I am trying to catch up to all the ARCs I still have to read and review. When I saw Rachel’s post on her ARCs on her shelves, I figured this is as good a time as any to talk about the ARCs I have with publication dates still to come. (I have a few more whose publication dates came and went and I will have to read and review those soonish as well, but currently I am concentrating on the ones I am not late for yet.) Hopefully this list will keep me accountable.
I have three reviews for upcoming releases already written and scheduled:
- Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi: Stunning, brilliant, mean, challenging.
- Folk by Zoe Gilbert: Not quite as brilliant as I’d hoped.
- The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton: Described as Groundhog Day meets Agatha Christie, I absolutely sped through it.
Currently Reading:
The Toymakers by Robert Dinsdale.
Publication Date: February 8th, 2018
Publisher: Penguin Random House UK, Ebury Publishing
Blurb (from Goodreads): Do you remember when you believed in magic?
The Emporium opens with the first frost of winter. It is the same every year. Across the city, when children wake to see ferns of white stretched across their windows, or walk to school to hear ice crackling underfoot, the whispers begin: the Emporium is open!
It is 1917, and London has spent years in the shadow of the First World War. In the heart of Mayfair, though, there is a place of hope. A place where children’s dreams can come true, where the impossible becomes possible – that place is Papa Jack’s Toy Emporium.
For years Papa Jack has created and sold his famous magical toys: hobby horses, patchwork dogs and bears that seem alive, toy boxes bigger on the inside than out, ‘instant trees’ that sprout from boxes, tin soldiers that can fight battles on their own. Now his sons, Kaspar and Emil, are just old enough to join the family trade. Into this family comes a young Cathy Wray – homeless and vulnerable. The Emporium takes her in, makes her one of its own. But Cathy is about to discover that while all toy shops are places of wonder, only one is truly magical…
Why I requested this: It has been described as for fans of The Night Circus, which I absolutely adored, and the idea of a magic toyshop really intrigued me. I am not loving it as much as I thought though which is why I have been reading this for over a month now.
How I Lose You by Kate McNaughton.
Publication Date: March 8th, 2018
Publisher: Random House UK, Transworld Publisher
Blurb (from Goodreads): When Eva wakes up one morning to discover that her husband has died in his sleep, she is overwhelmed: with anger, with disbelief, with fear. For Adam was only thirty-one, a brilliant doctor with no health issues. They were supposed to grow old together. In the aftermath, attempting to confront the agony of her loss, Eva starts to uncover the story of her marriage, delving into those parts of her husband’s life to which she never before had access. But the secrets she finds are not what she expected.
Why I requested this: Because the tagline is: “This is the story of Eva and Adam. It ends on page 12.”
Also on my (digital) shelves:
Up Up, Down Down by Cheston Knapp.
Publication Date: February 6th
Publisher: Scribner
Blurb (from Goodreads): For fans of John Jeremiah Sullivan and Wells Tower, a “glittering,” (Leslie Jamison), “always smart, often hilarious, and ultimately transcendent” (Anthony Doerr) linked essay collection from the managing editor of Tin House that brilliantly explores the nature of identity.
Daring and wise, hilarious and tender, Cheston Knapp’s exhilarating collection of seven linked essays, Up Up, Down Down, tackles the Big Questions through seemingly unlikely avenues. In his dexterous hands, an examination of a local professional wrestling promotion becomes a meditation on pain and his relationship with his father. A profile of UFO enthusiasts ends up probing his history in the church and, more broadly, the nature and limits of faith itself. Attending an adult skateboarding camp launches him into a virtuosic analysis of nostalgia. And the shocking murder of a neighbor expands into an interrogation of our culture’s prevailing ideas about community and the way we tell the stories of our lives. Even more remarkable, perhaps, is the way he manages to find humanity in a damp basement full of frat boys.
Taken together, the essays in Up Up, Down Down amount to a chronicle of Knapp’s coming-of-age, a young man’s journey into adulthood, late-onset as it might appear. He presents us with formative experiences from his childhood to marriage that echo throughout the collection, and ultimately tilts at what may be the Biggest Q of them all: what are the hazards of becoming who you are?
With “an ordnance of wit” (Wells Tower) and “a prose style that feels both extravagant and exact, and a big, booming heart” (Maggie Nelson), Up Up, Down Down signals the arrival of a truly one-of-a-kind voice.
Why I requested this: I love essay collections and thought I should read one written by a man for a change.
Starlings by Jo Walton
Publication Date: February 13th, 2018
Publisher: Tachyon Publications.
Blurb (from Goodreads): An intimate first flight of short fiction from award-winning novelist Jo Walton (Among Others, The King’s Peace).
A strange Eritrean coin travels from lovers to thieves, gathering stories before meeting its match. Google becomes sentient and proceeds toward an existential crisis. An idealistic dancer on a generation ship makes an impassioned plea for creativity and survival. Three Irish siblings embark on an unlikely quest, stealing enchanted items via bad poetry, trickery, and an assist from the Queen of Cats.
With these captivating initial glimpses into her storytelling psyche, Jo Walton shines through subtle myths and wholly reinvented realities. Through eclectic stories, subtle vignettes, inspired poetry, and more, Walton soars with humans, machines, and magic—rising from the everyday into the universe itself.
Why I requested it: Jo Walton is an author I have been meaning to get to. Plus it’s fantastical short stories.
To Kill A Kingdom by Alexandra Christo.
Publication Date: March 6th, 2018
Publisher: Hot Key Books.
Blurb (from Goodreads): Dark and romantic YA fantasy for fans of Sarah J Maas – about the siren with a taste for royal blood and the prince who has sworn to destroy her.
Princess Lira is siren royalty and the most lethal of them all. With the hearts of seventeen princes in her collection, she is revered across the sea. Until a twist of fate forces her to kill one of her own. To punish her daughter, the Sea Queen transforms Lira into the one thing they loathe most – a human. Robbed of her song, Lira has until the winter solstice to deliver Prince Elian’s heart to the Sea Queen or remain a human forever.
The ocean is the only place Prince Elian calls home, even though he is heir to the most powerful kingdom in the world. Hunting sirens is more than an unsavoury hobby – it’s his calling. When he rescues a drowning woman in the ocean, she’s more than what she appears. She promises to help him find the key to destroying all of sirenkind for good. But can he trust her? And just how many deals will Elian have to barter to eliminate mankind’s greatest enemy?
Why I requested it: Absolutely a mood decision. It looked great, it sounded cool, I wanted it. (I mean, I did say I would not read Young Adult without it being recommended… So I guess it took me less than two weeks to break one of my resolutions.)
The Sea Beast Takes A Lover by Michael Andreasen.
Publication Date: March 8th, 2018
Publisher: Head of Zeus.
Blurb (from Goodreads): Bewitching and playful, with its feet only slightly tethered to the world we know, The Sea Beast Takes a Lover explores hope, love, and loss across a series of surreal landscapes and wild metamorphoses. Just because Jenny was born without a head doesn’t mean she isn’t still annoying to her older brother, and just because the Man of the Future’s carefully planned extramarital affair ends in alien abduction and network fame doesn’t mean he can’t still pine for his absent wife. Romping through the fantastic with big-hearted ease, these stories cut to the core of what it means to navigate family, faith, and longing, whether in the form of a lovesick kraken slowly dragging a ship of sailors into the sea, a small town euthanizing its grandfathers in a time-honored ritual, or a third-grade field trip learning that time travel is even more wondrous–and more perilous–than they might imagine.
Andreasen’s stories are simultaneously daring and deeply familiar, unfolding in wildly inventive worlds that convey our common yearning for connection and understanding. With a captivating new voice from an incredible author, The Sea Beast Takes a Lover uses the supernatural and extraordinary to expose us at our most human.
Why I requested it: It just sounds so much up my alley, it’s a bit ridiculous. Since I have requested it, it has been blurbed by authors whose work I enjoy, which is always a plus. The publisher has requested the reviews to only be posted 10 days before publication which is the only reason I haven’t read it yet.
A Guide for Murdered Children by Sarah Sparrow.
Publication Date: March 20th, 2018
Publisher: Penguin Group, Blue Rider Press
Blurb (from Goodreads): We all say there is no justice in this world. But what if there really was? What if the souls of murdered children were able to return briefly to this world, inhabit adult bodies and wreak ultimate revenge on the monsters who had killed them, stolen their lives?
Such is the unfathomable mystery confronting ex-NYPD detective Willow Wylde, fresh out of rehab and finally able to find a job running a Cold Case squad in suburban Detroit. When the two rookie cops assigned to him take an obsessive interest in a decades old disappearance of a brother and sister, Willow begins to suspect something out of the ordinary is afoot. And when he uncovers a series of church basement AA-type meetings made up of the slain innocents, a new way of looking at life, death, murder and missed opportunities is revealed to him.
Mystical, harrowing and ultimately tremendously moving, A Guide for Murdered Children is a genre-busting, mind-bending twist on the fine line between the ordinary and the extraordinary.
Why I requested this: The title. (I have since grown apprehensive because the reviews are less than favourable so far. But god, that title is brilliant.)
Gods Of Howl Mountain by Taylor Brown.
Publication Date: March 20th, 2018
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press.
Blurb (from Goodreads): In Gods of Howl Mountain, award-winning author Taylor Brown explores a world of folk healers, whiskey-runners, and dark family secrets in the high country of 1950s North Carolina.
Bootlegger Rory Docherty has returned home to the fabled mountain of his childhood – a misty wilderness that holds its secrets close and keeps the outside world at gunpoint. Slowed by a wooden leg and haunted by memories of the Korean War, Rory runs bootleg whiskey for a powerful mountain clan in a retro-fitted ’40 Ford coupe. Between deliveries to roadhouses, brothels, and private clients, he lives with his formidable grandmother, evades federal agents, and stokes the wrath of a rival runner.
In the mill town at the foot of the mountains – a hotbed of violence, moonshine, and the burgeoning sport of stock-car racing – Rory is bewitched by the mysterious daughter of a snake-handling preacher. His grandmother, Maybelline “Granny May” Docherty, opposes this match for her own reasons, believing that “some things are best left buried.” A folk healer whose powers are rumored to rival those of a wood witch, she concocts potions and cures for the people of the mountains while harboring an explosive secret about Rory’s mother – the truth behind her long confinement in a mental hospital, during which time she has not spoken one word. When Rory’s life is threatened, Granny must decide whether to reveal what she knows…or protect her only grandson from the past.
With gritty and atmospheric prose, Taylor Brown brings to life a perilous mountain and the family who rules it.
Why I requested this: The reviews I have seen have all been brilliant, the cover is stunning and this sounds like something I might really love (or it will bore me to tears, stay tuned!).
The Water Cure by Sophie Mackintosh
Publication Date: May 24th, 2018
Publisher: Penguin Books (UK).
Blurb (from Goodreads): Imagine a world very close to our own: where women are not safe in their bodies, where desperate measures are required to raise a daughter. This is the story of Grace, Lia and Sky, kept apart from the world for their own good and taught the terrible things that every woman must learn about love. And it is the story of the men who come to find them – three strangers washed up by the sea, their gazes hungry and insistent, trailing desire and destruction in their wake.
Hypnotic and compulsive, The Water Cure is a fever dream, a blazing vision of suffering, sisterhood and transformation.
Why I requested this: I am SO excited about this. It made my Most Anticipated Reads list and might actually top it. I couldn’t not request it. It sounds so absolutely brilliant in all the vagueness of the blurb.
Florida by Lauren Groff.
Publication Date: June 5th, 2018
Publisher: Random House UK, Cornerstone
Blurb (from Goodreads): Lauren Groff’s next book, FLORIDA, a collection of stories, will be published next year by Riverhead. The New Yorker has a story, Dogs Go Wolf, that will appear in that collection. She says in an interview: “The collection is a portrait of my own incredible ambivalence about the state where I’ve lived for twelve years. My feelings for Florida are immoderate, and I love the disappearing natural world, the sunshine, the extraordinary and astonishing beauty of the place as passionately as I hate the heat and moisture and backward politics and the million creatures whose only wish is to kill you. I wrote this collection very slowly and was surprised when it came together to find that the stories built into a ferocious protracted argument.”
Why I requested it: I adored Fates and Furies. I love short story collections. I squealed when I was accepted.
What are your thoughts? Have you read any of these books or do you wish to do so? If you decide to do a similar post, please let me know. I am always eager to know what other people read.
I have thoughts on books 