Monday, March 24, 2014

Books In For Review

Here's a quick peek at a few books that came in for review this weekend.  Check them out and then stop by in a few weeks to read the reviews.  Enjoy!



Scary Story: An Anthology by Assorted Authors Summer's fading, and there's more than the bite of autumn in the air. Zombies are biting in ‘Last Dawn,’ and that's just a taste of Scary Story, a collection of twisted fiction and dark fantasy that's guaranteed to keep you turning pages and checking your back. The undeads in ‘The Path of Dead Roses’ are more ethereal, but whether or not the posy-plucking polters have the key to helping the heroine's troubled father is as uncertain as their very existence, and can only be discovered by readers brave enough to wander down that path. An extra-sensual treat is detailed in ‘The Wrinkled Duplex Halfway up the Hill,’ unveiling suburban secrets and mysteries particular to those wild enough to explore. ‘Silent Night’ turns frightful when a young girl left alone on Christmas Eve improvises her own holiday cheer. From the haunted coal mines in ‘Paradise Lost,’ to iffy experiments on a med student’s trusting wife in ‘Fire of Faith,’ there's something for every horror fan in this anthology. Authors include Samantha Frazier Gordon, Roger Leatherwood, Katherine McMullen, Cynthia Morrison, Kate Raynes, and Karen Robiscoe. Jane 

Austen's Guide to Life: Thoughtful Lessons for the Modern Woman by Lori Smith Jane Austen has become our patron saint of romance, our goddess of happy endings. Her name is synonymous with romantic sighs, period costumes, and the ideal of what love should be. But if she could give us advice about life and love, what would she tell us? What would she make of Match.com, of our Real Housewives, or of our obsession with finding The One? Austen’s stories give us relationship advice that still works today, but her life offers us so much more wisdom than just that pertaining to love. In our fame-obsessed culture, it’s refreshing to think that Austen preferred to remain anonymous. Ironically, Jane Austen—master of love stories—never married and can teach us something about being single. She also endured many painful circumstances and managed them with grace and humor. In this light biography and guide, author Lori Smith surmises about Austen’s sensible advice for twenty-first-century women—on everything from living our dreams, being a woman of substance, finding a good man, managing money, and much more. As such an astute student of human nature, Austen can teach us an awful lot about ourselves and about what it means to live well.

Love! Laugh! Panic! Life with My Mother by Rosemary Mild Don’t we all have mixed emotions about our mothers? But how many of us have a mother like Rosemary’s—multi-talented yet super-tough to live with? Luby Pollack was a skilled journalist, book author, club woman extraordinaire—a true leader, and even an artist of sorts. She sometimes had a daunting role to play. In the delivery room during Rosemary’s birth, her psychiatrist husband ordered her not to make any noise during labor—it was “unseemly for a doctor’s wife.” Rosemary Pollack Mild started to write a book strictly about herself, but that didn’t go so well. She discovered that Mother popped up on every page. Looming. Encouraging. Warning. Always the Protagonist, the Star, the Heroine, the Antagonist, and sometimes the Villain from the viewpoint of a loving but ornery daughter.

Lost in Thought by Cara Bertrand Lainey Young has a secret: she's going crazy. Everyone else thinks she has severe migraines from stress and exhaustion. What she really has are visions of how people died--or are going to die. Not that she tells anyone that. At age 16, she prefers keeping her crazy to herself. When doctors insist she needs a new and stable environment to recover, Lainey's game to spend two years at a private New England boarding school. She doesn't really think it will cure her problem, and she's half right. There is no cure, but as she discovers, she's not actually crazy. Almost everyone at Northbrook Academy has a secret too. Half the students and nearly all the staff are members of the Sententia, a hidden society of the psychically gifted. A vision of another student's impending death confirms Lainey is one of them. She'd like to return the crappy gift of divining deaths with only a touch, but enjoys spending time with Carter Penrose--recent Academy graduate and resident school crush--while learning to control it. Lainey's finally getting comfortable with her ability, and with Carter, when they uncover her true Sententia heritage. Now she has a real secret. Once it's spilled, she'll be forced to forget protecting secrets and start protecting herself.

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