Heidi Anne Heiner's Blog, page 3

New Book: Upon a Starlit Tide by Kell Woods

 

Upon a Starlit Tide by Kell Woods is a new book inspired by both Cinderella and the Little Mermaid. It has been blurbed by Juliet Marillier which is a coup for any author.

Book description from the publisher:

Upon a Starlit Tide is a dark and enchanting historical fantasy combining elements of "The Little Mermaid" and "Cinderella" into a wholly original tale of love, power, and betrayal.

*The hardcover edition features beautiful custom endpapers.*

Saint-Malo, Brittany, 1758. To Lucinde Léon, the youngest daughter of a wealthy French shipowner, the high walls of Saint-Malo are more hindrance than haven.

While her sisters are busy trying to secure advantageous marriages, Luce spends her days secretly being taught to sail by Samuel, her best friend—and an English smuggler. Only he understands how the waves call to her. Then one stormy morning, Luce rescues a drowning man from the sea.

Immediately drawn in by the stranger’s charm, Luce is plunged into a world of glittering balls and faerie magic, seduction and brutality. Secrets that have long been lost in the shadowy depths of the ocean begin to rise to the surface, but as Luce wrestles with warring desires, she finds that her own power is growing brighter and brighter, shining like a sea-glass slipper.

Or the scales of a seamaid's tail.

"Magnificent. This is a must-read!”—Juliet Marillier, award-winning author of the Sevenwaters and Blackthorn & Grim series

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New Book: Wooing the Witch Queen by Stephanie Burgis

Wooing the Witch Queen (Queens of Villainy Book 1) by Stephanie Burgis is a new release in a slated trilogy about villain queens. This one is said to be inspired by Snow White's witch which I can see allusions to in the description.

Book description from the publisher:

In a Gaslamp-lit world where hags and ogres lurk in thick pine forests, three magical queens form an uneasy alliance to protect their lands from invasion…and love turns their world upside down.

Queen Saskia is the wicked sorceress everyone fears. After successfully wrestling the throne from her evil uncle, she only wants one thing: to keep her people safe from the empire next door. For that, she needs to spend more time in her laboratory experimenting with her spells. She definitely doesn’t have time to bring order to her chaotic library of magic.

When a mysterious dark wizard arrives at her castle, Saskia hires him as her new librarian on the spot. “Fabian” is sweet and a little nerdy, and his requests seem a little strange – what in the name of Divine Elva is a fountain pen? – but he’s getting the job done. And if he writes her flirtatious poetry and his innocent touch makes her skin singe, well…

Little does Saskia know that the "wizard" she’s falling for is actually an Imperial archduke in disguise, with no magical training whatsoever. On the run, with perilous secrets on his trail and a fast growing yearning for the wicked sorceress, he's in danger from her enemies and her newfound allies, too. When his identity is finally revealed, will their love save or doom each other?

“Stephanie Burgis is a fresh new voice and I can’t wait to see what she does next.” —Ilona Andrews, #1 New York Times bestselling author

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Bargain Ebook: The Serpent's Shadow (Elemental Masters Book 1) by Mercedes Lackey for $1.99

The Serpent's Shadow (Elemental Masters Book 1) by Mercedes Lackey is also a Kindle Daily Deal for $1.99. I don't read a lot of Lackey but I remember this one being a favorite when I tried this series. This one is inspired by Snow White and I appreciated the Brahmin elements at the time. 

Book description from the publisher:

The first in a series of adult fairy tale retellings full of magic, romance, humor, and suspense—from a Grand Master of science fiction and fantasy!

A richly reimagined Snow White uncovers the secrets of her family’s magical history in an alternate Edwardian London . . .

As the daughter of a prominent British physician and a Brahmin woman of the highest caste, Maya Witherspoon graduated from the University of Delhi as a Doctor of Medicine by the age of 22. But the science of medicine was not Maya’s only heritage. For Maya’s aristocratic mother, Surya, was a sorceress—a former priestess of the mystical magics fueled by the powerful and fearsome pantheon of Indian gods.

Though Maya felt the stirring of magic in her blood, her mother had repeatedly refused to train her. Yet it was Maya’s father’s death shortly thereafter that confirmed her darkest suspicions. For her father was killed by the bite of a krait, a tiny venomous snake, and in the last hours of her mother’s life, Surya had warned Maya to beware “the serpent’s shadow.” Maya knew she must flee the land of her birth or face the same fate as her parents.

In self-imposed exile in Edwardian London, Maya knew that she could not hide forever from the vindictive power that had murdered her parents. She knew in her heart that even a vast ocean couldn’t protect her from “the serpent’s shadow” that had so terrified her mother. Her only hope was to find a way to master her own magic: the magic of her father’s blood. But who would teach her? And could she learn enough to save her life by the time her relentless pursuers caught up with their prey?

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Bargain Ebook: Hunted by Meagan Spooner for $1.99

Hunted by Meagan Spooner is on sale for $1.99 as a Kindle Daily Deal. So at least through midnight. This is a Beauty and the Beast retelling although the book cover makes me think more of Little Red Riding Hood despite no red cape. Funny how our minds work.

Book description from the publisher:

New York Times bestselling author Meagan Spooner spins a thoroughly thrilling Beauty and the Beast story for the modern age, expertly woven with spellbinding romance, intrigue, and suspense that readers won’t soon be able to forget.

Beauty knows the Beast's forest in her bones—and in her blood. After all, her father is the only hunter who’s ever come close to discovering its secrets.

So when her father loses his fortune and moves Yeva and her sisters out of their comfortable home among the aristocracy and back to the outskirts of town, Yeva is secretly relieved. Out in the wilderness, there’s no pressure to make idle chatter with vapid baronessas…or to submit to marrying a wealthy gentleman.

But Yeva’s father’s misfortune may have cost him his mind, and when he goes missing in the woods, Yeva sets her sights on one prey: the creature he’d been obsessively tracking just before his disappearance. The Beast.

Deaf to her sisters’ protests, Yeva hunts this strange creature back into his own territory—a cursed valley, a ruined castle, and a world of magical creatures that Yeva’s only heard about in fairy tales. A world that can bring her ruin, or salvation.

Who will survive: the Beauty, or the Beast?

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Forest Ceramic Candle Holder

 

I received this candle holder for free to review recently and really liked it so I thought I would share it here. It is a White Ceramic Candle Holder available in a forest theme (my pick) or a fairy (they say elf) theme which is just as whimsical but less my own taste. I think I have some dryad blood in me as I usually pick trees. I am not putting a candle in but a string of rechargeable fairy lights which makes it really glow, too. I put it on my end table to live with it for a few days before reviewing it but I think it will be making a permanent home there for a while. 

Many years ago, a friend had something similar, a floral one that was painted inside so it was white on the outside but when lit within the soft colors shone through. This doesn't do that but this is pleasing all unto itself.

This one reminds me of Aschenputtel, the German Cinderella, with her birds and tree helpers.

Here's the fairy one:

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New Book: Order of Swans by Jude Deveraux

 

A new book released in the last month: Order of Swans: A Magical Romantasy Journey of Love and Destiny in a Fairy Tale Kingdom, Filled with Suspense, Romance, and the Power to Change Fate by Jude Deveraux. I included the full subtitle here because these new marketing techniques amuse and fascinate me. 

Jude Deveraux is a bestselling mainstay in the romance genre. So when she releases a new fairy tale inspired book--not just a sword and princess fantasy labeled a fairy tale--I pay attention. Mainstream publishing has been mostly quiet on the fairy tale inspired novels recently but this may be a one-off or the start of a new uptick. Deveraux apparently plays with several in this novel. Be warned that it is a duology so there are some complaints about the unsatisfactory ending to this one that I am sure will be resolved in book two.

Book description from the publisher:

"A captivating blend of science fiction, fantasy, and fairy tale reimagining that challenges traditional genre boundaries. . . . an engaging, thought-provoking reading experience that challenges and delights in equal measure.”  —Medium

In this spellbinding, fantasy-rich romance, a woman is swept into a world where she has the power to alter fairy tales, and change a kingdom’s destiny…

To Kaley Arens, a PhD student and expert in folklore, fairy stories have always had a power and an allure beyond mere entertainment.

It’s only when Kaley accompanies her lifelong friend Jobi on a visit to his home that she realizes how much she still has to learn. Bellis isn’t the remote island that she believed it to be. It’s another world—a stunningly beautiful and seductive one, with its own royalty, its own rules, and inhabitants who breathe life into the tales she was taught were fiction.

Kaley’s presence is no simple holiday. She has a mysterious connection with Jobi and with Bellis, and abilities that may help determine this world’s fate. Tasked with locating a lost prince, Kaley and her companions—the enigmatic Tanek, a member of the Order of Swans, and Sojee, Kaley's colossal bodyguard—journey through a land both thrilling and terrifying, where the uncanny and the familiar go hand in hand.

But in fairy tales, heroes and villains are easy to discern. Here, nothing is quite as it seems. And though Kaley is discovering that she can change the outcome of the fairy tales she knows so well, her own story is unfolding in ways impossible to predict, with a destiny she could never have foretold…

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Bargain Ebook: The Wild Girl by Kate Forsyth

 

The ebook edition of The Wild Girl by Kate Forsyth is on sale for $2.99 perhaps through the end of the month since the sale has lasted a few days but it could end anytime and go back up to $9.99. It is inspired by the real Dortchen Wild who provided many of the tales for the Brothers Grimm and ended up marrying Wilhelm.

Book description by the publisher:

One of six sisters, Dortchen Wild lives in the small German kingdom of Hesse-Cassel in the early 19th century. She finds herself irresistibly drawn to the boy next door, the handsome but very poor fairy tale scholar Wilhelm Grimm. It is a time of tyranny and terror. Napoleon Bonaparte wants to conquer all of Europe, and Hesse-Cassel is one of the first kingdoms to fall. Forced to live under oppressive French rule, Wilhelm and his brothers quietly rebel by preserving old half-forgotten tales that had once been told by the firesides of houses grand and small over the land.

As Dortchen tells Wilhelm some of the most powerful and compelling stories in what will one day become his and Jacob's famous fairy tale collection, their love blossoms. But Dortchen's father will not give his consent for them to marry and war, death, and poverty also conspire to keep the lovers apart. Yet Dortchen is determined to find a way.

Evocative and richly-detailed, Kate Forsyth's The Wild Girl masterfully captures one young woman's enduring faith in love and the power of storytelling.

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New Beauty and the Beast Inspired Book: Black Woods, Blue Sky: A Novel by Eowyn Ivey

For all of Beauty and the Beast fans, a new book inspired by the tale and set in Alaska: Black Woods, Blue Sky: A Novel by Eowyn Ivey (Author), Ruth Hulbert (Illustrator) is officially released today.

Book description from the publisher:

Pulitzer Prize finalist and New York Times bestselling author of The Snow Child Eowyn Ivey returns to the mythical landscapes of Alaska with an unforgettable dark fairy tale that asks the question: Can love save us from ourselves?
“No one writes like Eowyn Ivey.”—Geraldine Brooks“You will find yourself in places you have never been.”—Louise Erdrich“A stunning tale told by a master of her craft.”—Jason Mott
Birdie’s keeping it together; of course she is. So she’s a little hungover, sometimes, and she has to bring her daughter, Emaleen, to her job waiting tables at an Alaskan roadside lodge, but she’s getting by as a single mother in a tough town. Still, Birdie can remember happier times from her youth, when she was free in the wilds of nature.
Arthur Neilsen, a soft-spoken and scarred recluse who appears in town only at the change of seasons, brings Emaleen back to safety when she gets lost in the woods. Most people avoid him, but to Birdie, he represents everything she’s ever longed for. She finds herself falling for Arthur and the land he knows so well. 
Against the warnings of those who care about them, Birdie and Emaleen move to his isolated cabin in the mountains, on the far side of the Wolverine River.
It’s just the three of them in the vast black woods, far from roads, telephones, electricity, and outside contact, but Birdie believes she has come prepared. At first, it’s idyllic and she can picture a happily ever after: Together they catch salmon, pick berries, and climb mountains so tall it’s as if they could touch the bright blue sky. But soon Birdie discovers that Arthur is something much more mysterious and dangerous than she could have ever imagined, and that like the Alaska wilderness, a fairy tale can be as dark as it is beautiful.
Black Woods, Blue Sky is a novel with life-and-death stakes, about the love between a mother and daughter, and the allure of a wild life—about what we gain and what it might cost us.

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Bargain Ebook: Workers' Tales: Socialist Fairy Tales, Fables, and Allegories from Great Britain

Workers' Tales: Socialist Fairy Tales, Fables, and Allegories from Great Britain (Oddly Modern Fairy Tales Book 12) by Michael Rosen (Editor) is also on sale for $2.99. This one is at least $10 normally so this is a great bargain.

Book description:

“Plain-language, kid-friendly introductions to socialist politics . . . striking allegories that remain pertinent now, even on the other side of the Atlantic.” —J. C. Pan, The Atlantic

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, unique tales inspired by traditional literary forms appeared frequently in socialist-leaning British periodicals, such as the Clarion, Labour Leader, and Social Democrat. Based on familiar genres—the fairy tale, fable, allegory, parable, and moral tale—and penned by a range of lesser-known and celebrated authors, including Schalom Asch, Charles Allen Clarke, Frederick James Gould, and William Morris, these stories were meant to entertain readers of all ages—and some challenged the conventional values promoted in children’s literature for the middle class. In Workers’ Tales, acclaimed critic and author Michael Rosen brings together more than forty of the best and most enduring examples of these stories in one beautiful volume.

Throughout, the tales in this collection exemplify themes and ideas related to work and the class system, sometimes in wish-fulfilling ways. In “Tom Hickathrift,” a little, poor person gets the better of a gigantic, wealthy one. In “The Man Without a Heart,” a man learns about the value of basic labor after testing out more privileged lives. And in “The Political Economist and the Flowers,” two contrasting gardeners highlight the cold heart of Darwinian competition. Rosen’s informative introduction describes how such tales advocated for contemporary progressive causes and countered the dominant celebration of Britain’s imperial values. The book includes archival illustrations, biographical notes about the writers, and details about the periodicals where the tales first appeared.

Provocative and enlightening, Workers’ Tales presents voices of resistance that are more relevant than ever before.

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Bargain Ebook: Fairy Tales for the Disillusioned: Enchanted Stories from the French Decadent Tradition

 

Fairy Tales for the Disillusioned: Enchanted Stories from the French Decadent Tradition (Oddly Modern Fairy Tales Book 14) by Gretchen Schultz (Editor), Lewis Seifert (Editor) is on sale for $2.99. This one is at least $10 normally so this is a great bargain.

Book description:

A collection that subverts the conventions of the traditional fairy tale—to entertain and startle even the most disenchanted reader: “Thoroughly engaging.” —Gramarye Journal

The wolf is tricked by Red Riding Hood into strangling her grandmother and is subsequently arrested. Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella do not live happily ever after. And the fairies are saucy, angry, and capricious. Fairy Tales for the Disillusioned collects thirty-six tales, many newly translated, by writers associated with the decadent literary movement, which flourished in France in the late nineteenth century. Written by such luminaries as Charles Baudelaire, Anatole France, and Guillaume Apollinaire, these enchanting yet troubling stories reflect the concerns and fascinations of a time of great political, social, and cultural change. Recasting well-known favorites from classic French fairy tales, as well as Arthurian legends and English and German tales, the updated interpretations in this collection allow for more perverse settings and disillusioned perspectives—a trademark style and ethos of the decadent tradition.

In these stories, characters puncture the optimism of the naive, talismans don’t work, and the most deserving don’t always get the best rewards. The fairies are commonly victims of modern cynicism and technological advancement, but just as often are dangerous creatures corrupted by contemporary society. The collection underlines such decadent themes as the decline of civilization, the degeneration of magic and the unreal, gender confusion, and the incursion of the industrial. The volume editors also provide an informative introduction, biographical notes for each author, and explanatory notes throughout.

“Sometimes sardonic, sometimes brutal, often blackly funny.” —Sydney Morning Herald

“A wide variety of cynical characters, forgotten forests, and perverse plots . . . The work will delight and possibly disenchant both fairy-tale enthusiasts and scholars.” —Marvels & Tales

“A perfect book, perhaps, for the moment.” —The Washington Post

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