So today my daughter turned 4. We hang out all day, her father, her and I, celebrated in her kindergarten, went to the cinema and watched Madagascar 3 and just had a blast. We did spend some time at a bookstore (she already loves bookstores) and … well, yeah, I did buy a couple of books. I really wasn’t supposed to, I can’t really afford it, and I already own more than enough books… But still, when I saw these two books, I had to have them.
Is there more dystopian novels coming out than there used to be? This one is dystopian, I recently bought The Leftovers by Tom Perotta and that’s dystopian as well and it just seems to me that there are a lot of these novels coming out these days. Maybe it’s the recession and the financial issues we all face, I don’t know – whatever it is, I think the idea of both this and The Leftovers seem intriguing and well thought-out so I’m looking forward to reading them.
On a seemingly ordinary Saturday in a California suburb, Julia and her family awake to discover, along with the rest of the world, that the rotation of the earth has suddenly begun to slow. The days and nights grow longer and longer, gravity is affected, the environment is thrown into disarray. Yet as she struggles to navigate an ever-shifting landscape, Julia is also coping with the normal disasters of everyday life—the fissures in her parents’ marriage, the loss of old friends, the hopeful anguish of first love, the bizarre behavior of her grandfather who, convinced of a government conspiracy, spends his days obsessively cataloging his possessions. As Julia adjusts to the new normal, the slowing inexorably continues.
A new Sherlock Holmes novel. And according to some reviewers (Amritorupa), this is even better than the real deal. I don’t know if that can be true, but I am definitely looking forward to reading both the original novels and this one.
For the first time in its one-hundred-and-twenty-five-year history, the Arthur Conan Doyle Estate has authorized a new Sherlock Holmes novel.
Once again, THE GAME’S AFOOT…
London, 1890. 221B Baker St. A fine art dealer named Edmund Carstairs visits Sherlock Holmes and Dr John Watson to beg for their help. He is being menaced by a strange man in a flat cap – a wanted criminal who seems to have followed him all the way from America. In the days that follow, his home is robbed, his family is threatened. And then the first murder takes place.
Almost unwillingly, Holmes and Watson find themselves being drawn ever deeper into an international conspiracy connected to the teeming criminal underworld of Boston, the gaslit streets of London, opium dens and much, much more. And as they dig, they begin to hear the whispered phrase-the House of Silk-a mysterious entity that connects the highest levels of government to the deepest depths of criminality. Holmes begins to fear that he has uncovered a conspiracy that threatens to tear apart the very fabric of society.
The Arthur Conan Doyle Estate chose the celebrated, #1 New York Times bestselling author Anthony Horowitz to write The House of Silk because of his proven ability to tell a transfixing story and for his passion for all things Holmes. Destined to become an instant classic, The House of Silk brings Sherlock Holmes back with all the nuance, pacing, and almost superhuman powers of analysis and deduction that made him the world’s greatest detective, in a case depicting events too shocking, too monstrous to ever appear in print…until now.
Further reading:
- Normalcy grinds to a halt. ‘The Age of Miracles,’ Debut Novel by Karen Thompson Walker – review by Michiko Kakutani for The New York Times
- The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz – review by Ian Samson for The Guardian
The Literary Bunny 
Wonderful – congratulations!!