The people of the kingdom of Glyndoria have yet to learn the shocking truth that Persephone and Azriel discovered about Mordesius’ role in the current king’s birth. Hoping to avoid execution, Azriel strikes a bargain with the Regent Mordesius: He and Princess Persephone will find the healing Pool of Genezing, which may only be the […]
“The buildings of the Sea are made of time,” Lina’s father, Wui Shin, says. “I knew that he was pulling my leg and also that he was being truthful,” she tells readers from a vantage point 50 years on. Time is mutable in Thien’s adventurous fourth novel: Helpful neighbors Bento, Blucher, and Jupiter have names […]
Amélie comes from a noble family that has fallen on hard times, which is how she came to be in a miserable marriage to simple merchant Hans. While her frugal and pragmatic husband spends most of his time in his library or at his raucous merchant’s guild, Amélie grudgingly tends to the domestic chores expected […]
A family urn is stolen and three armed gangsters set off to retrieve it. They trace the urn back to two thieves who live in a three-story, six-unit apartment building in a small town, but complications quickly arise, and what could have been a simple task quickly spirals out of control. As they drive into […]
Journalist and podcaster Princiotti isn’t ashamed of her pop-music obsession, and thinks you shouldn’t be, either. She traces her love of the genre back to 2003, when she was 9, and “Hilary Duff was the single most important person in the world to me outside my immediate family.” The subject of Princiotti’s book is the […]
Designated “Driver Eight,” 15-year-old Shiloh attempts neural linking with “the machine.” This giant robot landed on Earth long ago, and scientists from around the world have gradually recovered scattered parts. In the U.S., Synap Technologies, run by Shiloh’s father, Director Raguel, oversees each new robot-operating “Driver.” Shiloh, like others before them, uses something called the […]
It’s 2212, and 17-year old Earther Weslie has won the Interplanetary Alliance Life Support Bot competition for her bot named ILSA, or Individualized Life Support Assistant unit 001. The prize is a first-class ticket on luxury starship The Boundless, scheduled to embark on its maiden voyage to Mars, a five-week trip. In this future, the […]
German journalist and author Wittstock tells an irresistible story. He begins in the summer of 1940. Most of his subjects had fled Germany in the 1930s, then fled again, to Vichy France, unoccupied but submissive. Jews and intellectuals knew that their days were numbered. Although shocked by France’s collapse, most Americans opposed helping refugees. Running […]
It’s 1817. Young widow Lily Adler, who’s earned a modest reputation for unraveling mysteries, is known as a Lady of Quality—that is, a discreet investigator. So it’s no surprise that Sarah Forrest and her fiance, Mr. Clive, ask for her assistance in unraveling a mystery surrounding her inheritance. Did Sarah’s father really put it under […]
In this loose sequel to the author’s Turkey Shoot (2018), Anna Burmeister is in transition, raising her 5-year-old son, Ramadi, in Piraeus, Greece, while still mourning his father, Mahmoud, who was killed in the earlier book. Mahmoud isn’t as far away as she thinks, as he’s been denied entry to Paradise (“Where I find myself now […]