Heidi Anne Heiner's Blog, page 53

Today Only: Bargain Ebook: Pip Bartlett's Guide to Magical Creatures by Maggie Stiefvater & Jackson Pearce for $2.99

Pip Bartlett's Guide to Magical Creatures by Maggie Stiefvater & Jackson Pearce is on sale today only for $2.99 in ebook format.

Book description:

From bestselling authors Maggie Stiefvater and Jackson Pearce comes an exciting new series full of magical creatures, whimsical adventures, and quirky illustrations.

Here’s a list of things Pip Bartlett can talk to:

Unicorns
Miniature Silky Griffins
Bitterflunks
Basically, all magical creatures

Here’s a list of things she can’t talk to (at least, not very well):

Parents
Teachers
Basically, all people

Because of a Unicorn Incident at her school (it was an accident!), Pip is spending the summer with her Aunt Emma at the Cloverton Clinic for Magical Creatures. At first, it’s all fun, games, and chatting with Hobgrackles, but when Fuzzles appear and start bursting into flame at the worst possible places, Pip and her new friend Tomas must take action. Because if the mystery of the Fuzzles isn’t solved soon, both magical and unmagical creatures are going to be in a lot of trouble.

Today Only: Bargain Ebook: Jack and the Giants by Piers Anthony & J.R. Rain for $1.99

Jack and the Giants by Piers Anthony (Author), J.R. Rain (Author) is on sale TODAY ONLY for $1.99 in ebook format.

Book description:

In a unique retelling to the classic fairy tale “Jack and the Beanstalk,” Piers Anthony and J.R. Rain take you back to the magical land beyond the clouds. Back to the land of the Giants. Back to adventure and sorcery and awe-inspiring wonder.

In the real world, Jack works for a jerk. Luckily, the pretty receptionist makes his days bearable. But when Jack discovers he’s been fired, his simple life crumbles around him; that is, until he comes across the magic beans.

Now with a giant beanstalk growing outside his downtown New York apartment, Jack has a choice to make: follow the beanstalk up or pretend it’s not there. After all, he does seem to be the only one who can see it. Moreover, the beanstalk almost beckons him...

Putting aside his fears, Jack climbs out from his apartment window and onto the beanstalk, where climbs up and up and up...finally emerging through the clouds and into a land of dreams. Literally.

Almost immediately, he’s confronted by a hungry giant...and someone else. Someone he never expected. Someone he had long admired from afar. Now a team, Jack and Harriet seek answers to their dilemma, and find themselves in the middle of an age-old war for the land beyond the clouds. Battling evil kings, gods and giants, Jack is about to discover that he's much more than he ever dreamed...and that he may never return home again. And that’s just fine by him.

After all, the land beyond the clouds isn't that bad. Of course, he just has to survive first...

Bargain Ebook: Swan Sister: Fairy Tales Retold edited by Datlow and Windling for $2.99

Swan Sister: Fairy Tales Retold by Ellen Datlow (Editor), Terri Windling (Editor) is on sale for $2.99 in ebook format, the lowest price it has reached to my knowledge. It's usually in the $7.99 price range.

It's a great book--I own it in hardcover and ebook and it has some lovely stories by some favorite authors. But I will admit, it has a special place in my heart for an additional reason:


Book description:

Just as fairy-tale magic can transform a loved one into a swan, the contributors to this book have transformed traditional fairy tales and legends into stories that are completely original, yet still tantalizingly familiar

In the follow-up to A Wolf at the Door, thirteen renowned authors come together with a selection of new and surprising adaptations of the fairy tales we think we know so well. These fresh takes on classic tales will show you sides of each story you never dreamed of.

Bargain Ebook: Confessions Of An Ugly Stepsister by Gregory Maguire for $1.99

Confessions Of An Ugly Stepsister by Gregory Maguire is on sale for $1.99 in ebook format. This may be the first time the book has been priced that low because I didn't previously own it in ebook format--at that price I now do.

Book description:

Is this new land a place where magics really happen?

From Gregory Maguire, the acclaimed author of Wicked, comes his much-anticipated second novel, a brilliant and provocative retelling of the timeless Cinderella tale.

In the lives of children, pumpkins can turn into coaches, mice and rats into human beings.... When we grow up, we learn that it's far more common for human beings to turn into rats....

We all have heard the story of Cinderella, the beautiful child cast out to slave among the ashes. But what of her stepsisters, the homely pair exiled into ignominy by the fame of their lovely sibling? What fate befell those untouched by beauty . . . and what curses accompanied Cinderella's exquisite looks?

Extreme beauty is an affliction

Set against the rich backdrop of seventeenth-century Holland, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister tells the story of Iris, an unlikely heroine who finds herself swept from the lowly streets of Haarlem to a strange world of wealth, artifice, and ambition. Iris's path quickly becomes intertwined with that of Clara, the mysterious and unnaturally beautiful girl destined to become her sister.

Clara was the prettiest child, but was her life the prettiest tale?

While Clara retreats to the cinders of the family hearth, burning all memories of her past, Iris seeks out the shadowy secrets of her new household--and the treacherous truth of her former life.

God and Satan snarling at each other like dogs.... Imps and fairy godmotbers trying to undo each other's work. How we try to pin the world between opposite extremes!

Far more than a mere fairy-tale, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister is a novel of beauty and betrayal, illusion and understanding, reminding us that deception can be unearthed--and love unveiled--in the most unexpected of places.

New Book: From a High Tower (Elemental Masters) by Mercedes Lackey with Full Series List

From a High Tower (Elemental Masters) by Mercedes Lackey was released in June and I just realized I never posted about it!

Book description:

From a High Tower is newest adventure in Mercedes Lackey's Elemental Masters series, featuring a retelling of Rapunzel’s not-so-happily-ever-after ending.

How's that for an in-depth description? In other words, surprisingly enough, there hasn't been a Rapunzel retelling in this series yet. Now there is. And reading the reader reviews, this isn't where to begin the series if you are interested. I am behind on these, but enjoyed some of the earlier ones well enough. According to most lists, this is book 11 in the series, but that is always crazy because this series changed publishers so there are more than that I think. It would technically be book 13 I believe. Here is my list. The Fire Rose is my favorite since it is a Beauty and the Beast tale. And behind that would be The Serpent's Shadow--those are the two books that come to mind rather vividly when I think of the series. And two of the books are anthologies, but that still counts for me!

Elemental Masters Series by Mercedes Lackey:


1. The Fire Rose (1995)


2. The Serpent's Shadow (Elemental Masters, Book 1) (2001)


3. The Gates of Sleep (Elemental Masters, Book 2) (2002)


4. Phoenix and Ashes (Elemental Masters, Book 3) (2004)


5. The Wizard of London (Elemental Masters, Book 4) (2005)


6. Reserved for the Cat (Elemental Masters, Book 5) (2007)


7. Unnatural Issue: An Elemental Masters Novel (Elemental Masters, Book 6) (2011)


8. Home From the Sea: An Elemental Masters Novel (2012)


9. Elemental Magic: All-New Tales of the Elemental Masters (Daw Book Collectors) (2012)


10. Steadfast: (Elemental Masters #8) (2013)


11. Elementary (All-New Tales of the Elemental Masters) (2013)


12. Blood Red: (Elemental Masters #9) (2014)


13. From a High Tower (Elemental Masters) (2015)

New Book: Preserving the Spell: Basile's "The Tale of Tales" and Its Afterlife in the Fairy-Tale Tradition by Armando Maggi

Today is Amazon's Prime Day, sales galore for their 20th anniversary. My first order with Amazon was in 1997, a paperback copy of Tam Lin (Fairy Tale). Not very surprising that it would be fairy tale related, is it? And SurLaLune was still a year away from its birth when I ordered the book, a replacement copy of one I had lent out.

But on to regular business.


Preserving the Spell: Basile's "The Tale of Tales" and Its Afterlife in the Fairy-Tale Tradition by Armando Maggi is released this week. I have a copy preordered but I haven't seen it yet to know much more about it than the description below.

Book description:

Fairy tales are supposed to be magical, surprising, and exhilarating, an enchanting counterpoint to everyday life that nonetheless helps us understand and deal with the anxieties of that life. Today, however, fairy tales are far from marvelous—in the hands of Hollywood, they have been stripped of their power, offering little but formulaic narratives and tame surprises.

If we want to rediscover the power of fairy tales—as Armando Maggi thinks we should—we need to discover a new mythic lens, a new way of approaching and understanding, and thus re-creating, the transformative potential of these stories. In Preserving the Spell, Maggi argues that the first step is to understand the history of the various traditions of oral and written narrative that together created the fairy tales we know today. He begins his exploration with the ur-text of European fairy tales, Giambattista Basile’s The Tale of Tales, then traces its path through later Italian, French, English, and German traditions, with particular emphasis on the Grimm Brothers’ adaptations of the tales, which are included in the first-ever English translation in an appendix. Carrying his story into the twentieth century, Maggi mounts a powerful argument for freeing fairy tales from their bland contemporary forms, and reinvigorating our belief that we still can find new, powerfully transformative ways of telling these stories.

New Book: Letters to Zell by Camille Griep

Letters to Zell by Camille Griep was released earlier this month. And it looks like fun! We get several fairy tale heroines--I hate to say princesses--sounds so marketing machine. Has anyone read this one yet? This is a debut novel and it's nicely priced at $4.99 in ebook format, too. The UK edition ebook is £3.99, see Letters to Zell (UK Edition).
.

Book description:

Everything is going according to story for CeCi (Cinderella), Bianca (Snow White), and Rory (Sleeping Beauty)—until the day that Zell (Rapunzel) decides to leave Grimmland and pursue her life. Now, Zell’s best friends are left to wonder whether their own passions are worth risking their predetermined “happily ever afters,” regardless of the consequences. CeCi wonders whether she should become a professional chef, sharp-tongued and quick-witted Bianca wants to escape an engagement to her platonic friend, and Rory will do anything to make her boorish husband love her. But as Bianca’s wedding approaches, can they escape their fates—and is there enough wine in all of the Realm to help them?

In this hilarious modern interpretation of the fairy-tale stories we all know and love, Letters to Zell explores what happens when women abandon the stories they didn’t write for themselves and go completely off script to follow their dreams.

Bargain Ebooks: The Snow White Trilogy Books 1 & 2 by Salla Simukka

As Red as Blood (The Snow White Trilogy Book 1) and As White as Snow (The Snow White Trilogy Book 2) by Salla Simukka are both $1.99 for ebook format for a limited time. The sale is anticipation of the third and final book--As Black as Ebony (The Snow White Trilogy Book 3)--to be released in the U.S. on August 4, 2015.

Book description for As Red as Blood (The Snow White Trilogy Book 1):

In the midst of the freezing Arctic winter, seventeen-year-old Lumikki Andersson walks into her school’s dark room and finds a stash of wet, crimson-colored money. Thousands of Euros left to dry—splattered with someone’s blood.

Lumikki lives alone in a studio apartment far from her parents and the past she left behind. She transferred into a prestigious art school, and she’s singularly focused on studying and graduating. Lumikki ignores the cliques, the gossip, and the parties held by the school’s most popular and beautiful boys and girls.

But finding the blood-stained money changes everything. Suddenly, Lumikki is swept into a whirlpool of events as she finds herself helping to trace the origins of the money. Events turn even more deadly when evidence points to dirty cops and a notorious drug kingpin best known for the brutality with which he runs his business.

As Lumikki loses control of her carefully constructed world, she discovers that she’s been blind to the forces swirling around her—and she’s running out of time to set them right. When she sees the stark red of blood on snow, it may be too late to save her friends or herself.

Book description for As White as Snow (The Snow White Trilogy Book 2):

Book 2 in the Snow White trilogy.

The heat of the summer sun bakes the streets of Prague, but Lumikki’s heart is frozen solid.

Looking to escape the notoriety caused by the part she played in taking down Polar Bear’s crime ring, seventeen-year-old Lumikki Andersson escapes to Prague, where she hopes to find a few weeks of peace among the hordes of tourists. But not long after arriving, she’s cornered by a skittish and strange young woman who claims to be her long-lost sister. The woman, Lenka, is obviously terrified, and even though Lumikki doesn’t believe her story—although parts of it ring true—she can’t just walk away.

Lumikki quickly gets caught up in Lenka’s sad and mysterious world, uncovering pieces of a mystery that take her from the belly of a poisonous cult to the highest echelons of corporate power. On the run for her life again, Lumikki must use all her wits to survive, but in the end, she just may discover she can’t do it all alone.

New Release: The Wild Girl: A Novel by Kate Forsyth

(US/UK Links)
The Wild Girl: A Novel by Kate Forsyth is finally released this week in the US. It was released last year in the UK, see The Wild Girl (UK Link).

Book description:

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.

Bargain Ebook: Hero (The Woodcutter Sisters Book 2) by Alethea Kontis for $1.99

Hero (The Woodcutter Sisters Book 2) by Alethea Kontis is on sale in ebook format for $1.99. This is the first time this book has been discounted to this low price. It is the second book in the The Woodcutter Sisters series which has been popular with several SurLaLune readers. These books are usually in the $7-10 range.

Book description:

Rough-and-tumble Saturday Woodcutter thinks she's the only one of her sisters without any magic—until the day she accidentally conjures an ocean in the backyard. With her sword in tow, Saturday sets sail on a pirate ship, only to find herself kidnapped and whisked off to the top of the world. Is Saturday powerful enough to kill the mountain witch who holds her captive and save the world from sure destruction? And, as she wonders grumpily, "Did romance have to be part of the adventure?" As in Enchanted, readers will revel in the fragments of fairy tales that embellish this action-packed story of adventure and, yes, romance.