Another big week for books - this is growing expensive! My friend and I are just addicted to book shopping together lately. Got some more fantasy and some other stuff this time around.
Fantasy Bought:
The weather magic that holds Lur safe is failing, and the earth feels broken to those with the power to see. Among Lur's sorcerers, only Asher has the skill to mend the antique weather map that governs the seasons, keeping the land from being crushed by natural forces. Yet, when Asher risks his life to meddle with these dangerous magics, the crisis is merely delayed, not averted.
Asher's son Rafel has inherited the father's talents, but has been forbidden to use them. Many died in the last Mage War and these abilities aren't to be loosed lightly into the world. But when Asher's last desperate attempt to repair the damage leaves him on his deathbed, Rafel's powers may not be denied. For his countrymen are facing famine, devastation, and a rift in the very fabric of their land
The year is 1570, and in the convent of Santa Caterina, in the Italian city of Ferrara, noblewomen find space to pursue their lives under God’s protection. But any community, however smoothly run, suffers tremors when it takes in someone by force. And the arrival of Santa Caterina’s new novice sets in motion a chain of events that will shake the convent to its core.
Ripped by her family from an illicit love affair, sixteen-year-old Serafina is willful, emotional, sharp, and defiant–young enough to have a life to look forward to and old enough to know when that life is being cut short. Her first night inside the walls is spent in an incandescent rage so violent that the dispensary mistress, Suora Zuana, is dispatched to the girl’s cell to sedate her. Thus begins a complex relationship of trust and betrayal between the young rebel and the clever, scholarly nun, for whom the girl becomes the daughter she will never have.
As Serafina rails against her incarceration, others are drawn into the drama: the ancient, mysterious Suora Magdalena–with her history of visions and ecstasies–locked in her cell; the ferociously devout novice mistress Suora Umiliana, who comes to see in the postulant a way to extend her influence; and, watching it all, the abbess, Madonna Chiara, a woman as fluent in politics as she is in prayer. As disorder and rebellion mount, it is the abbess’s job to keep the convent stable while, outside its walls, the dictates of the Counter-Reformation begin to purge the Catholic Church and impose on the nunneries a regime of terrible oppression.
Pendergast has taken Constance on a whirlwind Grand Tour, hoping to give her closure and a sense of the world that she's missed. They head to Tibet, where Pendergast intensively trained in martial arts and spiritual studies. At a remote monastery, they learn that a rare and dangerous artifact the monks have been guarding for generations has been mysteriously stolen. Pendergast agrees to take up the search.
The trail leads him and Constance to the maiden voyage of the Queen Victoria, the world's largest and most luxurious passenger liner-and to an Atlantic crossing fraught with terror.
Urban Fantasy
A beautiful and compelling, but clearly unhinged, sculptress of gargoyles by the name of Marianne Engel appears at the foot of his bed and insists that they were once lovers in medieval Germany. In her telling, he was a badly injured mercenary and she was a nun and scribe in the famed monastery of Engelthal who nursed him back to health. As she spins their tale in Scheherazade fashion and relates equally mesmerizing stories of deathless love in Japan, Iceland, Italy, and England, he finds himself drawn back to life — and, finally, in love. He is released into Marianne's care and takes up residence in her huge stone house. But all is not well. For one thing, the pull of his past sins becomes ever more powerful as the morphine he is prescribed becomes ever more addictive. For another, Marianne receives word from God that she has only twenty-seven sculptures left to complete — and her time on earth will be finished.Romance/Bizzare/I dont know but looks cool
Andrew Carrington is the ideal Regency gentleman: heir to an earldom, wealthy, handsome, athletic-and gay. When he decides to do his duty to his family, he wants marriage on his terms: an honest arrangement, with no disruption to his way of life. But in the penniless, spirited-and curvaceous-Phyllida Lewis, a self-educated author of romances, Andrew gets more than he bargained for, perhaps even love. And when he meets honorable, shrewd-and hunky-Matthew Thornby, son of a self-made baronet, Andrew seems to have everything a man could desire, until a spy and blackmailer tries to ruin him and his friends. The fragile understanding developing between Andrew and his bride is shattered when Phyllida is attacked, and her assailant threatens to denounce her husband if she tells. She must deceive Andrew to protect him. But Andrew discovers the truth and, devastated by his first experience of failure, seems in danger of losing his wife, his lover, his very manhood itself. Only with Matthew's help can Andrew and Phyllida acknowledge their feelings and find their way to lasting love. "Phyllida" introduces an intrepid heroine and an engaging and sympathetic group of characters, members of an exclusive establishment for gentlemen who prefer the company of their own sex. A diverse assortment of personalities, the Brotherhood of Philander is bound together by sexual preference in a world where the law brands gay men as outlaws and leaves them vulnerable to extortion. Moving from familiar scenes of society balls, theater parties and midnight suppers, to the witty conversations, games of chance and intimate pleasures at London's most aristocratic "madge club," "Phyllida" takes the reader into alittle-known side of Regency life. In this unusual romantic comedy, a bisexual man may make the best husband-for both his wife and his lover.Drama
From an O. Henry Prize-winner, this dazzling novel in stories marks the arrival of a powerfully original and beguiling new voice in American fiction. The linked stories that make up this spare and beautifully written novel follow the life of Ayela, the illegitimate daughter of a Mexican dressmaker, and create a portrait, composite yet intriguingly incomplete, that captures the complexity of who she was.
Author Biography: Charlotte Forbes is the winner of an O. Henry Prize and a nominee for the Best New American Voices 2006. Her stories and articles have appeared in literary reviews and newspapers across the U.S. She lives in New York City and is working on a novel.
The year is 1570, and in the convent of Santa Caterina, in the Italian city of Ferrara, noblewomen find space to pursue their lives under God’s protection. But any community, however smoothly run, suffers tremors when it takes in someone by force. And the arrival of Santa Caterina’s new novice sets in motion a chain of events that will shake the convent to its core.Ripped by her family from an illicit love affair, sixteen-year-old Serafina is willful, emotional, sharp, and defiant–young enough to have a life to look forward to and old enough to know when that life is being cut short. Her first night inside the walls is spent in an incandescent rage so violent that the dispensary mistress, Suora Zuana, is dispatched to the girl’s cell to sedate her. Thus begins a complex relationship of trust and betrayal between the young rebel and the clever, scholarly nun, for whom the girl becomes the daughter she will never have.
As Serafina rails against her incarceration, others are drawn into the drama: the ancient, mysterious Suora Magdalena–with her history of visions and ecstasies–locked in her cell; the ferociously devout novice mistress Suora Umiliana, who comes to see in the postulant a way to extend her influence; and, watching it all, the abbess, Madonna Chiara, a woman as fluent in politics as she is in prayer. As disorder and rebellion mount, it is the abbess’s job to keep the convent stable while, outside its walls, the dictates of the Counter-Reformation begin to purge the Catholic Church and impose on the nunneries a regime of terrible oppression.
No comments:
Post a comment (0)