This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic is:

 

 

Upcoming Releases I’m On the Fence About 

An interesting topic this one! Usually I only add books to my Goodreads TBR list that I’m quite certain I want to read

 

Ginger Bread – Helen Oyeyemi

For me this is an Ooh a new Oyeyemi book!” but also, a bit hesitant because her books can be difficult to read. But this synopsis sounds fun!

Influenced by the mysterious place gingerbread holds in classic children’s stories–equal parts wholesome and uncanny, from the tantalizing witch’s house in “Hansel and Gretel” to the man-shaped confection who one day decides to run as fast as he can–beloved novelist Helen Oyeyemi invites readers into a delightful tale of a surprising family legacy, in which the inheritance is a recipe.

Perdita Lee may appear to be your average British schoolgirl; Harriet Lee may seem just a working mother trying to penetrate the school social hierarchy; but there are signs that they might not be as normal as they think they are. For one thing, they share a gold-painted, seventh-floor walk-up apartment with some surprisingly verbal vegetation. And then there’s the gingerbread they make. Londoners may find themselves able to take or leave it, but it’s very popular in Druh�strana, the far-away (and, according to Wikipedia, non-existent) land of Harriet Lee’s early youth. In fact, the world’s truest lover of the Lee family gingerbread is Harriet’s charismatic childhood friend, Gretel Kercheval–a figure who seems to have had a hand in everything (good or bad) that has happened to Harriet since they met.

Decades later, when teenaged Perdita sets out to find her mother’s long-lost friend, it prompts a new telling of Harriet’s story. As the book follows the Lees through encounters with jealousy, ambition, family grudges, work, wealth, and real estate, gingerbread seems to be the one thing that reliably holds a constant value. Endlessly surprising and satisfying, written with Helen Oyeyemi’s inimitable style and imagination, it is a true feast for the reader

Omega Canyon – Dan Simmons (March 2019)

I’ve enjoyed some of Simmons books, like The Terror and Hyperion but books set during wartime aren’t exactly books I immediately am drawn to. So we will see

Paul and Erik Haber are Vienna-born brothers who fled Nazi-controlled Europe as Hitler tightened his grip. The first, a physicist who had to leave behind his Jewish wife and child as he escaped, is designing the atomic bomb at Los Alamos; the second is a commando in Britain’s legendary Special Operations Executive working on the top-secret ALSOS Mission to seek out Nazi atomic scientists across Europe.

When Paul is blackmailed by a German agent who wants him to betray America, he sees a slim, dangerous chance for Erik to rescue his wife and son.

Now, as one brother tries to end the war, the other must risk everything to save his brother’s family.

With action ranging from Los Alamos labs to the battlefields of Europe and ruined cities of Germany, Omega Canyon is a story of daring action, brotherly love and the fight for freedom.

Agency – William Gibson (April 2019)

William Gibson! I associate his books with my communications classes in university and haven’t read his works since those many years ago. So I don’t know about this one. Apparently he wrote something five years ago! I didn’t know that either.

In William Gibson’s first novel since 2014’s New York Times bestselling The Peripheral, a gifted “app-whisperer” is hired by a mysterious San Francisco start-up and finds herself in contact with a unique and surprisingly combat-savvy AI.

Bangkok Wakes to Rain – Pitchaya Sudbanthad

On the fence because he’s a new author, that’s all

A missionary doctor pines for his native New England even as he succumbs to the vibrant chaos of nineteenth-century Siam. A post-WWII society woman marries, mothers, and holds court, little suspecting her solitary future. A jazz pianist in the age of rock, haunted by his own ghosts, is summoned to appease the resident spirits. A young woman tries to outpace the long shadow of her political past. And in New Krungthep, savvy teenagers row tourists past landmarks of the drowned old city they themselves do not remember. Time collapses as these stories collide and converge, linked by the forces voraciously making and remaking the amphibious, ever-morphing capital itself

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018.