Publishers Weekly: Lizbeth “Lizzie” Andrew Borden wields her axe against Lovecraftian entities in this terrifying and powerful series launch by fan favorite Priest (the Clockwork Century series). Two years after Lizzie infamously slew her mother and stepfather, she and her consumptive, scholarly older sister, Emma, remain in their hometown of Fall River, Mass., in an isolated and modified home called Maplecroft. Lizzie spends countless hours in her basement laboratory, trying to understand what transformed the Bordens into horrifying creatures, while protecting and caring for Emma and conducting a love affair with actress Nance O’Neil. Then Emma, who poses as “Dr. E.A. Jackson” to contribute to the men-only world of science, sends a biological sample to colleague Phillip Zollicoffer at Miskatonic University, with terrible consequences. Readers will be intrigued by the weird monsters and 19th-century science, but the story is really carried by the characters’ emotional dynamics, especially those between the Borden sisters.
Jul 282014
July 28, 2014
Publishers Weekly: The prolific Lake’s death in 2014, after a long, harrowing, and very public battle with cancer, gives extra weight to these 32 epitaphs. Lake’s command of language is strong and sincere, and his stories of everyday heartaches, filled with secret fears and self-delusion, whisk readers from inner geographies of mind to limitless gulfs of space. Lake’s characters emotionally embody the doomed heroism of Nordic gods sneering at grim fates, finding bittersweet redemption in dark byways of human ignorance. Reality is shattered when an alien controls a hardened mercenary’s dreams in the darkly romantic “Last Plane to Heaven: A Love Story.” Cynical humor greets oblivion in “The Speed of Time.” In surprisingly intelligent space opera (“Permanent Fatal Errors”) and a visit to the City Imperishable (“Promises”), revelations eschew oversentimentality for moral complexity. “Such Bright and Risen Madness in Our Names” injects pathos into the Cthulhu mythos, questioning identity and raising hackles. Malevolent faeries face metaphysical annihilation in a dying young woman’s cancer cells in “Her Fingers Like Whips, Her Eyes Like Razors.” And in “The Cancer Catechism,” Lake discovers faith in the inevitability of death. As he states, “In the end, words are all that survive us”; his fans and friends may find some comfort in the hope that his words will live on forever.
Publishers Weekly: Two novellas and two short stories expand the setting of Wells’s dreamlike fantasy novels. In “The Falling World,” a vanished envoy triggers a diplomatic crisis between two courts, and investigation reveals a long-forgotten tragedy. “The Tale of Indigo and Cloud” sets two queens against each other, with an unhappy consort as the prize. Familiar characters appear in “The Forest Boy,” a prequel to The Cloud Roads that examines a brief encounter between Moon and forest dwellers, and “Adaptation,” in which Chime deals with an unwanted transformation and its disquieting implications. Wells is adept at suggesting a long, complex history for her world with economy, and, while her protagonists may not be human as we understand it, they are definitely people, sympathetic figures constrained but not defeated by their environments. Longtime fans and new readers alike will enjoy Wells’s deft touch with characterization and the fantastic.
Booklist: McGoran brings back Philadelphia detective Doyle Carrick and his girlfriend, Nola, in another intriguing ecothriller that takes the GMO food angle first explored in Drift to a whole new level.The bees on Martha’s Vineyard appear to be dying off at an accelerated rate, leaving the farmers to hand-pollinate their crops or use genetically modified bees. A large agribusiness has offered to test their lab-created bees on the island, but not everyone wants them there. A weekend trip to the Vineyard lands Nola a job on an organic farm, and her new boss, Teddy Renfrew, is especially vociferous about keeping the GMO bees off the island, to the point where he may be endangering a deal his father has cooked up. The senior Renfrew hires Carrick to keep an eye on Teddy, who definitely doesn’t want the interference. But when someone takes potshots at Carrick, he realizes there is something deadly going on. 
Romantic Times: Senft is a talented author and her research on various herbs is a welcome surprise to readers. The story incorporates facts about herbs, what each of them can be used for and what will happen if used incorrectly. This sweet romance has a believable storyline with a lot of heart.
School Library Journal: Anika Dragomir is the third most popular girl in school, despite being of mixed heritage in an overwhemingly white neighborhood. She’s smart, attractive, and knows that the most popular girl, Becky Vilhauer, is a bully. Still, Anika clings to the tenuous friendship for fear of the total social annihilation that Becky will put her through if she displeases her in any way. Anika is constantly trying to reconcile the “spider stew” of her true self with her social persona, which leads to a series of hilarious escapades and a decidedly double life. When she finds herself falling for former nerd turned hottie, Logan McDonough, she manages to keep their relationship secret by arranging regular midnight rendezvous.
Booklist: The author of the outrageous Frank Sinatra in a Blender (2012) returns with an equally blood-spattered but slightly less offbeat thriller. If you see a burned-out house trailer on the cover of a crime novel, you can pretty well count on the book being country noir and the former occupants of the trailer having something to do with cooking or selling meth. Both assumptions hold true here, but that’s about all that’s predictable in McBride’s uncompromisingly gritty but surprisingly tender and quite funny tale of a good cop who impetuously grabs $52,000 of meth money hidden in a long-untended kitty-litter pan on the floor of meth cook Jerry Dean Skaggs’ trailer (yes, the one on the cover). 
The New York Times has a profile of Amy Alkon and her book Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck.
Library Journal: Watching this romance unfold from Ian’s point of view is refreshing and insightful. A stock womanizer soon unfolds into a complex hero. But as with all heroes, Ian has flaws and is all the more lovable for them. Savoring each page of this novel, this reviewer found the end unfolding a bit too quickly; still, with this first-time effort, Braden will soon amass a strong readership.