Our Most Anticipated Books of March

Jen’s picks:

There’s lots of much-awaited books coming out in March - River Marked by Patricia Briggs and A Lot Like Love by Julie James - and I will definitely be reading both of those but there are two books I am very excited about: The Peach Keeper by Sarah Addison Allen and Sweet Valley Confidential: Ten Years Later by Francine Pascal. You can be sure I've got both of these reserved at my local library.

The New York Times bestselling author of The Girl Who Chased the Moon welcomes you to her newest locale: Walls of Water, North Carolina, where the secrets are thicker than the fog from the town’s famous waterfalls, and the stuff of superstition is just as real as you want it to be.
It’s the dubious distinction of thirty-year-old Willa Jackson to hail from a fine old Southern family of means that met with financial ruin generations ago. The Blue Ridge Madam—built by Willa’s great-great-grandfather during Walls of Water’s heyday, and once the town’s grandest home—has stood for years as a lonely monument to misfortune and scandal. And Willa herself has long strived to build a life beyond the brooding Jackson family shadow. No easy task in a town shaped by years of tradition and the well-marked boundaries of the haves and have-nots.
But Willa has lately learned that an old classmate—socialite do-gooder Paxton Osgood—of the very prominent Osgood family, has restored the Blue Ridge Madam to her former glory, with plans to open a top-flight inn. Maybe, at last, the troubled past can be laid to rest while something new and wonderful rises from its ashes. But what rises instead is a skeleton, found buried beneath the property’s lone peach tree, and certain to drag up dire consequences along with it.
For the bones—those of charismatic traveling salesman Tucker Devlin, who worked his dark charms on Walls of Water seventy-five years ago—are not all that lay hidden out of sight and mind. Long-kept secrets surrounding the troubling remains have also come to light, seemingly heralded by a spate of sudden strange occurrences throughout the town.
Now, thrust together in an unlikely friendship, united by a full-blooded mystery, Willa and Paxton must confront the dangerous passions and tragic betrayals that once bound their families—and uncover truths of the long-dead that have transcended time and defied the grave to touch the hearts and souls of the living.
Resonant with insight into the deep and lasting power of friendship, love, and tradition, The Peach Keeper is a portrait of the unshakable bonds that—in good times and bad, from one generation to the next—endure forever.

The Peach Keeper will be released on March 22, 2011.

Now with this striking new adult novel from author and creator Francine Pascal, millions of devoted fans can finally return to the idyllic Sweet Valley, home of the phenomenally successful book series and franchise. Iconic and beloved identical twins Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield are back and all grown up, dealing with the complicated adult world of love, careers, betrayal, and sisterhood. (Link to the first chapter: http://www.sweetvalleytenyearslater.com/?page_id=74)

Sweet Valley Confidential: Ten Years Later... will be released on March 29, 2011.

Jane’s pick:

My pick is Late Eclipses by Seanan McGuire. I have to blame Jen for getting me hooked on the October Daye series and urban fantasy in general. (You are welcome!) This is the fourth book in the series which takes place in the San Francisco Bay area. Love, love, love this series! The release date is March 1st.

Two years ago, October "Toby" Daye believed she could leave the world of Faerie behind. She was wrong. Now she finds herself in the service of Duke Sylvester Torquill, sharing an apartment with her Fetch, and maintaining an odd truce with Tybalt, the local King of Cats. It's a delicate balance—one that's shattered when she learns that an old friend is in dire trouble. Lily, Lady of the Tea Gardens, has been struck down by a mysterious, seemingly impossible illness, leaving her fiefdom undefended.

Struggling to find a way to save Lily and her subjects, Toby must confront her own past as an enemy she thought was gone forever raises her head once more: Oleander de Merelands, one of the two people responsible for her fourteen-year exile. But if Oleander's back, what's her game? Where is she hiding? And what part does Toby's mother, Amandine, have to play?

Time is growing short and the stakes are getting higher. For the Queen of the Mists has her own agenda, and there are more players in this game than Toby can guess. With everything on the line, she will have to take the ultimate risk to save herself and the people she loves most—because if she can't find the missing pieces of the puzzle in time, Toby will be forced to make the one choice she thought she'd never have to face again...

Review: A Local Habitation by Seanan McGuire

October "Toby" Daye is a changeling, the daughter of Amandine of the fae and a mortal man. Like her mother, she is gifted in blood magic, able to read what has happened to a person through a mere taste of blood.

Half-human, half-fae, outsiders from birth, most changelings are second-class children of Faerie spending their lives fighting for the respect of their immortal relations. Toby is the only changeling who has earned knighthood, and she re-earns that position every day, undertaking assignments for her liege, Sylvester, the Duke of the Shadowed Hills.

Now Sylvester has asked her to go to the County of Tamed Lightning - otherwise known as Fremont, CA - to make sure that all is well with his niece, Countess January O'Leary, whom he has not been able to contact. It seems like a simple enough assignment - but when dealing with the realm of Faerie nothing is ever as simple as it seems. January runs a company that produces computer fantasy games, and her domain is a buffer between Sylvester's realm and a rival duchy whose ruler is looking for an opportunity to seize control. And that is the least of January's problems. For Tamed Lightning has somehow been cut off from the other domains, and now someone has begun to murder January's key people. If Toby can't find and stop the killer soon, she may well become the next victim...

Seanan McGuire launched herself into the spotlight last year with her book Rosemary and Rue. What a wonderful book that was -  I even picked it for my best book of September 2009. I was afraid that she wouldn't be able to repeat the magic for A Local Habitation; Rosemary and Rue was so original and astonishing that surely she would have used up all her brainpower on the first try. Shows how much I know - A Local Habitation may be even better than Rosemary and Rue. Yes, it's that good.

You've got to love Toby. She's still trying to figure herself out and is working to be a human again: she's got her PI credentials back, she's socializing and is going out with friends on Girls Night Out. No particular prospects are looking up in her love life as long as she pretends there's nothing between her and Tybalt. Ah, Tybalt. Look at who Heather from Darkly Reading picked as her Tybalt. I think I said Holy Cow! when I saw those pics :) Hollered it, more like. You'd think that the Cat King wouldn't be so appealing but the way McGuire writes him is pitch perfect. It looks as if he'll be in An Artificial Night quite a bit, out in September. Goody.

I loved pretty much everything about this book. It had another freaky mystery for Toby to solve. We get to see even more Fae (I wish I could get Elliot to make a bi-weekly visit to my house). We get more of Toby's wonderful sense of humor, especially when she interacts with Quentin, her knight-in-training assistant Boy Wonder. I was surprised and yet not that there's little to no mention of her estranged family, her child and spouse/boyfriend. I guess it's a little too soon for that. Maybe in book three? C'mon September! And October :)