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Emeline Fitzpatrick is desperate to leave her guardians’ home in Halifax, Canada. Not only is she wildly in love with a naval officer, Emeline also chafes at the restrictions of (the very appropriately named) Mrs. Shackleton. The sooner her dashing lieutenant can whisk her away to Bermuda, the better. Readers can probably guess from the title that things will not go to plan for our young heroine. The Third Wife of Faraday House, by B.R. Myers, is full of surprises for Emeline and for us...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.

Scott Phillips takes Bill Ogden, protagonist of Cottonwood, and transports him years and miles away for this new novel, The Devil Raises His Own. Phillips also adds a huge cast of scoundrels, strivers, and schemes to make things interesting. This mosaic of a novel roams through all kinds of dingy corners of World War I-era Los Angeles to deliver brutal tales of comeuppance and acceptance...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.

T. Kingfisher has a gift. I love how she takes elements from folklore and fairy tales and makes them fully realized settings for her characters to inhabit. Where a stock character from an old story has to follow unspoken rules or fulfill predestined roles, Kingfisher’s characters have opportunities to resist and rewrite their stories. A Sorceress Comes to Call, Kingfisher’s latest, delivers a story of a wicked mother and a sheltered daughter à la Rapunzel but adds a clear-sighted and stubborn middle-aged heroine, angry geese, and a terrifying demon horse. Readers, I inhaled this book in a single day...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.

The end of the 1939 film, The Wizard of Oz, is a happy one. Dorothy has returned home after a tornado whisked her away from her Kansas home. She is reunited with her aunt and uncle. The Wicked Witch is dead and gone. Gordon McAlpine recasts that happy moment in After Oz into a psychological puzzle and a chilling murder mystery. Dorothy Gale herself is relegated to the background while a psychologist, Dr. Evelyn Wilford, and her hometown itself wonder what to make of the young girl...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.

Jared Pechaček takes us on a strange ride through a depopulated crumbling palace on the brink of doom in The West Passage. This palace, with its monstrous warring Ladies, reminded me of a hive. Our protagonists, Pell and Kew, have to wend their way through a labyrinth to reach the answers and people they need. To make things even more complicated—and possibly allegorical—they have to contend with strange people with their own agendas who threaten to fatally slow our heroes’ efforts to keep the whole palace from toppling into nothing...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.

According to her mother, Hecate Cavendish needs to settle down with a nice man. According to her father, Hecate is a gifted scholar who should be given the freedom to choose her future. Things in the Cavendish house are, understandably for the late 1800s, tense. As if this weren’t enough, Paula Brackston makes things even more complicated for her protagonist in The Haunting of Hecate Cavendish by, well, introducing some hauntings...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.

Ilmar is a conquered city. Only a few years before Adrian Tchaikovsky’s imaginative novel, City of Lost Chances, opens, it was taken by the Palleseens as part of their quest to “perfect” the world. Tchaikovsky’s cast of characters provide a wonderful selection of vantage points to watch as the city begins to spin out of control, leaving us all to wonder if the long-awaited day of independence might be coming at last. Because there are so many characters, however, I had to reserve judgment about who to root for. Like any other newcomer to Ilmar, I had to wait and watch until everyone’s true colors emerged...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type.

Aki Ito has always looked up to her older sister, Rose. Rose was beautiful. She was popular. She was fearless. She was the one to strike out to Chicago to make a new life after the Ito family was incarcerated in Manzanar along with thousands of Japanese Americans after the attack on Pearl Harbor. So when Rose dies under strange circumstances, Aki has to know what happened and who is responsible. Clark and Division, by Naomi Hirahara, is a thrilling and moving slice of history...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type.