Welcome to Book Beat! Think of Book Beat as Hide Your Wallet, Part Two!
In Hide Your Wallet, we talk about books coming out in a particular month that we really want to read. But there’s more to good books than just new releases!
Book Beat aims to highlight other books that we may hear about through friends, social media, or other sources. We could see a gorgeous ad! Or find a new-to-us author on a list of underrated romances! Think of Book Beat as Teen Beat or Tiger Beat, but for books. And no staples to open to get the fold-out poster.
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A Treason of Truths
Author: Ada Harper
Released: October 1, 2018 by Carina Press
Genre: LGBTQIA, Romance, Science Fiction/Fantasy
Series: Whisper #2She turned her back on her people and shifted her allegiance to the very Empire she was sent to betray
Now head spymaster, Lyre’s loyalty lies with Sabine, the Empress she has loved since childhood. But when Sabine visits the secretive Cloud Vault, the floating citadel home that Lyre betrayed, Lyre’s elaborate web of lies starts to untangle. Her very presence threatens Sabine’s future, and Lyre will do whatever it takes to protect her lover…even if that means sacrificing herself.
Empress Sabine Corvus has lived a life of service, pushing aside her own desires for the greater good. With the Empire teetering on the brink of war with the traitorous Syndicate, she cannot afford to show weakness. Although Lyre’s spymaster skills are her greatest weapon, their bond is Sabine’s Achilles’ heel. Regardless of the price, she will not give Lyre up.
Source: @Adahwrites on Twitter
“Queer Girl Die Hard on a floating city.”
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A Princess for Christmas
Author: Jenny Holiday
Released: October 13, 2020 by Avon
Genre: Contemporary Romance, RomanceFrom USA Today bestselling author Jenny Holiday comes a modern fairy tale just in time for Christmas about a tough New Yorker from the other side of the tracks who falls for a princess from the other side of the world.
Leo Ricci’s already handling all he can, between taking care of his little sister Gabby, driving a cab, and being the super of his apartment building in the Bronx. But when Gabby spots a “princess” in a gown outside of the UN trying to hail a cab, she begs her brother to stop and help. Before he knows it, he’s got a real-life damsel in distress in the backseat of his car.
Princess Marie of Eldovia shouldn’t be hailing a cab, or even be out and about. But after her mother’s death, her father has plunged into a devastating depression and the fate of her small Alpine country has fallen on Marie’s shoulders. She’s taken aback by the gruff but devastatingly handsome driver who shows her more kindness than she’s seen in a long time.
When Marie asks Leo to be her driver for the rest of her trip, he agrees, thinking he’ll squire a rich miss around for a while and make more money than he has in months. He doesn’t expect to like and start longing for the unpredictable Marie. And when he and Gabby end up in Eldovia for Christmas, he discovers the princess who is all wrong for him is also the woman who is his perfect match.
Source: @JennyHoli on Twitter
A new holiday romance out this year with a princess & a cab driver pairing!
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The Good, the Bad, and the Scandalous
Author: Cora Lee
Released: August 17, 2017 by More Than Words Press
Genre: Historical: European, Romance
Series: The Heart of a Hero #6Andrew Elliott, Earl of Hartland, is no stranger to scandal. A notorious rake and eccentric genius, he fights crime in armor of his own design and celebrates his achievements with the merriest of widows. What the ton doesn’t know is that Hart has received a warning: danger is heading for London and it’s looking for Sarah Shipton.
Sarah discovers the bookshop her mother owns is failing and they will have nothing to live on when the month is out. So when the Earl of Hartland offers for her, she agrees to the marriage. But marrying Hart throws Sarah from the frying pan of imminent poverty into the fire of a world filled with science and peril she never knew existed.
How will Sarah cope with the knowledge that someone wants her dead? Can Hart keep her safe from a person hell bent on her destruction?
Source: Can’t exactly remember where I first heard about this book/series, but I had this blog post bookmarked.
The series is essentially The Avengers turned Regency romance characters. This one is Iron Man I think?
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Plain Bad Heroines
The award-winning author of The Miseducation of Cameron Post makes her adult debut with this highly imaginative and original horror-comedy centered around a cursed New England boarding school for girls—a wickedly whimsical celebration of the art of storytelling, sapphic love, and the rebellious female spirit.
Our story begins in 1902, at The Brookhants School for Girls. Flo and Clara, two impressionable students, are obsessed with each other and with a daring young writer named Mary MacLane, the author of a scandalous bestselling memoir. To show their devotion to Mary, the girls establish their own private club and call it The Plain Bad Heroine Society. They meet in secret in a nearby apple orchard, the setting of their wildest happiness and, ultimately, of their macabre deaths. This is where their bodies are later discovered with a copy of Mary’s book splayed beside them, the victims of a swarm of stinging, angry yellow jackets. Less than five years later, The Brookhants School for Girls closes its doors forever—but not before three more people mysteriously die on the property, each in a most troubling way.
Over a century later, the now abandoned and crumbling Brookhants is back in the news when wunderkind writer, Merritt Emmons, publishes a breakout book celebrating the queer, feminist history surrounding the “haunted and cursed” Gilded-Age institution. Her bestselling book inspires a controversial horror film adaptation starring celebrity actor and lesbian it girl Harper Harper playing the ill-fated heroine Flo, opposite B-list actress and former child star Audrey Wells as Clara. But as Brookhants opens its gates once again, and our three modern heroines arrive on set to begin filming, past and present become grimly entangled—or perhaps just grimly exploited—and soon it’s impossible to tell where the curse leaves off and Hollywood begins.
A story within a story within a story and featuring black-and-white period illustrations, Plain Bad Heroines is a devilishly haunting, modern masterwork of metafiction that manages to combine the ghostly sensibility of Sarah Waters with the dark imagination of Marisha Pessl and the sharp humor and incisive social commentary of Curtis Sittenfeld into one laugh-out-loud funny, spellbinding, and wonderfully luxuriant read.
Source: Publishers Lunch announcement
A Gothic comedy horror! Hello!
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Avengers turned Regency character you say? I’m sold !
The first thing the Avengers-Regency-style made me think was “Wow, it’s really true that any sufficiently beloved story will have a Regency romance retelling.”
The follow-up thought was that (in a world in which we still had cons and also I went to cons), it would be a lot of fun to watch a mini-tournament where Genre Experts went head to head to see how many romance novel retellings of Popular (and Less Popular!) Story X they could produce on the spot. There are definitely people out there who would be scary-good at this. Has that ever been a thing?
I want to see people cosplaying as Regency-era Avengers
I just discovered Derek B. Miller’s Oslo-based crime novels, starting with NORWEGIAN BY NIGHT. This and the second book, AMERICAN BY DAY, feature a female chief inspector. The writing is superb, as are the characters and story. The first book tangentially explores Norway’s (lack of, according to the author) awareness of Jews during the war, while also looking at the situation of Serbian and Kosovo Albanian immigrants. Highly recommended.
I would pay money to see someone cosplay Black Widow, Regency-style.