Library Journal: Marney lost her family and her best friend when their employer, ichorite baron Yann Chauncey, broke their strike with a massacre. She, the sole survivor, is lustertouched, a hallucinatory illness that develops in ichorite workers. After building a career as a bandit, Marney sees a chance for revenge when Chauncey’s daughter invites eligible suitors to compete for her hand in marriage. She’ll have to fake a noble identity and conceal her past long enough to outlast the competition, charm an heiress, and strike her enemy down. This novel is a rollicking, anti-capitalist fever dream with vivid prose that grows hallucinogenic at points from Marney’s illness and all-encompassing grief. The worldbuilding is as intricate as the language, with vying factions and different religious traditions that complicate her quest for vengeance.
VERDICT: Clarke’s (“Scapegracers” series, writing as H.A. Clarke) adult debut, an irreverent queer fantasy novel, will thrill readers and appeal to fans of the “Locked Tomb” series by Tamsyn Muir, while the fusion of technology and magic and clash between industrialists and outlaws is reminiscent of Netflix’s Arcane.
It is August of 1704, and Matthew Corbett and his companions have narrowly escaped the island of Golgotha and are recuperating in the town of Alghero on the northwestern coast of Sardinia, currently under Spanish rule. Hudson Greathouse is at his limits, both mentally and physically, after their harrowing ordeal.
Abridged/dramatic audio rights to New York Times bestseller Tamsyn Muir’s The Locked Tomb series including GIDEON THE NINTH, HARROW THE NINTH, NONA THE NINTH and ALECTO THE NINTH, to Anji Cornette at Graphic Audio by Jennifer Jackson.
Arabic rights to World Fantasy Award winner Premee Mohamed’s THE BUTCHER OF THE FOREST, to Dawen Publishing House, by Gana Galal at Bears Factor Literary Agency, in association with Michael Curry.
We take the edible trappings of flirtation for granted: chocolate covered strawberries and romance, oysters on the half shell and desire, the eggplant emoji and a suggestive wink. But why does it feel so natural for us to link food and sexual pleasure? Rachel Hope Cleves explores the long association between indulging in good food and an appetite for naughty sex, from the development of the Parisian restaurant as a place for men to meet with prostitutes and mistresses, to the role of sexual outlaws like bohemians, new women, lesbians and gay men in creating epicurean culture in Britain and the United States. Taking readers on a gastronomic journey from Paris and London to New York, Chicago and San Francisco, Lustful Appetites reveals how this preoccupation changed the ways we eat and the ways we are intimate―while also creating stigmas that persist well into our own twenty-first century.
Author of SUCH A LOVELY FAMILY Aggie Blum Thompson’s untitled suburban suspense, in which a woman must convince her family that she was kidnapped, as an unsolved murder and robberies in the neighborhood point to something sinister, to Kristin Sevick at Minotaur, for publication in summer 2026, by Katie Shea Boutillier (world English).
It’s the night before Christmas and I’m alone in the house…
Congratulations to DMLA author, E.B. Asher as THIS WILL BE FUN makes the USA Today Bestseller List!
