Michelle L. Levigne's Blog, page 76

Off the Bookshelf: MAKE MINE MAGIC, by Shanna Swendson

 

Audible, Only From Audible

Audiobooks

If you haven't read the Enchanted Inc., series by Shanna Swendson, you really do need to. Fun!

She's got a thing for ordinary, brainy Texas girls falling into a magical community in New York -- because that happens in the Enchanted series, about a company that specializes in creating spells for the magically gifted community -- and it happens here, with Claire, our heroine.

Claire is in New York for her honeymoon ... except the groom didn't make it. And she isn't even two days into her trip before she's starting to think she dodged a bullet. The guy fled during the rehearsal, and when he didn't show up for the ceremony, she turned it into a party for her friends, then decided to go off and enjoy the trip that she put together. And she is enjoying herself -- except for every time she has to explain that yes, reservations were for two, but no, the other party didn't make it.

So when she helps a blind woman who is knocked over in what appears to be a failed mugging attempt, Claire is ready to make friends and have some company. And next thing she knows, people are coming out of the woodwork to make friends with her and invite her to lavish parties, and gift her with ball gowns so she's properly dressed. And then she finds the expensive-looking, antique-looking amulet that the little old blind lady slipped in her sweater pocket, and the more questions Claire asks, the faster and deeper she is pulled into the invisible society of wizards and magically gifted and a struggle to determine who is next to rule the wizards of New York.

Being a librarian, Claire knows how to do her research, and she's in her element when she finds a doorway no one else can see in the New York Public Library, leading to a hidden library of magical lore. Look out New York, look out wizards, this Texas girl is going to fix things before her honeymoon is over. 

Major fun, and just as satisfying as the Enchanted, Inc. books. 

New Release Sample: VIRTUALLY LONDON

 

Jinx roared up the driveway from the shed in the back, where he stored his motorcycle, and skidded to a stop in the gravel. He gunned the engine a few times, twisting the handlebars and gave me his, "Weren’t you in a hurry?" look. I signaled for him to cut and he did. Jinx was a lot more alert than people gave him credit for. He only pretended to be off in another dimension to irritate people.

"It's London." I pointed at her.

Jinx shrugged.

"Aunt Lenore's London."

Jinx jumped off his motorcycle so fast he almost knocked it over. He was up on that front porch with such speed, the force of the wind from his movement made the screen door bang open and then shut again. He grabbed Doni by her shoulders and turned her around and out of the shadows of the porch.

"Hey, sugar," he said, in a thick molasses drawl. For some reason, he always talked like a good-old-boy to anyone under four feet tall. Don't ask why. "Where's your folks?"

That was sonot the thing to say.

Doni's eyes welled up with tears and her lower lip trembled. She didn't burst into tears. Doni was never a crier and certainly never a wailer or a sniveler. I didn't know that then. All I knew was that my cousin had showed up on the porch without any warning, without any parents, and looked like she was going to burst into tears. I panicked.

"Gram!" I grabbed Doni's shoulder to drag her into the house.

I didn't get to school, and I ended up sharing my bag of treats with Doni, which helped. She liked those particular candy bars. Candy at eight in the morning helped her relax a little and open up and talk. My theory was, she figured someone who would unload a whole gob of candy bars on her had to be friendly.

Gram was happy to see her, even though Doni brought the news that Aunt Lenore and Uncle Thad had died. More than four months before. The Hallidays couldn't be bothered to notify our family. Aunt Lenore's maiden name wasn't known to the foreign media, and the death of a do-gooder scholar who never caused any scandals to report didn't create much of a blip to the media in the U.S., either.

New Release Sample: VIRTUALLY LONDON

 

It took about three seconds for what Doni said to sink through my gotta-hurry-for-the-last-day-of-school panic. I had an excuse. The fuzzy-headed, awkward kid in front of me was not the little girl in a Minnie Mouse costume in the frame on Gram's mantle. Aunt Lenore wasn't real big on photos. She wasn't real big on writing home, either.

"You're London? My cousin? Lenore and Thad's daughter?"

My first thought was to ask where her parents were, because obviously they weren't anywhere in sight. I liked Aunt Lenore and Uncle Thad, although I had never seen them face-to-face. They called whenever they were in the States, going from one investigative assignment to another, and sent pictures maybe once every twenty months or so. Usually those were pictures someone else took. They had an aversion to cameras that weren't used for their research. They sent cool presents from places no tourist ever visited, and books by the ton. All of us learned to read at least two languages besides English so we could make use of those books.

I had the sense not to ask Doni where her folks were, while my brain skidded through questions and possibilities and discarded most of them in the space of a few seconds. I'm not bragging when I say that. Gram claims I got electrocuted by a computer when I was a baby, crawling all over Granddad's desk and teething on the mouse cord. I've had an affinity for the frustrating, fascinating gizmos ever since. Part of that affinity meant my brain wanted to process a dozen different tracks at the same time, searching for information. Unlike computers, I had a tendency to get sidetracked by anything that caught my attention. Call it ADHD if you want, but I always preferred calling it the Neighborlee Effect.

(See how distracted I just got, telling you about me, when this is Doni's story?)

Off the Bookshelf: CRYOBURN, by Lois McMaster Bujold

 

AArrgghh!

This just shows how long it's been since I visited the world of the Vor lords and Barrayar.

I was so thrilled to find a book marked "A NEW Miles Vorkosigan Novel," but then I looked inside for the pub date and saw ... 2010 ... Yeah, I'm really behind on some of my favorite characters.

Well, I knew it wasn't really a NEW book since I found it at my favorite guilty pleasure used bookstore ... *sigh*

For those who don't know who Miles Vorkosigan is ... there's not enough room in this blog posting to bring you up to speed AND tell you about the book. Basically, Miles is a maniac genius when it comes to strategy and schemes and military maneuvers. At 17 he took over a band of space mercenaries and worked his way up to being the secret weapon of his emperor, and when he had a near-death experience (which very strongly relates to the big knotty problem of this book, with cryogenics and shady dealings of those who make it a big business) -- heck, he DID die, but was revived, with a few problems that led to him essentially retiring from the mercenary business and being an Auditor for the emperor. (In fact, the short blurb for that particular book says: Miles hits thirty. Thirty hits back.) Besides his regular seizures as a result of that whole experience, he was born with brittle bones thanks to an attempt to kill his parents when he was in utero, and he grew up handicapped and looked down on (and not just because he was short) by his very Russian-based society, and the guy is just HYPER!

Gotta love him. Okay, on to the story.

"Kibou-daini is a planet obsessed with cheating death." That's the first line of the cover flap. So Miles comes to the planet for a conference on cryogenics, because his emperor is smart enough to know this booming business is going to affect the Barrayaran Empire, sooner or later. When protesters kidnap a number of attendees and Miles ends up lost in an underground, city-sized labyrinth of the sleeping/cold/dead, he stumbles upon the darker, nastier side of the "sleep until we find a cure for what's killing you" business. And of course, being Miles, he gets involved, and manages to twist things around to profit someone: Barrayar, his clone brother, Mark (another story, that ties into Miles getting killed and revived) and various other business associates from other stories.

*sigh* I love Barrayar, the whole convoluted series, and maniac Miles whom no one quite understands, but they love him, even though he frustrates everyone he comes into contact with ... 

New Release Sample: VIRTUALLY LONDON

 

"Does Mrs. Longfellow live here?" this skinny little kid with bottle bottom glasses half-whispered.

"Yeah. Why you looking for her?"

Hey, I was just a tenth-grader in a big hurry. So sue me for sloppy speaking.

"I'm London," she whispered, and raked one hand through white-blond hair that stuck out from her head like dandelion fuzz.

"Hi, London. Nice to meet you. I'm her granddaughter, Athena."

Yes, the penchant for weird names runs in my family. Doni was named London because she was born there. I was named Athena because my flaky mother, Portia--who went to a sperm bank when her biological clock went off instead of putting up with the mess of the dating scene--thought that would influence me to be wise.

She forgot Athena was a goddess of war and, according to some of the stories, a real smart-alec with an attitude problem and a penchant for nasty jokes. Not a good role model. Mom never figured that part out before she dumped me on Gram and joined the Peace Corps when I was six. The last I heard from her, she was running an orphanage among the former cannibals in Papua New Guinea. Somewhere along the way, she figured it was easier to be a mother to twenty kids than to one.

I never said logic ran in my family.

New Release Sample: VIRTUALLY LONDON

Wednesday morning, the first week of June. I was on my way to Neighborlee High, where I was a sophomore. We only had three more days of classes before summer break, and I was running late, as usual. We had the Yearbook Staff thank-God-it's-over party to look forward to, and since Miss Lanie was our advisor, it was going to be good. I grabbed my backpack, jammed full of goodies for the party, and was looking over my shoulder as I headed for the door, yelling for Uncle Jinx to hurry up. He promised to drive me to school on his Harley on his way out of town. Jinx wanted to be as far away from Neighborlee as he could get when Senior Prank Night hit--the first Wednesday of June every year--so he wouldn't be blamed for whatever happened.

(Jinx got in major trouble with his Senior Prank, and the general consensus was that the idiots in the years that followed got in trouble trying to top what he did. What did he do? Something having to do with a pond in the Metroparks on Thursday where there wasn't a pond on Tuesday.)

I stepped out onto the front porch and almost tripped over Doni and her two pitiful little pieces of luggage. I stubbed my toe on her backpack full of books and jumped backwards, biting my tongue against a howl. I was barefoot, with my sneakers in my other hand. I planned on putting them on while I waited for Jinx to get his motorcycle.

Off the Bookshelf: UNITED WE SPY, by Ally Carter

The Gallagher Girls series. The (sob!) last one.

Graduation looms for the four roommates at the Gallagher Academy. And lots of unanswered questions and threats that just get closer and nastier. Because in the spy world, you can't trust anyone. Despite all the information Cammie uncovered at peril of her life -- and to save her neck -- the Circle of Cavan still seems to be out to get her. Seems there's dissension in the ranks and some want to kill her for information while others want to kill her to make sure the others don't get that information, and others are just nasty spoilsports who want to kill her because she stood up against them. Typical in the spy world, and politics ....

Heart-racing adventure indeed. Races against the clock -- and races that the gang sometimes lose, to great heartache. Enemies become surprising allies, and allies become enemies, and sometimes that isn't surprising and it all comes down to a literally explosive ending that ... well, I don't want to spoil it for you. Although if you love the Gallagher Girls like I do, even if you KNOW how it ends, or doesn't end, and who comes in from the cold and who ends up cold .... and shredded ... you'll still read it!

Oh, by the way, did I mention that the big threat is the nasties attempting to trigger WWIII?

Yeah, typical stuff for the girls of the Gallagher Academy. Because when you underestimate your opponent, you always lose, and everyone underestimates those private school girls in their plaid skirts........ BIG mistake.

New Release Sample: VIRTUALLY LONDON

 

Before there was London Holiday, there was London Halliday.

The former...well, even after all this time, I still don't know what the right term is for her. Starting with the question of if she’s real. What defines real? I don’t know anymore.

As for the latter, she's real. Flesh and blood and down-to-earth. Call her Doni, for one thing. Even for those of us who knew all the details, sometimes the similarity in names got confusing.

Where do I get the right to tell the story? I was there when London Holiday was born. In a sense, I was the midwife. Using that analogy, Doni was as close to a mother as London Holiday would ever get. Doni and I were cousins -- our mothers were sisters. Her parents were killed in a mine explosion while researching a book, when she was nine. The Hallidays thought we, the Longfellows, were just plain weird. From their point of view, "weird" was lower in rank than "common," and if they had thought they could get any profit from Doni, we never would have known Aunt Lenore and Uncle Thaddeus were dead.

(Yes, my last name is Longfellow. And no, we're not related to the poet. Granddad was an orphan, one of the many orphans through the generations who arrived from nowhere on the edge of town and landed in the Neighborlee Children's Home. He loved poetry, so he chose Longfellow when someone gave him the chance to choose his own last name.)

The Hallidays didn’t dump Doni on us when her parents were killed. That would imply some effort to make sure she ended up on our doorstep, which they most certainly did not.

New Book!

 

TODAY is the book birthday for VIRTUALLY LONDON.

The ebook version has been out in Kindle and Kindle Unlimited for a while, but today it's available in print.

Celebrate with me!

Want to learn more about Neighborlee, Ohio and especially about Divine's Emporium, the heart of the weird-and-wonderful?

You can take your own self-guided tour -- and maybe get in some trouble along the way.

An interactive story has just been uploaded to all the usual ebook outlets, some are available now, some are about to release, but if you want your FREE copy of DIVINE'S EMPORIUM right now ... just ask.

I'd really appreciate if you'd sign up for my newsletter -- just go to the form in the right-hand column. Then email me at MichelleLevigne@gmail.com and let me know you did, and I'll send it to you via Bookfunnel.

But you don't have to sign up (although, *sigh* I'd really, really appreciate it. *whimper* *sniff* *drop a few tears*).

Just ASK and I'll send you the story! Honest!

And check back throughout September and October, for samples from VIRTUALLY LONDON posted twice a week, right here. It'll be fun!

Off the Bookshelf: ONCE MORE UPON A TIME, by Roshani Chokshi

 

Audible

Audiobooks

Audible Originals

Major fun. Clever. New twist. One of those, "Yeah, that's what I always wondered," kind of stories. You know, where you get to the end and "And they lived happily ever after," just doesn't satisfy?

So what did happen to the middle son and one of the other princesses if they met up and married? Did you always wonder why it was the youngest son, youngest princess, the pig boy and not the prince who got the girl, and the older brothers and sisters got left out in the cold?

In this clever, far-too-short audiobook, a prince and princess meet in the aftermath of one of her sister's faerie tale weddings and think they're in love, and before the end of their own wedding they're under a curse. They don't just fall out of love, their love is stolen from them. Or so they think.

They lose their kingdom because, duh, one of the conditions of remaining king and queen of a kingdom with "Love" in the title is they have to be in love. Both of them are kind of battered and scarred and rebellious thanks to the side effects of other people's faerie tale lives, and they set off on a quest to get what they think they really want ... or is it?

Ever wonder if the faerie tales really told you the truth about the sweet, innocent princess and the clever prince, or the honorable talking animals and the faeries who come out of the forest shadows to help a lost, destitute, honorable young lad?

More please?