by Tasha Alexander ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 2007
A ponderously ornate, red herring–replete, but mildly diverting mystery.
Lady Emily Ashton returns, this time to decipher Marie Antoinette’s letters, solve a pair of murders and stop a pretender to the Bourbon throne.
Alluring widow of substance Emily would prefer to enjoy her usual pursuits: translating Homer, drinking port (an outré tipple for Victorian ladies) and keeping suitors, such as dashing Colin Hargreaves and Duke Jeremy Bainbridge, at bay. But it’s the London Season, and Emily’s mother is pressing her to remarry while her friends want her to circulate. Society is lionizing a newcomer, Charles Berry. Claiming direct lineage to Louis XVI, he aims to topple the République and claim his throne. Emily is repelled by Charles, who’s angling to groom her as his future Madame de Pompadour, but these petty concerns soon fade: Her townhouse is invaded by a cat burglar who specializes in the former property of Marie Antoinette. The burglar also papers Emily with billets-doux in ancient Greek. After she convinces an acquaintance, David Francis, to report the theft of his pink diamond (another of Marie’s treasures), David and his valet turn up dead, both poisoned by nicotine-laced shaving cream. A housemaid is charged with both murders when the nicotine, an aphid-killer, is traced to her gardener lover. Hargreaves repairs to France, where he’ll work behind the scenes to thwart Charles’s ambitions. Meanwhile, Emily starts decoding a packet of letters given her by Beatrice, David’s widow. They are Marie Antoinette’s letters from prison to a trusted confidant who was supervising the care of her son, the dauphin. While nimbly sidestepping attempts on her life and assaults on her reputation, Emily cracks the letters’ coded plans: to smuggle the dauphin to England in the care of a servant. When her burglar reveals himself as a descendant of the servant family sworn to protect the Bourbon heirs, she deduces the real identities of David Francis and his illegitimate son, whose secret she must guard until she decides whether to marry again.
A ponderously ornate, red herring–replete, but mildly diverting mystery.Pub Date: April 1, 2007
ISBN: 0-06-117414-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2007
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by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
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New York Times Bestseller
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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BOOK TO SCREEN
by Colleen Hoover ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 2, 2016
Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of...
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IndieBound Bestseller
Hoover’s (November 9, 2015, etc.) latest tackles the difficult subject of domestic violence with romantic tenderness and emotional heft.
At first glance, the couple is edgy but cute: Lily Bloom runs a flower shop for people who hate flowers; Ryle Kincaid is a surgeon who says he never wants to get married or have kids. They meet on a rooftop in Boston on the night Ryle loses a patient and Lily attends her abusive father’s funeral. The provocative opening takes a dark turn when Lily receives a warning about Ryle’s intentions from his sister, who becomes Lily’s employee and close friend. Lily swears she’ll never end up in another abusive home, but when Ryle starts to show all the same warning signs that her mother ignored, Lily learns just how hard it is to say goodbye. When Ryle is not in the throes of a jealous rage, his redeeming qualities return, and Lily can justify his behavior: “I think we needed what happened on the stairwell to happen so that I would know his past and we’d be able to work on it together,” she tells herself. Lily marries Ryle hoping the good will outweigh the bad, and the mother-daughter dynamics evolve beautifully as Lily reflects on her childhood with fresh eyes. Diary entries fancifully addressed to TV host Ellen DeGeneres serve as flashbacks to Lily’s teenage years, when she met her first love, Atlas Corrigan, a homeless boy she found squatting in a neighbor’s house. When Atlas turns up in Boston, now a successful chef, he begs Lily to leave Ryle. Despite the better option right in front of her, an unexpected complication forces Lily to cut ties with Atlas, confront Ryle, and try to end the cycle of abuse before it’s too late. The relationships are portrayed with compassion and honesty, and the author’s note at the end that explains Hoover’s personal connection to the subject matter is a must-read.
Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of the survivors.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1036-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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