Comments for On My Wishlist: September 25, 2010

Petty Magic by Camille Deangelis (Recommended by FSF Magazine)

In this brilliantly imagined tale of adventure and timeless romance, acclaimed novelist Camille DeAngelis blends WWII heroics with witchcraft and wit, conjuring a fabulously rich world where beldames and mortal men dare to fall in love.

Evelyn Harbinger sees nothing wrong with a one-night stand. At one hundred and forty nine years old, Eve may look like she bakes oatmeal cookies in the afternoon and dozes in her rocking chair in the evenings, but once the gray hair and wrinkles are traded for jet-black tresses and porcelain skin, she can still turn heads as the beautiful girl she once was.

Can't fault a girl for having a little fun, can you?

This is all fine and well until Eve meets Justin, who reminds her so much of a former lover, and one night is no longer enough. Eve spends more and more nights — and days — romancing Justin as her younger self, and noticing the many peculiar ways in which he is so like Jonah, her partner behind enemy lines in WWII and the love of her life.

Experts in espionage, Jonah and Eve advanced the Allied cause at great personal sacrifice, and Jonah lost his life. Now Eve suspects that her Jonah has returned to her, and despite the disapproval of her coven, and the knowledge that love with a mortal man can only end in sorrow, she can't give him up. But can she prove it's really him?

The Poison Eaters by Holly Black (Recommended by Lee Wind)

GoodReads description:

Holly Black returns to the world of Tithe in two darkly exquisite new tales. Then Black takes readers on a tour of a faerie market and introduces a girl poisonous to the touch and another who challenges the devil to a competitive eating match.

These stories have been published in anthologies such as 21 Proms, The Faery Reel, and The Restless Dead, and have been reprinted in many "Best of" anthologies. The Poison Eaters is Holly Black’s much-anticipated first collection of stories, and her ability to stare into the void—and to find humanity and humor there — will speak to young adult and adult readers alike.

The Case of the Missing Servant by Tarquin Hall (Recommended by The Book Blog)

GoodReads description:

Watch out Alexander McCall Smith! Here comes the first novel by the highly acclaimed writer Tarquin Hall in an entrancing new mystery series set in India.

The portly Vish Puri is India's most accomplished detective, at least in his own estimation, and is also the hero of an irresistible new mystery series set in hot, dusty Delhi. Puri's detective skills are old-fashioned in a Sherlock Holmesian way and a little out of sync with the tempo of the modern city, but Puri is clever and his methods work.

The Most Private Investigator novels offer a delicious combination of ingenious stories, brilliant writing, sharp wit, and a vivid, unsentimental picture of contemporary India. And from the first to the last page run an affectionate humour and intelligent insights into both the subtleties of Indian culture and the mysteries of human behaviour.

Koko Be Good by Jen Wang (Recommended by Becky's Book Reviews)

Koko's always got a new project cooking, even though they usually end in total disaster. This time will be different, Koko promises herself. This time, she's decided to Be Good. But how can a girl whose greatest talent is causing trouble get her act cleaned up? If she’s being honest with herself, Koko isn't even sure what "being good" means.

Jon knows what being good means, and that's why he’s going to Peru to support his girlfriend's humanitarian mission. That's good, all right, but is it what he wants? Jon has a promising future as a musician. Is he ready to give that up — maybe forever?

Two very different people, both struggling for direction, find their way into each other's lives in Jen Wang's first graphic novel. Honest, wrenching, and incredibly funny, Koko Be Good is a tour-de-force debut about human nature and the inhuman efforts we make to find ourselves.

Airborn by Kenneth Oppel (Recommended by Green Bean Reading Teen)

GoodReads description:

Sailing toward dawn, and I was perched atop the crow's nest, being the ship's eyes. We were two nights out of Sydney, and there'd been no weather to speak of so far. I was keeping watch on a dark stack of nimbus clouds off to the northwest, but we were leaving it far behind, and it looked to be smooth going all the way back to Lionsgate City. Like riding a cloud.

Matt Cruse is a cabin boy on the Aurora, a huge airship that sails hundreds of feet above the ocean, ferrying wealthy passengers from city to city. It is the life Matt's always wanted; convinced he's lighter than air, he imagines himself as buoyant as the hydrium gas that powers his ship. One night he meets a dying balloonist who speaks of beautiful creatures drifting through the skies. It is only after Matt meets the balloonist's granddaughter that he realizes that the man's ravings may, in fact, have been true, and that the creatures are completely real and utterly mysterious.

The Radleys by Matt Haig (Recommended by Allure of Books)

GoodReads description:

Peter, Helen and their teenage children, Clara and Rowan, live in an English town. They are an everyday family, averagely dysfunctional, averagely content. But as their children have yet to find out, the Radleys have a devastating secret

From one of Britain's finest young novelists comes a razor-sharp unpicking of adulthood and family life. In this moving, thrilling and extraordinary portrait of one unusual family, The Radleys asks what we grow into when we grow up, and explores what we gain — and lose — when we deny our appetites.

The Princess's Bride by KT Grant (Recommended by Giselle Renard)

GoodReads description:

Daisy de Fleurre, an exiled princess from a faraway land, longs for true love. She almost experienced it at the tender age of eighteen, when she and her servant Chelsey, engaged in a smoldering love affair for one brief summer before they were both separated forever. Eight years later, Daisy is now engaged to a man who wants to offer her the world. But Daisy still longs for the woman she has never forgotten.

The dastardly lady pirate C.W. Dread, lives for revenge against Lord Humphrey, the man who murdered her family. She will kidnap Humphrey's fiancée, hold her for ransom, and introduce her to the delights of the flesh. Then her revenge will be complete! But Dread is in for a shock when her prisoner is a blast from her past who she once adored deep down to her very core.

Danger, adventure and passion are only a few things in store for this lady pirate and her princess as they succumb to a lust for one another that can no longer be denied or contained.

Flood and Fire by Emily Diamand

GoodReads description:

Flooded England, 2216: Lilly Melkun has outwitted the bloodthirsty Reavers, who prowl the waters that cover most of England, and escaped to Cambridge. But Lilly is far from safe, because still in her keeping is PSAI, the last hand-held computer in existence, a now malfunctioning treasure from the past. Inside the jewellike computer, is a sinister looking chip with an unknown purpose. Worse follows, when the professors of Cambridge plug it into an ancient mainframe computer setting in motion a fiery chain of events leading back to London. A false, anti-terrorist alert has been activated. Strange, out-of-control robots from a long-ago technological time, threaten to use 'maximum force' to control everything in their way. Once again, it's up to Lilly, Zeph and friends to save the world from burning.

Tallow by Karen Brooks (Recommended by The Readings of a Busy Mom)

GoodReads description:

On the edge of a mystical border called the Limen, close to a beautiful canal-laced city, a humble candlemaker rescues a child whom he raises as his apprentice.

Years pass and the child’s unusual talents are revealed, the gentle art of candlemaking slowly transforming into something far more sinister.

Lingering in the shadows, enemies watch and wait - a vengeful aristocrat, an exotic queen and the lethal creatures known only as the Morte Whisperers.

They hunger after the child’s ancient magic and will do anything to control it - betray, lie, manipulate. Even murder.

A story of intrigue, deadly magic and a love so deep it transcends life itself.

A Taste for Red by Lewis Harris (Recommended by Manga Maniac Cafe)

GoodReads description:

A sixth-grade Goth girl who thinks she’s a vampire encounters her greatest nemesis when she enrolls at Sunny Hill Middle School in this hilarious and entirely original take on the vampire genre for middle graders. Svetlana Grimm has recently discovered she’s a vampire. The clues are all there: she can eat only red foods, has to sleep under the bed because of her heightened sensitivity to light and noise, and can read others’ thoughts. But this new discovery is making her transition from home-schooling to attending sixth grade at Sunny Hill Middle School that much more difficult. After all, what can she possibly have in common with those jellybean-eaters in her class? She prefers to watch them from afar in her hidden lair atop the Oak of Doom in her backyard. But things get more interesting when Svetlana’s cruel yet beautiful science teacher, Ms. Larch, reads her thoughts. Svetlana is excited to have found another of her kind—until her new neighbor, The Bone Lady, fills her in on Ms. Larch's true identity and her own. What happens when your sixth-grade science teacher might also be your immortal enemy?