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NAHIA

Name: NAHIA
Author: Patricia Bossano

by Patricia Bossano ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

A vivid and intricate fantasy tale about the ties that bind and the conflicts between two realms.

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The faery sphere and the human world collide in this third installment of a series.

The story opens with the loss of Celeste, the human who was raised with the faery Princess Nahia as if they were sisters. Celeste had chosen to remain in the human realm so she had lived a short life span instead of the longer one she could have experienced in the faery kingdom. Even in the wake of this grief, Nahia still has a rocky relationship with some of Celeste’s clan. When Nahia is invited to bestow a gift on a new baby in the family, a strange impulse comes over her, and she steals the child and takes him to the faery world, determined to keep him there. When this doesn’t work out, Nahia bides her time and devises another scheme, vowing to be with the man she thinks is destined for her. Lurking beyond these romantic endeavors and family squabbles is another huge threat to the faery kingdom. Ultimately, Nahia will have to make decisions about whether to break promises in order to save the faeries. The story covers many years, but each chapter heading details the time period for the reader’s benefit. The jumps through time can still be a little abrupt—for instance, Chapter 14 covers two pages and spans 14 years, and a notable child quickly goes from a baby to a young talking girl. The characters’ families are quite large, and the reader may need to draw a tree to keep track of them all. Ultimately, such complexities should appeal to readers who enjoy expansive fantasy worlds. In addition, Bossano’s (Cradle Gift, 2013, etc.) writing is beautiful and rich with detail (“She dove into the gnarled gullies and misty woodland on her way to Moon Dancer Lake”). Much of the novel takes place in Spain, and the setting is infused with Basque culture. The immediate conflict in the saga changes a few times—in Chapter 16, the faeries suddenly find themselves fighting for their lives. But the overarching themes of loyalty, family, and weighing one’s own desires versus the greater good remain throughout.

A vivid and intricate fantasy tale about the ties that bind and the conflicts between two realms.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Waterbearer Press

Review Posted Online: May 23, 2017

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

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A CONSPIRACY OF BONES

by Kathy Reichs ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2020

Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.

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Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.

A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”

Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.

Pub Date: March 17, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Scribner

Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020

Categories:

- BOOK REVIEW
FIRE AND BONES
by Kathy Reichs

- BOOK REVIEW
COLD, COLD BONES
by Kathy Reichs

- BOOK REVIEW
THE BONE CODE
by Kathy Reichs

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LOVE AND OTHER WORDS

by Christina Lauren ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 10, 2018

With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.

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Eleven years ago, he broke her heart. But he doesn’t know why she never forgave him.

Toggling between past and present, two love stories unfold simultaneously. In the first, Macy Sorensen meets and falls in love with the boy next door, Elliot Petropoulos, in the closet of her dad’s vacation home, where they hide out to discuss their favorite books. In the second, Macy is working as a doctor and engaged to a single father, and she hasn’t spoken to Elliot since their breakup. But a chance encounter forces her to confront the truth: what happened to make Macy stop speaking to Elliot? Ultimately, they’re separated not by time or physical remoteness but by emotional distance—Elliot and Macy always kept their relationship casual because they went to different schools. And as a teen, Macy has more to worry about than which girl Elliot is taking to the prom. After losing her mother at a young age, Macy is navigating her teenage years without a female role model, relying on the time-stamped notes her mother left in her father’s care for guidance. In the present day, Macy’s father is dead as well. She throws herself into her work and rarely comes up for air, not even to plan her upcoming wedding. Since Macy is still living with her fiance while grappling with her feelings for Elliot, the flashbacks offer steamy moments, tender revelations, and sweetly awkward confessions while Macy makes peace with her past and decides her future.

With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.