The Literate Kitty

>>ARC Review<< Revenge and retribution, regret and recriminations. Not an ideal mix... but it’s really no more and no less than Changeling (half-fae, half-human) October Daye--fearless knight and reluctant hero--has become accustomed to dealing with on a daily basis.  Let’s take stock, shall we? (Note: If you haven't read the first three books in this series-- Rosemary and Rue , A Local Habitation , and An Artificial Night --yet, why?? Hie yourself over to my reviews of each of them, first. Here , here , and  here . Then go find each book and read it. Then come back here. You'll thank me, really.) Anyway, back to the recap... First, Toby endured being turned into a fish and left for dead-- and would have died, were it not for the kindness of a human passerby who happened to notice the floundering fish and scooped it off the pavement and into a nearby pond. (That pond, by the way, was her home for the next fourteen years... during which time, she lost the human...

Proper English libraries and staid country manors, drafty French castles built to hold off hordes of invaders, and a haunted New England farmhouse, full of the usual assortment of characters... at least, if one numbers witches, vampires, and demons among the “usual” inhabitants. As improbable as that sounds, it all comes across as a rather “ordinary” sort of world in newcomer Deborah Harkness’s fabulous (and strikingly-different) supernatural tale, A Discovery of Witches . And what a debut this is! Artfully combining historical facts with literature, science, philosophy, myth and lore--plus thoughtfully contemplating the nature of love--Harkness shows off her storytelling chops to great effect. This is an author with some very interesting things to say, and a splendidly-unhackneyed way of going about it. ✠ ~ ✠ ~ ✠ ~ ✠ ~ ✠ ~ ✠ It’s a typical day for American professor Dr. Diana Bishop, sequestered once again in Oxford University’s Bodleian Library behind a huge stack of rare books. An e...

It would hardly be an understatement to say that the magic has, erm, dimmed just a tad from the celebration of the day I entered the world-- not terribly surprising, really, given that my partner's b-day greeting to me this year consisted of "So... howzit feel ta be another year older?" --but perversely, I prefer to look on the bright side. What's that, you ask? I have this... Boycat. Mine, all mine. As consolation prizes go, I think I'm pretty lucky. So, Happy Me Day! :)

[ARC Review] In a city that never sleeps, there’s always something going on--whether it’s something fun, exciting, sad, unbelievable, scary, dangerous, sexy, or weird (and that’s just for starters). Most of us wouldn’t expect to experience all of them in a 24-hour period, though. Then again, no other city is quite like Las Vegas... that glitzy-against-all-odds desert playground where all bets are off when it comes to finding oneself in crazy situations.   ~ ✩ ~ ✩ ~  ✩ ~ ✩ ~ ✩ ~ Last year, newcomer Deborah Coonts whetted our appetites with her delicious delight of a debut, Wanna Get Lucky --a rollicking-good-time of a mystery set in Sin City. (Haven't read it yet? Check out my review, here. ) Now, she’s serving up a tasty second course with Lucky Stiff, which picks up the action a couple months later.  Long-suffering, thirty-something head of the prestigious Babylon hotel’s customer relations department, Lucky O’Toole, is still doing what she does best... racing around...