It’s time for an adventure! Join us as we explore stories set in spaces far away, hidden away and years ago.
Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance by Lois McMaster Bujold (Baen, $26.00)
You needn’t have read the previous books in the long-running Vorkosigan saga, or even be a science fiction reader at all, to enjoy Bujold’s latest space opera installment. Ivan Vorpatril is the kind of character any reader is bound to enjoy: affable, gallant, and smart enough to know that he doesn’t have the intelligence of his cousin, Miles Vorkosigan, the real principal character in the series. Ivan is, however, a ladies’ man with a penchant for getting himself into personal and political trouble. When his friend Byerly asks him to follow a young woman for her protection, Ivan winds up bound to a chair in her apartment. When thugs invade, Ivan learns that Tej, the woman he followed, and Rish, her strikingly blue-skinned companion, are fleeing for their lives. Ivan begins to seethe when he discovers just how little Byerly saw fit to share with him about his charge. If you enjoy a story full of swashbuckling adventure and a romance story reminiscent of Georgette Heyer, with endearing characters, snappy dialogue, and political and social intrigue, give Bujold a try.
A Land More Kind Than Home by Wiley Cash (William Morrow, $14.99)
Adelaide Lyle witnessed her pastor, Carson Chambliss, hand 79-year-old parishioner Miss Molly Jameson a copperhead snake, saw it bite her, and stood by as the congregation watched her die in the name of her sins and God’s will. Adelaide stood up to pastor Chambliss after Molly’s death, demanding to take the community’s children out of the church during services; and she succeeds, until a tragic event 10 years later. Cash’s debut takes the reader into the inner reaches of a religious cult and the small North Carolina community grudges and politics that allow its lawless reach to flourish. If you enjoyed Tom Franklin’s Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter or miss the Southern gothic atmosphere of Flannery O’Connor’s stories of betrayal and redemption, then you should enjoy this tense novel of literary suspense.
The Last Night at the Ritz by Elizabeth Savage (AmazonEncore, $14.95)
“My friend and I are very grand these days. We meet at the Ritz.” The unnamed narrator of this 1973 reprint, from Nancy Pearl’s Book Lust Rediscoveries series, meets dear friends and lovers at the Ritz for a carousing lunch. The heady 1960s college days that they shared filter back through her memory over the course of the meal. But Gay and Len (her old roommate and her husband) are worried about their oldest son, Charley, who has fled to Canada to dodge the war draft. As the story unfolds, it is clear that the narrator holds back intimate knowledge about their son that might explain so much. At the heart of this sparkling story is a tale of friendship, love, betrayal, and the hope and grief that undergirds every life. The Last Night at the Ritz presents a complex friendship between two women and the subtle dance of what is revealed and what is withheld in any friendship.
