A Suffragist’s Guide To The Antarctic by Yi Shun Lai (February 13) caught my eye primarily because of the gorgeous cover. Yes, I judge books by their covers. The novel follows a young girl who exaggerates her age after joining an all-male crew on an Antarctic expedition in 1914 that ends in disaster.
This tiny book (336 pages) explores Clara’s journey through her diary entries. Meanwhile, someone compared Dead Things Are Closer Than They Appear by Robin Wasley (February 13) to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which is high praise. Sid Spencer, the protagonist, is painfully average.
One of only four Asians in her town, Sid is still struggling to recover from a humiliating romantic rejection when a maniac unleashes the apocalypse. Sid and her ragtag crew will fight through hordes of the undead to find her missing brother.
Bride by Ali Hazelwood (February 6) is a paranormal romance novel. Misery Lark, the protagonist and daughter of a powerful Vampyre councilman, is forced to abandon her life of anonymity among the humans to uphold a treaty between the Vampyres and the Weres, their mortal enemies.
The reviews admit that Ali’s writing is not necessarily the best. Nonetheless, they commend her for telling an engrossing story littered with imperfect characters.
The Fox Wife by Yangsze Choo (February 13) belongs in the historical fantasy genre, and again, I love the cover. Set in Manchuria in 1908, the novel follows Bao, a detective charged with investigating the death of a young woman. The locals blame fox spirits, creatures that transform into beautiful women to lure and trap their victims.
Bao is drawn to the case because the fox gods have always intrigued him, and the mystery offers him an opportunity to touch their realm.
Meanwhile, a family whose eldest sons always die before turning 24 is about to receive a mysterious guest, a woman with the power to change their luck, or so they hope.
Switching gears entirely, Night Watching by Tracy Sierra (February 1) sounds absolutely terrifying. The mystery horror follows a mother fighting to protect her children. Alone in the house during a blizzard, she is tucking her son into bed when she hears footsteps.
She catches a glimpse of a man and quickly ushers her children into a hidden room. There, she waits while the man prowls the house, threatening the mother and making promises to the children to lure them out.
One reviewer used words like ‘Anxiety-inducing,’ ‘Horrifying,’ and ‘Suspenseful’ to describe the novel. Katherine Arden wrote the breathtaking Winternight trilogy – The Bear and the Nightingale is a must-read for every fantasy fanatic. Now Arden is back with The Warm Hands of Ghosts (February 13).
Freddie Iven, one of the protagonists, was fighting in the Great War in November 1917 when he barely survived an explosion. He awoke next to a wounded enemy soldier. Surprisingly, the German was just as disinterested in returning to the killing fields as he was. So they formed an alliance and took refuge in the embrace of a strange man with a mysterious power.
Months later, Lauren Iven was back home, a nurse ejected from the battlefield after sustaining an injury. When she got word of her brother’s death, Lauren returned to Belgium to investigate, but no one could tell her anything definitive about Freddie’s fate.
After receiving word of haunted trenches and a hotelier with bizarre gifts, Lauren could not help but wonder whether Freddie had fallen prey to something worse than the Great War.
Happy reading!
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