The Heiresses by Sara Shepard

Good morning, everyone! Today I'm a stop on the TLC blog tour for Sara Shepard's The Heiresses.

The Saybrook family is well known for their jewelry empire. It all began in WWII when the family patriarch returned from war with a large, canary yellow diamond in tow. As the story goes, he found said diamond at a bazaar in France and it put Saybrook's on the map. 

Now the family has everything they could ever dream about. But there's also rumor of a curse that plagues the Saybrooks. As one Saybrook heiress plans for her upcoming wedding, another heiress is struck dead. Could it be the curse or does someone have it in for the Saybrook women?

I should say first that I've never read or seen Pretty Little Liars but based on everything I've heard, The Heiresses does have some similar elements. The prologue hints at the mysterious things to come (with a narrator who possibly isn't actually revealed before the end of the story) and the close of the book does leave room for more books to follow. To say more might give a bit too much away but it did make for quite fun reading and left me curious about what might come for the Saybrooks should this develop into a series.

I loved that each of the Saybrook women were so different - Shepard does a wonderful job building up each of them without losing any momentum with the plot, which is always key in a suspenseful thriller. The mysteries and secrets plaguing the family were also believable and built well - thankfully coming to the end and the BIG REVEAL was no let down :)

The Heiresses is a light and frothy read tinged with mystery and suspense - perfect for summer in other words! I think I read the whole thing in almost one sitting, it was so catchy!

Rating: 4/5

To see more stops on the tour be sure to check out the official TLC tour page here.

For more on Sara Shepard, you can visit her website here. You can also follow her on Twitter.

New Releases 5/27/14

Some of the new titles hitting shelves this week are:

The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair by Joël Dicker

I Am Pilgrim by Rerry Hayes

Skin Game by Jim Butcher

The Remaining by D.J. Molles

Goodnight June by Sarah Jio

The Directive by Matthew Quirk

Dreaming for Freud by Sheila Kohler

The Given by Vicki Pettersson

Night Terrors by Tim Waggonner

The Lost by Sarah Beth Durst

Invisible Ellen by Shari Shattuck

Suspicion by Joseph Finder

The Stranger on the Train by Abbie Taylor

Hannibal: Enemy of Rome by Ben Kane

The Secret Life of Violet Grant by Beatriz Williams

The Immortal Crown by Richelle Mead

Small Plates: Short Fiction by Katherine Hall Page

The Dark World by Cara Lynn Shultz

Played by Liz Fichera

Divided by Elsie Chapman

Bad Luck Girl by Sarah Zettel

City of Heavenly Fire by Cassandra Clare

Take Me On by Katie McGarry

New on DVD:
Gambit

The Care and Management of Lies by Jaqueline Winspear

And for today's second post I'm a part of the TLC book tour for Jacqueline Winspear's upcoming stand alone, The Care and Management of Lies.

Summer of 1914 should be a happy time for Kezia Marchant - soon to be Brissenden. After all, she's to be married soon to a man she loves wholly. But across the ocean the threat of war becomes stronger and stronger with each day. 

Back on Marshals Farm this threat seems so distant and impossible that much of the village acts as if it almost doesn't exist. That is until some of their own begin to return in body bags. Tom Brissenden has no illusions about war and daily battles between his responsibilities at home and his responsibilities to his country. In the end he voluntarily signs on, leaving his new wife to take the helm at the farm. 

In London, Thea Brissenden attempts to go on in her life as usual. She's conflicted about the new marriage between her longtime friend and her brother, certain that Kezia is unsuited for her new role as a farmer's wife. And for her, the war is an opportunity to take up figurative arms against the conflict. Her new role as a pacifist soon lands her in hot water and her only option is to join the war effort to escape. But Thea is unprepared for the realities this was will bring. 

Sooooo I had a little trouble getting into this book. Don't worry, it's not a bad review and I didn't dislike it at all but I had some real trouble getting started. Part of it was simply timing - this was a crazy week and every time I sat down to read I got distracted in by one thing or another. Which is kind of sad now that I've finished. The first pages really set the scene and the tone for the whole book! If I could do it all over again I'd just lock myself in a quiet place (the bathtub) and set aside a big chunk of evening to get to it. And I should have done that to begin with but oh, well.

When we first meet Kezia and Dorothy/Dorrit/Thea it's just days til Kezia's looming nuptials. She and Thea have been friends since their schooldays so one would think they'd both be happy as can be that the upcoming wedding will officially make them sisters. And yet, Kezia's engagement to Thea's brother doesn't necessarily please Thea.

Thea and Kezia both worked hard for their education and it's understandable that Thea feels a bit like Kezia is throwing it away to become the wife of a farmer. Sadly Kezia and Tom's fondness for one another don't seem to temper Thea's disappointment in her friend's life choices. And while Thea is disappointed in Kezia, Kezia also feels a disconnect in their longtime friendship, recognizing that Thea is also making choices that separate the two. Thea is an ardent suffragette and, with the threat of war on the horizon, has also joined a group of pacifists in protesting the country's response to goings on in Europe (what soon becomes WWI).

War is the catalyst that each character needs to really begin to change and grow (though I think Kezia was well on her way before that). (Of the two, Kezia is definitely the one I felt I connected most with.) Between the two of them, Winspear I think truly captures the essence of what it must have been like to be a young woman during war time. The balance between their personal wants and needs and becoming housewives and homemakers. How they reacted to the war and the challenges they faced when the bulk of the men in their communities went to battle.

And it's not just the women that Winspear addresses. It's the men as well. Tom is stationed in the trenches and has become an example (in a bad way) for all the other soldiers. But with Kezia back home, working diligently to ensure that each letter to her husband is a distraction she catches the attention of another man as well. Edmund Hawkes is also stationed at the trenches and as Captain one of his tasks is to read through the soldiers' correspondence for censoring. He too looks forward to each and every letter from Kezia, longing for something more.

These days there are many titles set around WWI, enough for every kind of reader I think. For me, Winspear tackles the subject with grace while never letting the reader forget how awful it was.The effect on everyone involved on the front and at home, soldiers, nurses, wives, workers... no one was immune to the tragedies of this war. Everyone had a different way of surviving - whether it be (as the case is here) Kezia's white lies about life at home meant to life the spirits of her husband or Thea's self-serving but still admirable joining up and serving at the front herself. Hawkes and his surreptitious longing for Kezia thanks to her letters. And of course Tom, who - like many - would never burden their families with the realities of the front.

Anyway, if you couldn't tell, I do heartily recommend The Care and Management of Lies to any fan of historical fiction. Longtime Maisie Dobbs fans might be disappointed that the heroine is not present here, but I assure you you'll quickly become captivated by this new story (and I'm sure there'll be more Maisie to come as well).

Rating: 4.5/5

(The Care and Management of Lies is officially due out July 1.)

To see more stops on the tour be sure to check out the official TLC tour page here.

For more on Jacqueline Winspear and her work you can visit her website here. You can also like her on Facebook.

The Conditions of Love by Dale M. Kushner

Hi, everyone! I've got two posts for you today. First up I'm a stop on the TLC book tour for Dale M. Kushner's The Conditions of Love.

Eunice never knew her father, just that he'd abandoned her and her mother very shortly after Eunice was born. He returned once when she was just ten years old, only to disappear again. 

Throughout her life, people come and go offering Eunice pieces of themselves and love along the way. In this way, she is able to experience all the important love a person should have in their life. Though where the love comes from is anything but ordinary.

This is a hard book to pin down in a nutshell. Basically, Eunice's mother is a very egocentric flake who doesn't really provide more than the basics for her daughter. Not that it's not hard to sympathize with her, and Eunice does often side with her mother. But there's so much neglect before they finally part. And the parting itself is almost tragic. Eunice handles each loss in her life with bravery but each loss also tears her up a bit.

Eunice so quickly draws the reader into her story; she's incredibly easy to love. As a reader I felt like I was cheering her on throughout the book, just hoping that someone would finally give her all the things she deserves - stability, warmth, and love... and many of them do, but can they really compensate for her parents' neglect?

Dale M. Kushner's debut may sound a bit sad, but it's really not. The story is told in a very thoughtful way and Eunice's strength alone makes it more uplifting than you would think. The fact that she is able to meet so many wonderful people throughout her life also makes this more of a feel good story than my description might suggest.

Rating: 3.5/5

To see more stops on the tour be sure to check out the official TLC tour page here. For more on the author, including a look at her speaking about The Conditions of Love you can visit her website here. 

Guest Post by Steven S. Drachman

Good morning, readers! Today I have a special treat for you - a Q&A with Watt O'Hugh the Third.

Who is Watt O'Hugh the Third, you might ask? Why he's the time traveling star of Steven Drachman's Memoirs of Watt O'Hugh trilogy. Books 1 & 2, The Ghosts of Watt O'Hugh and Watt O'Hugh Underground, are both out today for your reading pleasure.

To introduce you to Watt, Steven has kindly shared the following piece with us:

10 Questions with Watt O’Hugh the Third

Reprinted from the New York Herald-Tribune – June 15, 1936 

Our older readers may remember Watt O’Hugh the Third as the hero of various dime novels that circulated back in the 1870s, battered copies of which were still passed around among our less discerning lads as late as the 1890s. His more enthusiastic fanatics may even have managed to spot his Wild West show, which played New York’s now forgotten Hippodrome theater (the first one) in 1874, before closing quickly and ignominiously. Since discovering his story, and his alleged heroic exploits in Little Mount, I have wondered what had ever become of Mr. O’Hugh, who has over the years variously been described as dead or “on the lam.” He has now turned up, age 94 or 95, living in some squalor on an inactive western ranch, living off the last bits of a small fortune, the source of which he will not disclose. He agreed to a brief interview on two conditions: the state in which the ranch is located will not be identified, and I bring a case of whiskey and a carton of cigarettes, brand not specified. Mr. O’Hugh looks every bit his age, but he is still an imperfectly handsome man recognizable from old photographs. 

NYHT: You seem to spend a lot of time sitting here on your front porch and telling tall tales to the town’s children. 

O’Hugh: Not tall tales. God’s honest truth. I tell them about time Roaming, the dragon I spotted in Utah, the ghosts that guided my aim and made me the greatest living shootist in the West, some time back. 

NYHT: Fire breathing dragons are well-known to be mythical creatures. 

O’Hugh: Dragons are the lost link between dinosauria and birds. A few survived into the 19th century. They haven’t been spotted in many years. You are correct that they didn’t breathe fire. Cold blooded reptiles couldn’t breathe fire. That would be ridiculous. 

NYHT: And you are a time traveler. 

O’Hugh: Time Roamer. We can visit, but we cannot change a thing. “Traveling” somewhere implies fully possessing a time and place, which Roamers cannot do. We are like the wind, like a shadow. I’ve spent many days and years in the past and in the future. It’s hard to get out of your blood, once you get good at it. It’s addictive as opium but has its frustrations. It’s because of my Roaming that I am writing my story, and writing it so fast. I finally roamed to the day of my death and it is coming sooner than I had hoped, but later than I had any reason to expect, given how often I’ve been shot in the head. 

NYHT: How often have you been shot in the head? 

O’Hugh: Once or twice. In any event: more often than I would have preferred. 

NYHT: What do you expect to come of this memoir? Will you send it to Harper & Bros? Are you the new Hemingway? 

O’Hugh: Ha. You’re the funny boy. A real Lum and Abner, ain’t you? I don’t know what I’ll do with the book. I may bury it in the sand. But one day it will be found and published, by a rather unlikable has-been in the 21st century. A really despicable bastard, without a redeeming quality, other than his admiration for me. Kirkus will have some nice things to say about it, though they will mistake it for a novel. Peter Keough, a famous film critic in the future, will call it “rip snorting.” 

NYHT: Quite a remarkable prediction. 

O’Hugh: Believe what you want. It’s men like you, city men, skeptics, who have chased the magic out of the wilderness that America used to be. I have seen a dragon scurry across the cloudless sky in Utah, I did fly among the snowy stars in Wyoming with a woman of the dark arts, who promised me eternal life, poor Oscar Wilde and I saw deadlings rise in a mountain city in Colorado, we really saw a whole army of them, and I fought in the first battle of Sidonia. 

NYHT: Sidonia? The legendary magic city nestled in the Montana valley? 

O’Hugh: Not legendary. I wish that it were. 

NYHT: Have you been to Atlantis? 

O’Hugh: No. There was never an Atlantis. But I’ve been to the Chinese Hell of the Innocent Dead. For example. That’s as real as your ass, and even more frightening. Giant ferocious sand crabs, just for starters, and it goes downhill from there. It’s the 6th level of Hell. 

NYHT: Out of? 

O’Hugh: Eighteen. 

NYHT: Can you – you, the remarkable hero – possibly have any regrets, after this apparently spectacular life of adventure? 

O’Hugh: I have one regret. Involves a woman. Don’t want to talk about it. 

At this, the indomitable, possibly lunatic O’Hugh heaved a heavy sigh, took a heavy drag on his cigarette, took a heavy gulp of whiskey and looked up at the stars. And our interview came to a close.

About the author: Steven S. Drachman is a writer and critic whose work has appeared in the New York Times, The Village Voice, Entertainment Weekly, and The Chicago Sun-Times. He lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn, with his wife and two daughters.

And there you have it, folks! Just a taste of what you can expect from time traveling adventurer Watt O'Hugh's tales.

Big, big thanks to author Steven Drachman for supplying us with this interview and thanks to the lovely folks over at Wunderkind as well.

For more on Steve, Watt, and Watt's adventures, as well as excerpts and event news be sure to check out the Watt O'Hugh site here.

The Queen of the Tearling by Erika Johansen

Good morning, readers! Today I'm a stop on the TLC book tour for Erika Johansen's debut fantasy release, The Queen of the Tearling.

Kelsea Raleigh Glynn has been in hiding her entire life, but on her nineteenth birthday it is time for her to emerge and claim her throne. In the years since her mother's death, the Tearling has suffered greatly. Vulnerable to attack from the nearby kingdom of Mortmesne, Tearling has made a dark and tenuous alliance with the Red Queen. Kelsea's own uncle has his eyes set on the throne and has done everything in his power to take it as his own, including put a contract out for Kelsea's death. If she can live long enough to be crowned, it'll be just the beginning of the battle to take back her kingdom. 

I can't deny that I've been craving some epic fantasy and Erika Johansen's debut sure did hit the spot!

The Queen of the Tearling is the first in a new series set in a land not unlike our own. In fact, there are hints as to the beginnings of this particular world and the various settlements. Hints that I think will blossom into full blown explanations in further installments. Until then I have my own guesses but I'll have to wait and see if they're correct.

Kelsea is a great lead. A strong female leader who's been preparing for her throne all her life. Her teachers - and foster parents - have instilled great wisdom and morality in her, if she can overcome general teenage stubbornness and see it. And so we have a chance to see her grow and transform throughout the book to become someone truly wonderful.

But of course this is just the beginning of her story. The Queen of the Tearling has only a temporary resolution to events that take place in this particular part of the tale. Had the other books been available at this time I would have ripped through them all; I so badly wanted to stay in Johansen's created world longer!

Rating: 4.5/5

The Queen of the Tearling officially hits shelves on July 8. If you're a fan of epic fantasy, great world building, and wonderfully strong female leads, you won't want to miss out on this one. (Plus, apparently movie rights have been sold and Emma Watson has been tapped for the lead!)

To see more stops on the tour be sure to check out the official TLC tour page here.

New releases 5/20/14

Some of the new titles hitting shelves this week are:

Resistant by Michael Palmer

The Severed Streets by Paul Cornell

The Three by Sarah Lotz

The Devil's Workshop by Alex Grecian

Closed Doors by Lisa O'Donnell

The From-Aways by CJ Hauser

Suffer the Children by Crail DiLouie

Sixth Grave on the Edge by Darynda Jones

American Woman by Robert Pobi

The Heiresses by Sara Shepard

The Boost by Stephen Baker

Cold Shot by Mark Henshaw

Thief's Magic by Trudi Canavan

The One & Only by Emily Giffin

The Stranger You Know by Jane Casey

The Lincoln Myth by Steve Berry

Dangerous Creatures by Kami Garcia

New on DVD:
The Monuments Men
Vampire Academy
Pompeii