My Summer Reading List......so far

Ah summer. The living is easy and the publishers bring out the books that they hope will be be Summer Blockbusters. Often over-sized escapist reading to tempt the vacationer and those who have an easier work pace for a short few months. Not only that, most people seem to like to read for sheer enjoyment. So this is the list (so far) of the books I want to read this summer.



Overseas
Beatriz Williams
Putnam Adult
May 10, 2012

There has been a lot of buzz about this debut novel by Beatriz Williams and I plan to kick off the Memorial Day weekend by at least starting it. It appears to be a combination of mystery, romance and time-travel between WWI and present day New York City. Both critical and reader response has been very good. It seems like the perfect summer read, called "delicious" by the cover blurbs and decidedly not a "Fifty Shades of Grey" clone.

Shadow of Night
Deborah Harkness
Penguin Group
July 10, 2012

Shadow of Night is the follow-up to one of last summer's biggest book successes, A Discovery of Witches, Book 1 of the All Souls Trilogy. It features Oxford Scholar Diana Bishop and vampire geneticist Matthew Clairmont. Their discovery of an enchanted manuscript known as Ashmole 782 catapulted them into a supernatural battle. The cliff-hanger ending of A Discovery of Witches sent them to Elizabethan England, a world of spies and the mysterious School of Night. While Elizabeth and Matthew are  consorting with such personages as Sir Walter Raleigh and Chistopher Marlowe the mystery of Ashmole 782 continues. While I thought A Discovery of Witches could have done with some judicious editing the story caught me in it's magic.

Cliff Walk: A Liam Mulligan Novel
Bruce DeSilva
Macmillan/Tor/Forge
May 22, 2012

Cliff Walk is the second Liam Mulligan novel after Rogue Island, winner of the Edgar Award for Best First Novel. Liam is back at work in Providence, RI at a dying newspaper as an investigative reporter. He manages to get under the establishment's skin again with his reports on legalized prostitution in RI and the governor taking bribes to keep it that way. When a child's severed arm turns up in a landfill and the body of an internet pornographer is found on the rocks at Cliff Walk Liam thinks there may be connections to the sex industry. As anyone knows who read Rogue Island, nothing can stop Liam on the trail of a story. Bruce DeSilva gives Liam a unique and gritty "voice" not to be missed. As a former reporter himself, he knows the territory.

  


The Janus Affair: A Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences Novel
Tee Morris and Pip Ballantine
Harper Voyager
May 29, 2012


For sheer fun, nothing can beat "steampunk" and The Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences Novels. Agents Eliza Braun and Wellington Books hold the fate of England in their hands as they investigate several unexplained disappearances. Ingenious Archivist Books and beautiful, intrepid Eliza Braun are up against a fiendishly clever adversary but are equal to the task. Books and Braun are sort of a Victorian "Avengers" (the television series, not the Marvel Comics) with steam driven modern wonders. Evildoers beware, retribution is at hand!


More to come, I'm sure!