Secrets of Eden

Posted on February 8, 2010 by Malena Lott

I have never been disappointed by a single Shaye Areheart Book I’ve read. I know a lot of readers don’t pay attention to who publishes what, but when you read as much as I do, you find certain lines and certain publishers just seem to be your cup of tea. With SA, you know you are in for great writing and a good solid story well worth your time. This is my first read by Chris Bohjalian and I can’t wait! Happy to make it this week’s Book in Bloom.

SECRETS OF EDEN by Chris Bohjalian (Hardback)

Product Description
From the bestselling author of The Double Bind, Midwives, and Skeletons at the Feast comes a novel of shattered faith, intimate secrets, and the delicate nature of sacrifice.

“There,” says Alice Hayward to Reverend Stephen Drew, just after her baptism, and just before going home to the husband who will kill her that evening and then shoot himself. Drew, tortured by the cryptic finality of that short utterance, feels his faith in God slipping away and is saved from despair only by a meeting with Heather Laurent, the author of wildly successful, inspirational books about . . . angels.

Heather survived a childhood that culminated in her own parents’ murder-suicide, so she identifies deeply with Alice’s daughter, Katie, offering herself as a mentor to the girl and a shoulder for Stephen – who flees the pulpit to be with Heather and see if there is anything to be salvaged from the spiritual wreckage around him.
But then the State’s Attorney begins to suspect that Alice’s husband may not have killed himself. . .and finds out that Alice had secrets only her minister knew.

Secrets of Eden is both a haunting literary thriller and a deeply evocative testament to the inner complexities that mark all of our lives. Once again Chris Bohjalian has given us a riveting page-turner in which nothing is precisely what it seems. As one character remarks, “Believe no one. Trust no one. Assume all of our stories are suspect.”

About the Author
CHRIS BOHJALIAN is the critically acclaimed author of twelve novels, including the New York Times bestsellers Skeletons at the Feast, The Double Bind, and Midwives. His novel, Midwives, was a number one New York Times bestseller and a selection of Oprah’s Book Club. His work has been translated into more than 25 languages and twice became movies (Midwives and Past the Bleachers). He lives in Vermont with his wife and daughter.

Visit him at www.ChrisBohjalian.com or on Facebook.

You can also read an excerpt of the first chapter, see a video with the author and buy the book with this link.

The Murderer’s Daughter Release Day

Posted on January 19, 2010 by Malena Lott

This week’s Book in Bloom features a novel compared to the likes of White Oleander and The Deep End of the Ocean. If you’re looking for am emotionally gripping tale, consider THE MURDERER’S DAUGHTERS by Randy Susan Meyer.

41gjyBJkUdL._SL500_AA240_ From the publisher:
A beautifully written, compulsively readable debut that deals with the aftermath of a shocking act of violence that leaves two young sisters with nothing but each other—in the tradition of White Oleander, this haunting novel is a testament to the power of family and the ties that bind us together, even as they threaten to tear us apart.

Mama was “no macaroni-necklace-wearing kind of mother.” She was a lipstick and perfume-wearing mother, a flirt whose estranged husband still hungered for her. After Mama threw him out, she warned the girls to never let Daddy in the house, an admonition that tears at ten-year-old Lulu whenever she thinks about the day she opened the door for her drunken father, and watched as he killed her mother, stabbed her five-year-old sister Merry and tried to take his own life.

Effectively orphaned by their mother’s death and father’s imprisonment, Lulu and Merry, unwanted by family members and abandoned to a terrifying group home, spend their young lives carrying more than just the visible scars from the tragedy. Even as their plan to be taken in by a well-to-do foster family succeeds, they come to learn they’ll never really belong anywhere or to anyone—that all they have to hold onto is each other.

As they grow into women, Lulu holds fast to her anger, denies her father’s existence and forces Merry into a web of lies about his death that eventually ensnares her own husband and daughters. Merry, certain their safety rests on placating her needy father, dutifully visits him, seeking his approval and love at the expense of her own relationships. As they strive to carve lives of their own, the specter of their father, unrepentant and manipulative even from behind bars, haunts them. And when they learn he’s about to be paroled, the house of cards they’ve built their lives on teeters on the brink of collapse.

Buy the book here.

His Other Lover, Forever Waiting

Posted on December 31, 2009 by Malena Lott

Time is running out on the year, but lucky for us we can still read ’09 releases in 2010! Here are a couple we think deserve some attention, so without further ado, our new Books in Bloom…

HIS OTHER LOVER by Lucy Dawson

From the publisher:
To Mia, the devastating proof is right there on her boyfriend’s cell phone. In the dead of night she discovers Pete—her lover, her soul mate, her future—is having an affair. Instead of waking him with accusations, Mia begins to look for answers. What woman wouldn’t want to know everything, after all? But her desperate search only begins a frightening series of lies and deceptions.

Everything important to Mia may be on the line, but she’s also about to cross it. Desperation, obsession, and heartache can only lead to catastrophe, and if the cold, hard truth is not what Mia imagines, pursuing it could be the worst mistake she has ever made.

Just how far is too far?
Get LOVER now.

FOREVER WAITING by DeVa Gantt

From the publisher:
The gripping saga of the Duvoisins—an extraordinary American family both blessed and cursed—reaches a stunning conclusion. . .

In the wake of heartbreaking tragedy and volatile revelations, the once-great Duvoisin family of Virginia teeters on the brink of disintegration. And trusted governess, Charmaine Ryan, suffers with them.

Their world has exploded—and aging patriarch, Frederic Duvoisin, desperately tries to salvage what remains of his shattered family. His mercurial son John has left, vowing never to return, taking a piece of Charmaine’s heart with him. Paul, the roguish, illegitimate son and aspiring heir to the Duvoisin shipping empire, offers love to the vulnerable Charmaine. And Agatha, Frederic’s shrewish wife, plots to destroy anyone who stands in her way. Haunted by the past, John returns, inadvertently unearthing the most devastating scheme of all.

Buy FOREVER here.

The Little Stranger

Posted on December 29, 2009 by Malena Lott

by Malena Lott

35837811 The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

Stephen King recommended The Little Stranger in his best of 2009 list for Entertainment Weekly. The next day I read a tweet by thriller author MJ Rose who was reading it and loving it. (See how powerful frequency and word-of-mouth is?) Within thirty seconds I had purchased the hardback in Kindle format for my iPhone, only the second purchase I’ve made on my iPhone. I figured a ghost story might be just the thing I needed for holiday distraction. I was right.

What Waters has pulled off is a ghost story that may or may not be a ghost story – depending on whether or not you believe in ghosts. I happen to, full disclosure, so everything that happens in Hundreds Hall, the mansion which is the main character in the novel, feels haunted to me from the get go. That being said, the “ghost” part of the story is very minor, and the major aspects of the story are the history and functioning (and falling apart) of the house itself and the Ayres family who reside there. Mrs. Ayres and her two living children, a “hearty spinster” Caroline, her younger brother Roderick, who suffered burns and has a bum leg from the war.

The story is really about a man, our protagonist Dr. Faraday, a forty-ish bachelor whose parents gave up everything to see that he could become a doctor, and his relationship with the Ayres and Hundreds Hall. One quickly believes he loves the mansion, even in its tired state, more than he loves Caroline. His visits to the mansion begin as doctor-patient only and grow into a friendship. Throughout the story, the various members of the family confide in Dr. Faraday to determine what exactly is happening in Hundreds Hall – the burn marks on the walls and the bruises and marks appearing on the family members and later a bigger fire and suicide. As a medical doctor, Faraday explains it all away – clumsiness, candles too close to walls, and ultimately mental illness.

Does isolation and losing one’s standing in society – having to sell off parcel after parcel of your land, make you go crazy? In that way, can a house turn against you? Ruin your life? Or it something more – one’s own energy and anxiety causing things to physically happen within the house? Or could it be the ghost of little Susan, the first child of Mrs. Ayres, who the mother admits she was completely in love with and loved more deeply than her other two? Does the child miss her mother, want her on the other side?

Even if you don’t believe in ghosts, but acknowledge that places have chi – energy – then it’s easy to see how locking away whole sections of a mansion and letting it get to a dilapidated state because you can’t afford the upkeep or repairs, could change the home’s positive energy negative and stagnant.

Waters is a gifted writer for sure – and just scanning the acknowledgments in the back of the book on all the research she did to get the setting, time period, medicine and architecture right truly is astounding. While I would’ve preferred more haunted and less house, it’s an impressive book and certainly stands out as a literary exploration of the psyche and the supernatural.

Get LITTLE here.

Soulless: The Parasol Protectorate

Posted on December 28, 2009 by Malena Lott

by Malena Lott

41098430 Soulless by Gail Carriger

Soulless came into my life like many great books do: by referral. It was a Book End Babes HoLITday gift guide recommendation by one of our book club queenBs, and I knew from the cover it would be a quirky fun read (kudos to the art director for that spot-on design).

Carriger say she knew she wanted to write urban fantasy (supernatural/werewolf/vampires) and noticed that a lot of the genre is contemporary. But she figured these creatures had to have been around for a long time, right? So she set her story in the Victorian times in England and gifts us with a wonderful protagonist, Alexia, who is a preternatural, meaning she has no soul. This doesn’t make her mean, but it does mean she can’t be harmed by vampires, and in fact, kills a vampire at the beginning of the book (self-defense, of course.)

The book has mystery (what’s happening to the vampires?), politics (BUR, where all vampires and werewolves must be registered), and romance (Alexia falls for the area Alpha, Lord Maccon, a handsome werewolf). I loved SOULLESS not just for the adventure, but because Alexia is so easy to love – she’s tough, no-nonsense and must work harder for her position because she is a spinster (and a homely one, at that) and she’s a preternatural, which she must hide from her family, as well as society.

Carriger knows how to world-build and suck us in to this delightful story of a co-mingling proper society where things like the full moon and daylight matter, but only as much as serving delicious tarts at your party. If you haven’t tried urban fantasy, but enjoy historical romance, this would be an easy add. If you like urban fantasy, but are looking for something different, give SOULLESS a try. While the spinsterhood, romance, Victorian angle seems ripe for women’s readership, I think men who enjoy historicals and urban fantasy would get a kick out of it, too.

Buy it at Amazon.

I’m looking forward to CHANGELESS, Carriger’s second book in the series, due in 2010.