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The Magicians and Mrs. Quent, by Galen Beckett
Galen Beckett's 2008 novel The Magicians and Mrs. Quent features a plot cobbled together from the works of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, and Henry James, bound together by a hefty dose of classic fantasy. The end result falls short of Susanna Clarke's thematically similar Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, but is readable enough in its own right...
Manga Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night's Dream, by Kate Brown
Amulet Books clearly worked hard on their Manga Shakespeare books. The series is edited by a “leading Shakespeare scholar” and evaluated by an educational editor and an advisory group of teachers...
Manicpixiedreamgirl, by Tom Leveen
In addition to being saddled with a painfully quirky title that lights up my Spellcheck like a Christmas tree, Tom Leveen’s novel Manicpixiedreamgirl features one of my least favorite YA character types: the wishy-washy teenage male. Leveen’s protagonist is high school student Tyler Darcy, a kid blessed with a long-term (by high school standards) relationship, a supportive family, and a loyal circle of friends. Tyler has literary ambitions, and...
The Manny, by Holly Peterson
Time for another Wordcandy Book Review Double Feature!
The Manny, by Holly Peterson
Thirty-six-year-old Jamie Whitfield is unhappy. She has a fulfilling career and three beautiful children...
Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen
As everyone who spent any time around me in the fall of 2005 knows, I couldn't stand the most recent film adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It played up the dramatic aspects of the story and dumbed-down everything else. I thought it was too short to do the story justice. The casting was all wrong. (I’m not saying Mr. Darcy wasn’t very pretty, because he totally was, but prettiness isn’t everything.) The whole thing...
The Master of Misrule, by Laura Powell
The Master of Misrule is the sequel to Laura Powell's novel The Game of Triumphs, which we enthusiastically recommended last October. Like The Game of Triumphs, The Master of Misrule is a fast-paced and richly imagined fantasy inspired by the rules of the Tarot...
Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment, by James Patterson
James Patterson has described Maximum Ride as his favorite series, and possibly his best. We totally understand why these books are his favorites, as the first installment in the series...
Maybe This Time, by Jennifer Crusie
A new Jennifer Crusie novel is always cause for celebration, and Maybe This Time—her first full-length solo effort since 2004's Bet Me—is no exception. In this lively re-working of Henry James's novella The Turn of the Screw...
The Memory Bank, by Carolyn Coman and Rob Shepperson
The Memory Bank (text by Carolyn Coman, illustrations by Rob Shepperson) is the story of two sisters. When Hope's evil parents banish her baby sister Honey for breaking the family'...
Mercy Street, by Mariah Stewart
Mariah Stewart’s new novel Mercy Street is the first book in her Mercy Street Foundation series. The story centers on a shooting in a small Pennsylvania town: four high school seniors—three boys...
Meridian, Wildcat Fireflies, and Speed of Light, by Amber Kizer
Amber Kizer makes no secret of the fact that she started writing fiction because she needed a job that she could handle while managing a difficult health condition, not because she had an epic novel burning inside of her. Happily, Kizer turns out to possess a real talent for trotting out entertaining, briskly-paced YA literature, no matter how prosaic her inspiration...
The Mighty Queens of Freeville, by Amy Dickinson
Amy Dickinson is the author of “Ask Amy”, an advice column that began in the Chicago Tribune in 2003 and now appears in more than 150 newspapers nationwide. In her bestselling memoir The Mighty Queens of Freeville...
Millie's Fling, by Jill Mansell
British author Jill Mansell never takes herself too seriously, and we here at Wordcandy are grateful for it. Her latest effort, Millie's Fling, is classic Mansell: sweet, sunny, and cheerful...
Mine Till Midnight, by Lisa Kleypas
Lisa Kleypas’s Victorian romances are always first-rate, so it comes as no surprise that her most recent effort, Mine Till Midnight, is beautifully written, precisely plotted, and filled with appealing, fully developed characters. Kleypas cannibalizes some of her earlier stories for this book, but Mine Till Midnight is more than entertaining enough to rise above a few familiar plot twists...
The Mislaid Magician, or, Ten Years After, by Caroline Stevermer and Patricia C. Wrede
Caroline Stevermer and Patricia C. Wrede’s 1988 novel Sorcery and Cecelia was a delightful curiosity—a cult favorite that appealed equally to devotees of Diana Wynne Jones and Georgette Heyer. The book's two sequels, 2004’s The Grand Tour and the just-released The Mislaid Magician, don’t totally recapture the magic of the first story, but they still make for very entertaining reading...
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, by Winnifred Watson
Winifred Watson’s 1938 novel Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day has just been made into a movie, and—for once!—we’re totally grateful. We’re usually the first in line to complain about film adaptations, but if it wasn’t for the fine people at Focus Features we might never have heard of this charmingly optimistic romantic comedy...
Miss Understanding, by Stephanie Lessing
At first glance, Stephanie Lessing’s novel Miss Understanding looks pretty generic. A fish-out-of-water comedy set in a fashion magazine? Shades of Ugly Betty. A neurotic, obsessive heroine with a bevy of psychosomatic illnesses? Shades of Bridget Jones. A female-empowering adult-coming-of-age story featuring lots of Mean Girls-style bad behavior and a romantically mismatched couple...
Mister Monday, by Garth Nix
As I went through the Wordcandy mail a few weeks ago, I was pleased to run across a package from Scholastic containing not only the final book in Garth Nix's Keys to the Kingdom series, but also t...
Mistral's Kiss, by Laurell K. Hamilton
Laurell K. Hamilton’s most recent book, Mistral’s Kiss, the fifth title in the Meredith Gentry series, is better than I expected. It’s not as good as the first two installments in the series, but Mistral’s Kiss has some decent action scenes, ends on a tantalizing cliffhanger, and...
Moon Called, by Patricia Briggs
If I had to describe Patricia Briggs's novel Moon Called in a single line, I'd probably go for something like: “A lot like Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake series—only way less annoying...
Morrigan's Cross, by Nora Roberts
As anyone who’s had the misfortune of hearing me speak recently knows, I’ve been sick. Really sick. I sound like a seal with a lifelong pack-a-day habit. The only upside to the past week and a ...
Moscow Rules, by Daniel Silva
Daniel Silva’s upcoming novel Moscow Rules (due out July 22) is his eighth novel to feature art restorer and sometime Israeli secret agent Gabriel Allon. As this installment opens, Allon’s honeymo...
The Mouse That Roared, by Leonard Wibberley
When Leonard Wibberley's The Mouse That Roared first appeared as a serialized story in the 1950s, I'm sure the idea of the United States being invaded by a tiny nation armed with ridiculously inadequate weapons was just too precious. Unfortunately, in a post-9/11, box-cutter-filled world, some of the central jokes in this story hit pretty close to home...
Mr. Darcy, Vampyre, by Amanda Grange
Jane Austen continuations and vampire romances have been two of the great literary success stories of the past five years, so we're actually a little surprised we haven't already seen a combi...
Mr. Fooster Traveling on a Whim, by Tom Corwin
Tom Corwin’s Mr. Fooster Traveling on a Whim doesn’t quite live up to its publishers’ “Like Harold and the Purple Crayon for adults!” hype, but this elegant, unusual graphic novel is undeniab...
Much Ado About You, by Eloisa James
To paraphrase Jane Austen, there are few romance novelists whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. Eloisa James is one of the few writers that I love (well, more or less) and think well of--at least well enough to shell out the full cover price for, an honor that I reserve for a mere handful of authors...
Murder on the Orient Express, by Agatha Christie
Warning: Damning Confession (for a bibliophile) Straight Ahead: I... I have always felt that Agatha Christie's stories make better TV shows than they do books. I know! I'm sorry! Just typing t...
My Dead Girlfriend, by Eric Wight
At first glance, the first volume of Eric Wight’s My Dead Girlfriend has two things going for it—glowing recommendations from Meg Cabot and Joss Whedon—and one major strike against it: cover art t...
My Uncle Oswald, by Roald Dahl
If you took any good caper movie, turned it into a book, added a boatload of tongue-in-cheek licentiousness, and stuck the whole thing in a plummy P.G. Wodehouse-style setting, you’d still en...