Book reviews, new books, publishing news, book giveaways, and author interviews

Review: Preincarnate by Shaun Micallef

Review: Preincarnate by Shaun Micallef

If you're new here, why not subscribe to our email updates or follow us on Facebook? You can also add us to your Google Reader. Thanks for visiting! Preincarnate is not so much a novella as it is a whorl of ideas fashioned into a jauntily tipped hat, with said hat draped over a grassy barrow of anachronisms, with said anachronistic barrow then dug up by a French...

Unreliable narrators and Emily Maguires Fishing for Tigers

Unreliable narrators and Emily Maguire's Fishing for Tigers

You cant tell a story forward, not really, says Mischa Reese in Emily Maguires recently released Fishing for Tigers. Its a statement thats as true as it is telling, particularly when you learn the context of the quote: Mischas stroll through a temple with the teenage son of one of her friends. I was content in his company, and...

Book review: Forever and a Day by Jill Shalvis

Book review: Forever and a Day by Jill Shalvis

I know that I often come across as a grumpy contrarian yelling at kids to get off my lawn (well, I would if I had a lawn), but Im quite willing to toss aside all of my curmudgeonly angst for the right book. I have certain expectations for certain genres, and when it comes to romance, I want to be able to soak in a narrative bubble bath. I want to be...

Reading habits and prejudices and Joe Queenans One for the Books

Reading habits and prejudices and Joe Queenan's One for the Books

If books are an escapist tool, then surely books about books are a tool of solidarity: heres an opportunity for the most tragic of individuals, those who read about life rather than actually living it, to see that vicariously lived life lived out in book form. Vicariously. Whichever publisher came up with the deliciously recursive idea of the book about...

On narrative voice in YA and Dark Dude by Oscar Hijuelos

On narrative voice in YA and Dark Dude by Oscar Hijuelos

    When I was in year eight I had an English teacher who would have us write essays in class, and would then commend students who could hand in a piece of work free of spelling mistakes. I will never forget the time he held up an error-free essay, then looked the student in the eye and said, but its not as though you took any risks, is...

At Last by Jill Shalvis (and why Im a sap at heart)

At Last by Jill Shalvis (and why I'm a sap at heart)

  Uh oh, Linda Lael Miller, youre in trouble. Because Ive just spent my weekend working my way through'At Last'and'Forever and a Day (review tomorrow) by Jill Shalvis with all the delight that I usually save for your laconic cowboys, pink-fringed, bedazzled cowboy boots and the wedding dresses you describe, quite deliciously if not...