Envious Casca, by Georgette Heyer
If you find Georgette Heyer's best-known romance novels, to borrow a phrase from Jane Austen, rather too light and bright and sparkling, her mysteries are considerably nastier. Heyer had a gift for creating caustic, almost misanthropic characters, and nowhere is this displayed to better effect than in the pages of Envious Casca, her 1941 locked-room whodunit...
Holiday Book Giveaway: Envious Casca/The Christmas Party, by Georgette Heyer
Today's Book Giveaway is Georgette Heyer's Envious Casca, possibly my favorite country-house mystery of all time. Please note: Sourcebooks has recently reprinted this novel as A Christmas Party. I sympathize with any publisher's desire to get their hands on some of that sweet Christmas-book money (who doesn't want to read about murdering relatives during the holidays?), but...
Choose Your Own Misery: The Holidays, by Mike MacDonald and Jilly Gagnon
Written by Onion alums Mike MacDonald and Jilly Gagnon, Choose Your Own Misery: The Holidays is an R-rated choose-your-own-adventure story that takes you through countless holiday misadventures, ranging from moderately gloomy to gross as hell. The set-up is simple: your family is out of town, and your relationship is too new for a shared Christmas, so...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Choose Your Own Misery: The Holidays, by Mike MacDonald and Jilly Gagnon
Last week was devoted to our suggestions for stuff that we want for Christmas; this week we're thinking about others (occasionally, in between cookie breaks). Brace yourselves for five days of holiday-themed book giveaways, dear readers, beginning with Mike MacDonald and Jilly Gagnon's Choose Your Own Misery: The Holidays. A review will follow shortly...
Holiday Gift Pick #8
Gift Idea #8: Girls Next Door mugs
Okay, this one is both a little hard to explain and aimed squarely at the most hardcore nerds among us (me included; I already requested one of these for Christmas). French artist Rebecca Morse's webcomic Girls Next Door started life...
Holiday Gift Pick #7
Gift Idea #7: Pop Chart Lab's 100 Essential Novels Scratch-off Chart
I'm not a gambler, so I've never been able to experience the mysterious delights of scratch-off tickets. This gorgeous poster...
Holiday Gift Pick #6
Gift Idea #6: See America: A Celebration of Our National Parks & Treasured Sites
2016 is the centennial anniversary of the National Parks Service, In celebration, the artists at the Creative Action Network partnered with the National Parks Conservation Association to create this book...
Holiday Gift Pick #5
Gift Idea #5: Uncle Goose Alphabet Blocks
Okay, this suggestion IS for little kids. Uncle Goose produces absolutely gorgeous, 100% made-in-America wooden blocks. Their classic ABC blocks are lovely, but they make a wide variety of...
Holiday Gift Pick #4
Gift Idea #4: Jason Porath's Rejected Princesses: Tales of History's Boldest Heroines, Hellions, and Heretics
Porath is a former professional animator, and his website Rejected Princesses is a fascinating, informative, and frequently genuinely moving read. This book tie-in features...
Holiday Gift Pick #3
Gift Idea #3: Mini Lumio Book Lamp
At $125, this is the most expensive item on this year's list, but it's just so cool. Here's the item description...
Holiday Gift Pick #2
Gift Idea #2: ThinkGeek's Harry Potter-themed 1000-piece puzzle
There are actually two versions of this puzzle. We prefer the vintage-travel-style "Ride the Hogwarts Express" one; but the Marauders' Map one is okay too. Both retail for $15.99...
Holiday Gift Pick #1
It is time once again, dear readers, for our annual Holiday Gift Guide! We're going to spend the week showcasing some of our favorite book-themed gift ideas, which vary widely in style and price point...
Stars of Fortune, by Nora Roberts
I really only had one problem with Nora Roberts's Stars of Fortune, but it's a big one: Roberts simply isn't very good at writing fantasy. She keeps trying, but the genre does not play to her strengths...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Stars of Fortune, by Nora Roberts
This week's Book Giveaway title is Nora Roberts's Stars of Fortune, the first book in her Guardians trilogy. If past experience is anything to go by, I'll probably have a LOT of complaints, but who knows? Sometimes Roberts decides to knock it out of the park. Plus, the final book in the series comes out tomorrow, so at least I won't need to wait if I decide to finish it...
Apropos, but...
Well, Entertainment Weekly has the first images from the upcoming miniseries adaptation of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, and they look creepy as hell. That is, of course, an accurate...
Unexpected bedfellows
Sports Illustrated's The Cauldron has posted an essay by Erin Finnegan about the intersection between sports stories and romance novels. I'm not sure I buy all of the author's arguments (I think the combination of wealth, fitness, and celebrity has a lot to do with the appeal of sports-star romance heroes), but...
Getting creative
Quartz recently published a fascinating article about Mei Fong, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter whose book, One Child: The Story of China’s Most Radical Experiment, has been unable to find a Chinese-language publisher...
Great question
Yesterday, Literary Hub set out to solve one of the great mysteries of our time: "Who is the genius behind Merriam-Webster's social media?" The short answer is: a lot of people, but...
Lovely!
According to NPR, there is a long-unpublished H.G. Wells story that will finally be seeing the light of day. In its new issue, The Strand is publishing "The Haunted Ceiling", described as a short story...
Pride and Prejudice: Third Norton Critical Edition, by Jane Austen and edited by Donald J. Gray
When reviewing an annotated Jane Austen novel, I always want to emphasize that I am focusing solely on the quality of the critical content featured in this particular edition. (I don't have anything left to say about Pride and Prejudice other than it's amazing, and...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Pride and Prejudice, Third Norton Critical Edition, by Jane Austen and edited by Donald Gray
As everyone who loves me knows, there is nothing I find more relaxing than hate-reading critical essays about Jane Austen. I picked up this particular book right after the election, and I'm offering it up this week as part of our Weekly Book Giveaway. Here's hoping it works its soothing magic for you, too...
Wow.
Somebody bought a Tintin illustration for 1.55 million euros, apparently. Seems reasonable! The image (from the popular Tintin adventure Explorers on the Moon) fetched the highest amount ever for a single cartoon drawing, well above...
Ambitious
[Note: due to the shortened holiday week, we won't be doing a Book Giveaway today. See you next Monday, bargain hunters!]
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Paramount TV and Universal Cable Productions are teaming up to adapt Robert Heinlein's 1961 sci-fi classic Stranger in a Strange Land as...
Crafty (maybe)
And the first full trailer is out for the Ghost in the Shell movie! I have Notes. First, the accusations of cultural appropriation in this sucker appear to be richly deserved. Second, why on Earth did they choose Rupert Sanders as the director? Or was...
Sure? I guess?
And speaking of unnecessary remakes, the first full trailer is out for Disney's live-action adaptation of Beauty and the Beast. This movie strikes me as superfluous on several fronts, but the two...
Don't get your hopes up
A trailer is out for the latest adaptation of the inexplicably popular Itazura Na Kiss. (This time it's a Japanese movie, although I think there's another Taiwanese drama in the works, too.) I suspect this particular article makes the story sound more interesting than it really is...
Spectacular
A few months ago, Wired compiled a list of 10 of the Most Beautiful Libraries on Earth. Beauty is subjective, and I suspect people who prefer their libraries to resemble, say, Hogwarts aren't going to find much to admire in this list. But...
Shadowed Souls, edited by Jim Butcher and Kerrie L. Hughes
Shadowed Souls is a bit of a bait-and-switch. Based on the style of the cover, I had assumed that this was a Dresden Files-themed anthology written by a bunch of big-name urban fantasy writers. Instead, it's an uneven collection of “dark and gritty” short stories tied together by...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Shadowed Souls, edited by Jim Butcher and Kerrie L. Hughes
This week's Book Giveaway is Shadowed Souls, a collection of short stories set in Jim Butcher's Dresden Files universe. The featured authors include some longtime Wordcandy favorites like Seanan McGuire, Kat Richardson, and Butcher himself. (Sadly, the book does not...