Advanced Booktempting!
Helloooo!
This weekend I am at Fantasycon and I shall report back next week but as you may have an unexpected bank holiday with a day of little to do just possibly you need some books ideas. Fear not I am here to help like your guardian angel!
Signal To Noise by Silvia Moreno-Garcia - Out Now from Solaris £9.99 paperback £5.99 Kindle eBook
Mexico City, 1988. Long before iTunes or MP3s, you said "I love you" with a mixtape. Meche, awkward and fifteen, discovers how to cast spells using music, and with her friends Sebastian and Daniela will piece together their broken families, and even find love...
Two decades after abandoning the metropolis, Meche returns for her estranged father's funeral, reviving memories from her childhood she thought she buried a long time ago. What really happened back then? Is there any magic left?
The debut of this incredible author is re/released with a fresh cover and also has a playlist. Very much looking forward to talking about this soon
Not For Good Maidens by Tori Bovalino - out now from Titan - £8.99 paperback £6.99 Kindle eBook
Louisa doesn’t believe in magic, until her teenage aunt Neela is kidnapped to the goblin market.
The market is a place of magic, where twisting streets, succulent fruits, glimmering jewels, and death are on offer to the unwary human. An enticing place that her mother and aunt barely escaped seventeen years ago, paying a terrible price.
With only three days before the market disappears, Lou must navigate the treacherous market, controlled by bloodthirsty goblins who crave vengeance against her family. She must learn the songs and tricks of the goblins to save Neela, or the market might just end up claiming her too.
This is a horror-fantasy focused tale based around the classic tale Goblin Market. I think you can see why it called to me?
Notorious Sorcerer by Davinia Evans - out now from Orbit £8.99 paperback £4.99 Kindle eBook
Welcome to Bezim, where tribes of sword-slinging bravi race through the night, and where rich and idle alchemists make magic out of mixing the four planes of reality.
Siyon Velo, Dockside brat turned petty alchemist, scrapes a living hopping between the planes to harvest ingredients for the city's alchemists. But when Siyon accidentally commits and act of impossible magic, he's catapulted into the limelight - which is a bad place to be when the planes start lurching out of alignment, threatening to send the city into the sea.
It will take a miracle to save Bezim. Good thing Siyon has pulled off the impossible before. Now he has to master it.
Now you know I love a good sword fight and the you add magic? Well how can I resist that?
A Magic Steeped In Poison by Judy I Lin out now from Titan £8.99 paperback £6.83 Kindle eBook
I used to look at my hands with pride. Now all I can think is, These are the hands that buried my mother.
For Ning, the only thing worse than losing her mother is knowing that it's her own fault. She was the one who unknowingly brewed the poison tea that killed her―the poison tea that now threatens to also take her sister, Shu.
When Ning hears of a competition to find the kingdom's greatest shennong-shi--masters of the ancient and magical art of tea-making--she travels to the imperial city to compete. The winner will receive a favor from the princess, which may be Ning's only chance to save her sister's life.
But between the backstabbing competitors, bloody court politics, and a mysterious (and handsome) boy with a shocking secret, Ning might actually be the one in more danger.
Tea, intrigue, magic and again more tea. This one sounds my kind of fun and I shall be reporting back soon!
The Creeper by A M Shine - out now via Head of Zeus £16.99 hardback £3.99 Kindle eBook
Superstitions only survive if people believe in them... Renowned academic Dr Sparling seeks help with his project on a remote Irish village. Historical researchers Ben and Chloe are thrilled to be chosen – until they arrive. The village is isolated and forgotten. There is no record of its history, its stories. There is no friendliness from the locals, only wary looks and whispers. The villagers lock down their homes at sundown. It seems a nameless fear stalks the streets, but nobody will talk – nobody except one little girl. Her words strike dread into the hearts of the newcomers. Three times you see him. Each night he comes closer... That night, Ben and Chloe see a sinister figure watching them. He is the Creeper. He is the nameless fear in the night. Stories keep him alive. And nothing will keep him away...
Last year I was blown away by this new Irish horror writer whose The Watchers is a spectacular tense horror tale in the woods. I’m on the blog tour for this book later this month but whisper is it’s just as good!
Ghost Eater by Clay McLeod Chapman - out 20/9 from Quirk Books £19.18 hardback £10.44 Kindle eBook
Erin hasn’t been able to set a single boundary with her charismatic but reckless college ex-boyfriend, Silas. When he asks her to bail him out of rehab―again―she knows she needs to cut him off. But days after he gets out, Silas turns up dead of an overdose in their hometown of Richmond, Virginia, and Erin’s world falls apart.
Then a friend tells her about Ghost, a new drug that allows users to see the dead. Wanna get haunted? he asks. Grieving and desperate for closure with Silas, Erin agrees to a pill-popping “séance.” But the drug has unfathomable side effects―and once you take it, you can never go back.
I’ve enjoyed Chapman’s horror a lot and this one again sounds an inventive tale using familiar horror elements. Very much looking forward to being unsettled
The Death of Jane Lawrence by Caitlin Starling - out 20/9 via Titan £8.99 paperback £6.64 Kindle eBook
Practical, unassuming Jane Shoringfield has done the calculations, and decided that the most secure path forward is this: a husband, in a marriage of convenience, who will allow her to remain independent and occupied with meaningful work. Her first choice, the dashing but reclusive doctor Augustine Lawrence, agrees to her proposal with only one condition: that she must never visit Lindridge Hall, his crumbling family manor outside of town.
Yet on their wedding night, an accident strands her at his door in a pitch-black rainstorm, and she finds him changed. Gone is the bold, courageous surgeon, and in his place is a terrified, paranoid man―one who cannot tell reality from nightmare, and fears Jane is an apparition, come to haunt him. By morning, Augustine is himself again, but Jane knows something is deeply wrong at Lindridge Hall, and with the man she has so hastily bound her safety to
Its’s Dark and spooky and I’ve been meaning to try Starling after their SF horror last year. This feels already an enjoyably gothic tale to read in a comfy chair with just one light on!
I think that’s enough for now but if you have some suggestions feel free to add in the comments!
