill, Mort Castle, Audrey Niffenegger, Charles Paul Wilson III, Maria Frohlich, Eddie Campbell, Neil Gaiman, and more come together to pay tribute to the work of the one and only Ray Bradbury. In this collection are stories based on “By The Silver Water of Lake Champlain,” “The Man Who Forgot Ray Bradbury,” “Backward in Seville,” “Weariness,” “Live Forever!,” “Who Knocks?,” “Earth (A Gift Shop),” “Altenmoor, Where the Dogs Dance,” and “Conjure.”
Joe Hill’s nerve-shredding re-imagining of Tales from the Darkside never made it to TV … but the dead are restless and refuse to stay buried! Adapts the episodes written by Hill and illustrated by Locke & Key co-creator Gabriel Rodriguez!
Three stories of the macabre and malevolent! One coulda-been, shoulda-been TV epic on paper with pictures that don’t move! Step out of the warm, sunlit world you think of as reality and get ready to take a chilling walk … on the DARKSIDE!
A graphic novel prequel to Hill’s New York Times-bestselling novel NOS4A2. Discover the terrifying funhouse world of Christmasland and the ageless monster who rules it.
Climb into the passenger seat as Hill and artist Charlie “Talent” Wilson III explore Charlie Manx’s twisted beginnings, introduce a new and depraved cast of characters to Christmasland, and take us for a 100 MPH ride down an icy nightmare road in a car with no brakes…
Kindle Black Hole of Good Intentions
When two girls are abducted and killed in Missouri, journalist Camille Preaker is sent back to her home town to report on the crimes. Long-haunted by a childhood tragedy and estranged from her mother for years, Camille suddenly finds herself installed once again in her family’s mansion, reacquainting herself with her distant mother and the half-sister she barely knows – a precocious 13-year-old who holds a disquieting grip on the town.
As Camille works to uncover the truth about these violent crimes, she finds herself identifying with the young victims – a bit too strongly. Clues keep leading to dead ends, forcing Camille to unravel the psychological puzzle of her own past to get at the story. Dogged by her own demons, Camille will have to confront what happened to her years before if she wants to survive this homecoming.
Nina can never forgive Maggie for what she did. And she can never let her leave.
They say every house has its secrets, and the house that Maggie and Nina have shared for so long is no different. Except that these secrets are not buried in the past.
Every other night, Maggie and Nina have dinner together. When they are finished, Nina helps Maggie back to her room in the attic, and into the heavy chain that keeps her there. Because Maggie has done things to Nina that can’t ever be forgiven, and now she is paying the price.
But there are many things about the past that Nina doesn’t know, and Maggie is going to keep it that way – even if it kills her.
Because in this house, the truth is more dangerous than lies.
Hannah’s a witch, but not the kind you’re thinking of. She’s the real deal, an Elemental with the power to control fire, earth, water, and air. But even though she lives in Salem, Massachusetts, her magic is a secret she has to keep to herself. If she’s ever caught using it in front of a Reg (read: non-witch), she could lose it. For good. So, Hannah spends most of her time avoiding her ex-girlfriend (and fellow Elemental Witch) Veronica, hanging out with her best friend, and working at the Fly By Night Cauldron selling candles and crystals to tourists, goths, and local Wiccans.
But dealing with her ex is the least of Hannah’s concerns when a terrifying blood ritual interrupts the end-of-school-year bonfire. Evidence of dark magic begins to appear all over Salem, and Hannah’s sure it’s the work of a deadly Blood Witch. The issue is, her coven is less than convinced, forcing Hannah to team up with the last person she wants to see: Veronica.
While the pair attempt to smoke out the Blood Witch at a house party, Hannah meets Morgan, a cute new ballerina in town. But trying to date amid a supernatural crisis is easier said than done, and Hannah will have to test the limits of her power if she’s going to save her coven and get the girl, especially when the attacks on Salem’s witches become deadlier by the day.
A tale of love, money, and family conflict – among Dragons.
A family deals with the death of their father.
A son goes to court for his inheritance.
Another son agonises over his father’s deathbed confession.
One daughter becomes involved in the abolition movement, while another sacrifices herself for her husband.
And everyone in the tale is a dragon, red in tooth and claw. Here is a world of politics and train stations, of churchmen and family retainers, of courtship and country houses … in which, on the death of an elder, family members gather to eat the body of the deceased. In which the great and the good avail themselves of the privilege of killing and eating the weaker children, which they do with ceremony and relish, growing stronger thereby.
At nineteen, Savannah Dean escaped her family, leaving behind a note and the people who caused her so much pain.
Now, she lives on her own and keeps to herself.
At nineteen, Kent Lawson’s girlfriend betrayed him, leaving him behind with a broken heart and a whole lot of mistrust in women. Now, he lives on his own and shares himself with nearly every pretty thing that walks by but only for one night.
When Savannah and Kent meet, they can’t stand each other.
Kent knows she’s hiding something, and he despises liars.
And Savannah has nothing but secrets.
When Bella stumbles upon her dead sister’s diary, she sets out on a mission to find her sister’s killer, but it leads her to the wrong side of town.
And right into the path of Rocco, a loner, a bad boy, who is determined to keep her away. After all, you protect your own, and Bella certainly doesn’t belong with the likes of him.
But it’s hard to move on when you’re chained to the past, and Bella is intent on getting justice for her sister … even if it’s at the cost of her own life.
For eleven years, Oakley Farrell has been silent. At the age of five, she stopped talking, and no one seems to know why. Refusing to communicate beyond a few physical actions, Oakley remains in her own little world.
Bullied at school, she has just one friend, Cole Benson. Cole stands by her, refusing to believe that she is not perfect the way she is. Over the years, they have developed their own version of a normal friendship. However, will it still work as they start to grow even closer?
When Oakley is forced to face someone from her past, can she hold her secret in any longer?
NetGalley
In 1893, there’s no such thing as witches. There used to be, in the wild, dark days before the burnings began, but now witching is nothing but tidy charms and nursery rhymes. If the modern woman wants any measure of power, she must find it at the ballot box.
But when the Eastwood sisters – James Juniper, Agnes Amaranth, and Beatrice Belladonna – join the suffragists of New Salem, they begin to pursue the forgotten words and ways that might turn the women’s movement into the witch’s movement. Stalked by shadows and sickness, hunted by forces who will not suffer a witch to vote – and perhaps not even to live – the sisters will need to delve into the oldest magics, draw new alliances, and heal the bond between them if they want to survive.
There’s no such thing as witches. But there will be.
Sir Julius Vogel Awards
Best Novel Finalists
“Come here, my dearest calamity. I’ve a story to tell – it starts with a shipwreck, and ends with a kiss.”
A ship rolls through the fog, its doomed crew fallen victim to an engineered plague. Yat Jyn-Hok – disgraced cop, former thief, long lost love to a flame-haired street girl – stumbles across its deadly trail, but powerful men will do anything to keep it secret.
They kill Yat.
It doesn’t stick.
An ancient intelligence reanimates her, and sends her out to enact its monstrous designs. She has her own plans: to find her lost love, and solve her own murder before the plague tears the city to pieces. But what are the golden threads she sees running through the city walls? What does her inhuman saviour want from her? Why can’t she die?
Set in Hainak Kuay Vitraj – where lost gods live in the cracks in the sidewalk, where the miracle of alchemical botany makes flesh as malleable as clay – The Dawnhounds is a story of rebirth, redemption, and the long road home.
How is the king like a blacksmith? He has a hammer as well as a sword.
Duncan Archer has heard that riddle many times, but he doesn’t know what it means. No one does, not even the members of the Royal Guild of Swordsmiths. It isn’t Duncan’s business anyway. Good sense tells him to stick to beating iron into shape for the residents of his backwater town, and not worry about the king and his nobles pounding Frankland into the ground.
But good sense never stopped Duncan from poking his nose into everyone else’s business. If it had, he might not be a fugitive, the subject of the biggest manhunt in the country’s history.
With a charge of murder hanging over his head like a sword, understanding that riddle becomes much more urgent …
No longer content to rumble in anger, the great mountain warriors of New Zealand’s central plateau, the Kāhui Tupua, are preparing again for battle. At least, that’s how the Māori elders tell it. The nation’s leaders scoff at the danger. That is, until the ground opens and all hell breaks loose. The armed forces are hastily deployed; NZDF Sergeant Taine McKenna and his section tasked with evacuating civilians and tourists from Tongariro National Park. It is too little, too late. With earthquakes coming thick and fast and the mountains spewing rock and ash, McKenna and his men are cut off. Their only hope of rescuing the stranded civilians is to find another route out, but a busload of prison evacuees has other ideas. And, deep beneath the earth’s crust, other forces are stirring.
Well-bred women should not be seen kissing their butlers. Even when the butler in question is secretly a fae prince.
Wyn knows falling for Hetta Valstar is a bad idea. She’s not only human but the new magically bonded ruler of Stariel Estate. If their relationship gets out, it’ll cause a scandal that could ruin their attempts to sort out the estate’s crumbling finances.
And it doesn’t help that Stariel has decided it doesn’t like him.
But more than jealous sentient estates and Hetta’s good name are at stake. Wyn’s past is coming back to bite him. Ten years ago, he broke an oath and shattered the power of his home court, and the fae have been hunting him ever since. Now they’ve found his hiding place, they won’t rest until he’s dead or the debt is repaid – and they don’t play nicely.
Best Novella / Novelette Finalists
This is no ordinary ghost story.
Wellington, 1931. Seventeen-year-old Phyllis Symons’ body is discovered in the Mt Victoria tunnel construction site.
Eighty years later, Aroha Brooke is determined to save her life.
When the state steals your words, you still have your voice. When they steal your family, will you have the strength to use it?
In the near future, the Librarian Algorithm enforces tailored censorship to protect citizens from stories and words that could cause trauma or crime.
Detective Virginia Wright is going undercover in the criminal world of spoken poetry to hunt down suppliers of illegal open-access e-readers. She has buried herself in her work ever since her mother died. But when her remaining family are arrested for literary solicitation, her world starts to crumble. And when the man she is supposed to arrest gives her the most precious gift of all, her moral compass is sent spinning.
Schizanthus Nerd 