What I Put on Hold this Month...

When going through my stack of review journals for work, here are the books that I couldn't wait to read for myself! (Warning, this week's stack of review journals included Publisher Weekly's Fall 2019 Adult Announcements, so this is a long post and some of these books won't come out for another 6 months. Also, I didn't list anything I already knew about, which includes everything from the ALA annual conference.)



On Division by Goldie Goldbloom

A Chasidic grandmother is embarrassed by her pregnancy (everyone will know she and her husband are still intimate!) so she hides it, and this secret becomes twisted with another secret--her deceased son was gay.

Singapore Sapphire by AM Stuart

New mystery series set in 1910 Singapore. It's about a British widow, so we'll see how the colonialism is handled, but the setting/time period is pure catnip and Kirkus gave it a star, so I want to at least check it out.

New School Nightmare by Carolyn Nowak

I'm not sure today's middle grade readers are really interested in Buffy or that they'll pick this up. But, *I'm* super into this.




Girl on the Block: A True Story of Coming of Age Behind the Counter by Jessica Wragg

I'm really into the "woman enters old-timey-but-still-around male profession" memoir a la Hammer Head: The Making of a Carpenter or Cutting Back: My Apprenticeship in the Gardens of Kyoto.

Our Rainbow Queen by Sali Hughes

I heard once that Queen Elizabeth II wears the same solid color head-to-toe so she's easier to spot in a crowd--she knows she's on the shorter side and people often make an effort to come out and see her and she wants to make it easier on them. I love it and can't wait to flip through this book.

Edward Hopper and the American Hotel ed. by Leo G Mazow

Hopper is my favorite visual artist--something about how he paints that perfect mid-century white American Dream with such desolate bleakness and loneliness. These essays on hotels in his work promises to crack some of that wide open.



You Can HAve it All, Just Not at the Same Damn Time by Romi Neustadt. It's not so much that I want to read this book, but that I think I need to.

The Princess Plan by Julia London. You can't swing a dead cat in Regency Romance without hitting a dozen dukes, but the royal family rarely makes an appearance. This one involves a visiting prince and a gossip columnist. I'll take it.

My Fake Rake by Eva Leigh. Regency Romance. Scientist wallflower heroine. Rake hero. Fake dating. Sold.




Snow: A Scientific and Cultural Exploration by Giles Whittell. I love a microhistory and I love snow, so this looks right up my alley.

Ahab's Rolling Sea: A Natural History of Moby Dick by Richard J. King I'm currently reading Moby Dick for work and this look at the novel as nature writing, taking into account what the Melville would and would not have known at the time seems like a nice follow up.

The Book of Lost Saints by Daniel Jose Older. From PW: "[A] ghost of a woman who died in the Cuban Revolution nags her nephew to dig into their family history"



The Vine Witch by Luanne G. Smith. Turns out the best wines depend on vine witches to help grow the best grapes. I'm intrigued.

How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse by K. Eason. A space opera involving a teenage princess blessed by fairies. Here for it. I've been reading a lot more sci fi/fantasy lately and I love it when they blend.

The Gurkha and the Lord of Tuesday by Saad Z. Hossain. A Djinn wakes up to find humans have forgotten magic and tries to change that.


Other titles of note--

Philippa Gregory's new one, Tidelands, kicks off a new series (this time about the English Civil War) but gasp! not about royalty.




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