Library Journal: The latest from Marino (The Seven Visitations of Sydney Burgess) is a lesson about how art can open doors that probably shouldn’t be opened. The story focuses on the Lark siblings, both eccentric artists. Peter Larkin (Lark to his friends) is a famous artist, a hometown boy who made good yet decided to stay in the community where he grew up, idyllic Wofford Falls. His sister Betsy is also talented, but her paintings can have disconcerting effects on people and on reality itself. This makes her integral to the plans of a pair of one-percenter siblings who want the Larkins to help them create works of art that might just destroy the world. Marino demonstrates his skill as a storyteller, creating empathetic, fleshed-out characters who must fight through the madness that is bearing down on them—but note that this novel isn’t Stephen King–style, slice-of-Americana, triumph-of-the-human-spirit horror.
VERDICT Marino is very willing to plumb the depths of human discomfort and nihilistic despair, revealing disturbing images that sear into the brain while showing how art, and sibling bonds, can both create and destroy.
Audio rights to LJ Andrews’s GAME OF HATE AND LIES and DANCE OF KINGS AND THIEVES, Book 5 and 6 of Broken Kingdom series, to Kate Runde at Podium Audio, in a two-book deal, by Katie Shea Boutillier (world English).
Arabic rights to New York Times bestselling author Martha Wells’ THE CLOUD ROADS, the first novel in her Books of the Raksura series, to Noura Al Noman at Makhtoota 5229, by Michael Curry for Jennifer Jackson.
On a warm March night in 2083, Judy Wallach-Stevens wakes to a warning of unknown pollutants in the Chesapeake Bay. She heads out to check what she expects to be a false alarm–and stumbles upon the first alien visitors to Earth. These aliens have crossed the galaxy to save humanity, convinced that the people of Earth must leave their ecologically-ravaged planet behind and join them among the stars. And if humanity doesn’t agree, they may need to be saved by force.
For nearly two decades, Jamie Warren has been running from darkness. He’s haunted by a traumatic childhood and the guilt at having disappeared from his disabled brother’s life. But then a series of unusual events reunites him with his estranged brother and their childhood friends, and none of them can deny the sense of fate that has seemingly drawn them back together.