Five 2009 Novels

I’m always looking for the latest thing to hit the bookstands.  Here are 5 knockout novels recently published:

1. Burn by Linda Howard – Money changes Jenner Redwine’s life when she wins a lottery jackpot. But it also costs her plenty: Her father rips her off and disappears, her fortune-hunting boyfriend soon becomes her ex, and friends-turned-freeloaders give her the cold shoulder when she stops paying for everything.

2. The Neighbor by Lisa Gardner – It was a case guaranteed to spark a media feeding frenzy–a young mother, blond and pretty, disappears without a trace from her South Boston home, leaving behind her four-year-old daughter as the only witness and her handsome, secretive husband as the prime suspect.

3. The Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick – When Catherine Land, who’s survived a traumatic early life by using her wits and sexuality as weapons, happens on a newspaper ad from a well-to-do businessman in need of a “reliable wife,” she invents a plan to benefit from his riches and his need.

4. City of Thieves by David Benioff – Having elected to stay in Leningrad during the siege, 17-year-old Lev Beniov is caught looting a German paratrooper’s corpse. The penalty for this infraction (and many others) is execution.

5. Angels & Demons by Dan Brown – Robert Langdon, a Harvard specialist on religious symbolism, is called in by a Swiss research lab when Dr. Vetra, the scientist who discovered antimatter, is found murdered with the cryptic word “Illuminati” branded on his chest.

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22 Year Old Author Publishes 9th Novel!

I want this book:  A Madness of Angels: Or The Resurrection of Matthew Swift by Kate Griffin.  Here’s a description of the plot:

“Two years after his untimely death, Matthew Swift finds himself breathing once again, lying in bed in his London home.  Except that it’s no longer his bed, or his home. And the last time this sorcerer was seen alive, an unknown assailant had gouged a hole so deep in his chest that his death was irrefutable…despite his body never being found.”

Not only does the book look interesting, the author seems pretty interesting herself.  Although she is just 22 years old, this is her 9th novel!   She published her first novel when she was just 14 (Mirror Dreams, a young adult novel, published under the name Catherine Webb).

Here is what Kate/Catherine says about the book, which is set in London, in her author interview at Neth Space (where you can also see a somewhat dated photo of her):

It’s (I hope) funny enough to make the tired commuter smile, strange enough to make the mundane seem peculiar, real enough to catch at the memory of pretty much anyone who’s ever waited for the last train on a cold night in December while wearing the wrong kind of shoes…

(If you’d like to see a more recent photo, go to the author interview at Yatterings.)   You can also read the Kate Griffin blog here.

Chick lit, Blogger Style

Maureen Lipinski’s debut novel, A Bump in the Road, looks like it is written blog-style, which sounds kinda different and interesting.  Here’s a description of the book from the publisher’s website:

When twenty-seven-year-old event planner and blogger Clare Finnegan got married, she didn’t mind moving out of the city. After all, a suburban existence didn’t necessarily equal domesticity, book club parties, and a subscription to Martha Stewart Living. But when, after a weekend in Vegas, Clare discovers she’s pregnant, she is thrown into a world where eating lunchmeat is equivalent to smoking crack and maternity clothes appear to have been molested by a BeDazzler.

Oddly enough, the book mirror’s the author’s own life, who became unexpectedly pregnant shortly after writing this book.

You can also visit the author’s website or read the author’s blog, called Now That You Mention It, Fiction with a Side of Snark.

Hater – the Novel Soon to be a Movie

I was looking around for recently published novels when Hater by David Moody came to my attention.  It looks fantastic, and I’ll probably end up buying it in the next week or so.  It must be good as it came out 2 months ago and the movie is already in pre-production.  (The novel was originally self-published in 2006.)  The following is part of a review from Booklist which appears on amazon.com:

“One day Danny McCoyne’s life tends toward the humdrum: job, family, the usual. The next day, suddenly, without warning or explanation, people are turning into killers, murdering their loved ones, attacking perfect strangers. Soon Danny is trying desperately to keep his family safe, while all around him society seems to be self-destructing, as ordinary men and women turn into animals, filled with hate and violence. This is a truly frightening book…”

The review goes on to compare the story to the zombie movie, 28 Days Later.

Drop by David Moody’s blog, which has lots of info for fans.  Moody is also the author of the Autumn book series, which is being made into a movie, as well.