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Here are some handpicked titles from our New Books section. Want to include your book? Just read our Facebook Your New or Upcoming Book post. Don’t forget to include your title’s exact release date and a link.

Trove by David McGukin: “When the widow of Blackbeard’s heir finds herself unprepared to deal with his three hundred year old estate, ancient trusts quickly unravel, leaving her exposed with nothing but a haunting curse and a band of mutineers intent on her demise. In her world of vast riches, power, and deception, Luna Belle must navigate murky waters of modern piracy on a secreted Georgia coastal island, while fighting for her fortune, her sanity, and her life.” (August 2012)

Conspiracy of Silence by Glede Browne-Kabongo: ”She has the perfect life—and a secret worth killing for. Nina Kasai is a gorgeous, Ivy League educated executive who would do anything to keep her past a secret, even from her husband. Seventeen years ago, she ran for her life and the truth has been locked away in the pages of her hidden diary, and in the mind of a disturbed woman who will never tell—ever.” (September 2012)

Danse de la Folie by Sherwood Smith: “A light-hearted Regency folly, starring Miss Clarissa Harlowe who wants a quiet life-but falls in love with a smuggler, the marquess of St. Tarval. Tarval’s sister, Lady Kitty, is determined to write a dramatic Gothic to save her brother’s mortgaged estate-if she can reach London. Clarissa’s much-pursued cousin, Mr. Philip Devereaux, is inexplicably intrigued by Lady Kitty, who is doing her best to encourage the match between him and Clarissa, except that Clarissa is now betrothed to… Lord Wilburfolde. And so the madness of changing partners begins in the dance of love.” (September 2012)

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As promised. Despite a brain filled with mush (flu vaccine reaction plus 2 nights' rotten sleep) and gloom (British spending review. Does George Osborne really think he can make it all okay by saying "Fairness" a gazillion times? And furthermore calling them "savings we've found in the budget" doesn't make them anything other than cuts. No it does not.).

The connection between sartorias' Coronets and Steel and Hilary McKay's Wishing for Tomorrow was a random thought that passed through my head one night as I was trying to get to sleep, and has stuck there. Possibly its sticking has as much to do with the amount of readerly pleasure I got from the two books as anything, but it also seems to me to give yet another perspective on the endlessly fascinating matter of how writers present the past. ("Present the past" btw, was totally unintentional, but its dual meaning is perfect. Sometimes English rocks. ) Although the past to be presented is quite different in the two books, it seems to me that there's a surprising degree of similarity in the way -- well, not the way it's done, exactly, but one way in which it's experienced. Must admit that I've never read The Prisoner of Zenda, but steepholm has said many times that being able to talk about a book you've never read is a trademark academic skill, so I won't let that stop me. If embarrassing mistakes ensue, just hum to yourselves and move along, okay?


Both Coronets and Steel and Wishing for Tomorrow are homages to older books - to The Prisoner of Zenda and The Little Princess respectively, which is the major apparent similarity between them. Unless Wiki has let me down (unthinkable!) The Prisoner of Zenda was published in 1894, while A Little Princess was published in 1904, but is an expansion of the earlier Sara Crewe, serialized in 1888, so the mean date of publication as it were, is quite close. The fact that Wishing for Tomorrow is a sequel to A Little Princess while Coronets and Steel has a modern setting and none of the characters of the earlier book doesn't make as much difference as it might be expected to, I think.

Starting with Wishing for Tomorrow, in a way, the attempt to write a successful (for any values of successful) sequel to A Little Princess would seem doomed from the outset. The big emotional payoff that comes from the restoration of Sara to her 'proper place' in life is so dependent on an understanding of society that really isn't one most people can comfortably hold to now. Even though Sara's nobility is shown to be unrelated to her current financial situation, it's anything but class-free. No matter how choked up we get in reading the scene in the bakery with the girl who's even hungrier than Sara, or how pleased we are to see that the inspired baker has hired the girl so she's never hungry again, it's always Sara who's inspirational, or generous enough to remain a friend to Becky after she's restored to wealth, never the lower-class character.

On the other hand, an unsubtle "updating" of the story, with Sara becoming a crusader for social justice rather than a