The Black Bird Oracle by Deborah Harkness
Published by: Ballantine Books
Publication Date: July 16th, 2024
Format: Hardcover, 464 Pages
To Buy
The official patter:
"Diana Bishop journeys to the darkest places within herself - and her family history - in the highly anticipated fifth novel of the beloved #1 New York Times bestselling All Souls series.
Deborah Harkness first introduced the world to Diana Bishop, an Oxford scholar and witch, and vampire geneticist Matthew de Clermont in A Discovery of Witches. Drawn to each other despite long-standing taboos, these two otherworldly beings found themselves at the center of a battle for a lost, enchanted manuscript known as Ashmole 782. Since then, they have fallen in love, traveled to Elizabethan England, dissolved the Covenant between the three species, and awoken the dark powers within Diana's family line.
Now, Diana and Matthew receive a formal demand from the Congregation: They must test the magic of their seven-year-old twins, Pip and Rebecca. Concerned with their safety and desperate to avoid the same fate that led her parents to spellbind her, Diana decides to forge a different path for her family's future and answers a message from a great-aunt she never knew existed, Gwyneth Proctor, whose invitation simply reads: It's time you came home, Diana.
On the hallowed ground of Ravenswood, the Proctor family home, and under the tutelage of Gwyneth, a talented witch grounded in higher magic, a new era begins for Diana: a confrontation with her family's dark past and a reckoning for her own desire for even greater power - if she can let go, finally, of her fear of wielding it.
In this stunning new novel, grand in scope, Deborah Harkness deepens the beloved world of All Souls with powerful new magic and long-hidden secrets, and the path Diana finds at Ravenswood leads to the most consequential moments yet in this cherished series."
I know everyone else has been like me waiting impatiently for more of Diana's adventures. I just think seeing as it's only a month off AND on a Tuesday they should have released it on Diana's birthday. Which is August the 13th. And happens to be mine as well.
The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman
Published by: Viking
Publication Date: July 16th, 2024
Format: Hardcover, 688 Pages
To Buy
The official patter:
"The #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Magicians trilogy returns with a triumphant reimagining of the King Arthur legend for the new millennium.
A gifted young knight named Collum arrives at Camelot to compete for a spot on the Round Table, only to find that he's too late. The king died two weeks ago at the Battle of Camlann, leaving no heir, and only a handful of the knights of the Round Table survive.
They aren't the heroes of legend, like Lancelot or Gawain. They're the oddballs of the Round Table, from the edges of the stories, like Sir Palomides, the Saracen Knight, and Sir Dagonet, Arthur's fool, who was knighted as a joke. They're joined by Nimue, who was Merlin's apprentice until she turned on him and buried him under a hill. Together this ragtag fellowship will set out to rebuild Camelot in a world that has lost its balance.
But Arthur's death has revealed Britain's fault lines. God has abandoned it, and the fairies and monsters and old gods are returning, led by Arthur's half-sister Morgan le Fay. Kingdoms are turning on each other, warlords lay siege to Camelot and rival factions are forming around the disgraced Lancelot and the fallen Queen Guinevere. It is up to Collum and his companions to reclaim Excalibur, solve the mysteries of this ruined world and make it whole again. But before they can restore Camelot they'll have to learn the truth of why the lonely, brilliant King Arthur fell, and lay to rest the ghosts of his troubled family and of Britain's dark past.
The first major Arthurian epic of the new millennium, The Bright Sword is steeped in tradition, full of duels and quests, battles and tournaments, magic swords and Fisher Kings. It also sheds a fresh light on Arthur's Britain, a diverse, complex nation struggling to come to terms with its bloody history. The Bright Sword is a story about imperfect men and women, full of strength and pain, who are looking for a way to reforge a broken land in spite of being broken themselves."
Everyone has been waiting to see what Lev Grossman would do next. The answer? Awesomely it's Arthurian Legend!
The Lost Story by Meg Shaffer
Published by: Ballantine Books
Publication Date: July 16th, 2024
Format: Hardcover, 352 Pages
To Buy
The official patter:
"Inspired by C. S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia, this wild and wondrous novel is a fairy tale for grown-ups who still knock on the back of wardrobes - just in case - from the author of The Wishing Game.
As boys, best friends Jeremy Cox and Rafe Howell went missing in a vast West Virginia state forest, only to mysteriously reappear six months later with no explanation for where they'd gone or how they'd survived.
Fifteen years after their miraculous homecoming, Rafe is a reclusive artist who still bears scars inside and out but has no memory of what happened during those months. Meanwhile, Jeremy has become a famed missing persons' investigator. With his uncanny abilities, he is the one person who can help vet tech Emilie Wendell find her sister, who vanished in the very same forest as Rafe and Jeremy.
Jeremy alone knows the fantastical truth about the disappearances, for while the rest of the world was searching for them, the two missing boys were in a magical realm filled with impossible beauty and terrible danger. He believes it is there that they will find Emilie's sister. However, Jeremy has kept Rafe in the dark since their return for his own inscrutable reasons. But the time for burying secrets comes to an end as the quest for Emilie's sister begins. The former lost boys must confront their shared past, no matter how traumatic the memories.
Alongside the headstrong Emilie, Rafe and Jeremy must return to the enchanted world they called home for six months - for only then can they get back everything and everyone they've lost."
It's not just Narnia I'm looking for, it's secret passages!
The West Passage by Jared Pechaček
Published by: Tordotcom
Publication Date: July 16th, 2024
Format: Hardcover, 384 Pages
To Buy
The official patter:
"A palace the size of a city, ruled by giant Ladies of unknowable, eldritch origin. A land left to slow decay, drowning in the debris of generations. All this and more awaits you within The West Passage, a delightfully mysterious and intriguingly weird medieval fantasy unlike anything you've read before.
When the Guardian of the West Passage died in her bed, the women of Grey Tower fed her to the crows and went back to their chores. No successor was named as Guardian, no one took up the fallen blade; the West Passage went unguarded.
Now, snow blankets Grey in the height of summer. Rats erupt from beneath the earth, fleeing that which comes. Crops fail. Hunger looms. And none stand ready to face the Beast, stirring beneath the poisoned soil.
The fate of all who live in the palace hangs on narrow shoulders. The too-young Mother of Grey House sets out to fix the seasons. The unnamed apprentice of the deceased Grey Guardian goes to warn Black Tower. Both their paths cross the West Passage, the ancient byway of the Beast. On their journeys they will meet schoolteachers and beekeepers, miracles and monsters, and very, very big Ladies. None can say if they'll reach their destinations, but one thing is for sure: the world is about to change."
The whole plague of rats and crops failing might sound a little too close to home...
Cabaret Macabre by Tom Mead
Published by: Mysterious Press
Publication Date: July 16th, 2024
Format: Hardcover, 320 Pages
To Buy
The official patter:
"Victor Silvius has spent nine years as an inmate at The Grange, a private sanatorium, for the crime of attacking judge Sir Giles Drury. Now, the judge's wife, Lady Elspeth Drury, believes that Silvius is the one responsible for a series of threatening letters her husband has recently received. Eager to avoid the scandal that involving the local police would entail, Lady Elspeth seeks out retired stage magician Joseph Spector, whose discreet involvement in a case Sir Giles recently presided over greatly impressed her.
Meanwhile, Miss Caroline Silvius is disturbed after a recent visit to her brother Victor, convinced that he isn't safe at The Grange. Someone is trying to kill him and she suspects the judge, who has already made Silvius' life a living hell, may be behind it. Caroline hires Inspector George Flint of Scotland Yard to investigate.
The two cases collide at Marchbanks, the Drury family seat of over four hundred years, where a series of unnerving events interrupt the peace and quiet of the snowy countryside. A body is discovered in the middle of a frozen pond without any means of getting there and a rifle is fired through a closed window, killing a man but not breaking the glass. Only Spector and his mastery of the art of misdirection can uncover the logical explanations for these impossible crimes.
An atmospheric and puzzling traditional mystery that pays homage to the greatest writers of the genre's Golden Age, Cabaret Macabre is the third book in Tom Mead's Joseph Spector series, hailed by the Wall Street Journal as "a recipe for pure nostalgic pleasure." The books can be enjoyed in any order."
Heavy breathing. Family estate? Body in the middle of a frozen pond? More heavy breathing.
I Was a Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones
Published by: S and s/Saga Press
Publication Date: July 16th, 2024
Format: Hardcover, 384 Pages
To Buy
The official patter:
"From New York Times bestselling horror writer Stephen Graham Jones comes a classic slasher story with a twist - perfect for fans of Riley Sager and Grady Hendrix.
1989, Lamesa, Texas. A small west Texas town driven by oil and cotton - and a place where everyone knows everyone else's business. So it goes for Tolly Driver, a good kid with more potential than application, seventeen, and about to be cursed to kill for revenge. Here Stephen Graham Jones explores the Texas he grew up in, the unfairness of being on the outside, through the slasher horror he lives but from the perspective of the killer, Tolly, writing his own autobiography. Find yourself rooting for a killer in this summer teen movie of a novel gone full blood-curdling tragic."
Period nostalgia and summer horror in one!
Where Are You, Echo Blue? by Hayley Krischer
Published by: Dutton
Publication Date: July 16th, 2024
Format: Hardcover, 336 Pages
To Buy
The official patter:
"A smart, juicy, and page-turning novel about celebrity, fandom, and the price of ambition following a journalist's obsessive search for a missing Hollywood starlet.
When Echo Blue, the most famous child star of the nineties, disappears ahead of a highly publicized television appearance on the eve of the millennium, the salacious theories instantly start swirling. Mostly, people assume Echo has gotten herself in trouble after a reckless New Year's Eve. But Goldie Klein, an ambitious young journalist who also happens to be Echo's biggest fan, knows there must be more to the story. Why, on the eve of her big comeback, would Echo just go missing without a trace?
After a year of covering dreary local stories for Manhattan Eye, Goldie is sure this will be her big break. Who better to find Echo Blue, and tell her story the right way, than her? And so, Goldie heads to L.A. to begin a wild search that takes her deep into Echo's complicated life in which parental strife, friend break ups, rehab stints, and bad romances abound. But the further into Echo's world Goldie gets, the more she questions her own complicity in the young star's demise...yet she cannot tear herself away from this story, which has now consumed her entirely. Meanwhile, we also hear Echo's side of things from the beginning, showing a young woman who was chewed up and spit out by Hollywood as so many are, and who may have had to pay the ultimate price.
As these young women's poignant and unexpected journeys unfold, and eventually meet, Where Are You, Echo Blue? interrogates celebrity culture, the thin line between admiration and obsession, and what it means to tell other peoples' stories, all while ushering us on an unruly ride to find out what did become of Echo Blue."
A fictional yet all to realistic look into what celebrity did to female stars at the turn of the century.
The White Guy Dies First edited by Terry J. Benton-Walker
Published by: Tor Teen
Publication Date: July 16th, 2024
Format: Hardcover, 320 Pages
To Buy
The official patter:
"13 Scary Stories. 13 Authors of Color. 13 Times We Survived...The First Kill.
The White Guy Dies First includes thirteen scary stories by all-star contributors and this time, the white guy dies first.
Killer clowns, a hungry hedge maze, and rich kids who got bored. Friendly cannibals, impossible slashers, and the dead who don't stay dead....
A museum curator who despises "diasporic inaccuracies." A sweet girl and her diary of happy thoughts. An old house that just wants friends forever....
These stories are filled with ancient terrors and modern villains, but go ahead, go into the basement, step onto the old plantation, and open the magician's mystery box because this time, the white guy dies first.
Edited by Terry J. Benton-Walker, including stories from bestselling, award-winning, and up-and-coming contributors: Adiba Jaigirdar, Alexis Henderson, Chloe Gong, Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé, H. E. Edgmon, Kalynn Bayron, Karen Strong, Kendare Blake, Lamar Giles, Mark Oshiro, Naseem Jamnia, Tiffany D. Jackson, and Terry J. Benton-Walker.
A collection you'll be dying to talk about...if you survive it."
It's about time that the white guy dies first!
The Woman in the Garden by Jill Johnson
Published by: Poisoned Pen Press
Publication Date: July 16th, 2024
Format: Paperback, 336 Pages
To Buy
The official patter:
"Eustacia has always been better with plants than people...
Eustacia Rose is a Professor of Botanical Toxicology with only her extensive collection of poisonous plants for company. Her life is quiet, her schedule is unchanging, and her closest friends are the specimens she tends to. But she does have one other hobby: watching her neighbors through her telescope, taking extensive notes on their lives for "research."
When Eustacia hears a scream one evening, the temptation to investigate proves irresistible. Through her telescope she catches a glimpse of her extraordinarily beautiful new neighbor, Simone, and soon becomes obsessed with her and her life. But who are these four men that orbit Simone? And why does Eustacia get the feeling she needs to protect her from them?
One day, Eustacia comes home to find her precious garden destroyed, and learns that someone close to Simone has been murdered with a rare poisonous plant. As she is drawn deep into the crime, Eustacia's closed-off life begins to crumble, forcing her to break free from the walls of her secret garden and take matters into her own hands. Soon, she's forced to realize that the world is filled with people who are just as toxic as her plants...
Fans of The Maid will revel in this perfectly tended tale of obsession. The Woman in the Garden explores the delicate balance between beauty and danger - infatuation and obsession - tightly woven together in a tense and unsettling mystery."
Is it wrong to really really want a poison garden?
The Perfect Sister by Stephanie DeCarolis
Published by: Bantam
Publication Date: July 16th, 2024
Format: Paperback, 368 Pages
To Buy
The official patter:
"A woman's search for her missing sister on the sandy white beaches of the Hamptons uncovers a wealth of secrets worth killing for - a sultry and sumptuous psychological suspense from USA Today bestselling author Stephanie DeCarolis.
Alex Walker has always looked up to her perfect older sister. Maddie has succeeded in all the ways Alex has not: She escaped their hometown and seems to have put the memories of their unstable childhood behind her. But despite the different paths their lives have taken, the two sisters made a pact to spend one week together every summer. It was a promise they'd never broken...until now.
When Maddie suddenly cancels her annual trip home, Alex begins to worry. But when Maddie stops returning her calls altogether, Alex is certain something is wrong. Relying on the only clues Maddie left behind, Alex follows her sister's footsteps to the Hamptons where she meets the Blackwell family - the last people to have seen Maddie before she vanished into thin air. The Blackwells seem to have it all: wealth, beauty, and a beachside mansion on a private stretch of Hamptons real estate. It's a world unlike any Alex has ever known, but she quickly discovers that looks can be deceiving, and that a life of luxury always comes at a cost."
Oh, murder and mayhem in the Hamptons! Yes please!
Things Don't Break on Their Own by Sarah Easter Collins
Published by: Crown Publishing Group (NY)
Publication Date: July 16th, 2024
Format: Hardcover, 272Pages
To Buy
The official patter:
"A heart-wrenching mystery about sisters, lovers, and a dinner party gone wrong.
Twenty-five years ago, a young girl left home to walk to school. Her younger sister soon followed. But one of them arrived, and one of them didn't.
Her sister's disappearance has defined Willa's life. Everyone thinks her sister is dead, but Willa knows she isn't. Because there are some things that only sisters know about each other - and some bonds only sisters can break.
Willa sees fragments of her sister everywhere - the way that woman on the train turns her head, the gait of that woman in Paris. If there's the slightest resemblance, Willa drops everything, and everyone, and tries to see if it is her.
When Willa is invited to a dinner party thrown by her first love, she has no reason to expect it will be anything other than an ordinary evening. Both of them have moved on, ancient history. But nothing about Willa's life has been ordinary since the day her sister disappeared, and that's not about to change tonight.
Sarah Easter Collins has written an extraordinary novel about memory, lost love, and long-buried secrets that sometimes see the light of day."
I mean, just for Willa's sake we all need to find out what happened to her sister! Yes, I know they're fictional. But still...
Women in the Valley of the Kings by Kathleen Sheppard
Published by: St. Martin's Press
Publication Date: July 16th, 2024
Format: Hardcover, 320 Pages
To Buy
The official patter:
"The never-before-told story of the women Egyptologists who paved the way of exploration in Egypt and created the basis for Egyptology.
The history of Egyptology is often told as yet one more grand narrative of powerful men striving to seize the day and the precious artifacts for their competing homelands. But that is only half of the story. During the so-called Golden Age of Exploration, there were women working and exploring before Howard Carter discovered the tomb of King Tut. Before men even conceived of claiming the story for themselves, women were working in Egypt to lay the groundwork for all future exploration.
In Women in the Valley of the Kings: The Untold Story of Women Egyptologists in the Gilded Age, Kathleen Sheppard brings the untold stories of these women back into this narrative. Sheppard begins with some of the earliest European women who ventured to Egypt as travelers: Amelia Edwards, Jenny Lane, and Marianne Brocklehurst. Their travelogues, diaries and maps chronicled a new world for the curious. In the vast desert, Maggie Benson, the first woman granted permission to excavate in Egypt, met Nettie Gourlay, the woman who became her lifelong companion. They battled issues of oppression and exclusion and, ultimately, are credited with excavating the Temple of Mut.
As each woman scored a success in the desert, she set up the women who came later for their own struggles and successes. Emma Andrews' success as a patron and archaeologist helped to pave the way for Margaret Murray to teach. Margaret's work in the university led to the artists Amice Calverley's and Myrtle Broome's ability to work on site at Abydos, creating brilliant reproductions of tomb art, and to Kate Bradbury's and Caroline Ransom's leadership in critical Egyptological institutions. Women in the Valley of the Kings upends the grand male narrative of Egyptian exploration and shows how a group of courageous women charted unknown territory and changed the field of Egyptology forever."
Well any true fan of Egyptology already knows that women ruled Egypt in more ways that one... Now it's time for everyone else to find out!
Emergence by Kim Harrison
Published by: Ace
Publication Date: July 16th, 2024
Format: Kindle, 190 Pages
To Buy
The official patter:
"For better or worse, a solar eclipse brought humans and paranormal beings together, sparking one woman's battle to master magic or lose our world, in this riveting serialized adventure from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Hollows series.
As time has passed, Dr. Renee Caisson has begun to see the demonic, alien August as more than a research subject or an unlikely colleague - they've become friends. And together she and August have helped the two societies of Nextdoor and Earth through the confusion of first contact, the danger of misunderstandings, and the anger of mistreatment.
But when a popular blogger and conspiracy theorist twists August's words, an uproar ensues, turning a powerful section of human society against the Neighbors - and resulting in Renee's house arrest. Her could-be boyfriend, Major Jackson, says it's to protect her, though that’s not how Renee sees it.
Torn between duty and friendship, August jumps Renee to freedom, fully aware that the journey might reveal more to her than she should know. The wily Neighbor has pieced together that Renee has been unconsciously using their magic, a fact that, if revealed, will cause more, not less, conflict between the humans and Neighbors.
For if the people of Earth can master magic and exile August's people again, the Neighbors will not survive...."
Week three and we're at the grand finale!
The Magician's Land by Lev Grossman
The Magician King by Lev Grossman
The Magicians by Lev Grossman
This actually all started with me thinking I should reread Donna Tartt's The Secret History. You will soon find out that this didn't happen. I had every intention of doing so, but, well, maybe I should just trust my first impressions and not bow down to everyone telling me that I was wrong about The Secret History. Not every book is for everyone. And it just wasn't for me. But when I had plans to reread said book I started plotting out books to read that are set in academia. They didn't have to be dark academia, in the expected sense, they could have just a murder or two and no magic. That's dark right? But of course there would be dark academia as well. There's a reason it's so popular and I, for once, have fallen for a populist trend. Though I haven't gotten to the point where I'm redecorating to bring those vibes into my everyday life. I don't feel the need to have skulls on display. At least yet. Anything could happen. So I started gleefully composing reading lists of books that fit the loose and narrow definitions of dark academia and pretty soon I had such a long reading list I could do nothing but read this genre for years and not run out of books. Therefore I picked the ones I was most interested in, or in some cases, decided to read and belatedly realized that it was dark academia, and before I knew it I had three months plotted out. Or a summer.... And there's nothing more delicious then spending time when you don't have to be in school reading about school.... And thus Summer School was born. Get ready for some Leigh Bardugo, Olivie Blake, Lev Grossman, Maureen Johnson, Cari Thomas, Rebecca Yarros, and more! Because school is in session! 
The Magicians: Alice's Story by Lev Grossman
Bram Stoker's Dracula by Mike Mignola
Hellboy: 25 Years of Covers by Mike Mignola
Song of Blood and Stone by L. Penelope
The Darkest Summer by Ella Drummond
A Murder on Jane Street by Cathy Cash Spellman
The Second-Worst Restaurant in France by Alexander McCall Smith
If you follow my goodreads feed you sometimes glean things that aren't readily apparent here on my blog. You might guess what I'm planning in the coming months, or you might, for example go "how the hell does she like The Magicians when she hated the book so much that she hasn't even bothered to write a scorching review because she probably views it as a waste of time." FYI I do view it as a waste of time. Well, this is one of those rare instances where an adaptation is so much better than the source material that it's best to forget that source exists. Although I will give a tip of the hat to how clever the showrunners are in circling around and sneaking in something from the books when you least expect it. Though they have a way of making it work where Lev Grossman didn't. Because, for those who've read the books, there's no denying that the protagonist Quentin Coldwater with his Fillory obsession is a bit of a wet blanket. He's mopey and just best avoided, hence here comes Elliot and Margo to the rescue. Secondary characters elevated to a bitchy king and queen of Fillory? Oh. My. God. Yes. Please. They not only add levity to the show, they seriously make the show what it is. Watch how much more screentime they get in season two compared to season one and you'll know what I'm talking about. And THAT is what I love most about The Magicians, they see areas where they need to improve and actually improve! This is the "dark/adult Harry Potter" I expected when I picked up the book series. This is what fantasy television is about! 
The Inheritance by Charles Finch
The Facefaker's Game by Chandler J. Birch
Shadowed Souls by Jim Butcher, Kerrie L. Hughes et al.
Literary Wonderlands by Laura Miller and Lev Grossman
Ingenue by Jillian Larkin
The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson
Two for Sorrow by Nicola Upson
