Murder on the Serpentine: A Charlotte and Thomas Pitt Novel, by Anne Perry

Since 1979, Anne Perry has provided readers with a window into the affairs of the British upper class, and the lower classes' fight for survival, during the Victorian era. In her first novel, Thomas Pitt, a policeman who has fought his way from destitution to middle class, meets his wife Charlotte while investigating the murder of her sister. Now, 20 years later, it is 1899, and Pitt is Commander Thomas Pitt, the head of Special Branch.

Queen Victoria is tired and in poor health. She has mourned her beloved Prince Albert for over 38 years, and the burden of her grief, combined with the stress of ruling an empire alone since she was 18 years old, has taken its toll. Nonetheless, the Queen has never shirked her duties and when she hears a rumor that her son, the Prince of Wales and future king of England, has been led astray by one of his circle, she asked an old friend to investigate. When that friend suffers an accidental death on the day he was to report his findings to her, the Queen calls on Commander Pitt to investigate the death and determine what he had uncovered.

As he investigates, Pitt must unravel a treasonous conspiracy against Great Britain while protecting the Royal family, and his own family from the fallout. Anne Perry skillfully, and with historical accuracy, brings each character to life against a backdrop of the last years of the Victorian era and the beginning of the 20th century.

(In return for an honest review, I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.)

* Print Length: 288 pages
* Publisher: Ballantine Books (March 21, 2017)
* Publication Date: March 21, 2017
* Sold by: Random House LLC
* Language: English

Take It to the Grave, Part 1 of 6: A tense and addictive psychological thriller, by Zoe Carter

Zoe Carter tantalizes us with the first part of her six part thriller series. Sarah is living every woman's alleged fantasy life with a gorgeous, wealthy husband, a healthy, beautiful baby boy, and a house in East Hampton, Long Island. Except it's not. The growing stench of backstabbing neighbors, marital infidelity, a demanding, cruel mother-in-law, and eating disorders permeate Sarah's life. Pushed by her mother-in-law to invite her family to her son's christening, Sarah reluctantly contacts her estranged sister, Maisey, thereby adding buried dark family secrets to her already troubled life.

Carter knows how to write and how to keep her readers glued to the page. Indeed, Part 1 of "Take it to the Grave" is such an exhilarating, roller coaster of a ride, it's hard to imagine a reader not grabbing the next installment in the series.

(In return for an honest review, I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.)

* Print Length: 64 pages
* Publisher: Harlequin Special Releases (June 1, 2017)
* Publication Date: June 15, 2017
* Sold by: Harlequin Digital Sales Corp

Argyle Fox, by Marie Letourneau

This is a big, beautiful book (12" by 9.1") that young children will love to own, look at illustrations, and read or have read to them. Ms. Letourneau wrote the text and created the illustrations. The protagonist is Argyle Fox, a young fox who always wears argyle scarfs or sweaters, which are knitted for him by his loving, elegant mother. Argyle loves to play in the forest with his friends: squirrel, beaver, ground hog and badger, but the wind interrupts their play. So Argyle sets out to create a toy designed to be used in the wind.

The book opens to an easy to read illustrated map of Argyle Fox's forest and surrounding area. There's beaver's pond, pirate ship, groundhog burrow, Argyle's four story house within a tree, and in the distance there is a knight's castle. The book's clever, large illustrations are its best feature, with the text appearing in a relatively small area at the bottom of each page. Young children will be delighted with this lovely, well-designed book with gorgeous illustrations. Its large size will encourage small children to spend hours pouring over it.

(In return for an honest review, I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.)
* Age Range: 3 - 7 years
* Grade Level: Preschool - 2
* Hardcover: 32 pages
* Publisher: Tanglewood (March 14, 2017)

To Dream, Anatomy of a Humachine (Book 1), by Louis K. Lowy

Louis K. Lowy does a stellar job unveiling a complicated plot with many moving parts in the first novel of his new series: "To Dream, Anatomy of a Humachine." His protagonist, Dr. Niyati Bopari, is a brilliant roboticist and bio-physicist who mourns her beloved son, Jay, a young man killed in a car crash on his high school graduation day. Dr. Bopari was driving the car, and her guilt, despair and love for her son is so intense that, unbeknownst to her employer, Ameri-Inc., in 2030, as she builds their first highly advanced human-machine hybrid (humachine), she infuses it with his DNA, and names it, "J-1." Subsequently exiled by Amer-Inc., to a manufacturing facility on the planet Truatta for almost two hundred years, J-1, for various reasons, begins to evolve. As he does so, he must deal with the corrupt underbelly of Ameri-Inc., its attacks on the human population of both Truatta and Earth, and his growing awareness of his own human roots.

Despite a storyline that goes back and forth between two centuries, with detailed descriptions of different technologies and different cultures and characters, Mr. Lowy manages to keep his writing crisp, focused and understandable. The emotional impact of this novel surprised me. In a science fiction novel covering two centuries and several planets, where one of the main protagonists is a hybrid between robot and human, I did not expect to be so moved by his plight. This is a novel worth reading.

* Print Length: 305 pages
* Publisher: IFWG Publishing (January 2, 2017)
* Publication Date: January 2, 2017
* Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC

Interview with Louis K. Lowy

I asked Louis Lowy what inspired him to write this novel. He graciously provided the following answer:

L. Lowy: "'To Dream: Anatomy of a Humachine' was inspired by a three page short story that I had written over a decade ago and had completely forgotten about. Rummaging through my virtual files, I stumbled upon it. Reading it, I thought it had the basic elements for a longer (in this case, much longer) story. The basic elements were there. The protagonist was an A.1. named J-17, which became J-1 in my novel. He was working on another planet, which I utilized, and he was mining Genimetrothiasine -- another thing I incorporated.

From there it became a lot of 'what ifs' and 'how do I explain how the what ifs came about.' I had to answer nine key elements of the 'how the what ifs came about' before I started on the novel. That took me a couple of months, but once I had the answers, I began writing and eventually the book reached fruition. Of course, there were twists and turns that I hadn't seen coming, but that's one of the joys of storytelling."

For more information about Louis K. Lowy, go to:
http://www.louisklowy.com