Angieville

Aren't these three just sort of striking and atmospheric? First up, Scott Westerfeld 's Leviathan is due out October 6th. As you can tell by the awesome cover, it's all kinds of steampunk and is the first in a new series. Yay! Longtime favorite of mine Sharon Shinn has a new YA out also in October, the 15th to be exact. Gateway is about an adopted Chinese girl and is set in an alternate St. Louis modeled after 19th century China. Ever since getting lost in The Historian , I've been wondering what Elizabeth Kostova would write next. The Swan Thieves is due out the same day as Leviathan and follows a solitary psychiatrist treating a tormented artist. I'll take it.

For your Friday Giggles I present you with the hilarious Book-A-Minute Classics and Book-A-Minute SF/F sites, with their "Ultra-Condensed Books" lists. Browse about at will. But make sure you take a peek at the particularly giggle-worthy ultra-condensed versions of A Tale of Two Cities , Pride & Prejudice , The Fionavar Tapestry , and my personal favorite-- The Book of Three . What the heck, let's throw Twilight in there for good measure. Enjoy.

Here she is. I'm kind of digging her. What with the wings and the whip and everything. Diana Peterfreund is giving away three copies of Sarah Cross 's new novel Dull Boy about a boy named Avery who discovers he has superpowers. So head over to The Hero Factory and make your own. Then go tell Diana about it and enter the contest. This book looks great!

First off, apologies to Angie and her Ville for the delay in this post. My brain went dead following two weeks on the road, and the various attempts at writing something produced words so dull, they put me to sleep. Of course, pretty much anything put me to sleep, after an average of 5 ½ hours of sleep a night for 12 nights… One of the things I love most about an author tour is having a chance to meet the people who read my books. In a normal job, a person gets feedback as she goes along, conversations with customers and colleagues, but my job is to sit in a quiet room for ten or eleven months and tap my fingertips down onto buttons. Little opportunity for ongoing feedback there. On a book tour, it’s all about the feedback, particularly since my events consist of about ten minutes of me talking, two minutes of reading from the book, and 48 minutes of Q&A. It’s true, as my daughter pointed out, that I don’t actually answer the questions, but I do use them as springboards to tal...

I love the title of this the 9th Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes novel. In name and spirit, The Language of Bees brings things back to the beginning once more. Back to the Downs, back to the hives, back to a 15-year-old Mary Russell stumbling over a retired detective tending his bees in peace, thus setting into motion the unlikely formation of a most formidable and engaging partnership. What an adventure it's been, and how fascinating to follow these two dominant personalities meet and clash and meet again, picking their way ever so rationally toward a kind of home. In this installment, Russell and Holmes indeed come home to Sussex after months and months abroad--tired, anxious, and, in Russell's case, tangled up in self-doubt and disillusionment. They walk through the door to find Holmes' beloved bees have inexplicably fled their hive and a stranger waiting for them. A stranger who is not a stranger after all. They met surrealist painter Damian Adler once before. Now he soli...

Apparently this one's the real deal. What do you think?

So. much. WIN. Also, I'm in love with Spock. That is all.