Tuesday Tomorrow
The Albion Initiative by George Mann
Published by: Tor Books
Publication Date: July 5th, 2022
Format: Hardcover, 256 Pages
To Buy
The official patter:
"George Mann's Newbury and Hobbes steampunk series concludes as our special agent heroes discover a plot of empire-changing proportions in The Albion Initiative..."
But as George said recently on my blog, it's not REALLY the end! Because I couldn't handle that.
The Icarus Plot by Timothy Zahn
Published by: Baen
Publication Date: July 5th, 2022
Format: Hardcover, 352 Pages
To Buy
The official patter:
"New science fiction series from the creator of The Cobra Series and Star Wars' Admiral Thrawn.
There wasn’t much money to be made as a Trailblazer, searching out new worlds for possible development. Still, it was safer than the bounty hunter career that had cost Gregory Roarke his left arm six years ago. And thanks to his Kadolian partner Selene’s ultrasensitive sense of smell, they occasionally discovered a medically promising seed or spore they could sell under the table. It was a quiet life, uneventful and mostly legal.
Until Roarke was approached by two men with a proposal: track down a mysterious woman named Tera and, through her, locate a secret project called Icarus.
The challenge was intriguing. The unlimited budget was tempting. But Roarke had a more personal reason to accept the job.
The chance for long-delayed payback."
Timothy Zahn made me the reader I am today, so I definitely read everything he writes!
Augusta Hawke by G. M. Malliet
Published by: Severn House
Publication Date: July 5th, 2022
Format: Hardcover, 240 Pages
To Buy
The official patter:
"Sometimes it's safer not to know your neighbors' secrets.
Where are Niko and Zora Norman? Crime writer Augusta Hawke puts her sleuthing skills to the test to solve the mystery of her disappearing neighbors in the first entry in a new series.
While Augusta Hawke is a successful author of eighteen crime novels, since her husband's death she's been living vicariously through her Jules Maigret-like detective Claude and his assistant Caroline. Then a handsome police detective appears investigating a real-life mystery.
Where are her neighbors, the Normans? No one has a clue what's happened - except Augusta. Although she isn't nosy, spending all day staring out the windows for inspiration means she does notice things. Like the Normans arguing. And that they've been missing a week.
Once the Normans' car is found abandoned, Augusta senses material for a bestseller and calls on the investigatory skills she's developed as a crime writer. But she soon uncovers long-hidden secrets and finds herself facing real-life dangers her characters never faced...ones she can't write her way out of."
Shades of Jessica Fletcher eat your heart out!
Cold, Cold Bones by Kathy Reichs
Published by: Scribner
Publication Date: July 5th, 2022
Format: Hardcover, 352 Pages
To Buy
The official patter:
"#1 New York Times bestselling thriller writer Kathy Reichs returns with her twenty-first novel of suspense featuring forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan who, after receiving a box containing a human eyeball, uncovers a series of gruesome killings eerily reenacting the most shocking of her prior cases.
Winter has come to North Carolina and, with it, a drop in crime. Freed from a heavy work schedule, Tempe Brennan is content to dote on her daughter Katy, finally returned to civilian life from the army. But when mother and daughter meet at Tempe’s place one night, they find a box on the back porch. Inside: a very fresh human eyeball.
GPS coordinates etched into the eyeball lead to a Benedictine monastery where an equally macabre discovery awaits. Soon after, Tempe examines a mummified corpse in a state park, and her anxiety deepens.
There seems to be no pattern to the subsequent killings uncovered, except that each mimics in some way a homicide that a younger Tempe had been called in to analyze. Who or what is targeting her, and why?
Helping Tempe search for answers is detective Erskine "Skinny" Slidell, retired but still volunteering with the CMPD cold case unit - and still displaying his gallows humor. Also pulled into the mystery: Andrew Ryan, Tempe's Montreal-based beau, now working as a private detective.
Could this elaborately staged skein of mayhem be the prelude to a twist that is even more shocking? Tempe is at a loss to establish the motive for what is going on…and then her daughter disappears.
At its core, Cold, Cold Bones is a novel of revenge - one in which revisiting the past may prove the only way to unravel the present."
Because who doesn't want more Bones?
The Ruins by Phoebe Wynne
Published by: St. Martin's Press
Publication Date: July 5th, 2022
Format: Hardcover, 336 Pages
To Buy
The official patter:
"Phoebe Wynne's The Ruins is a suspenseful, femimist Gothic coming-of-age tale with shades of Patricia Highsmith and Atonement, pitched against the sun-soaked backdrop of the French Riviera.
The most dazzling summer casts the darkest shadows.
Welcome to the Chateau des Sètes, a jewel of the Cote d'Azur, where long summer days bring ease, glamour, and decadence to the holidaymakers who can afford it.
Ruby Ashby adores her parents' house in France, but this August, everything feels different. Unexpected guests have descended upon the chateau - friends of her parents, and their daughters - and they are keen to enjoy the hot, extravagant summer holiday to its fullest potential. Far from England, safe in their wealth and privilege, the adults revel in bad behavior without consequence, while the girls are treated as playthings or abandoned to their own devices. But despite languid days spent poolside and long nights spent drinking, a simmering tension is growing between the families, and the sanctuary that Ruby cherishes soon starts to feel like a gilded cage.
Over two decades later the chateau is for sale, its days of splendor and luxury long gone, leaving behind a terrible history and an ugly legacy. A young widow has returned to France, wanting to purchase the chateau, despite her shocking memories of what transpired that fateful summer. But there is another person who is equally haunted by the chateau, and who also seeks to reclaim it. Who will set the chateau free - and who will become yet another of its victims?
With riveting psychological complexity, The Ruins captures the tangled legacy of abuse, the glittering allure of the Mediterranean - and the dark shadows that wait beneath the surface of both."
I was sold at Gothic and Patricia Highsmith, but the hints of Riviera add just the something extra.
Death by Bubble Tea by Jennifer J. Chow
Published by: Berkley
Publication Date: July 5th, 2022
Format: Paperback, 304 Pages
To Buy
The official patter:
"Two cousins who start a food stall at their local night market get a serving of murder in this first novel of a delicious new cozy mystery series by Jennifer J. Chow, author of Mimi Lee Gets a Clue.
When Yale Yee discovers her cousin Celine is visiting from Hong Kong, she is obliged to play tour guide to a relative she hasn't seen in twenty years. Not only that, but her father thinks it's a wonderful idea for them to bond by running a food stall together at the Eastwood Village Night Market. Yale hasn't cooked in years, and she hardly considers Celine's career as a social media influencer as adequate experience, but because she’s just lost her job at her local bookstore, she feels she has no choice.
Yale and Celine serve small dishes and refreshing drinks, and while business is slow, it eventually picks up thanks to Celine's surprisingly useful marketing ideas. They're quite shocked that their bubble tea, in particular, is a hit - literally - when one of their customers turns up dead. Yale and Celine are prime suspects due to the gold flakes that Celine added to the sweet drink as a garnish. Though the two cousins are polar opposites in every way, they must work together to find out what really happened to the victim or the only thing they'll be serving is time."
I'm obsessed with anything bubble tea related. So THIS is in my wheelhouse. Though I am pretty sure most gold flakes aren't edible.... And that knowledge is thanks to Dynasty.
Miss Aldridge Regrets by Louise Hare
Published by: Berkley
Publication Date: July 5th, 2022
Format: Hardcover, 368 Pages
To Buy
The official patter:
"The glittering RMS Queen Mary. A nightclub singer on the run. An aristocratic family with secrets worth killing for.
London, 1936. Lena Aldridge wonders if life has passed her by. The dazzling theatre career she hoped for hasn't worked out. Instead, she's stuck singing in a sticky-floored basement club in Soho, and her married lover has just left her. But Lena has always had a complicated life, one shrouded in mystery as a mixed-race girl passing for white in a city unforgiving of her true racial heritage.
She's feeling utterly hopeless until a stranger offers her the chance of a lifetime: a starring role on Broadway and a first-class ticket on the Queen Mary bound for New York. After a murder at the club, the timing couldn't be better, and Lena jumps at the chance to escape England. But death follows her onboard when an obscenely wealthy family draws her into their fold just as one among them is killed in a chillingly familiar way. As Lena navigates the Abernathy's increasingly bizarre family dynamic, she realizes that her greatest performance won't be for an audience, but for her life.
With seductive glamor, simmering family drama, and dizzying twists, Louise Hare makes her beguiling US debut."
Strip it down and it's a locked room mystery, ON A BOAT! YAS!
A Dress of Violet Taffeta by Tessa Arlen
Published by: Berkley
Publication Date: July 5th, 2022
Format: Paperback, 352 Pages
To Buy
The official patter:
"A sumptuous novel based on the fascinating true story of La Belle Époque icon Lucy, Lady Duff Gordon, who shattered the boundaries of fashion with her magnificently sensual and enchantingly unique designs.
Lucy Duff Gordon knows she is talented. She sees color, light, and texture in ways few people can begin to imagine. But is the male dominated world of haute couture, who would use her art for their own gain, ready for her?
When she is deserted by her wealthy husband, Lucy is left penniless with an aging mother and her five-year-old daughter to support. Desperate to survive, Lucy turns to her one true talent to make a living. As a little girl, the dresses she made for her dolls were the envy of her group of playmates. Now, she uses her creative designs and her remarkable eye for color to take her place in the fashion world—failure is not an option.
Then, on a frigid night in 1912, Lucy’s life changes once more, when she becomes one of 706 people to survive the sinking of the Titanic. She could never have imagined the effects the disaster would have on her fashion label Lucile, her marriage to her second husband, and her legacy. But no matter what life throws at her, Lucy will live on as a trailblazing and innovative fashion icon, never letting go of what she worked so hard to earn. This is her story."
The interesting intersection of a Belle Époque icon AND the Titanic!
Twice Upon a Time: Selected Stories, 1898-1939 by L.M. Montgomery
Published by: University of Toronto Press
Publication Date: July 5th, 2022
Format: Hardcover, 352 Pages
To Buy
The official patter:
"Although L.M. Montgomery (1874-1942) is best remembered for the twenty-two book-length works of fiction that she published in her lifetime, from Anne of Green Gables (1908) to Anne of Ingleside (1939), she also contributed some five hundred short stories and serials to a wide range of North American and British periodicals from 1895 to 1940. While most of these stories demonstrate her ability to produce material that would fit the mainstream periodical fiction market as it evolved across almost half a century, many of them also contain early incarnations of characters, storylines, conversations, and settings that she would rework for inclusion in her novels and collections of linked short stories.
In Twice Upon a Time, the third volume in The L.M. Montgomery Library, Benjamin Lefebvre collects and discusses over two dozen stories from across Montgomery's career as a short fiction writer, many of them available in book form for the first time. The volume offers a rare glimpse into Montgomery's creative process in adapting her periodical work for her books, which continue to fascinate readers all over the world."
I mean, I HAVE to feature this book because of the editor right? Not just for L.M....
Joan by Katherine J. Chen
Published by: Random House
Publication Date: July 5th, 2022
Format: Hardcover, 368 Pages
To Buy
The official patter:
"Girl. Warrior. Heretic. Saint? From the acclaimed author of Mary B comes a stunning, secular reimagining of the epic life of Joan of Arc.
1412. France is mired in a losing war against England. Its people are starving. Its king is in hiding. From this chaos emerges a teenage girl who will turn the tide of battle and lead the French to victory, becoming an unlikely hero whose name will echo across the centuries.
In Katherine J. Chen's hands, the myth and legend of Joan of Arc is transformed into a flesh-and-blood young woman: reckless, steel-willed, and brilliant. This meticulously researched novel is a sweeping narrative of her life, from a childhood steeped in both joy and violence, to her meteoric rise to fame at the head of the French army, where she navigates the perils of the battlefield and the equally treacherous politics of the royal court. Many are threatened by a woman who leads, and Joan draws wrath and suspicion from all corners, while her first taste of fame and glory leaves her vulnerable to her own powerful ambition.
With unforgettably vivid characters, transporting settings, and action-packed storytelling, Joan is a thrilling epic, a triumph of historical fiction, as well as a feminist celebration of one remarkable - and remarkably real - woman who left an indelible mark on history."
Always here for all things Joan.
Thank you for including Twice upon a Time on your blog, Elizabeth! I hope you enjoy the book.
—Benjamin
Unknown said... July 29, 2022 at 10:55 AM
Post a Comment