Hello, folks. This week I thought I would try something a bit different. For the new books that I feel need a bit more explanation, I am adding more description to help make it easier for you to decide if it might be a good book for you to read or not. Some of the books this week sound really interesting!
First, we have an urban fantasy book, a genre we haven’t been seeing too much of lately.
Urban Fantasy
SOUL TAKEN by Patricia Briggs
Mercy Thompson, car mechanic and shapeshifter, must face her greatest fears in this chilling entry in the #1 New York Times bestselling series.
The vampire Wulfe is missing. Since he’s deadly, possibly insane, and his current idea of “fun” is stalking me, some may see it as no great loss. But, warned that his disappearance might bring down the carefully constructed alliances that keep our pack safe, my mate and I must find Wulfe—and hope he’s still alive. As alive as a vampire can be, anyway.
But Wulfe isn’t the only one who has disappeared. And now there are bodies, too. Has the Harvester returned to the Tri-Cities, reaping souls with his cursed sickle? Or is he just a character from a B horror movie and our enemy is someone else?
The farther I follow Wulfe’s trail, the more twisted—and darker—the path becomes. I need to figure out what’s going on before the next body on the ground is mine.
Fantasy
Next, there is a fantasy novel, dealing with occult issues.
CACKLE by Rachel Harrison
From the author of The Return, a darkly funny, frightening novel about a young woman learning how to take what she wants, from a witch who might be too good to be true, now in trade paperback
Non – fiction
Two interesting non-fiction books cross our paths next week. They are:
WE NEVER DIE: SECRETS OF THE AFTERLIFE by Matt Fraser
From America’s top psychic medium and the author of When Heaven Calls comes a new book that unveils the secrets of the afterlife, the truth about heaven, and why we never truly die.
WALKING IN MY JOY: IN THESE STREETS by Jenifer Lewis (Biography)
In this exciting collection infused with her sharp humor and buoyant spirit, Jenifer Lewis, the author of the hugely successful The Mother of Black Hollywood and costar of ABC’s hit sitcom Black-ish, shares the way she found the strength and courage to walk in her joy despite personal and universal hardships.
Women’s Fiction
CARRIE SOTO IS BACK by Taylor Jenkins Reid
In this powerful novel about the cost of greatness, a legendary athlete attempts a comeback when the world considers her past her prime—from the New York Times bestselling author of Malibu Rising, Daisy Jones & The Six, and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.
OTHER BIRDS by Sarah Addison Allen
From the New York Times bestselling author of Garden Spells comes an enchanting tale filled with magical realism and moments of pure love that won’t let you go.
Between the real and the imaginary, there are stories that take flight in the most extraordinary ways. Right off the coast of South Carolina, on Mallow Island, The Dellawisp sits—a stunning cobblestone building shaped like a horseshoe and named after the tiny turquoise birds who, alongside its human tenants, inhabit an air of magical secrecy.
When Zoey comes to claim her deceased mother’s apartment on Mallow Island, she meets her quirky and secretive neighbors, including a girl on the run, two estranged middle-aged sisters, a lonely chef, a legendary writer, and three ghosts. Each with their own story, Each with their own longings. Each whose ending isn’t written yet.
Thriller
Lastly, we have the heart-pounding thrillers:
THE INK BLACK HEART by Robert Galbraith
The latest installment in the highly acclaimed, internationally bestselling Strike series finds Cormoran and Robin ensnared in another winding, wicked case.
When frantic, disheveled Edie Ledwell appears in the office begging to speak to her, private detective Robin Ellacott doesn’t know quite what to make of the situation. The cocreator of a popular cartoon, The Ink Black Heart, Edie is being persecuted by a mysterious online figure who goes by the pseudonym of Anomie. Edie is desperate to uncover Anomie’s true identity.
Robin decides that the agency can’t help with this—and thinks nothing more of it until a few days later, when she reads the shocking news that Edie has been tasered and then murdered in Highgate Cemetery, the location of The Ink Black Heart.
Robin and her business partner, Cormoran Strike, become drawn into the quest to uncover Anomie’s true identity. But with a complex web of online aliases, business interests and family conflicts to navigate, Strike and Robin find themselves embroiled in a case that stretches their powers of deduction to the limits – and which threatens them in new and horrifying ways . . .
A gripping, fiendishly clever mystery, The Ink Black Heart is a true tour-de-force.
SURVIVE THE NIGHT by Riley Sager
It’s November 1991. Nirvana’s in the tape deck, George H. W. Bush is in the White House, and movie-obsessed college student Charlie Jordan is in a car with a man who might be a serial killer.
Josh Baxter, the man behind the wheel, is a virtual stranger to Charlie. They met at the campus ride board, each looking to share the long drive home to Ohio. Both have good reasons for wanting to get away. For Charlie, it’s guilt and grief over the shocking murder of her best friend, who became the third victim of the man known as the Campus Killer. For Josh, it’s to help care for his sick father—or so he says.
The longer she sits in the passenger seat, the more Charlie notices there’s something suspicious about Josh, from the holes in his story about his father to how he doesn’t want her to see inside the trunk. As they travel an empty, twisty highway in the dead of night, an increasingly anxious Charlie begins to think she’s sharing a car with the Campus Killer. Is Josh truly dangerous? Or is Charlie’s jittery mistrust merely a figment of her movie-fueled imagination?
One thing is certain—Charlie has nowhere to run and no way to call for help. Trapped in a terrifying game of cat and mouse played out on pitch-black roads and in neon-lit parking lots, Charlie knows the only way to win is to survive the night.
As always, thank you for making our shelves your destination.
Annie's Book Stop of Worcester 