Strange Angels by Lili St Crow, Ash and Quill by Rachel Caine, A Conspiracy in Belgravia by Sherry Thomas, Automatic Woman by Nathan Yocum and Option B by Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant

Due to some medical issues that I've had this month, I've not been able to update this blog as faithfully as I usually do, so now I've got 5 books awaiting review and only one post to review them. Hence, without further ado, or tidbits, here's what I've been reading in the past couple of weeks.

  

Strange Angels by Lili St Crow is a YA title by Lillith Saintcrow, whose urban fantasy novel series Jill Kismet and Dante Valentine I've read in omnibus editions. I've also read her Bannon and Clare steampunk series and Cormorant Run, an SF title, is on my TBR pile. I was curious about what Saintcrow would do with a young adult female protagonist, considering how great her protagonists in urban fantasy, Jill and Dante, are, and how thoroughly they kick butt on the regular.

And in terms of sheer kick-arse, Dru Anderson did not disappoint. Unfortunately, though, the first zombie she has to kill is her father, her last remaining relative. Now an orphan, Dru and a strange boy named Graves that she becomes enamored of (for no real reason I can tell other than he helps her find food and a place to stay a couple of times, provides a shoulder to cry on and barely believes her when she tells him she is a hunter of supernatural beasties and monsters) have to find out who zombied her dad, and why she is being targeted by killer werewulves and vampires. Here's the blurb: Dru Anderson's life has always been less than normal. Her normal life has consisted of moving from town to town with her father as he hunts poltergeists, ghosts, and other characters from horror films. Her father insists Dru get an education, but Dru scoffs at the triviality of school, which is far from what she sees as the real world—the world of paranormal activity. Tough, sarcastic, able to sense anything from the real world, and an expert at tai chi, Dru lands in trouble barely two weeks after moving to a new town. She finds herself without a father and running from something unknown and truly terrifying. In the space of several days, Dru fights zombies, werewolves, burning dogs, and vampires in her quest to discover what is after her and why. A regular kid, named Graves, involves himself when he offers a spot for her to stay the night. Dru, struggling to know whether to trust a group called the Order, forms an unlikely friendship with Graves. The ending points to subsequent books and leaves a number of questions unanswered. Although filled with plenty of action and excitement, readers should be warned that the book contains a significant amount of bad language.

Children's Literature - Amalia Selle

Although I enjoyed Saintcrow's zippy prose and her precision plot, I found much of the story to be familiar and formulaic, with the strong teenage girl in an inevitable love triangle with the weaker-but-compassionate regular guy (Graves) and the hottie supernatural guy, (with the inevitable European-sounding name) Christophe, both of whom want to love and protect her, though she really doesn't need either of them, as she has been trained to protect herself. If any of this sounds like the Hunger Games or Divergent or every other YA series that's popular, I wouldn't say that was an accident. And while St Crow's spin on YA tropes is interesting, (and I plan on reading the next two books in the series), I am slightly disappointed that she felt the need to go down this well tread path. Saintcrow seems to me to be an author with a surfeit of imagination who can invent whole worlds out of nothing and populate them with characters that are unique and fascinating. That's why I'm giving this book a B, and recommending it to those who are fond of the Hunger Games and its ilk.  

Ash and Quill by Rachel Caine is the third book in the Great Library series. I've been reading this series since I got an ARC of the first book years ago, in exchange for an unbiased review. This series is founded on the idea that the Great Library of Alexandria never burned, but instead became a huge political force that disseminates all forms of knowledge as it sees fit, and controls society with rigid guidelines that make owning actual paper copies of books a crime. This leads to a healthy blackmarket in smuggled books, and our protagonist, Jess Brightwell, is the scion of a wealthy and well connected smuggling family who care little for him other than for his usefulness in obtaining illegal volumes. In this installment, Jess and his fellow scholars are plunged into the world of the "burners," in America, a fanatical group who illegally burn books and believe that all knowledge should be free. Here's the blurb: Hoarding all the knowledge of the world, the Great Library jealously guards its secrets. But now a group of rebels poses a dangerous threat to its tyranny....
 Jess Brightwell and his band of exiles have fled London, only to find themselves imprisoned in Philadelphia, a city led by those who would rather burn books than submit. But Jess and his friends have a bargaining chip: the knowledge to build a machine that will break the Library’s rule. School Library Journal: Out of the frying pan and into the fire, Jess Brightwell and his friends are forced to flee to Philadelphia, where they're imprisoned by the fanatical Burners. The ace up their sleeve is the same one they would have used with Jess's father if they hadn't been captured. Thomas's printing press would destroy the library's hold over the populace, and the Burners' leader seems ready to negotiate for ownership of this illegal technology. But Jess knows he and his friends' lives will be forfeit once the press has been built. The seven friends formulate a plan of escape to coincide with the press's completion, unaware that the Archivist Magister has discovered their location. An attack is launched on the Burners' stronghold just before Jess and company can run off. Help comes from unlikely sources, and Jess is inconveniently indebted to his family and their black market contacts even as he realizes that he and his companions are still dispensable pawns in someone else's game. Amid the luxurious trappings of his father's castle, Jess is once again negotiating a fatal bargain and plotting escape. Caine skillfully demonstrates that right and wrong are always shrouded in shades of gray. This volume maintains the series's signature high-level intensity with characters who continue to grow and evolve along with the narrative.

I found the dystopian version of America fascinating, though sad, and I was just as horrified as the main characters when the entire town of Philadelphia is bombed back to the stone age. What really bothered me, however, was that Jess ends up having to "sell out" his friends in order for them to have a chance at destroying the evil Archivist from within the library itself. I was sincerely hoping that Jess would figure out another way to change his world. Still, the action in this novel never lets up, and the prose is sterling. A well deserved A, with a recommendation for anyone who has read the first two books and a caveat that the ending of Ash and Quill will break your heart.

A Conspiracy in Belgravia by Sherry Thomas is the second book in the "Lady Sherlock" series, which, although it is not steampunk, has a Victorian setting that smells steampunkish enough to draw in that audience. Here's the blurb from Publisher's Weekly: The first in Thomas’s Lady Sherlock series, A Study in Scarlet Women (2016), offered a clever a premise: that Sherlock Holmes is a fabrication created by Miss Charlotte Holmes and her coterie of accomplices, including Mrs. Watson, in order to allow her to practice her skills as a detective in the male-centric world of Victorian England. Potential clients are told they must consult Sherlock through his “sister” because of his ill health. In this entertaining sequel, Lady Ingram, the wife of Charlotte’s friend and benefactor, Lord Ingram, needs help with a delicate matter that she wishes to keep secret from her husband. Lady Ingram’s true love, whom she declined to marry because he wasn’t rich enough, has failed to show up for their annual rendezvous at London’s Albert Memorial. Charlotte takes on the case, but what seems like a straightforward search for a missing person soon spirals into something altogether more complicated and sinister. Could Professor Moriarty be involved? Thomas writes with brio and creates appealing characters. Sherlockians may get a kick out of Charlotte’s sister, Livia, an aspiring writer, who wishes to write a story based on Charlotte’s exploits—a story that sounds a lot like Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet.

I enjoyed this installment more than the first book, mainly because Charlotte seems to have gotten more certain of herself and less fearful of the people around her discovering her secret (that she is Sherlock Holmes) and of her family trying to abduct her and shut her away forever as an embarrassment (that she's a "fallen" woman who remains unmarried). Usually, in mystery novels, I am able to tell "whodunnit" within the first few chapters, sometimes within the first 75 pages. Thomas thwarted me until I was 2/3 of the way through the book this time, though I had my suspicions of the Ingrams from the first book. Thomas' prose is delicate and yet sturdy and her plot unflagging and rich with surprise twists and turns. I'd give it an A-, and recommend it to anyone who likes Sherlock Holmes mysteries with a female protagonist, and also has a long plane or train trip scheduled, so they can become engrossed and finish this book, as I did, in one fell swoop.

Automatic Woman by Nathan L Yocum was a surprise to me, in that I was unaware that it was self published. It had been recommended to me by a website that normally only recommends traditionally published works. Still, under the tagline "Steampunk done right" I was unable to resist purchasing a copy. This is the story of a fat man named Jolly Fellows who is a "thief catcher" for a PI firm in London in the late 19th century. He finds a case, or rather, a case finds him when a fanatical mechanical genius builds an entire dance troupe of automatons and somehow manages to instill independent thought and/or a "soul" into the lead ballerina of the troupe, who immediately turns on her creator and crushes him to death before Jolly breaks her apart and is caught over the mechanical engineer's lifeless body. What follows is a mad ride through the underbelly of London as Jolly tries to figure out who the players are, what they want, and how he can extricate himself from his predicament. Here's the blurb:

There are no simple cases. Jacob "Jolly" Fellows knows this.

The London of 1888, the London of steam engines, Victorian intrigue, and horseless carriages is not a safe place nor simple place...but it's his place. Jolly is a thief catcher, a door-crashing thug for the prestigious Bow Street Firm, assigned to track down a life sized automatic ballerina. But when theft turns to murder and murder turns to conspiracy, can Jolly keep his head above water? Can a thief catcher catch a killer?
Automatic Woman is the second novel from award winning screenwriter Nathan L. Yocum. A volatile mix of steampunk, noir, historical fiction, and two-fisted action, Automatic Woman takes us to a place that never was yet we all know so well... the London of Jules Verne, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Jack the Ripper and Bram Stoker with a pneumatic twist.

I found the appearance of well known Victorians like Charles Darwin and Bram Stoker (author of Dracula) fascinating, and the idea that Darwin was pitting himself against other genius minds to gain control of the secret of creating a clockwork being with a soul was also quite a thrill. Would Darwin have, in reality, been so manipulative and cruel? Probably not, but speculating about a fictional Darwin is all in good fun. Yocum's prose is muscular and his plot straightforward. There's even an HEA, or a HFN at the last, which was pretty satisfying. I'd give this book a B+, and recommend it to any steampunk fan who likes a good mystery.

Option B, Facing Adversity, Building Resilience and Finding Joy by Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant. I only read this book as part of an online book group spearheaded by my wonderful friend Jenny Zappala, who kindly purchased a copy for me when it became apparent that there were too many holds on the book at the library, and I wouldn't get a copy in enough time to participate in the group discussion via messenger on Facebook. BTW, Sandberg is the COO of Facebook, as she makes clear within the first few pages of this so-called advice book. I think that the title should have been "A White One Percenter's Guide to Becoming a Successful, High Profile Widow." There's a nasty veneer of hubris that makes itself apparent on every page. She constantly "name-drops" all the famous people she knows, particularly Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook and his wife, who literally have to hold her up after she dramatically collapses at her husband's funeral, in a scene worthy of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind. Sandberg goes on to make it clear in every chapter that no one has ever loved so deeply or grieved so hard as she has, and the fact that she can send her children to watch a rocket launch with Elon Musk or send them to an expensive grief camp shouldn't detract from the fact that her precious heart is broken, and we plebes can only imagine how hard it is for her, with infinite paid leave, to deal with her day to day affairs in the face of such a tragic loss! She insists that her coworkers learn to grieve along with her, and she sets herself up as a kind of tyrant, once she returns to the office, demanding that others emotionally kowtow to her. Sandberg doesn't even allow her coauthor Grant to speak for himself. She actually paraphrases his ideas in more than one chapter. Here's the blurb:

After the sudden death of her husband, Sheryl Sandberg felt certain that she and her children would never feel pure joy again. “I was in ‘the void,’” she writes, “a vast emptiness that fills your heart and lungs and restricts your ability to think or even breathe.” Her friend Adam Grant, a psychologist at Wharton, told her there are concrete steps people can take to recover and rebound from life-shattering experiences. We are not born with a fixed amount of resilience. It is a muscle that everyone can build.
Option B combines Sheryl’s personal insights with Adam’s eye-opening research on finding strength in the face of adversity. Beginning with the gut-wrenching moment when she finds her husband, Dave Goldberg, collapsed on a gym floor, Sheryl opens up her heart—and her journal—to describe the acute grief and isolation she felt in the wake of his death. But Option B goes beyond Sheryl’s loss to explore how a broad range of people have overcome hardships including illness, job loss, sexual assault, natural disasters, and the violence of war. Their stories reveal the capacity of the human spirit to persevere . . . and to rediscover joy.
Resilience comes from deep within us and from support outside us. Even after the most devastating events, it is possible to grow by finding deeper meaning and gaining greater appreciation in our lives. Option B illuminates how to help others in crisis, develop compassion for ourselves, raise strong children, and create resilient families, communities, and workplaces. Many of these lessons can be applied to everyday struggles, allowing us to brave whatever lies ahead. Two weeks after losing her husband, Sheryl was preparing for a father-child activity. “I want Dave,” she cried. Her friend replied, “Option A is not available,” and then promised to help her make the most of Option B.
We all live some form of Option B. This book will help us all make the most of it.

I kept hearing the song "What Do the Simple Folk Do?" from the musical Camelot while I was reading this book, because, despite the above blurb that claims she can "help us all make the most of (Option B)," unless you are wealthy and high up enough in a company that you get grief leave (Something I would bet 98 percent of us don't have), I don't believe there's anything in this book that can help you, mainly because Sandberg is so far removed from 'regular' people in her ivory tower life.

I also found Sandberg to be domineering, a snob who condescends to share her pearls of wisdom with the little people, and what wisdom she does share that isn't usable for the average person, is often cliche'd common sense ideas, like 'giving yourself time to grieve', or 'finding gratitude' for what is good in your life, or 'leaning in to the suck' which basically means facing the pain of your loss head on. Relying on friends and family for support and talking out your feelings of anger and pain were all staples of the Oprah Winfrey show from years ago, where she talked about dealing with tragedy in a much more simplistic and common sense fashion. That Sandberg rehashes these ideas as if they were something new was, frankly, laughable. I also found her constant blathering about her perfect husband, their marriage, reprinting their wedding vows and his eulogy, to be ridiculous. None of that served the book's supposed mission of giving advice to help other grieving widows and children. Therefore I'd give this tedious tome a C-, and only recommend it to those who are Sandberg fans from her book "Lean In," and who don't mind being treated as minions by her royal widowed majesty.

Canadian Bookstores, Beer Writer of the Year, Margaret Atwood's Peace Prize, Greywalker by Kat Richardson, Death Among Rubies by R. J. Koreto, The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street by Susan Jane Gilman and The Cracked Spine by Paige Shelton

In the latest book news from Shelf Awareness, here are three interesting tidbits, first 11 great Canadian bookstores from an article in Chatelaine (a magazine that I used to read that I now believe is online), New Zealand's Beer Writer of the Year, which is a book my husband would love, because he drinks and loves beer, and the German Book Trade Peace Prize goes to the wonderful Margaret Atwood, whose work I've been reading since I was a teenager. She has the dubious privilege of watching her book, The Handmaid's Tale become a mini-series that is in the process of becoming reality in the United States. 

"From the shop founded by Alice Munro in Victoria to a Nova Scotia

bookstore that specializes in rare titles," Chatelaine showcased "11 of

the dreamiest bookstores to get lost in across Canada

http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz34539328."

The Brewers Guild of New Zealand named Alice Galletly the 2017 Beer

Writer of the Year

http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz34539349,

Booksellers NZ reported, noting that the winner attributed the honor to

her columns in Air New Zealand magazine Kia Ora and her book, How to

Have a Beer. "It's a very non-serious, personal guide to enjoying beer,

full of silly anecdotes and jokes," she said. Guild representative

Martin Bennett praised "the sheer force of personality in the writing."

"My approach with beer writing is always to write for non-geeks first

and foremost, and to make it as fun and accessible as possible," she

said. "The mission of course, is to convert unsuspecting lager drinkers

to our cult."

In another event that was particularly political, the Peace Prize of the

German Book Trade was given to Margaret Atwood, who was cited by

organizers this way: "By closely observing human contradictions, she

shows how easily supposed normality can turn into inhumanity. Humanity,

justice and tolerance shape Margaret Atwood's approach to the world."

At the prize ceremony on Sunday, Atwood expressed dismay over the

political situation in the United States, which she said once was a

symbol of freedom and democracy--but "no longer." Things have gotten so

bad, she continued, that her 30-year-old novel The Handmaid's Tale

suddenly is topical. "Parliaments controlled by men want to set the

clock back--preferably into the 19th century."

She said the world is in "strange historical times.... We don't know

exactly where we are. We also don't know exactly who we are."

Frankfurt mayor Peter Feldmann said the choice of Atwood was a reminder

of the political dimension of art, adding, "The world needs less

division, less Trump, less hate--and more tolerance and solidarity."

The other major book prize given at the fair was the German Book Prize,

won by Robert Menasse for Die Haupstadt (The Capital), published by

Suhrkamp, set in Brussels, the unofficial European Union capital. The

prize is sponsored by the Boumlrsenverein, the German book industry

association, and honors the best German-language novel of the year.

Greywalker by Kat Richardson is an urban fantasy novel set in Seattle that has been recommended to me so many times I've lost count. Now that I finally bought at copy and read it, I was disappointed in the clumsy prose and awkward characters who stumble through a ramshackle plot that does, at least, have a decent conclusion.  Here's the blurb:

Harper Blaine was your average small-time P.I. until a two-bit perp's savage assault left her dead for two minutes. When she comes to in the hospital, she sees things that can only be described as weird-shapes emerging from a foggy grey mist, snarling teeth, creatures roaring.
But Harper's not crazy. Her "death" has made her a Greywalker- able to move between the human world and the mysterious cross-over zone where things that go bump in the night exist. And her new gift is about to drag her into that strange new realm-whether she likes it or not.

The best thing about this supernatural thriller, as they're calling it, is that Richardson is a competent storyteller, so she knows how to keep readers turning pages to find out what happens. I got the feeling that if Richardson only had a bit more time to develop in the craft of writing, her book would have been easier to read and her characters less difficult to understand or relate to. At any rate, I'd give it a B-, and recommend it to those who like the hard-boiled supernatural detective who didn't ask for any of this genre of urban fantasy.

Death Among Rubies by R.J. Koreto is the second Lady Frances Ffolkes mystery, and like the debut novel, is a ripping good yarn, though somewhat predictable. Like Lara Croft and other gentry who like to solve mysteries, Lady Franny is smart and tough, but also like women of the early 20th century (1907, to be exact), she's hampered by the sexism and misogyny of English society, which sneered at suffragists while insisting that educating women was a waste of time, because they belonged to men as wives and brood mares alone. Not to be deterred by this ridiculous state of affairs, Franny goes on the hunt for a killer at a huge estate, and manages to uncover some political maneuvering at the same time. 

Here's the blurb from Publisher's Weekly: Koreto’s appealing sequel to Death on the Sapphire takes Edwardian suffragette Lady Frances Ffolkes and her maid, June Mallow, to Kestrel’s Eyrie outside Morchester, England. Gwendolyn Kestrel has invited her extremely close friend, Thomasina Calvin, and Franny to visit the country manor while her father is hosting several diplomatic guests. Soon after the ladies arrive, Mallow finds Gwen’s father, Sir Calleford, stabbed to death with a ruby-inlaid Turkish dagger. Franny sets out to get to the bottom of things with Mallow’s help, but the local police aren’t interested in their assistance. When Inspector Eastley arrives from Scotland Yard, he reluctantly accepts Franny as a translator for the French guests, having learned from a previous case that Lady Frances is not to be denied. The delightful Franny and Mallow soon discover familial as well as political motives behind the crime. Koreto nicely blends international intrigue and affairs of the heart. 

I found it interesting that Gwen, who is portrayed as being somewhat simple, almost a Down Syndrome person, has a close and intimate relationship with Thomasina, or Tommie, as she's called, and most assume that they are lesbians, but no one actually comes out and says so unless they're writing threatening notes to harass Gwen into marrying the estate manager/housekeeper's son, so that the housekeeper could continue to rule the roost at the estate. Readers are left to surmise that Gwen isn't mentally strong enough to have a heterosexual relationship, so her relationship with Tommie must be maintained at all costs. Lots of twists and turns of the plot later, everyone who isn't dead gets what they want, and justice is served, and Lady Franny becomes engaged to a (GASP!) working man whom she loves. A fast and fun read, I'd give this book an A, and recommend it to anyone who likes British mysteries solved by smart women.

The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street by Susan Jane Gilman was a paperback that I found at the library sale shelf this summer that looked irresistible. What I wasn't prepared for was 560 pages of one woman's tale of heartbreak and tragedy in New York and surrounding communities. Our protagonist, Malka, a Russian Jewish child, arrives in New York in 1913, and is soon embroiled in a fight for survival with her sisters and a mother who is going insane (their dirtbag father took whatever money they had and abandoned his family). After being run over by an Italian gelato horse and cart, Malka's mother wants nothing to do with her disabled daughter, so Malka is taken in by the Italian ice cream man's family, and from there she learns to make ice cream/gelato and how to run a business. Here's the blurb:

In 1913, little Malka Treynovsky flees Russia with her family. Bedazzled by tales of gold and movie stardom, she tricks them into buying tickets for America. Yet no sooner do they land on the squalid Lower East Side of Manhattan, than Malka is crippled and abandoned in the street.
Taken in by a tough-loving Italian ices peddler, she manages to survive through cunning and inventiveness. As she learns the secrets of his trade, she begins to shape her own destiny. She falls in love with a gorgeous, illiterate radical named Albert, and they set off across America in an ice cream truck. Slowly, she transforms herself into Lillian Dunkle, "The Ice Cream Queen" — doyenne of an empire of ice cream franchises and a celebrated television personality.
Lillian's rise to fame and fortune spans seventy years and is inextricably linked to the course of American history itself, from Prohibition to the disco days of Studio 54. Yet Lillian Dunkle is nothing like the whimsical motherly persona she crafts for herself in the media. Conniving, profane, and irreverent, she is a supremely complex woman who prefers a good stiff drink to an ice cream cone. And when her past begins to catch up with her, everything she has spent her life building is at stake. Publisher's Weekly: Nonfiction writer Gilman (Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven) parlays her craft into an outstanding fiction debut, which follows an abrasive, unscrupulous protagonist from the 1910s to the early 1980s. In 1913, within months of arriving in New York City from her native Russia, young Malka Bialystoker is injured by a horse belonging to street vendor Salvatore Dinello. Deserted by her unstable mother and shiftless father, Malka is taken in by the Dinello clan out of a sense of guilt. Coping with a now-deformed right leg, she sheds her Jewish heritage in favor of her adoptive family’s Italian ethnic identity, complete with a new name: Lillian Maria Dinello. The Dinellos never fully accept her, however, and after she has reached early adulthood, they pointedly exclude her from their fledgling ice cream business. In retaliation she, along with her new husband, Albert Dunkle, begins a rival company. Lillian, a ruthless, hard-drinking businesswoman behind closed doors, in public provides a friendly, wholesome face for the increasingly successful Dunkle’s Famous Ice Cream. Gilman’s numerous strengths are showcased, such as character-driven narrative, a ready sense of wit, and a rich historical canvas, in this case based on the unlikely subject of the 20th-century American ice cream industry.

I agree with the "conniving, profane and irreverent" part of the blurb above, because Lillian (formerly Malka) is something of an anti-heroine. She's got a sailor's mouth, she likes to drink and smoke pot with her grandson and she's crude, rude and downright mean most of the time. She only appreciates her simple and loving husband Albert once he's dead, and even then she sneers at him, when it is obvious he's the only sane and moral one in the family. She doesn't even like her son, who really never gets the chance to know her whole story, and her grandson seems to want to hang out with her because she is lax about substance abuse and music, plus he obviously wants her money when she dies. We are left with Lillian going to prison, like Capone, for tax evasion, in the end, and though I appreciated her toughness, I didn't understand why someone so savvy and smart about business allowed her evil con-man father to repeatedly steal from her, lie to her and treat her like dirt. She finally cuts him off, but only when he's already stolen so much from her and made is clear, time and again, that he doesn't care a thing for her as a person. Still, Lillian is quite a character, and I'd give this book a B, and recommend it to those who like immigrant sagas and stories of transformation.

The Cracked Spine by Paige Shelton sounded like a book that was right up my alley. It's marketed as a Scottish Bookshop Mystery, and it is about a young woman, Delaney Nichols, who moves to Edinburgh, Scotland where she's hoping to make a fresh start at a rare manuscript and esoterica store, full of characters who could fill a book in their own right. Here's the blurb:

Delaney Nichols is on the literary adventure of a lifetime when she leaves the States for Edinburgh, Scotland, to take a job at The Cracked Spine. A legendary bookshop filled with special editions and rare manuscripts, it’s a house of biblio delights—one as eclectic as those who work there: the spirited and ever-curious Rosie, along with her tiny dog, Hector; a nineteen-year-old thespian named Hamlet (of course); and Edwin, the big boss, who Delaney likes but just can’t get a read on. Then there’s Tom, the bartender from across the street, whose gentle brogue pulls at Delaney’s heart strings—and who can rock a kilt like none other.
But before she can settle into her new life, a precious artifact from the shop goes missing—and Delaney is terrified to find out that Edwin’s sister is brutally murdered. Never did Delaney think that her dream job would turn into a living nightmare. Can she, along with Tom and her coworkers, help close the book on this killer mystery…before it’s too late? Publisher's Weekly: This appealing first in a new cozy series from Shelton (Merry Market Murder and four other Farmer’s Market mysteries) introduces Delaney Nichols, who answers an employment ad after losing her museum job in Wichita, Kans., and ends up working at the Cracked Spine, a bookstore in Edinburgh, Scotland. The Cracked Spine’s owner, Edwin MacAlister, belongs to a secretive little group of wealthy collectors and sellers known as the Fleshmarket Batch, named for the meat market that once existed near the bookstore. Soon after Delaney meets the shop’s two other employees, Hamlet and Rosie, Edwin’s drug addict sister is found murdered, and Edwin admits to leaving a near-priceless and now-missing item in her possession. Delaney’s desire to help almost gets her killed, but that doesn’t prevent her from making some fast friends and meeting Tom, the attractive bartender across the street. This spotlessly clean, fun-filled read takes plenty of twists and turns on the way to the satisfying ending.

I agree that the prose is spotlessly clean, and the plot moves along at a nice, even pace, however, my main problem with this book was that Delaney is consistently something of a wimp. She quails at so many things, that I was surprised she was able to run the murderer to ground in the end. I was also surprised that the store owner, who is supposedly so savvy as a businessman, played the complete idiot in giving his junkie sister a precious and very valuable copy of Shakespeare's First Folio for safekeeping. Anyone with half a brain knows that drug addicts are never to be trusted, because they will sell anything to get their next high. Still, this is a fast and fun read, and I'd give it an A, with the recommendation that those who read it overlook the stupidity of some of the characters.

Sasquatch Books Acquired by Penguin Random House, Midnight at the Electric by Jodi Lynn Anderson, Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly and The Last Chance Matinee by Mariah Stewart

I once had a job interview at Sasquatch Books, and though I didn't get the job (I think they were looking for someone younger and with more experience in book editing and publishing), I was tremendously impressed with their offices and their line of cookbooks and children's stories. Now that they are merging with PRH, I wonder if they will be adding different genres of books to their publishing roster? Heaven knows there are plenty of authors who live in or around the Seattle/Puget Sound area whom they could tap for locally sourced novels and non fiction.

Penguin Random House (PRH) Acquires Sasquatch Books

  

Penguin Random House has acquired Sasquatch Books, the Seattle, Wash.,

publisher that has been a distribution client of Penguin Random House

Publisher Services since 2012. Sasquatch will retain its editorial and

operational independence, with no changes planned for its Seattle

location, management or staff. In an unusual approach, Sasquatch will

report to PRHPS president Jeff Abraham.

Founded in 1986, Sasquatch Books http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz34402374 focuses on nature, travel, gardening, lifestyle, children's publishing, food, and wine titles. Bestsellers include The Encyclopedia of Country Living;

the Larry Gets Lost series; The 52 Lists Project; A Boat, a Whale, & a

Walrus; and Dead Feminists. Its children's imprint is Little Bigfoot.

Sasquatch's mission is "to seek out and work with the most gifted

writers, chefs, naturalists, artists, and thought leaders in the Pacific

Northwest and bring their talents to a national audience."

Sarah Hanson, president of Sasquatch Books, said, "For more than five

years we have leveraged tremendous value from the PRHPS partnership and

the Penguin Random House sales and supply-chain infrastructure. We have

always appreciated their great respect for our publishing program and we

are thrilled to continue our successful teamwork with our distributor

into this new phase, where there will be even greater opportunities for

collaboration."

Abraham added: "When it became known that the company was looking for

new ownership to take Sasquatch to the next level, the prospect of PRHPS

acquiring the company, while maintaining its independence in Seattle,

was enormously appealing to both sides. We've accomplished so much with

the incredible team at Sasquatch over the last few years. Now, our

expanded commitment will allow for even more opportunities for growth."

Midnight at the Electric by Jodi Lynn Anderson was recommended to me by a book website that tends to list books by genre and as the "10 best books of the Summer" or the "25 most underrated books of the year" and all the hyperbole that follows such headlines. Sometimes they're right on the money, and sometimes they're a waste of time, but this particular time, I found several books that sounded right up my alley, so I put them on hold at the library. Midnight at the Electric turned out to be a hidden gem, with a page-turner of a plot and lots of fascinating epistolary stories told via generations of women. Anderson's prose is poetic without being pedantic, and her plot never drags. Here is the blurb:

New York Times bestselling author Jodi Lynn Anderson's epic tale—told through three unforgettable points of view—is a masterful exploration of how love, determination, and hope can change a person's fate.
Kansas, 2065: Adri has been handpicked to live on Mars. But weeks before launch, she discovers the journal of a girl who lived in her house more than a hundred years ago and is immediately drawn into the mystery surrounding her fate.
Oklahoma, 1934: Amid the fear and uncertainty of the Dust Bowl, Catherine’s family’s situation is growing dire. She must find the courage to sacrifice everything she loves in order to save the one person she loves most.
England, 1919: In the recovery following World War I, Lenore tries to come to terms with her grief for her brother, a fallen British soldier, and plans to sail to America. But can she make it that far?
While their stories span thousands of miles and multiple generations, Lenore, Catherine, and Adri’s fates are entwined in ways both heartbreaking and hopeful. In Jodi Lynn Anderson’s signature haunting, lyrical prose, human connections spark spellbindingly to life, and a bright light shines on the small but crucial moments that determine one’s fate.

You could say that human history features two types of people: those who stay and those who leave. Anderson's…moody, mesmerizing novel, an unusual hybrid of science fiction and historical fiction, is devoted to the restless souls who want to get the heck out…It's hard to forget Catherine's parched Dust Bowl farm, where even the morning toast and eggs are coated with grit, and fans of futuristic fiction will be drawn to Anderson's vision of flooded cities, space travel and inventions like the KitchenLite, used to print edible eggs and bacon.

The New York Times Book Review - Catherine Hong

I was drawn to Adri, the character who is the least like me as a person, as she's distant, closed off and, as she puts it, not a nice person, a loner by choice. Yet once she develops a relationship with 107 year old Lily, who is losing her memories to dementia, you can almost feel her heart start to expand. Once she begins reading Catherine and Lenore's letters, her world opens even more, and peeking into these intimate moments in history is like watching Downton Abbey, you know you will never actually meet people like this, but their stories and their lives are riveting nonetheless. The science fiction/historical fiction hybrid is surprisingly suspenseful and rich with detail. Anderson is obviously an accomplished writer. This novel deserves an A, and I'd recommend it to anyone who likes generational stories and science fiction with heart.

Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly is the book that we're reading for October for the library book group that I lead. This novel has been made into a popular movie and many of my friends and fellow book lovers have already seen it, though I have not. I loved that the book was about a group of amazing, successful black women during the WWII years up through the 1970s and the space race era of the 60s who served as human computers for aeronautics and for rockets, but were given little or no recognition due to the racism and sexism of the time. To read stories of real women who battled both and came out on top is a rare treat. Here's the blurb:
Set against the backdrop of the Jim Crow South and the civil rights movement, the never-before-told true story of NASA’s African-American female mathematicians who played a crucial role in America’s space program—and whose contributions have been unheralded, until now.
Before John Glenn orbited the Earth or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of professionals worked as “Human Computers,” calculating the flight paths that would enable these historic achievements. Among these were a coterie of bright, talented African-American women. Segregated from their white counterparts by Jim Crow laws, these “colored computers,” as they were known, used slide rules, adding machines, and pencil and paper to support America’s fledgling aeronautics industry, and helped write the equations that would launch rockets, and astronauts, into space.
Drawing on the oral histories of scores of these “computers,” personal recollections, interviews with NASA executives and engineers, archival documents, correspondence, and reporting from the era, Hidden Figures recalls America’s greatest adventure and NASA’s groundbreaking successes through the experiences of five spunky, courageous, intelligent, determined, and patriotic women: Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, Christine Darden, and Gloria Champine.
Moving from World War II through NASA’s golden age, touching on the civil rights era, the Space Race, the Cold War, and the women’s rights movement, Hidden Figures interweaves a rich history of scientific achievement and technological innovation with the intimate stories of five women whose work forever changed the world—and whose lives show how out of one of America’s most painful histories came one of its proudest moments.

…Margot Lee Shetterly does not play the austere historian in Hidden Figures. She is right there at the beginning with evocative memories of her childhood, visiting her father—an engineer turned climate scientist—at NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia…Hidden Figures…is clearly fueled by pride and admiration, a tender account of genuine transcendence and camaraderie. The story warmly conveys the dignity and refinements of these women. They defied barriers for the privilege of offering their desperately needed technical abilities.

The New York Times Book Review - Janna Levin

What I loved most about this book, the stories of these incredibly hard-working women who balanced long work days with raising children and developing integrated community organizations, (like the Girl Scouts) was also what I liked least about the book, because Shetterly, as the NYTB notes above, adds in a lot of civil rights history and regular history/historical incidents that, while they inform the era, are not directly about these women's lives. I think most children who went through any decent school system from the 60s on had already read about the civil rights movement, Dr Martin Luther King Jr and Brown VS the Board of Education. What I wanted more of, as a reader, was more insights into these women's lives. I wanted to hear about their struggles to raise children through inferior segregated schools, and then their push to get them into integrated schools and colleges, dealing with women's organizations of the time, dealing with husbands who expected them to do it all, and be it all, and getting around sexism and racism in the work place. The author certainly raised these issues and spoke about them, but it wasn't in depth enough for me. I wanted more. That said, there was certainly a great deal to think about when I finished reading the book, because I felt like a huge slacker in the face of all that these women accomplished under the stresses and prejudices of the time. A solid A book, with the recommendation for anyone who is interested in Aviation and Space history and the hidden history of black women in this country.

The Last Chance Matinee by Mariah Stewart was a book that I won from Shelf Awareness and the author's giveaway section of their e-newsletter. Ms Stewart graciously sent me a copy of the book autographed, and with her personal author business card enclosed. This is a story about a trio of sisters who do not get along, yet they are thrown together when their father dies and two of the sisters discover that their father had another family that he never told them (or their mother) about on the other coast. Having actually known someone that this happened to, I was immediately riveted by the story arc, and interested as to how the characters were going to grow together, while renovating an old theater in the small town where their father grew up. The sisters are told that they won't get their substantial inheritance money unless they renovate and open this theater, on budget and on time. Here's the blurb:
From New York Times bestselling author Mariah Stewart comes the first novel in her all-new series, The Hudson Sisters, following a trio of reluctant sisters as they set out to fulfill their father’s dying wish. In the process, they find not only themselves, but the father they only thought they knew.
When celebrated and respected agent Fritz Hudson passes away, he leaves a trail of Hollywood glory in his wake—and two separate families who never knew the other existed. Allie and Des Hudson are products of Fritz’s first marriage to Honora, a beautiful but troubled starlet whose life ended in a tragic overdose. Meanwhile, Fritz was falling in love on the Delaware Bay with New Age hippie Susa Pratt—they had a daughter together, Cara, and while Fritz loved Susa with everything he had, he never quite managed to tell her or Cara about his West Coast family.
Now Fritz is gone, and the three sisters are brought together under strange circumstances: there’s a large inheritance to be had that could save Allie from her ever-deepening debt following a disastrous divorce, allow Des to open a rescue shelter for abused and wounded animals, and give Cara a fresh start after her husband left her for her best friend—but only if the sisters upend their lives and work together to restore an old, decrepit theater that was Fritz’s obsession growing up in his small hometown in Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains. Guided by Fritz’s closest friend and longtime attorney, Pete Wheeler, the sisters come together—whether they like it or not—to turn their father’s dream into a reality, and might just come away with far more than they bargained for. 
Library Journal: Allie and Des Hudson, raised in California and born to an alcoholic starlet, Honora, and her manager, Fritz, are summoned to their Uncle Pete's law office for the reading of Fritz's will after he dies suddenly. They're surprised when Cara, a half sister they never knew, shows up. Pete reveals Fritz's double life, and another surprise: all three daughters will not receive their inheritance unless they move to his hometown in rural Pennsylvania and restore the old theater where he spent his summers. Upon arrival, the women meet their Aunt Barney, yet another hidden relation Fritz never revealed, and they begin to learn a little more about their father and family. As they set to work repairing the theater, they begin to form a new family unit, although some are more willing than others. Barney lets them in on who their father was as a young man, but the mysteries around him keep growing. VERDICT This series opener by the author of the "Chesapeake Diaries" books is a bit disappointing, as almost nothing is resolved. That said, it's a good read, with a nice blend of mystery, family drama, and romance. Readers will look forward to the next installment.--Brooke Bolton
Though I know readers are supposed to identify with gentle yoga instructor Cara or animal-rescuer Des (everyone is supposed to dislike prickly helicopter parent and sneering snob Allie), I found myself liking Aunt Barney, who, though she's in her 60s or 70s, is lively, smart and fun, and well loved within the Hidden Falls community. She seems to be the only female character who has it together, and who isn't either looking for love, mourning a lost love or angry about love. The prose is sterling, and the characters well drawn enough to make readers care about them and their plights. The plot meanders and dawdles a bit, however, and reviewer Brooke Bolton is right in that nothing is resolved by the end of the book, so you're left at a very unsatisfying place, where renovations have hardly begun, and all of the sisters have revealed their weaknesses and have been neatly paired with a local guy who is frustratingly distant for one reason or another.  Even our sour and bitter Allie has a fan in the local sheriff, who lost his entire family to a drunk driver and who recognizes that Allie has an alcohol problem, even when she refuses to admit it to herself or anyone else. Still, being a theater major and a fan of romantic story lines interwoven with family dramas, I enjoyed reading The Last Chance Matinee, and I'd give it a B+ and recommend it to anyone who likes Gilmore Girls, Dynasty or Kristin Hannah's well told family sagas.