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Hello,
In First Impressions this week, we bring you the perfect pre-Halloween read: The September House by Carissa Orlando is a haunted house tale with complexity and depth that explores family dynamics along with spine-tingling phenomena.
Our Editor's Choice pick also blends an old story of enchantment with modern, topical subjects: T. Kingfisher's novella Thornhedge is an updated, subversive take on the classic story of Sleeping Beauty.
Along with Thornhedge, which clocks in at just a little over a hundred pages, you can explore many other slim but substantial titles in our Less Than 250 Pages category.
Plus, please join us for a tour of BookBrowse for Libraries which provides unlimited remote access to all patrons and staff for one low annual rate!
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With best wishes,
Davina Morgan-Witts
BookBrowse Publisher
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Each month, we share books with BookBrowse members to read and review. Here are their opinions on one recently released title. | |
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The September House
by Carissa Orlando
"In this haunted house horror story, empty nesters and later-in-life couple Hal and Margaret finally purchase a dream Victorian-style house in the middle of the country near(ish) a small town. At first, things are fine. They're renovating and redecorating, but then things start to go downhill... If you like slow-build, unreliable narrator stories with quite a bit of gore, you'll like The September House." —Jo N. (Carlsbad, NM)
"I really enjoyed The September House. The story is unique and tackles mental illness, family drama, love and loss... Margaret, the main character, is likeable. The other characters, including the dead ones, are interesting. This will be the perfect read during spooky season, but this book isn't too terrifying in my opinion (a benefit!). I'm not a big fan of super scary books and found this one to be just right." —Amber H. (Asheville, NC)
"As I read, I kept changing my mind about what was going on. It made the novel enjoyable. It would be a good book club selection." —Norma R. (Secaucus, NJ)
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This issue of The BookBrowse Review features reviews and "beyond the book" articles for 16 books, including Every Rising Sun by Jamila Ahmed, Disobedient by Elizabeth Fremantle and The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride.
We also bring you previews of no less than 55 books publishing in the next two weeks, as publishers release many of their best fall books in early September.
This twice-monthly online-magazine is just one benefit of being a BookBrowse member. Find out more!
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More than 400 public libraries across the U.S. subscribe, including Alameda County Library, CA; Onondaga County Public Library, NY; Prince William Public Library System, VA; and Jefferson County, CO.
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Recommended for anyone connected with a library interested in learning more, including public librarians, friends of the library members, and staff of currently subscribed libraries. Webinars will be recorded. Certificate of Attendance available.
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Thornhedge
by T. Kingfisher
You probably think you know the story of Sleeping Beauty, about the beautiful princess cursed by an evil fairy to sleep for a hundred years in a castle surrounded by a wall of thorns. You might remember the 1959 Walt Disney movie or the Charles Perrault fairy tale on which it was based, or you might be familiar with retellings, such as those by Robin McKinley, Neil Gaiman, or Jane Yolen, among many others. But T. Kingfisher's novella Thornhedge is unlike any previous imagining of this classic tale; as she explains in an afterword, her version started from an unconventional premise: "Why would you trap someone inside a hedge of thorns, anyway? Because you wanted to contain her. Because she was dangerous..."
In Thornhedge, readers barely even see the so-called Sleeping Beauty (though when they do encounter her, they won't soon forget her), and she certainly isn't the novella's protagonist. Instead, that honor belongs to Toadling, a shapeshifting woman who stands guard outside the castle, keeping away curious onlookers and would-be heroes, and witnessing plagues and wars and more than two hundred years of passing time. ...continued
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Beyond the Book:
Changelings in European Folklore
In addition to being a reimagining of the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale, T. Kingfisher's novella Thornhedge is inspired in part by the tradition of stories about changelings. In European folklore, changelings represented an intersection between the fairy world and the human world; a fairy would steal a baby—usually one who had not yet been baptized—from its cradle and leave a non-human replacement.
The changeling, who was often believed to not be a child at all, but rather an old, worn out, or particularly nasty fairy, or even an enchanted object like a block of wax or wood, would perplex and frighten the parents with its odd appearance, strange behavior, insatiable hunger, and lack of human affection. ...continued
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Thornhedge by T. Kingfisher (above) is only one book in our extensive Less Than 250 Pages category, where you can currently find about 600 featured and recommended titles (fiction and nonfiction) that won't test your patience with their page count!
This is just one of 100+ themed categories you can explore on BookBrowse to find the perfect read for your book club or yourself. Members have full access to all categories, while non-members can view a limited number.
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With so many new books published every month, it's difficult to find the standouts, the ones which are really worth your time. This is why hundreds of thousands of readers rely on BookBrowse to do the hard work of sifting though the multitude of titles to find the most promising new books, with a focus on books that entertain, engage and enlighten. | |
BookBrowse Highlights is one of our four free newsletters. We also offer Publishing This Week every Sunday, and Book Club News and Librarian News monthly.
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