Cora Buhlert's Blog, page 118

Classic German Cinema Rewatch: Das Schloß in Tirol (The Castle in Tyrol) from 1957

For today’s entry in our irregular Classic German Cinema Rewatch series, I use the term “classic” very loosely, because Das Schloß in Tirol (The Castle in Tyrol) from 1957 is not a classic by any measure. Indeed, I never planned to watch it at all. Alas, it showed up on TV instead of the film I was planning to watch to honour star on the occasion of his recent death. Why on Earth the TV station thought that airing this rather silly movie was the best way to honour Karlheinz Böhm, a man whose film career went from the Sissi movies of the 1950s via the classic thriller Peeping Tom in 1960 to Rainer Werner Fassbinder movies in the 1970s* to charity work in Ethiopia in the 1980s and beyond, will forever remain a mystery. I suspect it was the only movie starring Böhm for which they happened to have the rights.

And make no mistake, The Castle in Tyrol is a very silly film. It’s another entry into the perennially popular Heimatfilm genre, a genre that was not exactly notable for its high quality and thoughtful films. Instead, you mostly got high melodrama or gentle romantic comedies with a big dose of sentimentality and often rock-conservative morals, liberally peppered with stunning nature photography and random folk dance sequences.

The Castle in Tyrol falls on the comedic end of the Heimatfilm spectrum, since it is a typical comedy of mistaken identities. The young engineer Tom Stegmann (Karlheinz Böhm) wants to impress an American investor, so he hires a rundown castle in Tyrol (actually Castle Groppenstein, which is not in Tyrol at all, but in Carynthia) in order to play the master of the castle and fiancé of the lady of the house, since he unwisely told his American investor that he was engaged to an Austrian comtessa. Tom arrives at the castle, just as it is about to go under the hammer to pay for the debts racked up by generations of incompetent counts, and runs into a lovely milkmaid Resi (Erika Remberg) who unbeknowst to Tom is the owner of the castle, Comtessa Therese. Since she desperately needs money, the Comtessa is only too happy to rent out the castle to Tom and even provide some personnel to go with it. And since Resi is such a nice young woman, the late Count’s debtors are only too happy to go along with the ruse and play staff at the castle. The local post mistress (Maria Andergast) also gets involved in the whole affair and poses as the Baroness, who is supposed to chaperon Tom and the comtessa.

Things get even more complicated when Tom’s fashion model fiancee Gloria arrives and immediately departs again to take part in a beauty pageant. So Tom is out of a bride, but luckily there is still Resi who’s both willing and able to pose as the comtessa. So basically we have a comtessa posing as a milkmaid who is posing as a comtessa. Given how silly the film is, the plot is surprisingly complicated.

But Tom and Resi both pretending to be people they’re not is not the only case of mistaken identity. For it turns out that the American investor Jackie Hover from Detroit (Gustav Knuth) who was born in Tyrol and emigrated as a child is not rich at all, but lost all of his money during a stock market crash (Was the script left over from the 1930s?). However, Mr Hover is not at all troubled by the fact that he lost all his money – on the contrary, he’s happier living the simple life in Tyrol than he ever was in Detroit. Because if there’s one message that all Heimatfilme have it’s that materialism is bad (also see the denunciation of the capitalist practices of Old Dag in Und ewig singen die Wälder) and that there’s no place like home, hence Mr Hover’s homesickness for Tyrol. What is more, he is also quite entranced by the baroness, who is really a post mistress posing as a baroness. Yes, I told you that the plot was complicated.

Eventually, the various charades, make believe games and hidden identities all come to light. Tom finds a portrait of Resi in full comtessa get-up that the old Count had painted and is surprisingly upset that Resi is not in fact a milkmaid. “He doesn’t like comtessas”, Resi muses at one point, “Maybe one of them bit him in the leg once.” Meanwhile, Jackie Hover confesses to Tom that he is not in fact rich and that he cannot invest in Tom’s great business scheme. So now both Tom and Resi face bankruptcy and the loss of everything they hold dear.

However, The Castle in Tyrol is a romantic comedy and so everything ends well after all. Tom finds another investor and gets a very good deal with some negotiation help by Jackie Hover and stops Resi just in time from selling off her castle to a slimy real estate developer, while Jackie Hover decides to stay in Austria with the post mistress.

The Castle in Tyrol certainly has the comedy part of romantic comedy down, since some of the dialogues are genuinely funny. For example, the slimy real estate developer informs Resi’s lawyer that he will tear down the castle to build a hotel with ski lift and swimming pool. “There will be no swimming and no pooling around here”, the lawyer replies. Or take the scene, where Jackie Hover finally confesses his love to the post mistress, while in mortal danger. “I want to spent the rest of my life with you. Unfortunately, it won’t be very long.”

If this comedy of mistaken identity was all there was to the movie, it would be just another forgettable romantic comedy. However, there is one ingredient that pushes The Castle in Tyrol from forgettable over into totally bonkers territory and that is helicopter stunts. Yes, this is a romantic comedy movie with helicopter stunts. The helicopter stunts were performed by the Austrian army, who – along with a Lieutenant Colonel in charge of the helicopter squad – is even credited in the titles.

For you see, the invention that Tom wants to sell to the American investor is an air taxi, which is supposed to bypass traffic jams. Tom has a model of a big helicopter, which is supposed to work as an air taxi shuttling passengers to and away from major airports. He also has a full size two-seater helicopter in bright red. At the point where Tom reveals his great plan to Resi, I said to the person next to me, “Wait a minute, this is a film about a guy who invented a flying car and wants to sell the patent to an investor. By 1957 standards, this is science fiction.”

Okay, so the flying car is really just a bog-standard helicopter for budget reasons, but Tom is very clear about the fact that he expects that everybody will own their own helicopter in the future. So yes, this is definitely. It’s the first SF Heimatfilm.

And Tom’s fire engine red gets a lot of workout – well, if they had to hire the helicopter from the Austrian army anyway, they might just as well use it. First of all, Tom invites Resi to a helicopter ride and uses the opportunity to demonstrate that his helicopter can waltz. Yes, this is a film about waltzing helicopters!

The waltzing involves the helicopter flying in waves and circles very low above the ground and circling around poles randomly rammed into field just in case a waltzing helicopter happens by. During the helicopter waltz scene, we were literally sitting in front of the TV open-mouthed.

[The helicopter begins its waltz routine to the stains of "Wiener Blut" by Johann Strauß.]

Me: “Please don’t tell me Stanley Kubrick got the idea for the waltzing spaceships from 2001 by watching this.”

[The helicopter just waltzes very low across a wheat field.]

Me: “So that’s where crop circles come from.”

[A bit later]

Me: “So how come the Austrian army has a squad of dancing helicopters? What were they supposed to do, waltz the enemy to death?”

[Yet a bit later, when the helicopter goes into a nose dive.]

Me: “Oh my God, that’s the Austrian version of a Stuka dive bomber. Only that it’s a helicopter.”

After the big waltz sequence, the helicopter stunt pilots of the Austrian army get two more chances to show off their piloting skills. The first is when Jackie Hover, the American investor, retreats to the helicopter with the post mistress/baroness in search of some solitude and accidentally manages to start the helicopter (because pressing random buttons is a really great idea, when sitting in the cockpit of an aircraft you cannot fly), whereupon the helicopter launches into a madcap flight across the Austrian landscape. The second is a chase sequence, where Tom in his helicopter goes after Resi, who has taken a train to the nearest city to sell her castle to a slimy real estate developer. It’s the “Oh my God, I’ve just found the love of my life and now I’m going to lose him/her forever” mad dash at the end of every romantic comedy movie, only that this one escalates into a train versus helicopter race. The train thinks it has won, when it enters a tunnel, but of course the helicopter can just fly over the mountain and thus wins anyway. Cue happy ending.

Unfortunately, there are no clips of this movie online at all (which is a pity, because the waltzing helicopters must be seen to be believed), but this German film site has a few pictures.

After Und ewig singen die Wälder and this film, I am beginning to suspect that the Heimatfilm genre was made by directors and film crews under the influence of heavy duty drugs, because only drugs can explain the madness of the waltzing helicopters. I mean, can you imagine what the screenplay development was like for this film? “We have Karlheinz Böhm and a castle in Tyrol [well, really Carynthia] and a love story and waltzing helicopters, because what this film really needs is waltzing helicopters.”

The stunning thing is that Das Schloß in Tirol was not some obscure B-Movie. Karlheinz Böhm, Gustav Knuth, Maria Andergast and Erika Remberg were all A-list talent in 1950s German language filmmaking. And those helicopter stunts sure didn’t come cheap either.

All in all, The Castle in Tyrol is a monument to how downright bizarre German filmmaking could sometimes be in the 1950s and 1960s.

*In Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s film Martha from 1974, Karlheinz Böhm (together with Margit Carstensen) actually became the subject of the very first of cinematographer Michael Ballhaus famous orbiting shots where the camera circles around one or more actors. The scene in question can be seen here. Ballhaus brought the orbiting shot to Hollywood (here Ballhaus uses it to film Michella Pfeiffer, Jeff Bridges and a piano in The Fabulous Baker Boys) and it has been used countless of times since, e.g. during the massive final battle in The Avengers (the orbiting shot starts at 1:20). However, Martha was the very first time this technique was used. Don’t bother with watching the movie BTW (which stars Böhm as an abusive husband and Carstensen as his abused wife) – this scene is all you’ll ever need to see of Martha.

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R.I.P. Jay Lake

Speculative fiction writer Jay Lake passed away today after a long battle with cancer. Here are tributes from Ruth Nestvold, Charlie Jane Anders at iO9 and Tor.com. SF Signal has also compiled a round-up of rememberances and tributes.

Unlike most of the others who posted their tributes today, I only knew Jay online and never met him in person. I found his blog years ago, when someone linked to a post he’d written about writing a short story per week. That post, which is actually more of an essay, is still online in PDF form BTW and the advice is still as good as it was back in 2003. That essay made a lot of sense, so I started reading Jay’s blog and later also his fiction. We occasionally communicated in the comment section of his blog. I also know he was a regular reader of this site.

Jay’s frank blogging about his cancer experience has been extremely helpful both to other cancer patients and those who care for them. I certainly know it has been helpful to me.

Like many others said in their rememberances of Jay, it was clear that this day would eventually come, but we all hoped it wouldn’t be quite so soon.

So rest in peace, Jay, and a hearty “Fuck cancer”!

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Classic German Cinema Rewatch: Und ewig singen die Wälder (Duel with Death) from 1959

It’s time again for my irregular series of reviews of more or less classic German films from the 1950s and 1960s (maybe I should reorganize the posts as a proper series for easier reference). For more vintage German cinema, complete with links to full movies on YouTube, see this post.

Today’s classic German movie is Und ewig singen die Wälder (Duel with Death) from 1959, though a more literal translation of the title would be “And the woods sing forever”.

Und ewig singen die Wälder is a typical and somewhat above average example of that quintessentially German genre, the Heimatfilm (homeland movie), melodramatic tales of romance and family set against the backdrop of the spectacular scenery of the Alps or sometimes the Black Forest or the Lüneburg Heath. Heimatfilme are a large part of the reason why the West German cinema of the 1950s and 1960s has such a bad reputation, because most of them were sentimental, melodramatic, possessed of a simplicistic black and white morality (the message was usually, “There’s no place like home”) and often flat out silly. However, Heimatfilme also offered stunning nature footage (My Mom once told me that the nature footage was a large part of the reason people watched these films) and sometimes top-notch actors.

Und ewig singen die Wälder definitely boasts top-notch acting talent, since it stars Gert Fröbe (best known to international audiences as Auric Goldfinger from the eponymous Bond film), Hansjörg Felmy in a much too brief role, Joachim Hansen, the wonderful 1950s and 1960s villain Carl Lange in semi-sympathetic role for once and finally Swedish actress Maj-Britt Nilsson who also appeared in Ingmar Bergman films and was so popular in Germany that you’ll find a lot of women in their early 50s named Maj-Britt. As usual, Gert Fröbe steals the film, though Hansjörg Felmy would have come close, if his character hadn’t been killed of in the first twenty minutes.

Nonetheless, Und ewig singen die Wälder is unusual for a Heimatfilm, since it’s not set in Germany, Austria or Switzerland, as normal for the genre, but in Norway. Indeed, the movie is based on the first part of the Björndal trilogy by Norwegian writer Trygve Gulbranssen. The Björndal trilogy was written in the 1930s and was a massive worldwide success well into the 1950s. The German edition, which is a duology for reasons unknown, was published by the Bertelsmann book club and was a staple on German bookshelves in the 1950s and 1960s. Vintage hardcover editions still show up regularly on fleamarkets and in used book stores, though the trilogy itself is largely forgotten, at least in Germany.

In its day, the film adaption Und ewig singen die Wälder was a huge success as well. It drew an audience of seven million people into the theatres, which would put it in the top 5 of most successful German films of all time, except that the official list only begins in 1968 and is essentially useless, since it misses out on the era of mass audiences in the 1950s and early 1960s. The film also spawned a sequel entitled Das Erbe von Björndal (The legacy of Björndal) in 1960. Here is a fascinating review from Der Spiegel from 1960, which also addresses the popularity of adaptations of popular novels (many of which are forgotten fifty years later) in the late 1950s.

So how does the most successful German movie of 1959, a film which thrilled seven million cinema goers, hold up 55 years later? The answer is surprisingly well. For Und ewig singen to Wälder is thoroughly entertaining. It is also stark raving mad.

Romance, melodrama, thrilling action, stunning nature photography, antique furniture, folkdance interludes, innocent maidens and scheming villainesses, Christian sermons and anti-capitalist commentary, this film has it all in liberal doses. There are waterfalls, thrilling carriage chases on narrow mountain roads, duels on the edges of a bottomless abyss, fights against bears, sleighrides by torchlight in the snow, births, marriages, deaths, fires, musical interludes and a Christmas mass. I’m not sure how much of this is actually in Trygve Gulbranssen’s books, but the film adaptation certainly throws in everything and the kitchen sink as well.

So what’s the film actually about? Well, there is old Dag (Gert Fröbe), a wealthy farmer who lives on his estate Björndal with his two sons, Tore (Hansjörg Felmy), who’s charming, adventurous and a ladies man, and young Dag (Joachim Hansen), who likes hunting and making fur coats (really) and dreams of running away to sea, because his father totally prefers Tore. Interestingly, it took us about half the film to figure out that there were two characters named Dag, father and son. Up to that point, we had been calling the younger son Loki, for obvious reasons.

Old Dag is not a very pleasant person. For starters, he’s a crap dad who prefers one son to the other and also relentlessly hits on his daughter-in-law, which is really freaking creepy. Then he is a ruthless capitalist who kindly lends money to other farmers in trouble and then forecloses them to add their lands to his growing empire. What is more, Old Dag is an atheist and refuses to go to church ever since his wife died in childbirth ages ago. Atheism and refusing to go to church are very bad things, as the film repeatedly reminds us. Worse, Old Dag is also the sort of really annoying atheist who even hits a priest at one point (well, the priest sort of asked for it by being unberably sanctimonious). Finally, Old Dag has a massive inferiority complex towards his neighbour, an impoverished nobleman named Count von Gall (Carl Lange) who lives on the estate Borkland and looks down his nose at Old Dag and his sons.

So yes, Old Dag is not supposed to be likable. He even has a nasty scar on his face from an ill-fated encounter with a bear. However, Old Dag is also played by Gert Fröbe, who is an excellent actor and basically steals every scene he’s in. And since we’ve all seen Gert Fröbe in full-on villain mode in Goldfinger or The Green Archer or It happened in the bright light of day or Robber Hotzenplotz, we know what Gert Fröbe in villain mode looks like and Old Dag is not it.

Dag’s oldest son Tore shares his father’s permanent rivalry with the noble von Gall family, a rivalry which expresses itself in a thrilling carriage chase scene on a narrow mountain road in the first fw minutes of the film. However, Tore is also fascinated by Elisabeth von Gall (Anna Smolik), the haughty daughter of the old Count, and keeps flirting with her, much to the consternation of Elisabeth’s fiancé Lieutenant Markas. At a party at yet another neighbouring estate (that is never mentioned again), Tore dances with Elisabeth during the folkdance interlude that was practically obligatory for the Heimatfilm genre. The chemistry between the two is fabulous and they generate so many sparks that they probably could’ve powered Björndal, Borkland and all neighbouring farms. However, Elisabeth is still engaged to Lieutenant Markas, who promptly challenges Tore to a duel at the edge of an abyss high above a wild mountain stream (because why should you hold your duels in a more convenient place?). Tore grabs his horsewhip and goes all Indiana Jones on Markas. However, this is Und ewig singen die Wälder and not Indiana Jones, so Tore loses, when Markas stabs him with his sabre and throws him into the abyss. This happens approximately twenty minutes into the movie and is the last we see of Tore. And a pity it is, too, because Tore as played by Hansjörg Felmy is so much more interesting than his bland brother Dag.

Lieutenant Markas also vanishes promptly thereafter (we later learn that he died offscreen by falling from his horse) and Elisabeth von Gall is transformed from a coquettish miss into a red-grabed harpy. She spends the remains of the film screaching and complaining and plotting revenge against those of Björndal (ironically because she loved Tore and is furious that he’s dead) and generally doing her best villainess impression. Elisabeth always wears red, whenever she appears, and usually looks magnificent. Oh yes, and she wears trousers in complete defiance of historical accuracy. Not that the movie, which is supposed to be set in the 19th century, has a whole lot of that. In short, Elisabeth is your typical movie bad girl. And as it is so often with German films of the 1950s and 1960s, the bad girl is a lot more interesting than her good girl counterpart. Indeed, the film would have been much better with Tore and Elisabeth as the protagonists. Alas, Tore falls into a bottomless abyss and is never seen again, while Elisabeth eventually sets her estate Borkland on fire to prevent Dag from getting his fingers on it and expires in the flames, looking very mad, whereupon Old Dag reacts with a gleeful “Ding, dong, the witch is dead” impression.

However, the true protagonist of the movie is not Tore but his younger and duller brother Dag. Dag the younger spends most of the early parts of the movie sulking, hunting and talking about running away to sea. He goes on a bear hunt and is severely wounded. However, young Dag is lucky, because he is found by Colonel Barre (Hans Nielsen) and his angelic daughter Adelheid (Maj-Britt Nilsson). Colonel Barre and Adelheid are poor relations of Count von Gall. However, Adelheid accidentally overhears Elisabeth and her fiancé arguing about the death of Tore and is appalled. She is even more appalled that Elisabeth claims she doesn’t know what happened to Tore, when his father comes asking for him. But in spite of being appalled, Adelheid never tells Old Dag about Tore’s death either, even though she later lives at Björndal. However, Adelheid’s moral indignation is sufficient to make her insist that she and her father leave Borkland at once. And while on their way home, they find the injured young Dag, take him back to Björndal and stay on, Colonel Barre because Old Dag offers him lots of food and gin (Colonel Barre is a stereotypical humorous drunk) and Adelheid to nurse young Dag back to health.

The two Dags decide to thank Adelheid by inviting her and her father to Björndal for Christmas. Young Dag also makes a fur coat for Adelheid, while he’s sulking in his cabin in the woods (young Dag does a lot of sulking), while Old Dag presents Adelheid with a precious necklace that once belonged to his wife. The angelic Adelheid also persuades Old Dag and entourage to attend Christmas mass for the first time in thirty years or so. Afterwards, Adelheid and Young Dag are married, following some pressure by Old Dag, because Young Dag is something of a bumbler.

Alas, the blissful happiness is soon interrupted, because Old Dag has the habit of hitting on his new daughter-in-law, which is just as creepy as it sounds. What is more, Old Dag agrees to a lucrative but risky business deal which requires him to delivery a lot of timber within a very short time frame. And the only way Old Dag can delivery his timber is via the river that is controlled by the von Gall family. Elisabeth von Gall now sees her chance for revenge (against whom, since she was supposedly in love with Tore and neither Old Dag nor Young Dag nor Adelheid are responsible for his death?) and flat out forbids Old Dag and his people from using the river. She also enforces this ban with a rifle. However, Old Dag has the marvelous idea to bypass the holdings of the von Gall family and simply hurl his freshly cut timber over the nearest waterfall, which leads to a marvellous bit of nature photography. One of Old Dag’s men gets killed during this operation, which so infuriates Young Dag that he runs away to sea after all, leaving his pregnant wife alone.

Adelheid meanwhile is so annoyed with Old Dag’s persistent hitting on her as well as appalled at his “ding dong, the witch is dead” routine after the fiery death of Elisabeth (never mind that Adelheid couldn’t stand Elisabeth in life) that she moves out as well and returns to the city to stay with her father. Young Dag returns from sea, finds a very pregnant Adelheid at her father’s home and together they move back to Young Dag’s hunting cabin in the woods, where Adelheid has her baby, a boy whom the couple promptly names Tore after Dag’s doomed brother.

Meanwhile, Old Dag is much mellowed by everybody running out on him. He decides not foreclose Count von Gall (which does the Count a fat lot of good, since his estate was burned to the ground by the insane Elisabeth) and even makes the arduous trek up to Young Dag’s cabin, where he promptly expires after having laid eyes on his newborn grandson Tore. And the woods sing forever…

I’m being quite snarky here about Young Dag and Adelheid (well, how could you not be snarky about that plot), but that is quite unfair, because there is absolutely nothing wrong with Maj-Britt Nilsson’*s performance as Adelheid. Adelheid is simply not very interesting, because her main characteristic is goodness. Young Dag is something of a jerk, when he leaves his pregnant wife alone to run away to sea, but otherwise he is a decent sort. Unfortunately, Joachim Hansen also plays him with terminal blandness. There actually is a lot more chemistry between Adelheid and Old Dag, which leads to all sorts of creepy subtexts, because Young Doug is just so dull.

However, like most Heimatfilme one doesn’t watch Und ewig singen die Wälder for the plot, but for the visual spectacle. And this movie really dishes up the spectacle. The music is hyperdramatic. The nature photography, shot on location in Norway, is absolutely stunning. The interiors are full of so-called “Bauernmöbel”, striking furniture hand-painted with flowers and other ornaments (here is an example). Young Dag’s hunting cabin in the woods has furniture made from tree stumps and roots. The people of Björndal wear clothes made of leather and fur, Elisabeth always appeared garbed in blood red, the tunics of the military men are a deep rich green. Combined, the effect is a nigh hallucinatory riot of colour with a beautiful Agfacolor tint.

Indeed, Und ewig singen die Wälder is not so much a movie, but a look into a parallel universe, a universe where the colours are more vivid, the behaviour of the characters makes sense and 19th century Norway really looked like that. It’s extremely entertaining and also very, very weird. A true acid trip of a film that – unlike e.g. 2001 – A Space Odyssey – actually had a plot, even if it is a hypermelodramatic one. It’s a hallucinatory soap opera.

Unfortunately, the movie is not available online. But the original theatrical trailer, whose narration is almost as hyperbolic as the movie itself, may be found on YouTube and gives a good impression of what the movie is like (though sadly the colours are much faded, since the movie was restored and the trailer wasn’t).

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Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month: May 2014

It’s that time of the month again, time for “Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month”.

So what is “Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month”? It’s a round-up of speculative fiction by indie authors newly published this month, though some April books I missed the last time around snuck in as well. The books are arranged in alphabetical order by author. So far, most links only go to Amazon.com and one to Smashwords, though I may add other retailers for future editions.

This time around, we have science fiction, space opera, dystopian fiction, YA fantasy, paranormal romance, urban fantasy, historical fantasy, fairy tale retellings, mermaids, dragon shifters, angels, demons, faeries, robotic teachers and werewolves. It’s also a truly international round-up, featuring authors from Australia, Ireland, the US, the UK, Malaysia and Singapore.

As always, I know the authors at least vaguely, but I haven’t read all of the books, so Caveat emptor.

If you’re looking for more indie speculative fiction, check out the Speculative Fiction Showcase, a new blog devoted to all things indie speculative fiction.

And now on to the books:

Assassin’s Way by K.S. Augustin

Alshandiel Dolrahn wants a new life away from the suffocating world of Qolar. But will the Diplomatic Corps be her salvation…or undoing?

The ideal assassin is young, smart and on the run.

Alshandiel feels suffocated by her home planet of Qolar. She finds her fellow Qolari narrow-minded and xenophobic and the caste system that governs her world rigid and stifling. She is looking for a way out.

The notorious Department of Other Matters deals with things the average Qolari doesn’t want to know anything about—most notably, the rest of the galaxy.

It seems only natural that Alshandiel should consider a career within the casteless, outward-looking Department. But DOM holds its own secrets. And once it has you, it never lets go.

Outage by Ellisa Barr

When fifteen-year-old Dee is left at her grandpa’s farm in rural Washington, she thinks life is over. She may be right.

A high-tech electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) attack destroys the country’s power and communication grids, and sends the U.S. hurtling back to the Dark Ages. Can Dee learn to survive without the basics: electricity, clean water… even her cell phone?

The chaos caused by the EMP isn’t her only problem. A sinister plot by a corrupt official threatens Dee and all she holds dear. She will have to fight if she wants to survive in this hostile new world.

Outage is a Young Adult novel of survival with a hint of romance and a lot of action-adventure.

Irradiated by S. Elliot Brandis

A man thrust a baby into Jade’s hands. It trembled in her arms. The man had a message: escape from the tunnels, and never return. Her parents were already dead. Jade had a sister; she was irradiated.

Thirteen years later, her sister, Pearl, is coming of age. Rows of sucker-caps line her arms and hands. Her skin is coral pink. Each night, her dreams fill with visions: violence, depression, and fear.

On the surface, people have grown wild and dangerous. They scavenge, fight, and steal. Below, in the tunnels, they’re controlled by a ruthless leader and an army of beings known only as Shadows. When both groups come searching for Pearl, sensing the power her dreams may hold, only Jade can stand in the way.

Forsaken by C. Ryan Bymaster

Choices can be such damnable things.

And when Everam is plucked from the afterlife and offered a chance to walk the mortal Earth again, there is only one choice to make. He is sent forth to protect “debatable” souls on Earth, and with each soul saved, he is one step closer to regaining his own soul. Falling for one of the souls he was sent to protect, Everam will learn that his choices—past and present—will have dire consequences.

Yet there must exist a balance between light and dark, and is another sent to oppose Everam. Tasked with ensuring Everam doesn’t succeed, this other will stop at nothing to win the free soul for himself—even if it means killing those mortal souls that are up for “debate.”

With strict rules to follow and a limit to their time on Earth, Everam and the other are pitted against each other in a struggle as old as time, where the demand for results weighs heavily on their conscious choices. And when consequences for breaking the rules begin to blur the distinctions between good and evil, Everam finds that seeking redemption for past choices may cost him more than he’d bargained for.

Some choices cannot be undone, and when contracting with the powers of Heaven and Hell, one should always read the fine print … And remember which side you chose to fight for.

Dark Claw by Joyce Chng

Gabriel Sutherland, scion of Lord Kevin Sutherland, returns to Singapore, to deal with the resurgence of the Dark Claws, a splinter group of ultra-conservative drakes. Tragedy strikes and he becomes Lord Sutherland, leader of a clan of drakes. Along the way, he also discovers a long-lost sibling. How is he going to balance all these new responsibilities while his inner demons are still not laid to rest.

 

 

Sworn to Defiance by Terah Edun

Ciardis Weathervane returned to the imperial court of Sandrin to unite her foes. But her efforts hit a stumbling block. The imperial kind. She never thought that before rallying an empire, she’d have to fight the emperor himself.

An imposter sits the throne and the court she turned to for help is in turmoil. Ciardis hasn’t survived assassination attempts, torture and really bad luck to be taken down by her own ruler. So she devises a plan. But first she needs to get Sebastian and Thanar to agree. Each seems to love her in their own way. But neither is listening to her. Pushing them to put aside their differences, in an effort to ward off catastrophe, might be harder than displacing an emperor who would do anything to keep his throne.

Butting heads at court isn’t Ciardis’s only problem. With the princess heir’s threat looming she is forced to travel to the mythical city of Kifar, where it is up to her small group to stop the destruction of the entire city while heading a rebellion that could foment a revolution. It wouldn’t be the first revolution that Algardis has ever known. But with Ciardis Weathervane at its head–it would certainly be the last.

This fifth novel in the Courtlight series continues the story of Ciardis Weathervane from Sworn To Secrecy.

Threats of Sky and Sea by Jennifer Ellision

Sixteen year-old Breena Perdit has spent her life as a barmaid, innocent to her father’s past and happily free from the Elemental gifts that would condemn her to a life in the Egrian King’s army. Until the day that three Elemental soldiers recognize her father as a traitor to the throne and Bree’s father is thrown in jail—along with the secrets from his last mission as the King’s assassin. Secrets that could help the King win a war. Secrets he refuses to share.

Desperate to escape before the King’s capricious whims prove her and her father’s downfall, Bree bargains with him: information for their lives. It’s a good trade. And she has faith she’ll get them both out of the King’s grasp with time.

But that was before the discovery that she’s the weapon the King’s been waiting for in his war.

Now, time is running out. To save her father’s life and understand her own, Bree must unravel the knot of her father’s past before the King takes his life– and uses her to bring a nation to its knees.

Dreaming of the Sea by Heidi Garrett

Gia Chantal will be called to fulfill an ancient contract. She will promise Cole–an exiled mer prince–freedom from his debt to her–in exchange for help in satisfying the contract. Miriam, an orphan who is driven by visionary tendencies, will be tempted by their offer of a life beyond the convent walls that have kept her safe for over a decade.

The repercussions from the intersection of these three lives will reach all the way to heaven… and hell.

Dreaming of the Sea is a retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid. In the original tale, after falling in love with a human prince, the little mermaid yearns to win his love–and gain an immortal soul–thus her bargain with the sea witch…

In this contemporary retelling, after refusing to heed a merman’s warnings, a young woman will make a different kind of bargain with the Sea Witch…

Zero Sum Game by SL Huang

Cas Russell is good at math. Scary good.

The vector calculus blazing through her head lets her smash through armed men twice her size and dodge every bullet in a gunfight. She can take any job for the right price and shoot anyone who gets in her way.

As far as she knows, she’s the only person around with a superpower . . . but then Cas discovers someone with a power even more dangerous than her own. Someone who can reach directly into people’s minds and twist their brains into Moebius strips. Someone intent on becoming the world’s puppet master.

Someone who’s already warped Cas’s thoughts once before, with her none the wiser.

Cas should run. Going up against a psychic with a god complex isn’t exactly a rational move, and saving the world from a power-hungry telepath isn’t her responsibility. But she isn’t about to let anyone get away with violating her brain — and besides, she’s got a small arsenal and some deadly mathematics on her side. There’s only one problem . . .

She doesn’t know which of her thoughts are her own anymore.

Willow Witch by Patty Jansen

After fleeing from the burning ruins of Saardam, Johanna, Prince Roald, Loesie and Nellie have been captured by a group of bandits and are being taken to a place unknown through a forest rife with magic. Loesie, struck mute by an unknown but powerful sorcerer, is behaving increasingly strange. The friends try to escape, but is Loesie helping them or is she a danger to them?

Every step they take through the ghost-ridden forest brings them closer to the duke who is rumoured to be the source of the evil magic, the necromancer whose anger against Saarland’s royal family has lain the world to waste.

Continued from Innocence Lost.

The Edge of the Woods by Ceinwen Langley

‘You’re not the first young woman to try to bend the rules, my dear, but they failed and so will you.’

For as long as anyone can remember, young women have vanished into the woods. Believing them to be weak willed and lured by demons, the zealous Mayor enforces rules to protect them: rules that render the village women submissive and silent, or face being ostracised.

Emma’s only hope of a decent life is to be married by her eighteenth birthday, but her quick mouth and low social standing make her a poor prospect. Lonely and afraid, she finds herself dreaming of the woods, and of a mysterious boy who promises freedom and acceptance if she’ll only step across the border into the trees.

With her birthday fast approaching, she has a decision to make: run away from her future, or fight for it.

The Deadly Seven by Kyoko M.

Michael O’Brien. 24. New Yorker. Musician. Archangel in charge of Heaven’s army.

It’s been centuries since Michael stayed on Earth for an extended amount of time. Now he’s here because of Jordan Amador–a Seer who helped him restore his life and memories and thwart the archdemon Belial from taking over the city. With Jordan on Belial’s hit list, Michael decides to stick around and live out life alongside her as her friend and temporary bodyguard. But as the days pass, he finds it harder to resist the seven deadly sins that tempt all men. Especially as he and Jordan grow closer fighting the demons that want her almost as much as he does…

This collection takes place in the two month period in The Black Parade between Chapters 15 and 16.

Faerie Apocalypse: Aoife’s Tale by Caoimhe McCabe

December 21st 2012, the day the world as we knew it ended.

Ireland’s ancient inhabitants, the Tuatha Dé Dannan, are free from the subterranean prison in which the Celts trapped them thousands of years ago. And the Tuath Dé, or Faeries, waste no time in making the world theirs again.

Aoife O’Neill, a former surgeon, lives on the rugged west coast of Ireland. She lies low, using her wits to avoid the cruel faerie courts that roam the country. Mourning the death of her younger brother, killed by the first explosive wave of Faeries to escape confinement, Aoife researches the Celtic lore for a way to bring an end to the Faerie Kingdom.

Dallada, a powerful arrogant faerie obsessed with Aoife, learns the hard way that she is stronger than she appears. He will stop at nothing to exact revenge for her insolence in refusing him.

Andrew Tyler, a seasoned British Army officer, leads a small band of soldiers in the Yorkshire dales in hit and run missions. Andrew can see no end in sight, but he’s determined to keep fighting.

When Aoife stumbles onto Andrew’s battlefield, he has a choice. Join her in a desperate attempt to defeat the powerful Faeries, or keep the Irish surgeon against her will as part of his military staff.

‘Aoife’s Tale’ begins the fight against the devastating power of the Faeries.

The Queen of Grass and Tree by B.E. Priest

A NEW QUEST BEGINS…

Southwind is in uprising,

and Asher is lucky to escape alive.

With an orphaned Finn and the exiled Healer,

he journeys north to the Queendom’s capital.

He goes to find his mother.

He’ll find only death.

Book #2 in a series of fantasy novellas following Southwind Knights.

 

The Child by David J. Rollins

The schools in the little town of Wonderville are different. They are taught by mechanical teachers that have been programmed to be perfect examples in every possible way. They speak correctly. They move correctly. They even carefully analyze each student for any sign of drug use, and they do that correctly too. They are however not very good at teaching. In fact, they are really really boring.

One particularly bright student, Vayle, often finds his mind wandering in class. He is too smart for his own good. He knows more than most of the students in his class. One day, he starts asking questions, questions his school doesn’t appreciate, questions like ‘What is the Garden of Eden like?’ and ‘How do you tell the difference between the letter O and the number O?’ and others. They are questions to which the school has no answer. Vayle gets in trouble.

To teach Vayle a lesson, the Principal sends him on a tour of the upper classes, and Vayle learns the difference between being enrolled and being admitted. Those that are enrolled make perfect grades and eat warm roast beef for lunch. Those that attend spend their days running from mechanical truant officers armed with shock whips and detention slips. And the only difference between those two types of students is degrees of perfection.

Vayle can’t stop asking questions though. He can’t turn off his brain like that. And he asks the one question every school administration hates. ‘Why?’

And then the real trouble begins.

Werewolf Magic and Mayhem by Stella Wilkinson

New witch Emily Rand and her crow Familiar, Bob, are back for another bout of magical mayhem. Following on from the events of Halloween, Emily is approached by a werewolf called Fletcher who wants her to cure him of his affliction. Despite her lack of experience, Emily decides to try to help Fletcher. Unfortunately her spells aren’t known for going according to plan, and Emily accidentally divides Fletch from his handsome human body and brings forth his inner wolf in a very real sense. Now she has to find a way to put it right by the next full moon or Fletcher will be stuck as a wolf forever. New Paranormal Romance novel from best selling author Stella Wilkinson.

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