A Work in Progress

New and Notable: Forthcoming Titles

My wishlist is once again growing to epic proportions!  A lot of the books catching my eye at the moment seem to be spring (or beyond) releases.  It's hard to think so far ahead to sunnier days (when yesterday we just had our first snow of the season), but I guess it will be here sooner than I think (considering how quickly time seems to pass these days).  I think it's time once again to share a few that look particularly tempting.

Milk Fever by Lisa M. Cowen - "Milk Fever is a rich and inspired tale set on the eve of the French Revolution- a delicious peek into this age's history. The story explores the fight for women's rights and the rise in clandestine literature laying bare sexuality, the nature of love and the magic of books to transform lives."

We That are Left by Juliet Greenwood - "Elin lives a luxurious but lonely life at Hiram Hall. Her husband Hugo loves her but never recovered from the Boer War. Now another war threatens to destroy everything she knows. With Hugo at the front, and her cousin Alice and friend Mouse working for the war effort, Elin has to learn to run the estate in Cornwall, making new friends - and enemies. But when Mouse is in danger, Elin must face up to the horrors in France herself. And when the Great War is finally over, Elin's battles prove to have only just begun."

The Lie by Helen Dunmore - "From the award-winning author of The Siege, Helen Dunmore, comes The Lie; a spellbinding tale of love, remembrance, and deception, set against the backdrop of World War I."

Fair and Tender Ladies by Chris Nickson - "1734. A young man arrives in Leeds searching for his missing sister - and ends up dead, his throat slit. Then the girl the young man came seeking is dragged from the river, drowned. Constable Richard Nottingham finds himself investigating two killings where nothing is as it seems."

The Ghost of the Marie Celeste by Valerie Martin - "In 1872 the American merchant vessel Mary Celeste was discovered adrift off the coast of Spain. Her cargo was intact and  there was no sign of struggle, but the crew was gone. They were never  found.  This maritime mystery lies at the center of an intricate  narrative branching through the highest levels of late-nineteenth-century literary society."

Philosophy in the Garden by Damon Young

Palmerino by Melissa Pritchard  - "Welcome to Palmerino, the British enclave in rural Italy where Violet Paget, known to the world by her pen name and male persona, Vernon Lee, held court. In imagining the real life of this brilliant, lesbian polymath known for her chilling supernatural stories, Melissa Pritchard creates a multilayered tale in which the dead writer inhabits the heart and mind of her lonely, modern-day biographer."

Dispute Over a Very Italian Piglet by Amara Lakhous - "This multiethnic mystery from the author of Clash of Civilizations over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio pays homage to the cinematic tradition of the commedia all’italiana as it probes the challenges and joys of life in a newly multicultural society."

I Shall Be Near to You by Erin Lindsay McCabe - "An extraordinary novel about a strong-willed woman who disguises herself as a man in order to fight beside her husband in the Civil War, inspired by a real female soldier's letters home."

The Sun and Other Stars by Brigid Pasulka - "Set in a seaside village on the Italian Riviera, this irresistible new novel by PEN/Hemingway Award-winner Brigid Pasulka tells the story of a widowed butcher and his son whose losses are transformed into love."

Under the Wide and Starry Sky by Nancy Horan - "From Nancy Horan, New York Times bestselling author of Loving Frank, comes her much-anticipated second novel, which tells the improbable love story of Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson and his tempestuous American wife, Fanny."

Fear by Gabriel Chevallier - "Acclaimed as 'the most beautiful book ever written on the tragic events that blood-stained Europe' for five years, prosecuted on first publication as an act of sedition, Fear appears for the first time in the United States in Malcolm Imrie’s poetic and prizewinning translation on the hundredth anniversary of the outbreak of World War I, the conflict with which the twentieth century came into its own."

The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress by Ariel Lawhon - "A tantalizing reimagining of a scandalous mystery that rocked the  nation in 1930—Justice Joseph Crater's infamous disappearance—as seen  through the eyes of the three women who knew him best."

Vienna Nocturne by Vivien Shotwell - "In the tradition of Paula McLain’s The Paris Wife and Laura Moriarty’s The Chaperone comes a sweeping historical love story and a portrait of an age. Vienna Nocturne is a deeply moving debut novel that brings to life two extraordinary figures—a thirty-year-old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and a young English soprano, Anna Storace, who was his muse—in prose as spirited, timeless, and touching as Mozart’s greatest compositions." This one is out just after my birthday--I foresee a little gift to myself! 

The Secret of Raven Point by Jennifer Vanderbes - "Reminiscent of Pat Barker’s Regeneration, The Secret of Raven Point is a war saga capturing the experiences of soldiers after the battles have ended. And as few novels have done, it depicts the ravages of war through the eyes of a young woman."

Carthage by Joyce Carol Oates - "A young girl's disappearance rocks a community and a family in this stirring examination of grief, faith, justice, and the atrocities of war from Joyce Carol Oates, 'one of the great artistic forces of our time' (The Nation)."

Oh yay, new books.  They make me feel all warm and tingly inside.  What do people who don't read do with their time?  I couldn't live without stories!

Bookish Cravings (In search of a book . . .)

Do you ever have bookish cravings?  I have them all the time.  Maybe I should explain what I mean by cravings.  Not so much a desire to acquire new books (though I have those sorts of cravings all the time), but a desire to read a particular type of story.  It seems there are search engines out there where you can pop in a title and they'll tell you what you should read next . . . a readalike?

This is what I have in mind.  A story of suspense.  Female protagonist.  Setting would be prewar Europe.  The heroine finds herself mixed up in something of that's dangerous and a little beyond her experience, but she's not one to back down from a challenge.  Maybe something a little political, definitely along the lines of a spy story.  Think 1930s.  Glamour.  A story that you could imagine translating onto the silver screen and of course filmed in B&W.

Now, if I hadn't already read Ethel Lina White's The Lady Vanishes, that would be just the ticket.  Or even The Madonna of the Sleeping Cars (though Lady Diana Wynham's secretary Gerard has all the "fun") would do quite nicely.  But something new to me is preferable.  Something written in the 30s would be a first choice, but maybe there is a more contemporary novel written about the era that would satisfy my desire.  Why does nothing come to mind?

I know there are loads of spy novels out there and I've even got a list or two, but the books tend to be heavy with male protagonists.  I seem to return to this genre quite often, don't I?  Maybe I should go back to Helen MacInnes or "settle" for a John Buchan?

Here's my other scenario.  Yes, I've got two.   Last year I read a book called Losing Nicola by Susan Moody.  It was a good novel, not perfect, but I liked the premise.  A coming of age story, a seaside setting of postwar England, another story of suspense and murder (though not espionage this time around).  I hate to think I like reading the same story over and over, but I guess I sort of do--at least occasionally.  When you have a good experience you want to repeat it, right?   Maybe not one book after another of the same sort, but enough time has passed that the stories come back to mind and I've got a bookish whim to read something along those same lines.

Now it's not as though I don't have plenty of satisfying reads on the go right now or anything.  I do.  I'm very much enjoying a number of books at the moment.  And I have four books that I am trying very hard to finish before I go on vacation (which is two weeks from today--quickly approaching--by the way), but when I have these whims, there is nothing for it but to give in to them. 

Yes, this is what I do at the gym when I am using weights and can't have a book in hand.  I start thinking about other books.  Gym time comes after work, and it is my "down time", time to think about what I want to do in my leisure moments.  It's a given that these moments turn to books, right?  I know I should break myself of the habit of thinking about other books when I am in the middle of something good (it almost feels a little bit disloyal).  I should learn to focus more.  Sigh.  

But I'm still happy to take any recommendations you have to offer! 

By the way, I am very nearly already in vacation mode.  I still have a couple of books that I'd like to write about, but I (as you see) had other distractions tonight.  Maybe tomorrow I'll tell you about a book I recently finished (and liked very much) or maybe I'll save them for the weekend when I have more time to spend writing the posts.  Posting in general may be a little sporadic (and probably like tonight a little uninspired), but it seems my mind is in about twenty places at once right now (and not enough time to devote to any one thing like I'd like to).  Assure me you know how that goes!