Victorian London come to life in this spellbinding mystery as an intrepid female sleuth wades through a murky world of collectors and criminals to recover a remarkable child.
Bridie Devine-flame-haired, pipe-smoking detective extraordinaire-is confronted with her most baffling puzzle yet: the kidnapping of Christabel Berwick, secret daughter of Sir Edmund Athelstan Berwick, a peculiar child whose reputed powers have captured the unwanted attention of collectors in this age of discovery.
Winding her way through the sooty streets of Victorian London, Bridie won't rest until she finds the young girl, even if it means unearthing secrets about her own past that she'd rather keep buried. Luckily, her search is aided by an enchanting cast of characters, including a seven-foot-tall housemaid; a melancholic, tattoo-covered ghost; and an avuncular apothecary. But secrets abound in this foggy underworld where nothing is quite what it seems.
Blending darkness and light, Things in Jars is a mesmerizing novel that collapses the boundary between fact and fairy tale to stunning effect and explores what it means to be human in inhumane times.
The Sun Down Motel By: Simone St. James
Upstate New York, 1982. Viv Delaney wants to move to New York City, and to help pay for it she takes a job as the night clerk at the Sun D Motel in Fell, New York. But something isn't right at the motel, something haunting and scary.
Upstate New York, 2017. Carly Kirk has never been able to let go of the story of her aunt Viv, who mysteriously disappeared from the Sun Down before she was born. Carly decides to move to Fell and visit the motel, where she quickly learns that nothing has changed since 1982. And she soon finds herself ensnared in the same mysteries that claimed her aunt.
A Woman is no Man By: Etaf Rum (This is a finalist for book of the year and I received for free)
"Where I come from, we keep these stories to ourselves. To tell them to the outside world is unheard of, dangerous, the ultimate shame."
Palestine, 1990 Seventeen-year-old Isra prefers reading books to entertaining the suitors her father has chosen for her. Her desires are irrelevant, however-over the course of a week, the naïve and dreamy girl finds herself betrothed, then married, and soon living in Brooklyn. There Isra struggles to adapt to the expectations of her oppressive mother-in-law, Fareeda, and her strange new husband, Adam: a pressure that intensifies as she begins to have children-four daughters instead of the sons Isra is expected to bear.
Brooklyn, 2008. At her grandmother's insistence, eighteen-year-old Deya must meet with potential husbands and prepare herself for marriage, though her only desire is to go to college. Her grandmother is firm on the matter, however: the only way to secure a worthy future for Deya is through marriage to the right man. But fate has a will of its own, and soon Deya will find herself on an unexpected path that leads her to shocking truths that will force her to question everything she thought she knew about her family, the past, and her own future.
Set in an America at once foreign to many and staggeringly close ate hand, A Woman Is No Man is a story of culture and honor, secrets and betrayals, love and violence. It is an intimate glimpse into a controlling and closed cultural world, and a universal tale about family and the ways silence and shame can destroy those we have sworn to protect.
The Guinevere Deception By: Kiersten White (I received this book free because it is my birth month)
Princess Guinevere has come to Camelot to wed a stranger: the charismatic King Arthur. With magic clawing at the kingdom's borders, the great wizard Merlin conjured a solution: send in Guinevere to be Arthur's wife...and his protector from those who want to see the young king's idyllic city fail.
The catch? Guinevere's real name-and her true identity-is a secret. She is a changeling, a girl who has given up everything to protect Camelot.
To keep Arthur safe, Guinevere must navigate a court in which the old-including Arthur's own family-demand that things continue as they have been, and the new-those drawn by the dream of Camelot-fight for a better way to live. And always, in the green hearts of forests and the black depths of lakes, magic lies in wait to reclaim the land. Arthur's knights believe they are strong enough to face any threat, but Guinevere knows it will take more than swords to keep Camelot free.
Deadly jousts, duplicitous knights, and forbidden romances are nothing compared to the greatest threat of all: the girl with the long, knotted black hair, riding on horseback through the dark woods toward Arthur. Because when your whole existence is a lie, how can you trust even yourself?
The first book in the Camelot Rising Trilogy
I felt it would be better to copy what the books said about themselves than me trying to describe them to you. As you can see I am intrigued to read these books. I have always liked mysteries and two of them are so I am hoping to get them next month for thrillerathon.
I hope you give this club a try. You will be very pleased and you can skip a month if you don't see anything you like.
Until next time keep reading.
