Tag: book preview

previews

Out This Week: New Lauren Willis

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I know everyone is going supernatural at the moment, but I wasn’t expecting Lauren Willig to join the club. I don’t know why I wasn’t but hey, it was a surprise to me when I saw this pop up in the October releases with the catchy subhead/amazon tagline of “A Supernatural Cemetery Romance of Gilded Age Curses and Second Chances”. The blurb says it’s “a delightfully Gothic romantic adventure, complete with a little bit of demon-hunting.” It promises two people – Jess and Adam digging into the history of a Brooklyn cemetery only to discover a Gilded Age curse, a ghostly socialite and a demonic pact. Now as you are all well aware my record with supernatural stuff in books is patchy, but as I generally like Lauren Willig I will give this a go if it crosses my path at a reasonable price – and that may take some time if previous history holds true. But spooky season has definitely started now, which means I should start reading some of the Halloween books I have waiting on the various piles…

Book previews

Out This Week: Final Renn Faire book

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At this point my love of Jen DeLuca and especially of her Willow Creek/Rennaissance Faire series is well known, so this post should not be a shock to you. A fifth (and final) book in the series has arrived and taking us back full circle to where we started, our heroine this time is Caitlin, who was the teenage instigator of Emily’s involvement in the Renn Faire in Well Met, the daughter of April, the heroine of Well Matched. In Well Versed, Caitlin is now 24 and back at the faire for the summer because she’s unemployed and back at home. This is a second chance romance – because our hero is Alex, who is the reason she fell out of love with the faire when he broke her heart years ago. I am so here for this and I can’t wait to read it!

Book previews

New Noodle shop mystery

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You may remember that in my haul from Red Lion Books back in May was a Noodle Shop mystery – number 12, Crime Rangoon. Well the next book in the series is out this week – it’s called And Then There Were Bun. this one has a murder in the aftermath of a surprise party for Lana that sees her boyfriend in the frame as the main suspect. As I said back in May, these are har to get hold of in the UK – the Kindle prices are too rich for my blood and the paperbacks only used to turn up if you’ve got somewhere that’s importing some paperbacks from the US – and we all know what’s going on with Mass Markets at the moment. But still, the cover is pretty, I know some of you reading this are in the States and so here I am.

Book previews

Out Today: Mrs Spy sequel

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When I wrote about Mrs Spy in my Recommendsday post, I mentioned that there was a sequel coming, so it only seemed right to come back around and mention that it is out today. It’s called The Spy and the Snake and according to the blurb sees Maggie on a mission in Budapest pretending to be the wife of a British defector. As the blurb mentions that Maggie’s daughter is away at university I think we must have jumped on a year or two from Mrs Spy, so I’m looking forward to seeing what changes have happened in the interim and how a few years more experience have changed Maggie.

Book previews

Out Today: New Jenny Jackson

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Jenny Jackson’s first novel Pineapple Street was one of my favourite new books of 2023 and so it probably shouldn’t be a surprise that her new novel is the new release that I want to highlight this week. Per the Blurb: The Shampoo Effect is about one summer in New England, where writer Caroline arrives in Greenhead and falls for its charms and for one of it’s residents, Van Whittaker. She spends the summer with his friends, including one who is pregnant with Van’s child, and it seems that the fun will keep coming – right up until it doesn’t. I love a rich people problems story – and I’ve also had a pretty good run of summer people and year round people novels which this sounds like it is too, so I have high hopes for this – and I have it on my pile ready to go too!

Book previews

Out This Week: New Ashley Poston

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The new book from Ashley Poston is out this week, and as I’m trying to take it as a sign that I should catch up with her last couple of books as I have two of them on the tbr pile. I’ve loved some of her previous books – like The Seven Year Slip and The Dead Romantics so I’m not quite sure how I’ve let this happen. Anyway: The Someday Garden is about Sophie, the new head gardener at Lilymoor House in Maine and who gets more than she bargained for when she discovers a secret garden with a mysterious man trapped inside. Magic and/or time travel is a feature of Poston’s books so when I say secret garden and trapped man, I mean it’s got an entrance that never appears in the same place twice. The house itself also has an uncertain future, so I’m optimistic that this may be a “lets save the house” book as well as a romance. I have a mixed record with magic (and ghosts, and the supernatural in general) in books but Poston is usually on the side of the things that I like so I’m looking forward to reading this, even if I really shouldn’t be buying it until I’ve cleared at least one of her other books of the (virtual) tbr shelf.

Book previews

Out This Week: New Annabel Monaghan

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Happy Thursday everyone and this week’s new book to mention is the new Annabel Monaghan, Dolly All The Time which came out on Tuesday. According to the blurb, this is about self sufficient, problem solving, single mum Dolly who moves back to her seaside home town and finds herself in a fake relationship with the wealthy, workaholic son of one of the town’s major families. I loved, loved, loved Nora Goes Off Script back in 2023, and I have enjoyed the three books of hers I’ve read since, although none of them have quite hit the same buttons for me as Nora did. But that’s a very high bar. I had this pre-ordered, so I already have my copy waiting for me but if you weren’t planning that far ahead, it’s out now in paperback, Kindle and Kobo.

Book previews

Out Today: New Emma Straub

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UK cover of American Fantasy

This one has been out in the US for about a month now, but the new novel from Emma Straub is out in the UK today. American Fantasy is set on a cruise for fans of a 90s boyband, where thousands their now grown up fans are on a ship with all five band members. One of the cruisers is Annie who’s really only there to keep her sister happy, but reconnects with a part of herself that she’s forgotten and (per the blurb) “By the time she meets one of the band members—not just a celebrity but someone in need of a friend—she has accessed a new sense of possibility.” If this is going where I think it might be going, it’s joining a number of books along the same lines in the last few years – but this being Emma Straub I could be completely off base with where this ends up. So I’m looking forward to reading it, and expecting to see it in the shops quite a lot.

Authors I love, Book previews

Out This Week: New Kate Clayborn

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Kate Clayborn has consistently written some of my favourite books of any year that she has published a book, so it would be remiss of me not to mention that she has a new book out this week. It’s called The Paris Match and it’s about a woman who heads to Paris for her former sister-in-law’s wedding, where she accidentally gives the bride cold feet and ends up butting heads with the best man who wants her to fix it. I love the sound of this, and I love a book set in Paris. I had this pre-ordered in paperback (as you can maybe tell because of the photo!) and I’m planning on making this my post Easter reading treat. In the meantime, you can read my posts about The Other Side of Disappearing, Georgie, All Along, Love Lettering and the Chance of a Lifetime series.

Book previews

Out This Week: The Geomagician

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The stats are coming up tomorrow as a Good Friday treat for you all, but before we get to that given that I’m on a run of cozy fantasy books I wanted to mention this one, which came out on Tuesday and which I’m already reading (but haven’t finished yet so this isn’t a review!). This is an alternative history type historical fantasy in a world where magic is real and Mary Anning (who was a real life fossil collector and palentologist) is a struggling fossil dealer who wants to be accepted into the Geomagical Society of London but is stymied by her gender and her lack of formal higher education. But one day she is out fossil hunting after a landslide when a pterodactyl egg hatches in her hand. Ajax could be the thing that makes her career – but the emissary from the society is her former fiancé and soon she is stuck between rival factions of the society with their own agendas. This is blurbed by Heather Fawcett (as in Emily Wilde and Agnes Aubert) which is why I requested it – so far (just over a third in) it’s a bit less cozy and has more religion than I was expecting, but I’m interested to see where it goes and how it all gets resolved.