From Publishers Weekly

Those familiar with McCaffrey and Scarborough’s first SF trilogy about life on the sentient planet Petaybee will best appreciate this solid start of a new series, which picks up where Power Play (1995) left off. Murel and Ronan, the precocious twins born to Maj. Yanaba Maddock-Shongili, administrator of Petaybee, and geneticist/selkie Dr. Sean Shongili, lead an idyllic, if frigid, life on the icy planet for their first eight years. Protected by their snow leopard and track-cat nannies, they change into seals, play with otters and telepathically communicate with each other and the fauna. When it appears their abilities have aroused the sinister interest of off-world scientists, they’re sent to live on a space station with a family friend. Fast-paced adventure follows as the twins thwart their enemies and further deal with their selkie natures. Flat characterization, anthropomorphic animals, sentimentality and simplistic takes on various cultures (i (more…)

From Publishers Weekly

In this delightful first novel, the opening salvo of a trilogy, Novik seamlessly blends fantasy into the history of the Napoleonic wars. Here be dragons, beasts that can speak and reason, bred for strength and speed and used for aerial support in battle. Each nation has its own breeds, but none are so jealously guarded as the mysterious dragons of China. Veteran Capt. Will Laurence of the British Navy is therefore taken aback after his crew captures an egg from a French ship and it hatches a Chinese dragon, which Laurence names Temeraire. When Temeraire bonds with the captain, the two leave the navy to sign on with His Majesty’s sadly understaffed Aerial Corps, which takes on the French in sprawling, detailed battles that Novik renders with admirable attention to 19th-century military tactics. Though the dragons they encounter are often more fully fleshed-out than the stereotypical human characters, the author’s palpable love for her subject and a (more…)

From Publishers Weekly

Samuel I. Newhouse Jr., generally known as Si, is not only one of the richest men in the U.S., he also heads its most powerful media company, Advance Publications, which owns a chain of high-visibility magazines, the Random House companies, newspapers and cable-TV interests. He is also, by his own choice, little known to the public, so a book about him, his personality, interests and remarkable influence is very much in order. Maier, a New York Newsday reporter, labored mightily to penetrate the veil Newhouse has established between himself and the world, and has come up with as thorough an account as an outsider probably could write of the Newhouse career: his early uncertainties in the shadow of a dynamic and demanding father, his growing skills in managing the magazine empire that never much interested Sam senior, his eventual triumphs in acquiring the kinds of properties-Random House, the New Yorker-his father would have delighted in. It is al (more…)

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Nigerian-born Jesuit priest Akpan transports the reader into gritty scenes of chaos and fear in his rich debut collection of five long stories set in war-torn Africa. An Ex-mas Feast tells the heartbreaking story of eight-year-old Jigana, a Kenyan boy whose 12-year-old sister, Maisha, works as a prostitute to support her family. Jigana’s mother quells the children’s hunger by having them sniff glue while they wait for Maisha to earn enough to bring home a holiday meal. In Luxurious Hearses, Jubril, a teenage Muslim, flees the violence in northern Nigeria. Attacked by his own Muslim neighbors, his only way out is on a bus transporting Christians to the south. In Fattening for Gabon, 10-year-old Kotchikpa and his younger sister are sent by their sick parents to live with their uncle, Fofo Kpee, who in turn explains to the children that they are going to live with their prosperous godparents, who, as Kotchikpa pieces together, are act (more…)

From Publishers Weekly

Quilters will especially enjoy Daheim’s 17th cozy (after 2004’s Alpine Pursuit) to feature Emma Lord, publisher of the Alpine Advocate, the weekly newspaper of rural Alpine, Wash. When Genevieve Bayard, who grew up in Alpine, returns for a visit after a long absence, Annie Jeanne Dupré, the gentle, heavy-handed organist at St. Mildred’s, decides to hold a welcome-back party for Gen and the other members of their old quilting group. Gen’s sudden death at the party (from eating poisoned cheesecake, an autopsy later reveals) upsets everyone, but Emma’s House & Home editor, Vida Runkel, who was absent at the time of the murder, is unusually disturbed and starts to behave strangely. Break-ins, a stranger in the local motel, burned quilt patterns, an anonymous letter, suspicious medications and another death compound the mystery. Daheim sympathetically portrays the small mountain town and its denizens, particularly Emma and her brother, Ben, a priest w (more…)