Assassin's Masque, by Sarah Zettel
Assassin's Masque, the third book in Sarah Zettel's Palace of Spies series, is a fun, smart read with an eye-catching cover, but I suspect it lacks that special something that makes teen books fly off shelves. (It might look inadequately dramatic?) I'm sorry about this, because I've found all of Zettel's books solidly entertaining...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Assassin's Masque, by Sarah Zettel
This week's Book Giveaway is Sarah Zettel's Assassin's Masque, the third book in her excellent Palace of Spies series. I'm not a fan of that title (which makes no sense and has almost nothing to do with the story, but I guess sounds cool?), but whatever: Zettel is a reliably great writer, so my expectations for this sucker are high...
I'm pretty sure you're fine judging this book by its cover.
Wow. I suspect that this cheesy-looking romance novel from the Philippines is hardly the skeeviest thing out there featuring Justin Bieber...
Harrumph
I was chagrined to discover that Sophia Bennett's young adult novel Love Song doesn't seem to be easily available here in the U.S. Love Song recently won the Goldsboro Books Romantic Novel of the Year prize. It's only the second time in the award's...
Ugh
According to The Wall Street Journal, Richard Hickock—one of the two Kansas murderers made famous by Truman Capote’s true-crime story In Cold Blood—wrote his own book with a Kansas journalist, which was never published...
Bring hankies
Oprah Winfrey is starring in a HBO adaptation of the 2010 nonfiction bestseller The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. (Oprah will be playing Lacks's daughter. Lacks herself died when she was only 31.) Lacks's story...
Magic for Nothing, by Seanan McGuire
Seanan McGuire's Magic For Nothing is my favorite installment in the InCryptid series to date... and that's saying something, because I've liked all of these books. But this book gives me something I didn't realize I was missing: a plausibly screwed-up heroine, despite her distinctly implausible circumstances...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Magic For Nothing, by Seanan McGuire
This week's Book Giveaway is Seanan McGuire's Magic For Nothing, the first novel in McGuire's InCryptid series to feature Antimony Price, the prickly younger sister of previous protagonists Alex and Verity. A full review will follow shortly...
All kinds of no.
Okay, this looks CREEPY AS HELL. There's an upcoming movie adaptation of Silvio Raffo’s mystery novel Voice from the Stone, which Entertainment Weekly describes as "a haunted house tale and a powerful meditation on grief, all in one." If the trailer is accurate...
Atmospheric
I've been admiring the trailers for the upcoming Charlize Theron action movie Atomic Blonde, which I just learned is based on a 2012 graphic novel by Antony Johnston called The Coldest City. And I see...
I want to visit!
There's a cool article in the Denver Post about the Rocky Mountain Land Library. The Land Library is described as "a collection of over 35,000 books and the shared dream of two bookstore employees: to rehabilitate a historic cattle ranch high in Colorado’s Front Range as a live-in library celebrating the West". The co-founders, Jeff Lee and Ann Marie Martin...
Try again
Sony is apparently going forward with a long-overdue sequel to David Fincher’s 2011 adaptation of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, but with an entirely new cast. The movie is due in 2018...
Stay realistic, Julia
This latest trailer for the upcoming Wonder Woman movie is getting my hopes ever higher. Unfortunately, it's still uncomfortably close to the grubby hands of Zack Snyder...
Heart of the Storm, by Michael Buckley
Heart of the Storm is the final volume in Michael Buckley's Undertow trilogy. All of the books in this series have been a mixed bag—at times wildly imaginative and exciting, at others just a overstuffed mess—and this last installment is no different...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Heart of the Storm, by Michael Buckley
This week's Book Giveaway is Michael Buckley's Heart of the Storm, the final book in his Undertow trilogy. I've never fallen as deeply in love with this series as I did with Buckley's Sisters Grimm stories, but these books are plenty fun in their own right. A full review will follow shortly...
Mass market
It's Mickey Spillane's birthday, and there's a great description of his career over on The Writer's Almanac. Spillane sounds like the James Patterson of his day: his books were written fast and critically panned, he apparently never featured a character who drank cognac or had a mustache (because he didn’t know how to spell those words), and...
Good deal
According to Entertainment Weekly, Barack and Michelle Obama have both signed deals to publish books with Crown Publishing Group. Crown has already published books by both Obamas: the former President’s 1995 memoir...
Yeah, right
Publishers Weekly recently posted an explanation of the upcoming changes to the New York Times Book Review's approach to book reviews. According to editor Pamela Paul, the New York Times Book Review isn't "cutting back", they're just being "strategic", but...
The right call
There's a great article over on Buzzfeed about the difficulties of casting John M. Chu's upcoming film adaptation of Kevin Kwan's Crazy Rich Asians. Chu promised “amazing Asian actors cast in EVERY SINGLE ROLE”, and there's a lot riding on him getting this right: Crazy Rich Asians will be...
Life in the virtual woods
I... really don't know how I feel about this. A video game based on Henry David Thoreau's Walden? It's not that I'm opposed to a game that aims to "reinforce our connection to the natural world and to challenge our hurried culture" or "achieve work-life balance", but doesn't doing that via a $20 video game...
Utterly Uncle Fred, by P.G. Wodehouse
Utterly Uncle Fred is an omnibus edition of P.G. Wodehouse's stories about the irrepressible Frederick Altamont Cornwallis Twistleton, 5th Earl of Ickenham. This collection includes the novels Cocktail Time, Uncle Dynamite, and Service With a Smile, and well as the short story that introduced us to the character, "Uncle Fred Flits By"...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Utterly Uncle Fred, by P.G. Wodehouse
This week's Book Giveaway is the P.G. Wodehouse omnibus Utterly Uncle Fred, which consists of one short story ("Uncle Fred Flits By") and three novels: Uncle Dynamite, Cocktail Time, and Service With a Smile. Any one of these, including the short story, would be well worth the cover price, so you can only imagine their combined awesomeness...
100% covetable
I recently ran across these absolutely gorgeous new editions of four classic Mary Stewart novels via the website Mary Queen of Plots. A little poking around the internet reveals that the publisher, Hodder & Stoughton, was also responsible...
No, thanks.
Well, I was never particularly excited about a TV miniseries adaptation of Jay Asher's YA novel Thirteen Reasons Why, and this new trailer is not doing much to change my opinion...
Immortalized!
This is great news: according to NPR, Lego has just announced their "Women of NASA" set, which will include Katherine Johnson, the NASA mathematician whose story was featured in Margot Lee Shetterly's book Hidden Figures...
Hiding in plain sight
According to the Guardian, a long-lost novel by Walt Whitman was recently discovered in the archives of a Victorian New York Sunday newspaper. Described as a "rollicking anti-lawyer revenge fantasy", The Life and Adventures of Jack Engle was published anonymously...
Tour guide
Atlas Obscura recently posted an article called "Exploring Cuba, Guided by Graham Greene". Taking advantage of the recent reconciliation between Cuba and the United States, essayist Luke Spencer sets out to explore Cuba, using Graham Greene’s satirical 1958 spy novel Our Man in Havana as a travel guide...
Take the Key and Lock Her Up, by Ally Carter
Take The Key and Lock Her Up is the final installment in Ally Carter’s Embassy Row trilogy. Sadly, this series ends the way it began: fun, frenetic, and stylish, but ultimately a little empty...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Take the Key and Lock Her Up, by Ally Carter
This week's Book Giveaway is Ally Carter's Take the Key and Lock Her Up, the third book in Carter's Embassy Row series and the one that fully pushes this series into "Princess Diaries meets James Bond" territory. (If that's a mash-up you've been hoping for, congratulations!) A full review will follow shortly...