The Handmaid’s Tale
Paperback | Kindle | Audiobook
By Margaret Atwood
Publisher: Anchor Books | Penguin Random House
Release Date: December 31, 2013

Offred is a Handmaid, whose only purpose is to live a simple holy life in the household, and procreate with the Commander and his wife. In this new dystopian society that had overthrown the government, women have no rights and men have few as well. Well, men had more than most, but really only the rich ones. Offred is allowed to shop, but may only exchange minimal words with her shop partner. She was trained for this. The only place Offred can be herself is in her mind and her memories and even she second guesses herself doing that. When the Commander starts breaking the rules, Offred begins to remember what “before” was like, and the power of women.

Check out what my book club thought about The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood.

Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles: An Alphabettery
Paperback | Kindle
Compiled and written by Becket
Introduction by Anne Rice
Publisher: Anchor Books
Release Date: October 23, 2018

I have long been a fan of Anne Rice because of the way she blends the supernatural or preternatural with the sensual or suggestive. This sense of familiarity binds the characters together in such a way that we, as readers, are enabled to see the similarities in people and places rather than the differences. In Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles: An Alphabettery we get a full frontal view of this concept without reservation. Read on to find out more!

Meddling Kids: A Novel
Hardcover | Paperback | Kindle | Audiobook
By Edgar Cantero
Publisher: Anchor Books | Blumhouse Books
Paperback Release date: May 29, 2018

Every summer, four young friends and their dog would return to their vacation spot in Blyton Hills, a small mining town in Oregon, to reconvene the “Blyton Summer Detective Club,” where they would have fun together while investigating unsolved local crimes. But in the summer of 1977, the teen detectives tackled their biggest and final mystery — the case of the Sleepy Lake Monster, and the consequences of their discovery left them traumatized. In Meddling Kids, author Edgar Cantero channels Scooby-Doo mysteries for a Lovecraftian tale that sees the gang reuniting 13 years later to venture back to Blyton Hills to figure out what really happened that day they unmasked the “monster.”

Ramses the Damned: The Passion of Cleopatra
Ramses The Damned #2
Paperback | Kindle | Audiobook
By Anne Rice & Christopher Rice
Publisher: Anchor Books
Release Date: November 21, 2017

The Mummy, or Ramses the Damned is my favorite of all things Anne Rice. For almost thirty years, I have loved that novel. The elegance and horror that exist side by side on those pages embodies everything I look for in a book. In no way is it the perfect example of any particular writing style or genre; instead it is a spectacular balance of the greatness that is needed to create a classical work of prose.

So you can only begin to imagine how ecstatic I was to learn that Rice was reviving these characters for a new release titled Ramses the Damned: The Passion of Cleopatra. This was to be a dream come true, literally (pun intended).