Wednesday, January 18, 2017

Buzz Books 2017: Spring/Summer: Exclusive Excerpts from 40 Top New Titles,* By Publishers Lunch

Buzz Books 2017 is an amazing menu of the new books that will be released this spring and summer. Take a look yourself: Publishers Lunch has made this gorgeous list available for free at any major ebookstore or at buzz.publishersmarketplace.com.

It would take weeks for me to synopsize the hundreds of great books listed and excerpted in this Buzz Books for Spring/Summer, so I will focus on a few of the forthcoming books that I am anxious to read and review.

The Marsh King’s Daughter, by Karen Dionne (G.P. Putnam’s Sons). The protagonist, Helena Pelletier, has a great family and a successful business, but all of that is at risk when she learns that her father has escaped from prison. This father abducted and raped her mother when she was a teenager, then kept both mother and child prisoner for many years. With echoes of the Jaycee Dugan story, this novel appears to have much to say.

Soleri, by Michael Johnston (Tor). Michael Johnston promises an elaborate, vast story that is based both on ancient Egyptian history and King Lear, and that involves "a world of ancient and elaborate rites, of unseen power and kingdoms ravaged by war, where victory comes with a price, and every truth conceals a deeper secret."

The Mystery Knight: A Graphic Novel,
by Ben Avery (Adapter), George R. R. Martin (Author), (Bantam). Billed as prequel to The Game of Thrones, this book is sure to be a bestseller.

Come Sundown, by Nora Roberts( St. Martin’s Press). Nora Roberts has written another blockbuster of a stand alone novel. An aunt, long considered dead, suddenly appears at her family's ranch in Montana. Her appearance resurrects old mysteries, and her dark past seems to be the reason murders are being committed.

The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple, by Jeff Guinn, (Simon & Schuster). The same author who wrote about Charles Manson now takes on Jim Jones, the man responsible for the Jonestown Massacre, which is still considered the largest murder-suicide in American history. I think this is a book that will challenge what we know about Jim Jones and cults in general.

The Velveteen Daughter: A Novel
by Laurel Davis Huber (She Writes Press). This novel is about Margery Williams Bianco, the author of The Velveteen Rabbit, and her daughter Pamela. Although fictionalized, it is based on a true story.

The Radium Girls: They paid with their lives. Their final fight was for justice, by Kate Moore (Sourcebooks). Although they were assured that radium was safe, many women who thought they were helping America in the WWI effort, lost their health and their lives. This is a story that is long overdue.

I'd Die For You: And Other Lost Stories
by F. Scott Fitzgerald (Author), Anne Margaret Daniel (Editor) (Scribner). Apparently, F. Scott Fitzgerald was not finished with society, and these new stories echoing his take on his wife and the social mores of the 1920s and 1930s, just might have a greater impact today than if they were published 80 years ago.

Dragon Teeth: A Novel , by Michael Crichton (Harper). Yes, you read that correctly. A new Michael Crichton novel has been recently discovered and it is being published posthumously. And it is about the Old West in 1876, and "two monomaniacal paleontologists [who] pillage the Wild West, hunting for dinosaur fossils, while surveilling, deceiving and sabotaging each other in a rivalry that will come to be known as the Bone Wars." This novel is sure to spark the interest of the millions of viewers who loved HBO's remake of Crichton's "Westworld."

Fallout: A V.I. Warshawski Novel (V.I. Warshawski Novels), by Sara Paretsky (William Morrow). V.I. Warshawski is back with a new case that will lead her and her dog "from her native Chicago... and into Kansas, on the trail of a vanished film student and a faded Hollywood star."

The Painted Queen: A Novel,
by Elizabeth Peters (Author), Joan Hess (Author) (William Morrow)
This is the final book in the wonderful mystery series involving Amelia Peabody and her archeologist husband, Radcliffe Emerson. In this installment, we travel back to Egypt in 1912, to search for a stolen bust of Queen Nefertiti.


(*In return for an honest review, I received Buzz Books 2017: Spring/Summer via NetGalley.)