![]() ![]() As Red observes, animals compete for resources just as humans do, and nature is not always pretty or fair or kind. (Red is monoecious, they explain, with both male and female flowers.) Newbery medalist Applegate succeeds at interweaving an immigrant story with an animated natural world and having it all make sense. Red becomes the repository for generations of wishes this includes both observing Samar’s longing wish and sporting the hurtful word that another young person carves into their bark as a protest to Samar’s family’s presence. An Irish woman named Maeve is the first, and a young 10-year-old Muslim girl named Samar is the most recent. But this tree also has perspective on its animal friends and people who live within its purview-not just witnessing, but ultimately telling the tales of young people coming to this country alone or with family. ![]() Not to mention that they have complicated relationships with humans. ![]() So says Red, who is over 200 years old and should know. Generations of human and animal families grow and change, seen from the point of view of the red oak Wishing Tree that shelters them all. ![]()
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![]() ![]() Independent Publisher's Award, Best Mystery/Thriller.If you like sassy detectives, irreverent humor, and crazy capers, then you'll love Kelly Oliver's hilarious adventure.īuy WOLF to join a girl-powered noir whodunit today! WOLFis the first standalone novel in the exhilarating Jessica James mystery series. And when her ragtag posse helps her uncover a related date drug scandal, repeated attempts on her drink make her fear she's the next on the killer's to-do list.Ĭan Jessica unmask the murderer before her degree gets buried six-feet-under? Suspecting the school's Russian janitor of doing more than sweeping the floors, Jessica mounts an investigation to clear her name. ![]() Scoping the crime scene for clues, she leaves evidence that makes her both a suspect and a target. only to find her adviser dead in the tub. Desperate to get out of her grubby attic digs, she and her friends break into her professor's office. Jessica James is broke and counting down the days until she can defend her philosophy thesis. "The Jessica James Mysteries are edgy, thrilling, and simply captivating." -Chicago Tribune But she just became a suspect of first-degree murder. ![]() ![]() Nalini lives and works in beautiful New Zealand. ![]() ![]() She's beyond delighted to be able to follow her dream as a writer. Though she's traveled as far afield as the deserts of China, the Highlands of Scotland, and the temples of Japan, it is the journey of the imagination that fascinates her the most. New York Times bestselling author Nalini Singh is passionate about writing. ![]() Along the way, the two dominants may find that submitting to one another uncovers not just a deadly conspiracy, but a passion so raw, it'll leave them both branded by fire. But when a brilliant changeling researcher is kidnapped from DarkRiver territory in a seemingly senseless attack, Mercy and Riley must work together to track the young male-before his shadowy captors decide he's no longer useful. The problem is not simply that he pushes her buttons the problem is that he's a wolf, she's a cat, and they're both used to being on top. Though DarkRiver sentinel Mercy is feeling the pressure to mate, she resists savagely when Riley Kincaid, a lieutenant from the SnowDancer pack, seeks to possess her. ![]() #1 New York Times bestselling author Nalini Singh allies two fierce changelings in this explosive Psy-Changeling novel. ![]() ![]() The author has my sense of humour, writes of a subject I’m interested in, and I found even (bizarrely) has the same names for his characters as I currently have in my WIP.ĭo you read your book reviews? How do you deal with bad or good ones? Hirsch, MD which I’m reading at the moment. It’s got to be ‘Didn’t Get Frazzled’ by David Z. ![]() What’s your favorite under-appreciated novel? If you could tell your younger writing self anything, what would it be?ĭon’t go overboard spamming your books left, right and centre. Of course I know that there’s probably nothing that hasn’t been written about by other authors, but there’s no harm in trying! ![]() I try and be original, so as not to write just another version of something that has been written about hundreds of times before. ![]() You can email me at please enjoy this interview with Stevie Turner:ĭo you try more to be original or to deliver to readers what they want? If you’re an author interested in being interviewed in this series, I still have limited spots available for 2018. You can catch up with all of my past author interviews (nearly 200) on my Author Directory page. I am honored to continue this series with English author and blogger Stevie Turner.įor those of you that have read my interviews in the past, you’ll find a new set of questions in this series. ![]() Author interviews will be posted every Friday throughout the year. Welcome to the 2018 author interview series. ![]() ![]() What are the similarities and difference s in their military tactics and leadership styles? What are the strengths and weaknesses of these different tactics and styles? How do t hese leaders prepare Todd, Viola, and the Return for leadership? Do Todd, Viola, or the Return want the roles that are being thrust upon them? Explain. Examine the four factions involved in this war and their leaders: the Ask (Mayor Prentiss), the Answer (Mistress Coyle), the Spackle (the Sky), and the newcomers (Simone Watkin and Bradley Tench). ![]() On page 10, Todd describes th e Noise of t he Ask’s army as “a monstrous thing, tuned together and twisted round itself, roaring as a single voice, like a loud and angry giant pounding its way down the road.” This is an example of what type of figurative language? Explain. Until there’s war, we are only children.” Do y ou agree or disagree with Mayor Prentiss? Explain. Which characters in this final book of the trilogy could be considered “monsters” who do monstrous things in the midst of war? Does war make them monsters, or are they monsters to begin with? Mayor Prentiss disagrees with Ben’s statement when he says on page 11, “It’s war that makes us men in the first place. ![]() Clearly demonstrates the ugliness of war. ![]() ![]() ![]() It’s the exact same format as the Magnus Archives (short stories linked by one overall plot). Correct because, it’s certainly the length of a novel, but incorrect because it just isn’t a novel. Sadly, my assumption that I’d get to see Jonathan taken on a novel-length work was both correct and incorrect. The curiosity at seeing Jonathan go for a novel-length piece and the stunning cover, not to mention the awesome blurb, had me plumping for this one without question. My Rating of ‘Thirteen Storeys’: 3 out of 5Īs a huge fan of the Magnus Archives (Jonathan Sims horror short story podcast in which the stories are all loosely connected by one over-arching plotline) I was thrilled to see he had a novel out. ![]() His death remains one of the biggest unsolved mysteries – until now. Besides a postcode, they share only one thing in common – they’ve all experienced an unsettling occurrence within the building’s walls.īy the end of the night, their host is dead, and none of the guests will say what happened. None of them know why they were selected to receive his invitation. All the guests are strangers – even to their host, the billionaire owner of the building. ![]() Ī dinner party is held in the penthouse of a multimillion-pound development. A chilling thriller that’s perfect for fans of Get Out and The Haunting of Hill House. ![]() ![]() ![]() Most of the brief, potent essays consider particular objects and actions and the questions they spark about value: a piano (“Dada da dum-middle class! Let the lessons begin”), redlining, investments, lines at amusement parks, the game of Monopoly, and poetry. In the same way her previous books explored the hidden social contracts around racism ( Notes From No Man’s Land) and vaccination ( On Immunity), her latest interrogates capitalism’s relationship to upper-middle-class living, particularly hers. ![]() She means it: Acquiring a home and its attendant creature comforts has radically changed her relationships to money, labor, and domesticity. ![]() “My adult life, I decide, can be divided into two distinct parts-the time before I owned a washing machine and the time after,” writes Biss. The poet and essayist considers her affluence and what-and who-has been sacrificed for it. ![]() ![]() ![]() But, of course, this is a book, and Grace is our MC, so there’s certain to be hijinks and hilarity between her and her goal of graduating. That’s fine with Grace, she just wants to survive junior year, get through senior year, and graduate so she can go back to California and be with her best friend, Heather, as they make up for lost time. Tall, brooding, and handsome, Jaxon Vega is not to be messed with or even thought about. Well her, and resident mysterious bad boy Jaxon Vega. As with any good YA protagonist, New Girl Grace is the talk of the school. She is taken in by her uncle Finn and his daughter Macy who also serve as the principal of the school Grace is to be enrolled in and Grace’s new bestie/tour guide, respectively. Our MC is Grace: recent Alaska transplant who’s parents have just passed away…truly unfortunate start for our girl. And now someone wants to wake a sleeping monster, and I’m wondering if I was brought here intentionally-as the bait. But there’s something about him that calls to me, something broken in him that somehow fits with what’s broken in me.īecause Jaxon walled himself off for a reason. A vampire with deadly secrets who hasn’t felt anything for a hundred years. I only know the one thing that unites them is their hatred of me. I still can’t decide which of these warring factions I belong to, if I belong at all. Here I am, a mere mortal among gods…or monsters. Nothing is right about this place or the other students in it. ![]() ![]() My whole world changed when I stepped inside the academy. ![]() ![]() ![]() We have, however, tried to celebrate the breadth of horror-to highlight those books that establish something about the genre or push it forward into new realms. ![]() With such a weight of contention, any attempt at a list of ‘best’ horror novels is doomed to disagreement. It was an era dominated by brand-name authors, with epic sales and matching page-lengths. Contemporary readers may look no further than the horror ‘boom’ of the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s. Jekyll–these figures emerged from a culture in crisis, when twin anxieties about masculinity and modernity birthed urban nightmares. Others locate the genre’s origins in a slate of late-Victorian novels and their roster of horror icons. ![]() Scholars trace the legacy of literary horror back to the British Gothic fictions of the eighteenth century, when castles were haunted, monks were evil, and anywhere beyond the edges of Protestant England was tinged sinister. This is before we even attempt a historical context. For others it hinges on atmosphere and tone. Definitions abound.įor some, horror is a genre founded on trope and convention: a checklist of blighted houses and monstrous secrets, men in masks and women in white nightgowns. ![]() ![]() ![]() The champion of the story is its setting. Sophia becomes a proactive heroine determined to exhume the secrets of the Abbey by reaching out to its inhabitants and neighbors. Several changes from the Charles Perrault version refashion the cautionary tale into a Gothic mystery with supernatural elements, drawing parallels between Sophia’s gilded cage and the trials of slave life. ![]() This awakening brings the realization of how isolated Sophia’s world has become, and how little she really knows about her host.įrom debut novelist Jane Nickerson comes this re-imagining of Bluebeard and his many wives. However, Sophia soon discovers an eerie commonality between de Cressac’s former wives and herself: they all have hair in strands of bronze and gold. ![]() Sophia Petheram enters her godfather’s world as an orphan and is captivated by his gusto for life. Tucked away in a backwater Mississippi town is Wyndriven Abbey, home of the mysterious, intoxicating Bernard de Cressac. ![]() |