On the Fiendish Radar: "Vacation" by Matt Costello

Book:                   Vacation

Author:                Matt Costello

Publisher:           Thomas Dunne

ISBN/ASIN:          9780312680077

RELEASE:              September 27, 2011

"Jack Murphy and his family need a vacation.  This one might just kill them.

After a global crisis causes crops to fail and species to disappear, something even more deadly happens. Masses around the world suddenly became predators, feeding off their own kind. These ‘Can Heads’ grow to such a threat that fences, gated compounds, and SWAT-style police protection become absolutely necessary to live.

And after one attack leaves NYPD cop Jack Murphy wounded and his partner dead, Jack takes his wife and kids on a vacation. Far up north, to the Paterville Family Camp, a fortress-like compound in the mountains, where families can still swim and take boats out on a lake.

At first, it's idyllic.  There's plenty of food, fun stuff for their children, and another nice young couple with kids of their own.  And when the camp suffers a Can Head attack, Jack even helps defend it. He's immediately offers Jack a job in security.  Jack's family wants to stay. 

But Jack slowly comes to realize that there's something else going on at Paterville Family Camp... and when he makes a gruesome discovery, he will be forced to get his family out, no matter who... or what... stands in his way." (from Amazon.com)

On the Fiendish Radar: "Hounded" The Iron Druid Chronicles by Kevin Hearne

Book:                   Hounded

Author:                Kevin Hearne

Publisher:           Del Rey

ISBN/ASIN:         9780345522474

RELEASE DATE: May 3, 2011

Find out more about the Iron Druid Chronicles

Book Blurb

“Atticus O’Sullivan has been running for two thousand years and he’s a bit tired of it. After he stole a magical sword from the Tuatha Dé Danann (those who became the Sidhe or the Fae) in a first century battle, some of them were furious and gave chase, and some were secretly amused that a Druid had the cheek to defy them. As the centuries passed and Atticus remained an annoyingly long-lived fugitive, those who were furious only grew more so, while others began to aid him in secret.

Now he’s living in Tempe, Arizona, the very last of the Druids, far from where the Fae can easily find him. It’s a place where many paranormals have decided to hide from the troubles of the Old World—from an Icelandic vampire holding a grudge against Thor to a coven of Polish witches who ran from the German Blitzkrieg.

Unfortunately, the very angry Celtic god who wants that sword has tracked him down, and Atticus will need all his power, plus the help of a seductive goddess of death, a sexy bartender possessed by a Hindu witch, and some good, old-fashioned luck of the Irish to kick some arse and deliver himself from evil.” (from www.kevinhearne.com)

On the Fiendish Radar: "Fire on Dark Water" by Wendy Perriman

Book:                  Fire on Dark Water

Author:               Wendy Perriman

Publisher:           Berkley

ISBN/ASIN:         9780425241042

RELEASE DATE:  June 7, 2011

Visit the Website Fire on Dark Water. Find out more about Wendy Perriman

In January while I was doing my annual book research for the year, I happened upon Perriman's book that instantly sent out a signal flare-and my immediate interest.

Pirates? Historical setting? Based in fact? Tough gritty heroines? Perriman's book looks to have it all and I am completely seduced by this era, the Golden Age of Piracy.

Having grown up with some of the best books thrust into my hands at an early age, my British gramps and I having some very heated discussions about the Spanish Main, and my dreamy eyed wonder at Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Francis Drake, Captain Kidd, (as well as the lure of darker, more dangerous pirates like Blackbeard), Perriman's book summons up all the wonder and desire to entrench myself deeply into that era in time once again. 

I cannot wait to read this book!

~Miz Fiendishly  

Book Blurb

From the author: “This tale is recounted by an English gypsy called Lola Blaise, who  knows that Captain Edward Teach is a buccaneer when she marries him but has no idea she is about to become the thirteenth wife of the infamous Blackbeard, nor does she realize the unconscionable deeds she will have to perform to avoid the fate of her tragic predecessors.

Fire on Dark Water is set in the Eighteenth Century’s ‘Golden Age of Piracy’. Lola takes us on an epic journey from her early Romany childhood, to loss of innocence in the slums of London, a horrific voyage on a white slave ship, indentured servitude on a Charleston rice plantation, life in a brothel on the ‘Pirate Republic’ of New Providence, and ultimately aboard the Queen Anne’s Revenge (Blackbeard’s flagship), as she interacts with real characters in factual situations.

Fate entwines Lola’s destiny with that of Anne Bonny, ‘Calico Jack’ Rackham, James Bonny, Blackbeard and crew – to name but a few – and as Captain Charles Johnson claims in The General History of the Robberies & Murders of the Most Notorious Pirates (1724) the “odd incidents of their rambling lives are such, that some may be tempted to think the whole story no better than a novel or romance, but . . . it is supported by many thousand witnesses,” confirming my own extensive research that the truth about these men and women is even stranger than the surrounding fiction. 

Tales of daring pirates continue to capture the popular imagination and feminists have looked to Anne Bonny and Mary Reed as historic examples of tough, proactive heroines.  But carried away by such romanticism we often lose sight of the fact that most buccaneers were greedy, bloodthirsty killers with addictive or pathological natures. Whereas previous books tend to sanitize their lifestyles my account is a gritty, violent, realistic portrayal of the lascivious, often manic events, acted out by dangerous drunk individuals with little left to lose.  

This is not a tale for the faint of heart!”

(From www.wendyperriman.com)

On The Fiendish Radar: 20 Years Later...and The City of Bohane

Book:         The City of Bohane         

Author:       Kevin Barry

Publisher:   Jonathan Cape

ISBN/ASIN:  9780224090575

Release Date:    May 24, 2011 (UK)

Find out more about Kevin here

Read an excerpt.

Add it to your Goodreads.

“Forty years in the future. The once-great city of Bohane on the west coast of Ireland is on its knees, infested by vice and split along tribal lines. There are the posh parts of town, but it is in the slums and backstreets of Smoketown, the tower blocks of the Northside Rises and on the eerie bogs of Big Nothin’ that Bohane really lives.

For years, the city has been in the cool grip of Logan Hartnett, the dapper godfather of the Hartnett Fancy gang. But there’s trouble in the air. They say his old nemesis is back in town; his trusted henchman is getting ambitious; and his missus wants him to give it all up and go straight...and then there's his mother.

City of Bohane is a unique and visionary novel that blends influence from film and the graphic novel, from Trojan beats and calypso rhythms, from Celtic myth and legend, from fado and the sagas, and from all the great inheritance of Irish literature. A work of mesmerising imagination and vaulting linguistic invention, it is a taste of the startlingly new.” (courtesy of Waterstone’s)

AND

Book:                  20 Years Later   

Author:               Emma Newman (EJ)

Publisher:           Dystopia Press

ISBN/ASIN:         9780984498123

Release Date:    July 5, 2011

Check out Dystopia press

Scope out Emma Newman’s page

Add it to your Goodreads

“LONDON, 2012: It arrives and with that the world is changed into an unending graveyard littered with the bones, wreckage, and memories of a dead past, gone forever. 

LONDON, 2032: Twenty years later, out of the ashes, a new world begins to rise, a place ruled by both loyalty and fear, and where the quest to be the first to regain lost knowledge is an ongoing battle for power. A place where laws are made and enforced by roving gangs—the Bloomsbury Boys, the Gardners, the Red Lady’s Gang—who rule the streets and will do anything to protect their own. 

THE FOUR: Zane, Titus, Erin, Eve. Living in this new world, they discover that they have abilities never before seen.  And little do they know that as they search post-apocalyptic London for Titus’ kidnapped sister that they’ll uncover the secret of It, and bring about a reckoning with the forces that almost destroyed all of humanity.” (courtesy of Dystopia Press)

`Miss Fiendishly (and Roxy the Grumpy Cat)

On The Fiendish Radar: Robopocalypse by Daniel Wilson

Book:                   Robopocalypse

Author:                Daniel Wilson

Publisher:           Random House/Doubleday

ISBN/ASIN:         9780385533850

Release Date:    June 7, 2011

Movie Tie In:     2013

Check out Daniel’s blogggg | Random House | How to Survive a Robot Uprising | Newz |

 “They are in your house. They are in your car. They are in the skies…Now they’re coming for you.

In the near future, at a moment no one will notice, all the dazzling technology that runs our world will unite and turn against us. Taking on the persona of a shy human boy, a childlike but massively powerful artificial intelligence known as Archoscomes online and assumes control over the global network of machines that regulate everything from transportation to utilities, defense and communication. In the months leading up to this, sporadic glitches are noticed by a handful of unconnected humans – a single mother disconcerted by her daughter’s menacing “smart” toys, a lonely Japanese bachelor who is victimized by his domestic robot companion, an isolated U.S. soldier who witnesses a ‘pacification unit’ go haywire – but most are unaware of the growing rebellion until it is too late. 

When the Robot War ignites -- at a moment known later as Zero Hour -- humankind will be both decimated and, possibly, for the first time in history, united. Robopocalypse is a brilliantly conceived action-filled epic, a terrifying story with heart-stopping implications for the real technology all around us…and an entertaining and engaging thriller unlike anything else written in years.” (courtesy of Random House/Doubleday)

Sounds flipping amazing doesn't it? And better yet, the cinematic king and visionary (drum roll please....) Steven Spielberg will be directing this phenom. As for the book....I'm fairly panting to get my hands on it.

A Fiendishly Bookish Review (and one grumpy cat)