As tempting as many of the offers are, I don't often take review copies unless a book really piques my curiosity and it is likely something I would pick up or borrow from the library anyway. My own reading list is just too long and I have this mental queue that I try to stick to (easier said than done). But once and a while I can't resist and then occasionally a book will arrive unannounced and it's always a treat when it turns out to be hugely appealing to me.
I seem to have accumulated a little pile of review copies that I'll be reading my way through over the course of the summer (if not even sooner), so I thought I might share them as I'm quite excited about these recent finds. Expect to hear more about them soon. (See, now that I'm sharing them I'll have to make sure I get to them all in a timely manner).
Stephen King's Joyland was something of a surprise though Titan Books kindly sends me the occasional parcel now and again (am reading a Helen MacInness spy novel at the moment, which I was thrilled to get). I just came across an article about Joyland. It seems Stephen King is going to hold off publishing this as an ebook as he wants to try and get readers into brick and mortar stores to buy it. Joyland has a wonderfully pulpy cover. it's set in a North Carolina amusement park in 1973. "Joyland is at once a mystery, a horror story, and a bittersweet coming-of-age novel, one that will leave even the most hard-boiled reader profoundly moved." It's been years since I read Stephen King and I am looking forward to this. It has summer read written all over it! It's due out June 4.
Another surprise arrival actually came to me via my work. I sometimes will attend webinars put on by publishers announcing their new releases. I especially look forward to those that are about mysteries and I must have dropped my name in a virtual hat to win a review copy. I missed the last webinar I signed up for and have been too busy to listen to the recording, so Pierre Lemaitre's Alex is another welcome surprise. Lemaitre is a French author who has written a number of award winning crime novels, though this is the first to be published in English. "In this gripping, fiendishly plotted detective novel, Alex Prévost is kidnapped, savagely beaten, and suspended from the ceiling of an abandoned industrial building in a wooden cage—she is running out of time. Her abductor/torturer appears to desire only one thing: to watch her die. Will hunger, thirst, or the rats get her first?" Le Monde calls it "“Exhilarating, literary, Hitchcockian." It's due out September 3.
I won a copy of Anton Disclafani's The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls from Library Thing. Every once and a while I will try my luck and request one of their review copies from their Early Reviewers program. I'm very excited to start reading this as I was in line for a copy at the library. And my luck held out since I have a copy in my hot little hands right now. "A lush, sexy, evocative debut novel of family secrets and girls’-school rituals, set in the 1930s South." This is due out June 4.
I've already mentioned Kimberly Gerry-Tucker's Under the Banana Moon: Living, Loving, Loss and Asperger's. I'll be starting it very soon. Copies are available now.
And one that's already underway, C.C. Humphreys' Jack Absolute. It's an edge of your seat adventure story set during the American Revolution, but this is a story with a twist. Jack Absolute is a British spy. This is the first in a series of historical novels featuring this dashing hero (though maybe he's more of an antihero really). I can't say I mind a swoon-worthy protagonist. I suspect the rest of the books will be published in the US eventually, though I might have to cheat and get the UK versions when I finish this one! It was published last month.
It's a good thing I have a long weekend to look forward to this coming weekend. I think you know what I'll be doing!