Top 10 Tuesday: Most Anticipated Books

It’s been a while since I participated in a Top 10 Tuesday.  I’m so excited to link up with all of you again – this is such a fun group of bloggers!!

The topic this week is The Top 10 Most Anticipated Releases for the Second Half of the Year.  The problem for me is that I’m always behind, so I’m going to be tweaking it a little bit and share 10 recent additions to my Mt. TBR.

Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and Those That Want to Write Them by Francine Prose: whoa, that was a long title.  I just added this to my wish list today after hearing it on last week’s Books on the Nightstand episode.  I have been obsessed with books about writing lately and this was recommended to a reader that asked for advice on being a more focused reader.

I am such a geek and this is totally up my alley!  I’ve said it a gazillion times here – I wish I would have been an English Major.  There’s SO much that I just need to know — and I think more literature classes would have been helpful for me.  The past is the past, right?  SOB.

Smoke by Dan Vyleta: also a rec from Books on the Nightstand (boy, I am going to miss that podcast!!)  From Amazon:

“Welcome to a Victorian England unlike any other you have experienced before.  Here, wicked thoughts (both harmless and hate-filled) appear in the air as telltale wisps of Smoke.

Young Thomas Argyle, a son of aristocracy, has been sent to an elite boarding school.  Here he will be purged of Wickedness, for the wealthy do not Smoke.  When he resists a sadistic headboy’s temptations to Smoke, a much larger struggle beyond the school walls is revealed.  Shortly thereafter, on a trip to London, Thomas and his best friend witness events that make them begin to question everything they have been taught about Smoke.

And thus the adventure begins… You will travel by coach to a grand estate where secrets lurk in attic rooms and hidden laboratories; where young love blossoms; and where a tumultuous relationship between a mother and her children is the crucible in which powerful passions are kindled, and dangerous deeds must be snuffed out in a desperate race against time.”

Ummm… SQUEAL!! That sounds so amazing.  I LOVE stories about boarding schools.  I LOVE stories set in Europe.  I LOVE stories about grand estates, attic rooms, and hidden ANYTHING.  I am SO excited to get my hands on this one!

 

An English Ghost Story by Kim Newman: This one I saw on Litsy (Are you on Litsy?  Please be my friend!  My username is Neverlistless).  From Amazon:

A dysfunctional British nuclear family seek a new life away from the big city in the sleepy Somerset countryside. At first their new home, The Hollow, seems to embrace them, creating a rare peace and harmony within the family. But when the house turns on them, it seems to know just how to hurt them the most—threatening to destroy them from the inside out.

Now – I will be honest here – haunted house stories are terrifying to me.  We don’t have to get into all of the details right now (we will one day, don’t worry), but seeing the line “but when the house turns on them” — my blood turns cold.  It makes the thought of going upstairs to my children horrifying.  And then I feel guilty for leaving them up there when I’m too scared to actually go up.  And with all of that said, I love haunted house stories.

Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt: Also discovered from Litsy.  Amazon says:

The English language debut of the bestselling Dutch novel, Hex, from Thomas Olde Heuvelt–a Hugo and World Fantasy award nominated talent to watch

Whoever is born here, is doomed to stay ’til death. Whoever settles, never leaves.

Welcome to Black Spring, the seemingly picturesque Hudson Valley town haunted by the Black Rock Witch, a seventeenth century woman whose eyes and mouth are sewn shut. Muzzled, she walks the streets and enters homes at will. She stands next to children’s bed for nights on end. Everybody knows that her eyes may never be opened or the consequences will be too terrible to bear.

The elders of Black Spring have virtually quarantined the town by using high-tech surveillance to prevent their curse from spreading. Frustrated with being kept in lockdown, the town’s teenagers decide to break their strict regulations and go viral with the haunting. But, in so doing, they send the town spiraling into dark, medieval practices of the distant past.

This chilling novel heralds the arrival of an exciting new voice in mainstream horror and dark fantasy.

Okay – I will probably never be brave enough to read this.  And if I do actually read this, it will be a huge mistake.  I will never sleep again.

 

Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff: I read Groff’s The Monsters of Templeton several years ago and fell in love.  I haven’t read anything else by her since, but this one has been mentioned everywhere!  From Amazon:

Fates and Furies is a literary masterpiece that defies expectation. A dazzling examination of a marriage, it is also a portrait of creative partnership written by one of the best writers of her generation.

Every story has two sides. Every relationship has two perspectives. And sometimes, it turns out, the key to a great marriage is not its truths but its secrets. At the core of this rich, expansive, layered novel, Lauren Groff presents the story of one such marriage over the course of twenty-four years.

At age twenty-two, Lotto and Mathilde are tall, glamorous, madly in love, and destined for greatness. A decade later, their marriage is still the envy of their friends, but with an electric thrill we understand that things are even more complicated and remarkable than they have seemed. With stunning revelations and multiple threads, and in prose that is vibrantly alive and original, Groff delivers a deeply satisfying novel about love, art, creativity, and power that is unlike anything that has come before it. Profound, surprising, propulsive, and emotionally riveting, it stirs both the mind and the heart.

Marriage is fascinating to me – the good and the bad.  This seems like it would be an interesting look behind the curtains!

Lake People by Abi Maxwell: I discovered this one on LibraryThing.  Amazon’s blurb:

A haunting, luminous debut novel set in a small New Hampshire town: the story of the crisscrossing of lives, within and without family, and of one woman, given up for adoption as a baby, searching for the truth about her life.

As an infant, Alice Thorton was discovered in Kettleborough, New Hampshire, in a boathouse by the lake; adopted by a young, childless couple; raised with no knowledge of the women who came before her: Eleonora, who brought her family to Bear Island, the nearly uninhabitable scrap of land in Kettleborough’s lake; Signe, the maiden aunt who nearly drowned in the lake, ashamed of her heart; Sophie, the grandmother who turned a blind eye to her unwanted granddaughter. Alice grows up aching for an acceptance she can’t quite imagine, trying to find it first with an older man, then with one who can’t love her back, and finally in the love she feels for one she has never met. And all the while she feels a mysterious pull to the lake. As Alice edges ever closer to her past, Lake People beautifully evokes the interweaving of family history and individual fate, and the intangible connections we feel to the place where we were born.

I live in New Hampshire, so I’m always pulled to books set here.  It’s not a very well known state, so it’s nice to see it get some press.  And I love books that feature family history and mystery, so this one looks very tempting to me!

The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton: this is the only Morton that I haven’t read!  I actually have an ARC of this, but never got to it for a million reasons.  From Amazon:

During a picnic at her family’s farm in the English countryside, sixteen-year-old Laurel Nicolson witnesses a shocking crime, a crime that challenges everything she knows about her adored mother, Dorothy. Now, fifty years later, Laurel and her sisters are meeting at the farm to celebrate Dorothy’s ninetieth birthday. Realizing that this is her last chance to discover the truth about that long-ago day, Laurel searches for answers that can only be found in Dorothy’s past. Clue by clue, she traces a secret history of three strangers from vastly different worlds thrown together in war-torn London—Dorothy, Vivien, and Jimmy—whose lives are forever after entwined. A gripping story of deception and passion, The Secret Keeper will keep you enthralled to the last page.

English countryside?  Discovering the truth about a family secret?  War-Torn London?  Check, check, and check.  Why haven’t I read this yet??

The Gunslinger by Stephen King: I read this one over 10 years ago, but never moved on to the next book in the series.  And now that I know that there is a movie with Idris Elba (who I think is amazing and incredibly hot), I must try again.  Amazon’s description:

A #1 national bestseller, The Gunslinger introduces readers to one of Stephen King’s most powerful creations, Roland of Gilead: The Last Gunslinger. He is a haunting figure, a loner on a spellbinding journey into good and evil. In his desolate world, which mirrors our own in frightening ways, Roland tracks The Man in Black, encounters an enticing woman named Alice, and begins a friendship with the boy from New York named Jake.

Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson: This one comes with high praise from a friend.  Amazon says:

A modern classic, Housekeeping is the story of Ruth and her younger sister, Lucille, who grow up haphazardly, first under the care of their competent grandmother, then of two comically bumbling great-aunts, and finally of Sylvie, their eccentric and remote aunt. The family house is in the small Far West town of Fingerbone set on a glacial lake, the same lake where their grandfather died in a spectacular train wreck, and their mother drove off a cliff to her death. It is a town “chastened by an outsized landscape and extravagant weather, and chastened again by an awareness that the whole of human history had occurred elsewhere.” Ruth and Lucille’s struggle toward adulthood beautifully illuminates the price of loss and survival, and the dangerous and deep undertow of transience.

Family tragedy, eccentricities — sign me up.

Hotel Du Lac by Anita Brookner: Another that I learned about from LibraryThing.  Amazon’s blurb:

In the novel that won her the Booker Prize and established her international reputation, Anita Brookner finds a new vocabulary for framing the eternal question “Why love?” It tells the story of Edith Hope, who writes romance novels under a psudonym. When her life begins to resemble the plots of her own novels, however, Edith flees to Switzerland, where the quiet luxury of the Hotel du Lac promises to resore her to her senses.

But instead of peace and rest, Edith finds herself sequestered at the hotel with an assortment of love’s casualties and exiles. She also attracts the attention of a worldly man determined to release her unused capacity for mischief and pleasure. Beautifully observed, witheringly funny,Hotel du Lac is Brookner at her most stylish and potently subversive.

Probably more romance than I typically look for, but I love Europe, and the idea of a luxurious hotel in Switzerland makes me want to make a cup of hot chocolate and be swept away with Edith!

Thank you for the fun linkup!!  Until next time 🙂