Monsoon Summer by Julia Gregson
Published by: Touchstone
Publication Date: August 2nd, 2016
Format: Hardcover, 464 Pages
To Buy
The official patter:
"By the award-winning author of East of the Sun, an epic love story moving from England to India, about the forbidden love between a young Indian doctor and an English midwife.
Oxfordshire, 1947. Kit Smallwood, hiding a painful secret and exhausted from nursing soldiers during the Second World War, escapes to Wickam Farm where her friend is setting up a charity sending midwives to the Moonstone Home in South India.
Then Kit meets Anto, an Indian doctor finishing his medical training at Oxford. But Kit’s light skinned mother is in fact Anglo-Indian with secrets of her own, and Anto is everything she does not want for her daughter.
Despite the threat of estrangement, Kit is excited for the future, hungry for adventure, and deeply in love. She and Anto secretly marry and set off for South India—where Kit plans to run the maternity hospital she’s helped from afar.
But Kit’s life in India does not turn out as she imagined. Anto’s large, traditional family wanted him to marry an Indian bride and find it hard to accept Kit. Their relationship under immense strain, Kit’s job is also fraught with tension as they both face a newly independent India, where riots have left millions dead and there is deep-rooted suspicion of the English. In a rapidly changing world, Kit’s naiveté is to land her in a frightening and dangerous situation...
Based on true accounts of European midwives in India, Monsoon Summer is a powerful story of secrets, the nature of home, the comforts and frustrations of family, and how far we’ll go to be with those we love."
The time period, the subject matter, this book has everything going for it.
The Last Days of New Paris by China Mieville
Published by: Del Rey
Publication Date: August 2nd, 2016
Format: Hardcover, 224 Pages
To Buy
The official patter:
"A thriller of war that never was—of survival in an impossible city—of surreal cataclysm. In The Last Days of New Paris, China Miéville entwines true historical events and people with his daring, uniquely imaginative brand of fiction, reconfiguring history and art into something new.
“Beauty will be convulsive. . . .”
1941. In the chaos of wartime Marseille, American engineer—and occult disciple—Jack Parsons stumbles onto a clandestine anti-Nazi group, including Surrealist theorist André Breton. In the strange games of the dissident diplomats, exiled revolutionaries, and avant-garde artists, Parsons finds and channels hope. But what he unwittingly unleashes is the power of dreams and nightmares, changing the war and the world forever.
1950. A lone Surrealist fighter, Thibaut, walks a new, hallucinogenic Paris, where Nazis and the Resistance are trapped in unending conflict, and the streets are stalked by living images and texts—and by the forces of Hell. To escape the city, he must join forces with Sam, an American photographer intent on recording the ruins, and make common cause with a powerful, enigmatic figure of chance and rebellion: the exquisite corpse.
But Sam is being hunted. And new secrets will emerge that will test all their loyalties—to each other, to Paris old and new, and to reality itself."
This sounds... odd. But I like odd, so it could work.
Cold Hand in Mine by Robert Aickman
Published by: Faber and Faber
Publication Date: August 2nd, 2016
Format: Paperback, 368 Pages
To Buy
The official patter:
"Cold Hand in Mine was first published in the U.K. in 1975 and in the U.S. in 1977. The story 'Pages from a Young Girl's Journal' won the Aickman World Fantasy Award in 1975. It was originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in 1973 before appearing in this collection.
Cold Hand in Mine stands as one of Aickman's best collections and contains eight stories that show off his powers as a 'strange story' writer to the full, being more ambiguous than standard ghost stories. Throughout the stories the reader is introduced to a variety of characters, from a man who spends the night in a Hospice to a German aristocrat and a woman who sees an image of her own soul. There is also a nod to the conventional vampire story ('Pages from a Young Girl's Journal') but all the stories remain unconventional and inconclusive, which perhaps makes them all the more startling and intriguing."
I admit I've never heard of Robert Aickman, but the cover and the description sound like a British Shirley Jackson. So if I wasn't already sold, the fact that Reece Shearsmith wrote the into, well, now I would be.
Three Sisters, Three Queens by Philippa Gregory
Published by: Touchstone
Publication Date: August 2nd, 2016
Format: Hardcover, 576 Pages
To Buy
The official patter:
"From the #1 New York Times bestselling author behind the upcoming Starz original series The White Princess, a gripping new Tudor story featuring King Henry VIII's sisters Mary and Margaret, along with Katherine of Aragon, vividly revealing the pivotal roles the three queens played in Henry VIII's kingdom.
As sisters they share an everlasting bond; As queens they can break each other’s hearts.
When Katherine of Aragon is brought to the Tudor court as a young bride, the oldest princess, Margaret, takes her measure. With one look, each knows the other for a rival, an ally, a pawn, destined—with Margaret’s younger sister Mary—to a sisterhood unique in all the world. The three sisters will become the queens of England, Scotland, and France.
United by family loyalties and affections, the three queens find themselves set against each other. Katherine commands an army against Margaret and kills her husband James IV of Scotland. But Margaret’s boy becomes heir to the Tudor throne when Katherine loses her son. Mary steals the widowed Margaret’s proposed husband, but when Mary is widowed it is her secret marriage for love that is the envy of the others. As they experience betrayals, dangers, loss, and passion, the three sisters find that the only constant in their perilous lives is their special bond, more powerful than any man, even a king."
I admit my love of The White Queen miniseries did reignite my love of Gregory... but now hearing about all the re-casting for The White Princess... well, not as excited as I was. So here's your obligatory Gregory for the year.
So I'm an AMC Insider. Why you might ask as I don't watch many shows on AMC, well, the reason I first signed up wasn't for the lovely gift card drawing, that was a recent edition, I mainly signed up because they asked questions about BBC America programing and I wanted to clearly state that BBC America should be showing actual British shows not filling their schedule with The X-Files and whatever Star Trek they feel like at the moment. Star Trek is a "little" understandable because of Patrick Stewart, but The X-Files!?! In between stating all my outrage and answering questions about my favorite Dirk Gently characters I started to get all these surveys about the upcoming show Killing Eve. The initial promos had me entirely uninterested, because they were vague and I had no idea what the show was about. After probably the tenth promo I watched I realized it was an espionage driven game of cat and mouse starring Sandra Oh and Jodie Comer and I decided to give it a try. Plus, Jodie Comer was really great in The White Princess so for me she was the real draw and the fact that only Oh got an Emmy nomination is shocking because I discovered in that first episode what many people came to realize as they joined the bandwagon late, Killing Eve is an exquisite dark comedy about two women on opposites sides inextricably drawn to each other where Comer is amazing in her instability. I was so desperate for more that I picked up Luke Jennings's compilation of Villanelle novellas, Codename Villanelle, to get more of a fix. But this adaptation is one of those rare occasions where it's better than the source material. Instead of a female James Bond with a hyperactive sex drive where everything is laid bare from the beginning, we're given a twisty tale that will keep you guessing until the very end and thanking whatever deity you believe in that it was renewed for a second series. 
The Last Tudor by Philippa Gregory
The Paris Spy by Susan Elia MacNeal
Emma in the Nights by Wendy Walker
Serenity: No Power in the 'Verse by Chris Roberson and Georges Jeanty
Binny for Short by Hilary McKay
The White Princess by Philippa Gregory
Carniepunk by Rachel Caine et al
