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Last Licks by Claire Donally

May 062014
 

Cover for Last Licks by Claire Donally. In the background is a grand mansion, complete with fountain and hedge maze. A cat walks up the garden path. In the foreground is a wheelchair with a red cushion, on which sits a cat cleaning its paw.When Sunny Coolidge’s curmudgeonly boss, Oliver Barnstable, lands in rehab after breaking his leg, Sunny is stuck shuttling between their offices in Kittery Harbor, Maine, and the facility where Ollie is recuperating. And if putting up with temper tantrums from her boss wasn’t enough, his rehab roommate, Gardner Scatterwell, is a shameless flirt.

But when Scatterwell dies unexpectedly in the night, Ollie is convinced it wasn’t from natural causes. He gives Sunny a new assignment—find out who killed the old tomcat.

And speaking of cats, Shadow, Sunny’s feline partner in crime, takes a peculiar interest in the rehab’s resident angel of death—a calico cat called Portia, with an uncanny talent for cozying up to patients right before they pass away. Together, Sunny and Shadow will have to nose out clues to discover if Portia’s jinx had anything to do with Gardner’s passing—or if all his catting around finally got him fixed.

 May 6, 2014  Tagged with: ,

Valour and Vanity by Mary Robinette Kowal

Apr 292014
 

Cover for Valour and Vanity by Mary Robinette Kowal. a white woman with brown curly hair in an up-do stands in the foreground in a Edwardian floral summer dress. behind her is a dark-haired and -goateed man in a white Edwardian suit, his outheld hand performing a glamour of fiery orange lights in the shape of a dragon. A medieval European church can be seen in the background.After Melody’s wedding, the Ellsworths and Vincents accompany the young couple on their tour of the continent. Jane and Vincent plan to separate from the party and travel to Murano to study with glassblowers there, but their ship is set upon by Barbary corsairs while en route. It is their good fortune that they are not enslaved, but they lose everything to the pirates and arrive in Murano destitute.

Jane and Vincent are helped by a kind local they meet en route, but Vincent is determined to become self-reliant and get their money back, and hatches a plan to do so. But when so many things are not what they seem, even the best laid plans conceal a few pitfalls. The ensuing adventure is a combination of the best parts of magical fantasy and heist novels, set against a glorious Regency backdrop.

 April 29, 2014  Tagged with: ,

The Fireman Finds a Wife by Felicia Mason

Apr 152014
 

Cover for The Fireman Takes a Wife by Felicia Mason. A white, blond woman in a pink shirt and jeans greets a white, blond man in a fireman's dress uniform at the door of her warm, suburban home.Widow Summer Spencer is eager for a quiet life—without the worry of loving a man who lives life in the fast lane. But when fire chief Cameron Jackson starts to woo her, it’s tough to resist his charms. Chief Cam can’t ignore the sparks between him and the stately beauty. But when he learns she’s from the richest family in town, he’s not sure he can ever measure up to her expectations. Can he set aside his fears and give true love another chance?

 April 15, 2014  Tagged with: ,

Steles of the Sky by Elizabeth Bear

Apr 082014
 

Cover for Steles of the Sky by Elizabeth Bear. Two people on brown horses and a small white pony ride through a beautiful maelstrom of purple, white, and gold.Re Temur, exiled heir to his grandfather’s Khaganate, has finally raised his banner and declared himself at war with his usurping uncle. With his companions—the Wizard Samarkar, the Cho-tse Hrahima, and the silent monk Brother Hsiung—he must make his way to Dragon Lake to gather in his army of followers.

Temur has many enemies, and they are not idle. The sorcerer who leads the Nameless Assassins, whose malice has shattered the peace of all the empires of the Celedon Highway, has struck at Temur’s uncle already. To the south, in the Rasan empire, a magical plague rages. To the east, the great city of Asmaracanda has burned, and the Uthman Caliph is deposed. And in the hidden ancient empire of Erem, Temur’s son has been born, and a new moon has risen in the Eternal Sky.

 April 8, 2014  Tagged with: ,

Rotten at the Heart by Bartholomew Daniels

Mar 252014
 

Cover for Rotten at the Heart by Bartholomew Daniels [a white, illustrated hand holding a dagger stabs upward; the dagger is covered in realistic-looking blood; the background is the black, leathery texture of an old book.]London, 1596. With their patron’s mysterious death and their Puritan landlord’s sudden determination to evict them, William Shakespeare and the Lord Chamberlain’s Men teeter on the brink of ruin. So when the new Baron Carey–son of their late sponsor–reveals to Shakespeare his suspicions that his father was murdered, and demands that Shakespeare use his own powers of observation to ferret out the killer in exchange for Carey’s continued patronage, Will has little choice but to agree. Continue reading »

 March 25, 2014  Tagged with: ,

Death on Blackheath by Anne Perry

Mar 252014
 

Death on Blackheath by Anne PerryAs commander of the powerful Special Branch, Thomas Pitt has the job of keeping Britain safe from spies and traitors. So there’s no obvious reason why he is suddenly ordered to investigate two minor incidents: the blood, hair, and shards of glass discovered outside the home of naval weapons expert Dudley Kynaston, and the simultaneous disappearance of Mrs. Kynaston’s beautiful lady’s maid.

But weeks later, when the mutilated body of an unidentified young woman is found near Kynaston’s home, Pitt realizes that this is no ordinary police investigation. Continue reading »

 March 25, 2014  Tagged with: ,

Lockstep by Karl Schroeder

Mar 252014
 

Lockstep by Karl SchroederWhen seventeen-year-old Toby McGonigal finds himself lost in space, separated from his family, he expects his next drift into cold sleep to be his last. After all, the planet he’s orbiting is frozen and sunless, and the cities are dead. But when Toby wakes again, he’s surprised to discover a thriving planet, a strange and prosperous galaxy, and something stranger still—that he’s been asleep for 14,000 years.

Welcome to the Lockstep Empire, where civilization is kept alive by careful hibernation. Continue reading »

 March 25, 2014  Tagged with: ,

The Burning Dark by Adam Christopher

Mar 252014
 

The Burning Dark by Adam ChristopherBack in the day, Captain Abraham Idaho Cleveland had led the Fleet into battle against an implacable machine intelligence capable of devouring entire worlds. But after saving a planet, and getting a bum robot knee in the process, he finds himself relegated to one of the most remote backwaters in Fleetspace to oversee the decommissioning of a semi-deserted space station well past its use-by date.

But all is not well aboard the U-Star Coast City. The station’s reclusive Commandant is nowhere to be seen, leaving Cleveland to deal with a hostile crew on his own. Persistent malfunctions plague the station’s systems while interference from a toxic purple star makes even ordinary communications problematic. Alien shadows and whispers seem to haunt the lonely corridors and airlocks, fraying the nerves of everyone aboard.
Continue reading »

 March 25, 2014  Tagged with: ,

Kill Fee by Owen Laukkanen

Mar 202014
 

Kill Fee by Owen LaukkanenThe billionaire picked a heck of a way to die.

On a beautiful Saturday in downtown Saint Paul, Minnesota, state investigator Kirk Stevens and his occasional colleague FBI special agent Carla Windermere witness the assassination of one of the state’s wealthiest men. The shooter is a young man, utterly unremarkable—except in his eyes. There is something very wrong in his eyes.
Continue reading »

 March 20, 2014  Tagged with: ,

Emilie and the Sky World by Martha Wells

Mar 042014
 

Emilie and the Sky World by Martha WellsWhen Emilie and Daniel arrive in Silk Harbor, Professor Abindon, an old colleague of the Marlendes, warns them that she’s observed something strange and potentially deadly in the sky, a disruption in an upper air aether current. But as the Marlendes investigate further, they realize it’s a ship from another aetheric plane. It may be just a friendly explorer, or something far more sinister, but they will have to take an airship into the dangerous air currents to find out.
Continue reading »

 March 4, 2014  Tagged with: ,
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