Waiting on Wednesdays: Deathless

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted at Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:

Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente
Release Date: March 29, 2011

What Amazon has to say: Koschei the Deathless is to Russian folklore what devils or wicked witches are to European culture: a menacing, evil figure; the villain of countless stories which have been passed on through story and text for generations. But Koschei has never before been seen through the eyes of Catherynne Valente, whose modernized and transformed take on the legend brings the action to modern times, spanning many of the great developments of Russian history in the twentieth century.

Deathless, however, is no dry, historical tome: it lights up like fire as the young Marya Morevna transforms from a clever child of the revolution, to Koschei’s beautiful bride, to his eventual undoing. Along the way there are Stalinist house elves, magical quests, secrecy and bureaucracy, and games of lust and power. All told, Deathless is a collision of magical history and actual history, of revolution and mythology, of love and death, which will bring Russian myth back to life in a stunning new incarnation.

Waiting on Wednesdays: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Sausages

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted at Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Sausages: A Comedy of Transdimensional Tomfoolery

Release Date: February 21, 2011

What Amazon has to say: Holt's latest comic fantasy gently twists the reader's mind like a wet dishrag. Polly Mayer thinks she's going crazy: her coffee keeps disappearing, someone else is doing her work, and a dry cleaner vanishes without a trace. Her brother, Don, assumes a rational explanation until he finds an object capable of working magic. Polly's boss, Mr. Huos, knows quite a bit about some ongoing transdimensional skullduggery, but he has no idea who he is or where he came from. Holt (Blonde Bombshell) throws in a highly intelligent pig, a brass ring that isn't, and a "chicken or the egg" riddle with universal ramifications, leaving readers clinging by their fingernails to this rapid-fire tale of a space-time continuum going manic.

Waiting on Wednesdays: Cloaked

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted at Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:

Cloaked by Alex Flinn

Released Date: February 8th, 2011

What Amazon has to say: I’m not your average hero. I actually wasn’t your average anything. Just a poor guy working an after-school job at a South Beach shoe repair shop to help his mom make ends meet. But a little magic changed it all.

It all started with a curse. And a frognapping. And one hot-looking princess, who asked me to lead a rescue mission.

There wasn’t a fairy godmother or any of that. And even though I fell in love along the way, what happened to me is unlike any fairy tale I’ve ever heard. Before I knew it, I was spying with a flock of enchanted swans, talking (yes, talking!) to a fox named Todd, and nearly trampled by giants in the Everglades.

Don’t believe me? I didn’t believe it either. But you’ll see. Because I knew it all was true, the second I got CLOAKED.