![]() While I sometimes struggle with stories told in flashback, I felt like this slightly unconventional structure did a great job of putting readers in the interrogation room with Sal and allowed her to tell her story to best effect. As the lead character and protagonist, Sal is a fascinating dumpster fire of a human being with a drinking problem, an itchy trigger finger, and an unforgettable narrative voice. In terms of structure, the majority of the novel is a first-person frame narrative with Sal recounting the events that led to her capture moments before her impending execution. ![]() ![]() ![]() Readers receive a firsthand account of Sal’s bloody vendetta from the woman herself. After all, what are a paltry two graves to a woman who’s filled cemeteries? Armed with a sentient gun, a bottle of whiskey, and a fistful of spell-worked bullets, readers follow Sal as she carves a path of destruction across the blasted wasteland of the Scar in relentless pursuit of the thirty-three mages who took everything from her. Betrayed by those she loved and trusted most, Sal was robbed of her magic and left for dead. “Before you embark on a journey of vengeance,” the old adage goes, “dig two graves.” Sal the Cacophony, the protagonist of Sam Sykes’ new Seven Blades in Black, didn’t get the memo. ![]()
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![]() The reason I needed a breather was 100% on me, and not that book, so I was determined to finish their story during Dark Reads October.and I’m really glad I did. ![]() I actually started that second book, Seduced in the Dark, but I had to stop. I couldn’t stop thinking about Livvie and Caleb, their dark and at times depraved story, and I couldn’t stop wondering what the next book would bring for those two. ![]() Especially since I had already read half of The Dark Duet almost a year ago.Īlmost exactly a year ago I read Captive in the Dark by CJ Roberts. ![]() Having already devoured one of those series during Dark Reads October, I knew that I had to read the other. When I think about dark romances that have been recommended to me over the years, the two that come to mind first definitely have to be Monsters in the Dark by Pepper Winters and The Dark Duet by CJ Roberts. ![]() ![]() ![]() Emily Trefusis, engaged to Trevelyan's nephew, uncovers the mystery along with the police. The roads being impassible to vehicles, Major Burnaby announces his intention to go to the village on foot to check on his friend, where he appears to find the prediction has come true. The spirit tells them that Captain Trevelyan is dead. ![]() Mrs Willett and her daughter host an evening of " table-turning" (a séance) on a snowy winter's evening in Dartmoor. The US edition retailed at $2.00 and the UK edition at seven shillings and sixpence (7/6). It is the first Christie novel to be given a different title for the US market. The Sittaford Mystery is a work of detective fiction by British writer Agatha Christie, first published in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in 1931 under the title of The Murder at Hazelmoor and in UK by the Collins Crime Club on 7 September of the same year under Christie's original title. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() I discovered the escape that books provided me, and I've been an avid reader ever since.īeyond your own work (of course), what is your all-time favorite book and why? And what is your favorite book outside of your genre? When I first learned to read, I hated it! Then, when I was nine years old my family moved to a new city where I was ostracized by my classmates. What’s one thing that readers would be surprised to find out about you? When we read a story that touches our hearts, it helps us to remember that these other humans around us are also thinking and feeling creatures, deserving of our kindness and respect. ![]() Our imagination is what makes us human! Our ability to create, connect, and care for these fictional beings is what sets us apart from other animals. Why is storytelling so important for all of us? ![]() ![]() Stick and rudder out of the slip, a nice little round-out above the land, hay brushing the tires, then the familiar calm crashing rattle of hard ground under-wheel, slowing, slowing and now a quick burst of noise and power to taxi beside the other plane and stop. ![]() Cornstalks a green-leaf jungle swishing close below, flicker of a fence and then just-cut hay as far as I could see. Wind in the flying wires, that gentle good sound, the slow pok-pok of the old engine loafing its propeller around. Throttle back to idle, a full-rudder slip, and the Fleet and I fell sideways toward the ground. ![]() I saw the biplane there, thought about it for a few seconds, and decided it would be no harm to drop in. Mine’s a free life, but it does get lonely, sometimes. In four years’ flying, I had never found another pilot in the line of work I do: flying with the wind from town to town, selling rides in an old biplane, three dollars for ten minutes in the air.īut one day just north of Ferris, Illinois, I looked down from the cockpit of my Fleet and there was an old Travel Air 4000, gold and white, landed pretty as you please in the lemon-emerald hay. ![]() It was toward the middle of the summer that I met Donald Shimoda. ![]() ![]() ![]() Merritt, has a secret, something hidden far out in the remote prairie. With the scaffolding of his life beginning to wobble, Will realizes that his flamboyant father, J.T. But Will finds himself torn when he meets the beautiful and beguiling Anna, whose dignity and determination test his deepest beliefs. And no one is more intolerant than Will’s best friend, Jasper, who delights in tormenting any farmer he encounters. ![]() The townsfolk resent the immigrant settlers whose new farms are slicing up the rangeland. Yet even with Hickok as marshal, Abilene boils with deep divisions. Idolizing the cowboys who flood the streets each summer, Will and his friends are drawn to Abilene’s exotic Texastown district-a powderkeg of saloons and brothels so notorious that the mayor has hired the West’s most famous gunman, Wild Bill Hickok, to police its streets. Fifteen-year-old Will Merritt is fiercely protective of the cattle trade that made his father’s fortune. This is the epic story of Abilene, Kansas, at a time when the cowboy is king, and good and evil are so evenly matched that no one knows which will triumph.Ībilene, 1871. ![]() ![]() ![]() She was real, honest and a little on the quirky side, but not ranking too high on the weird scale.Īaron… Now he was trickier to pin down at first, mostly due to his personality needing to not only seep through the pages of the book, but through the means of modern correspondence (i.e. Now it is rare I really like the female leads but I actually liked her. ![]() And eventually it did-IM, then traditional once Aaron returned to the States. I personally quite liked it although there came a point with the emails when I was ready to move into something different. Cute? Weird? Annoying? Brilliant? Each to their own. Guestimate-ly (totally a word), about half of the book is told in email format and then through instant messages before switching into traditional narration. After a rocky-road start, Ruby and Aaron build up a friendship through exchanging emails. They ‘meet’ through an organisation that puts in touch willing letter-writers with deployed soldiers. Admittingly, Dear Aaron is only the second book of hers I’ve read but she does it in such a nice manner I’ll gladly grant her the title.ĭear Aaron joins Ruby “Ruby Cube” Santos with Aaron “Soldier Boy” Hall. ![]() ![]() Mariana Zapata is probably my favourite for slow burn romances. Nice and easy does it…e-ve-ry time? (Yeah, you gotta sing-song it to work it). ![]() ![]() I chose this style so that readers would be so engaged in the characters’ lives that they could truly see the school experience from the teachers’ points of view.Įncouraging people to read books with positive portrayals of educators could help to sway public sentiment. In The Teachers, I tried to convey that message by following three teachers and presenting their year-in-the-life stories in a way that readers can feel like they are curled up with a fast-paced novel. It is astonishing that these underpaid, understaffed professionals, who are trained to educate and nurture future generations in their most formative years, are contending with such distressingly pervasive disrespect.Īs a substitute teacher for almost four years, I have seen firsthand the tremendous efforts, heart, and soul that teachers give to students, staff, and schools. One of the most common concerns I heard from teachers when I interviewed hundreds of educators for my book, The Teachers: A Year Inside America’s Most Vulnerable, Important Profession, was the negative portrayals of their profession by politicians, certain groups of parents, and on social media. ![]() ![]() ![]() “In Such a Fun Age, Emira Tucker’s relationships with her employer and new boyfriend culminate in an unexpected, combustible triangle so ingeniously plotted and observed that my heart pounded as though I was reading a thriller. Kiley Reid is a gifted young writer with a generosity that makes her keen social eye that much funnier and sharper." –Jess Walter, author of Beautiful Ruins " Such a Fun Age is such a fabulous book–a crisp, wry, and insightful novel about class, race, and relationships. “Kiley Reid’s witty debut asks complicated questions around race, domestic work, and the transactional nature of each.” –Nafissa Thompson-Spires, author of Heads of the Colored People ![]() This is a bullseye of a debut."- Emma Straub, author of Modern Lovers "Kiley Reid's propulsive, page-turning book is full of complex characters and even more complex truths. ![]() |