It’s been a minute since I updated the advanced copies I have received through various sources. Time for an update on what I will be reading in the future.

Synopsis:

A compendium of witches through the ages, from earliest prehistory to some of the most significant modern practitioners, Witches explores who and what is a witch. Ranging from such famed historical figures as Marie Laveau, Tituba, Sybil Leek, Isobel Gowdie, and Countess Erzsebet Báthory (popularly known as the Blood Countess) to popular literary and cinematic figures such as Endora, the Scarlet Witch, Storm, and the Wicked Witch of the West, Illes offers a complete range of the history of witches.   Also included are the sacred (Baba Yaga, Lilith, Isis, Hekate, Diana, Aradia, Circe) and the profane (the Salem Witch trials and the Burning Times), plus travel tips for witches and a guide to the tools of the trade. Witches is appropriate for readers of all ages and serves as an excellent and entertaining introduction for those fascinated by the topic.   Previously published in 2010 by Weiser Books as A Weiser Field Guide to Witches, this book has been updated for new witches as well as a new era.

Synopsis:

Set over the course of one day, a heart-racing debut about a woman facing the unimaginable, determined to find safety.

Last night, you and I were safe. Last night, in another universe, your father and I stood fighting in the kitchen.

Annie is nine months pregnant and shopping for a crib at IKEA when a massive earthquake hits Portland, Oregon. With no way to reach her husband, no phone or money, and a city left in chaos, there’s nothing to do but walk.

Making her way across the wreckage of Portland, Annie experiences human desperation and strangers offering help, a riot at a grocery store, and an unlikely friendship with a young mother. As she walks, Annie reflects on her struggling marriage, her disappointing career, and her anxiety about having a baby. If she can just make it home, she’s determined to change her life.

A propulsive debut, Tilt is a primal scream of a novel about the disappointments and desires we all carry, and what each of us will do for the people we love.

Synopsis:

The University of Arizona: A History in 100 Stories is a celebration of the people, ideas, inventions, teaching, and structures that have been part of the school’s evolution from a small land-grant institution to an internationally renowned research institution. Drawing on half a century of connection with the University of Arizona as a student, staff member, and faculty member, Gregory McNamee presents a history through the lens of a hundred subjects.

That story begins in 1885, with the establishment of the school, which quickly proved itself to be a powerhouse in its foundational “four pillars”: agriculture and earth sciences, followed by astronomy and anthropology. In the years following World War II, those four pillars became ever more important to the University, even as countless other fields of study gained prominence: optical sciences, women’s studies, the humanities, mathematics, and more. This phenomenal institution has as its setting the Sonoran Desert, and, closer to home, to a built environment that is widely considered among the most scenic in the country, from the Historic District with its buildings that are more than a century old to the latest steel-and-glass constructions on the edges of the ever-expanding campus.

McNamee relates this history in an entertaining manner, peppering discussion of serious intellectual and institutional themes with lighter moments—the origins of the university’s rivalry with Arizona State, the ghosts that are said to lurk about campus, and more. Wildcats everywhere will delight in McNamee’s celebration of the people, places, learning, books, and pastimes that have distinguished our school.

Synopsis:

When old secrets catch fire, everything will burn.

In a mortal world colonized by the gods and ruled over by the Descended, their cruel offspring, Diem Bellator yearns to escape the insular life of her poor village.

Her mother’s sudden disappearance—and the discovery of a dangerous secret about her past—offer Diem an unexpected opportunity to enter the dark world of Descended royalty and unlock the web of mysteries her mother left behind.

With the dying King’s handsome, mysterious heir watching her every move, and a ruthless mortal alliance recruiting her to join the growing civil war, Diem will have to navigate the unwritten rules of love, power, and politics in order to save her family—and all of mortalkind.

Synopsis:

John Sackville will soon be dead. Shadows writhe in the corners of his cell as he mourns the death of his secret lover and the gnawing hunger inside him grows impossible to ignore.

He must write his last testament before it is too late.

It is a story steeped in history and myth – a journey from stone circles in Scotland, to the barren wilderness of Ukraine where otherworldly creatures stalk the night, ending in the icy peaks of Tibet and Mongolia, where an ancient evil stirs . .