It is the blessing and bane of the existence of all readers. The shear number of books there are to be read My TBR pile is freaking huge. An all you can read buffet. Filled with everything from meaty, weighty tomes like The Luminaries and The Goldfinch, to mind bending mysteries such as Pattison’s Mandarin Gate and Soul of the Fire, to brain candy romances like Binding Ties and The Duke and the Lady in Red. And there are more coming out every week. Some, like tomorrow’s Shards of Hope, you can’t help but be more eager for than others. Here are mine for the second part of the year (Part 1 is here):
Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee
Release Date: July 14, 2015
Is there a child in the whole of the United States who has graduated high school without reading Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird at some point? For me it was in the 9th grade. I won’t lie. It didn’t wow me. Frankly, I’m not at all sure why they make teenagers read this novel. I’m not sure a fifteen year old has the maturity to fully understand the heart-breaking complexity of this story. I know I didn’t. If you haven’t read it since, then you should. You’ll be amazed at how your perception has changed. To Kill a Mockingbird is one of those novels that grows with you. As you grow older, experience more, the book changes, revealing new depths. This is why I’m so looking forward to this rediscovered sequel, Go Set a Watchman.
The Blurb:
An historic literary event: the publication of a newly discovered novel, the earliest known work from Harper Lee, the beloved, bestselling author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning classic, To Kill a Mockingbird.
Originally written in the mid-1950s, Go Set a Watchman was the novel Harper Lee first submitted to her publishers before To Kill a Mockingbird. Assumed to have been lost, the manuscript was discovered in late 2014.
Go Set a Watchman features many of the characters from To Kill a Mockingbird some twenty years later. Returning home to Maycomb to visit her father, Jean Louise Finch—Scout—struggles with issues both personal and political, involving Atticus, society, and the small Alabama town that shaped her.
Exploring how the characters from To Kill a Mockingbird are adjusting to the turbulent events transforming mid-1950s America, Go Set a Watchman casts a fascinating new light on Harper Lee’s enduring classic. Moving, funny and compelling, it stands as a magnificent novel in its own right.
Archangel’s Enigma by Nalini Singh
Release Date: September 1, 2015
It’s Naasir, need I say more? And didn’t I tell y’all that Archangel Alexander would show up at some point? He’s been mentioned too much for him not to.
The Blurb:
Naasir is the most feral of the powerful group of vampires and angels known as the Seven, his loyalty pledged to the Archangel Raphael. When rumors surface of a plot to murder the former Archangel of Persia, now lost in the Sleep of the Ancients, Naasir is dispatched to find him. For only he possesses the tracking skills required—those more common to predatory animals than to man.
Enlisted to accompany Naasir, Andromeda, a young angelic scholar with dangerous secrets, is fascinated by his nature—at once playful and brilliant, sensual and brutal. As they race to find the Sleeping archangel before it’s too late, Naasir will force her to question all she knows…and tempt her to walk into the magnificent, feral darkness of his world. But first they must survive an enemy vicious enough to shatter the greatest taboo of the angelic race and plunge the world into a screaming nightmare…
The Gilded Hour by Sara Donati
Release Date: September 1, 2015
I adored Donati’s Wilderness novels, so I was completely psyched to learn she’d written something else under that pseudonym. While a little bummed that it’s not another Wilderness book, I still can’t wait to read it.
The Blurb:
The international bestselling author of Into the Wilderness makes her highly anticipated return with a magnificent epic about the transcendent power of courage in 19th-century New York…
The year is 1883, and although young surgeon Anna Savard and her cousin, Sophie, have become successful physicians, they never recovered from the losses they suffered as children. So when Anna encounters a child who’s lost nearly everything, she must decide whether she’s willing to let go of the past and let love into her life. Meanwhile, Sophie’s memories of being left alone in the world propel the young obstetrician to help a desperate mother—and catapult her into the orbit of a very dangerous man.
Vividly drawing on historical events, Sara Donati has written a captivating, emotionally gripping novel that proves she is an author at the height of her powers.
Above the Waterfall by Ron Rash
Release Date: September 15, 2015
Ron Rash has become one of my favorite authors. I just love his smooth, slow southern style. Each passage just drips with it. Those honeyed vowels. Like a cool sip of sweet tea, at times laced with a splash of bourbon.
The Blurb:
The New York Times bestselling author of Serena—the basis of the movie starring Academy Award-winner Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper—illuminates lives shaped by violence, passion, and a powerful connection to the land in this haunting tale set in contemporary Appalachia.
Les, a long-time sheriff nearing retirement, contends with the ravages of poverty and crystal meth on his small Appalachian town. Nestled in a beautiful hollow of the Appalachians, his is a tight-knit community rife with secrets and suspicious of outsiders.
Becky, a park ranger, arrives in this remote patch of North Carolina hoping to ease the anguish of a harrowing past. Searching for tranquility amid the verdant stillness, she finds solace in poetry and the splendor of the land.
A vicious crime will plunge both sheriff and ranger into deep and murky waters, forging an unexpected bond between them. Caught in a vortex of duplicity, lies, and betrayal, they must navigate the dangerous currents of a tragedy that turns neighbor against neighbor—and threatens to sweep them all over the edge.
Echoing the lapsarian beauty of William Faulkner and the spiritual isolation of Carson McCullers, Above the Waterfall demonstrates the prodigious talent of an author hailed as “a gorgeous, brutal writer” (Richard Price); “one of the best American novelists of his day” (Janet Maslin, New York Times). Lyrical and evocative, tragic and indelible, it is a breathtaking achievement from a literary virtuoso.
Library of Souls by Ransom Riggs
Release Date: September 22, 2015
Can’t wait to see what Jacob does with his awesome powers. What thrilling adventures will he and his fellow Peculiars have next?
The Blurb:
Time is running out for the Peculiar Children. With a dangerous madman on the loose and their beloved Miss Peregrine still in danger, Jacob Portman and Emma Bloom are forced to stage the most daring of rescue missions. They’ll travel through a war-torn landscape, meet new allies, and face greater dangers than ever. . . . Will Jacob come into his own as the hero his fellow Peculiars know him to be? This action-packed adventure features more than 50 all-new Peculiar photographs.
After You by Jojo Moyes
Release Date: September 29, 2015
I loved Me Before You. It made me cry, so I’ll definitely have a box of tissues ready.
The Blurb:
A NOTE FROM JOJO MOYES ABOUT HER EXCITING NEW NOVEL, AFTER YOU:
Dear Reader,
I wasn’t going to write a sequel to Me Before You. But for years, readers kept asking and I kept wondering what Lou did with her life. In the end the idea came, as they sometimes do, at 5:30 in the morning, leaving me sitting bolt upright in my bed and scrambling for my pen.
It has been such a pleasure revisiting Lou and her family, and the Traynors, and confronting them with a whole new set of issues. As ever, they have made me laugh, and cry. I hope readers feel the same way at meeting them—especially Lou—again. And I’m hoping that those who love Will will find plenty to enjoy.
—Jojo Moyes
Blood Kiss by J. R. Ward
Release Date: December 1, 2015
Back to basics and, hopefully, the Brotherhood we all fell in love with the first time we read Dark Lover. Frankly, the original series was getting boring. I don’t really care about the Band of Bastards, and I care even less for Assail, so I’m looking forward to this new series. Here’s hoping.
The Blurb:
The legacy of the Black Dagger Brotherhood continues in a spin-off series from the #1 New York Times bestselling author…
Paradise, blooded daughter of the king’s First Advisor, is ready to break free from the restrictive life of an aristocratic female. Her strategy? Join the Black Dagger Brotherhood’s training center program and learn to fight for herself, think for herself…be herself. It’s a good plan, until everything goes wrong. The schooling is unfathomably difficult, the other recruits feel more like enemies than allies, and it’s very clear that the Brother in charge, Butch O’Neal, a.k.a. the Dhestroyer, is having serious problems in his own life.
And that’s before she falls in love with a fellow classmate. Craeg, a common civilian, is nothing her father would ever want for her, but everything she could ask for in a male. As an act of violence threatens to tear apart the entire program, and the erotic pull between them grows irresistible, Paradise is tested in ways she never anticipated—and left wondering whether she’s strong enough to claim her own power…on the field, and off.
The final novel in the Cousins’ War series, the basis for the critically acclaimed Starz miniseries, The White Queen, by #1 New York Times bestselling author and “the queen of royal fiction” (USA TODAY) Philippa Gregory tells the fascinating story of Margaret Pole, cousin to the “White Princess,” Elizabeth of York, and lady-in-waiting to Katherine of Aragon.
The novel opens with the vampire world in crisis…vampires have been proliferating out of control; burnings have commenced all over the world, huge massacres similar to those carried out by Akasha in The Queen of the Damned . . . Old vampires, roused from slumber in the earth are doing the bidding of a Voice commanding that they indiscriminately burn vampire-mavericks in cities from Paris and Mumbai to Hong Kong, Kyoto, and San Francisco.
In the wake of a brutal war, the archangel Raphael and his hunter consort, Elena, are dealing with the treacherously shifting tides of archangelic politics and the people of a battered but not broken city. The last thing their city needs is more death, especially a death that bears the eerie signature of an insane enemy archangel who cannot—should not—be walking the streets.
In the late twelfth century on the sweeping Mongolian grasslands, following a violent feud between blood brothers, the victor Temujin ascends to power, declaring himself Genghis Khan. But behind one powerful man stand many strong women…
Les, a long-time sheriff nearing retirement, contends with the ravages of poverty and crystal meth on his small Appalachian town. Nestled in a beautiful hollow of the Appalachians, his is a tight-knit community rife with secrets and suspicious of outsiders.
The fourth book in New York Times bestselling author Sarah MacLean’s incredible Rule of Scoundrels/Fallen Angels series. These four dark heroes will steal the hearts of their heroines and the readers alike! This is the last in the Rules of Scoundrels series—Chase’s story
Unapologetically Nerdy 