Waiting on Wednesday #166: My Italian Bulldozer by Alexander McCall Smith

"Waiting on Wednesday" is a weekly event hosted by Jill over at Breaking the Spine where we spotlight upcoming releases we are eagerly anticipating.  

This week the book I am waiting on is My Italian Bulldozer by Alexander McCall Smith. It's a standalone novel that looks to be humorous in nature. It's due out April 4, 2017 from Abacus.

Synopsis from Goodreads:

When writer Paul Stewart heads to the idyllic Italian town of Montalcino to finish his already late book, it seems like the perfect escape from stressful city life. Upon landing, however, things quickly take a turn for the worse when he discovers his hired car is nowhere to be found. With no record of any reservation and no other cars available, it looks like Paul is stuck at the airport. That is, until an enterprising stranger offers him an unexpected alternative. While there may be no cars available there is something else on offer: a bulldozer.

With little choice in the matter, Paul accepts and so begins a series of laugh out loud adventures through the Italian countryside, following in the wake of Paul and his Italian Bulldozer. A story of unexpected circumstance and lesson in making the best of what you have, My Italian Bulldozer is a warm holiday read guaranteed to put a smile on your face.

What book are you waiting on this week?  Share it or a link in the comments so we can check it out and maybe add it to our TBR lists. Thanks for coming by and Happy Reading!

Waiting on Wednesday #165: There's a Mystery There: the Primal Vision of Maurice Sendak by Jonathan Cott

"Waiting on Wednesday" is a weekly event hosted by Jill over at Breaking the Spine where we spotlight upcoming releases we are eagerly anticipating.  

Synopsis from Goodreads:

An extraordinary, path-breaking, and penetrating book on the life and work and creative inspirations of the great children's book genius Maurice Sendak, who since his death in 2012 has only grown in his stature and recognition as a major American artist, period. 
Polymath and master interviewer Jonathan Cott first interviewed Maurice Sendak in 1976 for Rolling Stone, just at the time when Outside Over There, the concluding and by far the strangest volume of a trilogy that began with Where The Wild Things Are and In the Night Kitchen, was gestating. Over the course of their wide-ranging and revelatory conversation about his life, work, and the fantasies and obsessions that drove his creative process, they focused on many of the themes and images that would appear in the new book five years later. Drawing on that interview, There's a Mystery There is a profound examination of the inner workings of a complicated genius's torments and inspirations that range over the entirety of his work and his formative life experiences, and uses Outside Over There, brilliantly and originally, as the key to understanding just what made this extravagantly talented man tick. To gain multiple perspectives on that intricate and multifaceted book, Cott also turns to four "companion guides": a Freudian analyst, a Jungian analyst, an art historian, and Sendak's great friend and admirer, the playwright Tony Kushner. The book is richly illustrated with examples from Sendak's work and other related images."


Why am I waiting on this one? I've long been a fan of Maurice Sendak. My all time favorite books by him are Where the Wild Things Are followed by the Nutshell Library boxed collection. I was lucky enough to see him speak when I was in college and even got to get his autograph. I am curious what this book has to say about him and his art and writing.

There's a Mystery There is due out May 16, 2017 from Doubleday Books.

What book are you waiting on this week? Share it or a link in the comments so we can check it out and maybe add it to our TBR lists. Thanks for coming by and Happy Reading!

Teaser Tuesday: Fatal Fiction by Kym Roberts

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Books And A Beat.
Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title and author so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

"He nodded and jotted something down on his notepad. I hoped it said find another suspect. But I knew bad karma was stuck to me like the stank of an angry skunk."
~ 10% through on my Kindle

Fatal Fiction is the first book in the new Book Barn Mystery.series. It's due out December 6, 2016 from Lyrical Underground. The main character is kindergarten teacher Charli Rae Warren in Hazel Rock, Texas. The above teaser is from her point of view. She hadn't been in town five minutes before she became a suspect in a murder.

What's your teaser this week? Share it or a link in the comments. Are you enjoying your book? Let us know! Happy Reading!

Review: Nightmares edited by Ellen Datlow

Things that go bump in the night? Sure, but so much more than that. The stories are varied and run the gamut from horrifying to creepy to don't turn your lights off scary. There was even a retelling of sorts of Hansel and Gretel. And don't forget the zombies.

Ellen Datlow is an excellent editor. I believe she is a sort of expert in short story quality and in horror from her many years of editing the Best Horror of the Year series among other things. Authors included in the anthology are (in order of appearance): Mark Samuels, Gene Wolfe, Brian Hodge, Kaaron Warren, Lisa Tuttle, Gemma Files, Simon Bestwick, Nicholas Royle, Margo Lanagan, Steve Duffy, Laird Barron, Stephen Graham Jones, Reggie Oliver, Ray Cluely, M. Rickert, John Langan, Anna Taborska, Livia Llewellyn, Dan Chaon, Robert Shearman, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Garth Nix, Nathan Ballingrud, and Richard Kadrey.

As with most anthologies, I didn't like all the stories equally. Some were better than others for me. A few I was puzzled as to why they were included. There was one story that used incest as an important part of the story. That one I could have done without entirely. It just wasn't for me.

My favorites were: How We Escaped Our Certain Fate by Don Chaon, and the last 3 stories in the anthology. It was almost as though the best were saved for last, but the stories were arranged chronologically in order of year of publication. Datlow says of the stories included: "Consider them a guide to some of the best short story writers currently working in the field of horror fiction. And in this volume specifically, a good representation of the excellent horror that was published between 2005 and 2015."

Overall, enough of the stories were satisfying for me to give the anthology a 4 out of 5 stars rating.

Nightmares: a New Decade of Modern Horror was released November 1, 2016 by Tachyon Publications.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

Waiting on Wednesday #164: The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher

"Waiting on Wednesday" is a weekly event hosted by Jill over at Breaking the Spine where we spotlight upcoming releases we are eagerly anticipating. 

Synopsis from Goodreads: 

The Princess Diarist is Carrie Fisher’s intimate, hilarious and revealing recollection of what happened behind the scenes on one of the most famous film sets of all time, the first Star Wars movie. 

When Carrie Fisher recently discovered the journals she kept during the filming of the first Star Wars movie, she was astonished to see what they had preserved—plaintive love poems, unbridled musings with youthful naiveté, and a vulnerability that she barely recognized. Today, her fame as an author, actress, and pop-culture icon is indisputable, but in 1977, Carrie Fisher was just a (sort-of) regular teenager. 

With these excerpts from her handwritten notebooks, The Princess Diarist is Fisher’s intimate and revealing recollection of what happened on one of the most famous film sets of all time—and what developed behind the scenes. And today, as she reprises her most iconic role for the latest Star Wars trilogy, Fisher also ponders the joys and insanity of celebrity, and the absurdity of a life spawned by Hollywood royalty, only to be surpassed by her own outer-space royalty. Laugh-out-loud hilarious and endlessly quotable, The Princess Diarist brims with the candor and introspection of a diary while offering shrewd insight into the type of stardom that few will ever experience.

Why am I waiting on this book? I grew up in the time period when the first Star Wars movie was released. I think I was in sixth grade. It made a big impact on me, my brother, and our friends at school. And I enjoy a well-written memoir. To couple the two things, it seems like it would be a fun book to read. Especially since it says that it is "laugh-out-loud hilarious and endlessly quotable." The Princess Diarist is due out November 22, 2016 according to NetGalley.

What book are you waiting on this week? Share it or a link in the comments so we can check it out and maybe add it to our TBR lists. Thanks for coming by and Happy Reading!

Teaser Tuesday: The Ballad of Elva & Chester by Adrian Archangelo

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Books And A Beat.
Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title and author so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

The mere presence of the human race upon the whole spectrum of living consciousness was going to take up a lot of bandwidth out there among the stars. Plenty of others were using it themselves. For them, the arrival of an entire species coursing through the galaxy had the overall effect of elbowing one's way into a crowded bar and stepping on people's shoes along the way.

~2% on my Kindle 

Synopsis: Elva and Chester are space aliens who look like humans but have been on Earth since the year 1100 with the goal of helping humanity develop more empathy and compassion. (The rest of the beings in the galaxy don’t want us flying around out there until we do.) The duo have no human habits to contend with, but they are extraordinarily responsive to chocolate and hold it in special regard. However, Elva and Chester find human behavior baffling, and continually see their plans twisted by human responses. Consequently, nearly everything wrong on this planet over the past thousand years–from the Leaning Tower of Pisa and Easter Island to The Black Plague–was caused by one of their historic debacles.

The Ballad of Elva & Chester is due out November 25, 2016 from WildBlue Press.

What's your teaser this week? Share it or a link in the comments. Are you enjoying your book? Let us know! Happy Reading!

Waiting on Wednesday #163: The Turn by Kim Harrison

"Waiting on Wednesday" is a weekly event hosted by Jill over at Breaking the Spine where we spotlight upcoming releases we are eagerly anticipating. 

This week my pick is The Turn by Kim Harrison. It's a prequel to the Hollows books. She lists it as # 0.1 in the series.

Synopsis from Goodreads:

Kim Harrison returns to her beloved Hollows series with The Turn, the official prequel to the series that will introduce fans and readers to a whole new side of Rachel Morgan's world as they've never seen it before!

Can science save us when all else fails?

Trisk and her hated rival, Kalamack, have the same goal: save their species from extinction.

Death comes in the guise of hope when a genetically modified tomato created to feed the world combines with the government's new tactical virus, giving it an unexpected host and a mode of transport. Plague takes the world, giving the paranormal species an uncomfortable choice to stay hidden and allow humanity to die, or to show themselves in a bid to save them.

Under accusations of scientific misconduct, Trisk and Kal flee across a plague torn United States to convince leaders of the major paranormal species to save their supposedly weaker kin, but not everyone thinks humanity should be saved.

Kal surreptitiously works against her as Trisk fights the prejudices of two societies to prove that not only does humanity have something to offer, but that long-accepted beliefs against women, dark magic, and humanity itself can turn to understanding; that when people are at their worst that the best show their true strength, and that love can hold the world together as a new balance is found. 

Why am I waiting on this one? It's another chance to read about Kim Harrison's world, The Hollows. And an opportunity to find out exactly what happened when the dreaded tomato hit the fan. The Turn is due out February 7, 2017 from Gallery Books.

What book are you waiting on this week? Share it or a link in the comments so we can check it out and maybe add it to our TBR lists. Thanks for coming by and Happy Reading!

Teaser Tuesday: The Deep End by Julie Mulhern

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Books And A Beat.
Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title and author so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

"When was the last time you saw her?"

"A week ago Tuesday. My husband and I had drinks with her and her husband, Roger." Polite drinks. Ignore the elephant drinks. We're-boinking-like-bunnies-and-you-don't-have-the-courage-to-do-anything-about-it-drinks.

~ p. 4 on my Kindle

The Deep End by Julie Mulhern is the first book in The Country Club Murders series. Ellison is being questioned by Detective Anarchy Jones in the teaser. After reading book 4 in the series last week, I wanted to go back and read the first book. It's pretty good. I enjoyed it. It is a humorous cozy set in the 1970s put out by Henery Press in February of 2015. I give it 4 out of 5 stars. 

What's your teaser this week? Share it or a link in the comments. Are you enjoying your book? Let us know! Happy Reading!

Review: The Thread that Binds the Bones by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

Tom has always known he was a little different than most people. He's moved around a fair bit to keep that a secret. Now he has moved to the small Oregon town of Arcadia and is settling in as a cab driver. When Laura Bolte comes into the bar where he's at, looking for a cab to take her out to Chapel Hollow, he feels a sense of connection with her that has been missing from his life. Things happen rather rapidly after that as he is exposed to the strangeness that is Chapel Hollow and the Bolte clan.

Magic is afoot. There are people like him, something he never thought he would find. In Chapel Hollow, Tom feels as if he has entered the Twilight Zone. This is a place where people can fly and change shapes among other things. What is Tom's place in all of this? Just what is he capable of doing?

This is a re-release of a Bram Stoker award winning first novel. The  book is well written generally. It does seem sometimes as if there is a little more tell than show in places, but considering how much of it takes place in people's minds, I think that is perhaps natural and necessary.

The plot is interesting. It's set in a secretive community and its sister town which serves as a link to the outside world. The characters are interesting. In particular, I find Tom, Laura, and Carroll are well developed.  There is good conflict ultimately of the age old sort, good vs. evil. The plot is well done and moves along quickly. The last about 20% of the book goes particularly fast. I needed to know what was going to happen to these people. It is definitely character driven. The Goodreads synopsis says that while this is the first book in the Chapel Hollow series, it can be read as a standalone. And I think that's true, but the ending does make you wonder what would happen next.

I gave this book 4 out of 5 stars. I liked it well enough, but wasn't crazy about some of the parts where there is more telling than showing. I have the impression that Nina Kiriki Hoffman's writing just got better and better after this novel. You might enjoy this book if you like fantasy and urban fantasy. No werewolves or vampires, just magical people with varying moral compasses. This edition of the book was released November 1, 2016 from Open Road Media.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

Review: Send in the Clowns by Julie Mulhern

Going to a haunted house venue isn't exactly Ellison Russell's idea of fun, Still, she is drawn there when her daughter doesn't come home on time. And being in the 1970s, neither had a cell phone.

It's even less her idea of fun when a clown stumbles forward and dies on her, literally. Who killed Brooks Harney? And why? Will she find  out before she becomes the next victim of the killer clown?

This is book 4 in The Country Club Murders series. It's the first one that I've read, though. Early on in the book, Ellison is found musing, "I'm not sure what it says about me that I have a homicide detective's home number memorized..." My guess would be that she has found bodies before and that this will probably not be the last one she finds as well.

Ellison has a good sense of humor that is evident in her thoughts and conversations with other characters in the mystery. She feels that Mr. Coffee and her father are the only two men who haven't let her down. And still, she finds herself in a little bit of a love triangle. At one point her date is hauled off for questioning in the case by the Detective Anarchy Jones. Both men would like to see her stay out of the mess, but she keeps getting drawn back in.

Romance is more of a subplot to the murder. Ellison's best friend is also dating someone new. And there is a further subplot of someone stealing and selling antiques.

It might sound like there is a lot going on. Honestly, though, it's really the right amount. The author pulls it all together seamlessly. I really enjoyed the book and all of its parts. I especially enjoyed Ellison's sense of humor and independence.

I gave this book 4 out of 5 stars. The mystery is well written and well paced. You can guess along with the rest of them who did it before the revealing. There is just the right amount of romance and subplot. And Ellison has a good relationship with her daughter that reminds me a little of the relationship Claire Malloy has with her daughter in the Joan Hess books. This novel can be read and enjoyed as a standalone, even though it is the fourth book in the series. I did go out and buy the first book when I finished this one. Send in the Clowns became available October 25, 2016 from Henery Press.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

Waiting on Wednesday #162: Silence Fallen by Patricia Briggs

"Waiting on Wednesday" is a weekly event hosted by Jill over at Breaking the Spine where we spotlight upcoming releases we are eagerly anticipating. 

Synopsis from Goodreads:

In the #1 New York Times bestselling Mercy Thompson novels, the coyote shapeshifter has found her voice in the werewolf pack. But when Mercy's bond with the pack and her mate is broken, she'll learn what it truly means to be alone...

Attacked and abducted in her home territory, Mercy finds herself in the clutches of the most powerful vampire in the world, taken as a weapon to use against alpha werewolf Adam and the ruler of the Tri-Cities vampires. In coyote form, Mercy escapes only to find herself without money, without clothing, and alone in the heart of Europe...

Unable to contact Adam and the rest of the pack, Mercy has allies to find and enemies to fight, and she needs to figure out which is which. Ancient powers stir, and Mercy must be her agile best to avoid causing a war between vampires and werewolves, and between werewolves and werewolves. And in the heart of the ancient city of Prague, old ghosts rise...

Why am I waiting on this book? I love the Mercy Thompson series. I really enjoy the stories about this woman who can shapeshift into a coyote, but who is in love with a werewolf. She has tangled before with vampires and managed to come out alive. This sounds like the ultimate vampire story for her. The expected publication date is March 7, 2017 from Ace Books. You can find an excerpt from chapter one here.

What book are you waiting on this week? Share it or a link in the comments so we can check it out and maybe add it to our TBR lists. Thanks for coming by!

Teaser Tuesday: The Thread that Binds the Bones by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Books And A Beat.
Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title and author so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

"Until yesterday, I was almost normal. I didn't need or use any of this. Then, when I came out to the Hollow, it was like going to the Twilight Zone, except ... Michael grabbed the cab off the road and flew it to the house, and I felt that in some weird way I had come home."

~ 22% on my Kindle

Slightly more than the 2 sentence teaser, but I think it works well. The speaker is Tom who is new to all kinds of abilities including the means to fly a cab off the road. This is a Kindle edition of a previously published Bram Stoker award winning book. It is book one in the Chapel Hollow series. The Kindle edition is being released today, November 1, 2016 from Open Road Media. You can find more information about the book and the author on Goodreads here.

What's your teaser this week? Share it or a link in the comments. Are you enjoying your book? Let us know! Happy Reading!