Good Morning, Readers!

Welcome to the first Monday in May! Summer is just right around the corner and I wish it was fall. I enjoy cooler weather a lot more than warm weather. I find that I may get a tad grouchy when it’s too hot outside.

This week I’m going to read a novella from one of my favorite authors, an arc that I received from the publisher, and a Bookish Box book.

What are you reading this week?

Legacy: An Off-Color Novella For You To Color- Chuck Palahniuk

IN HIS FIRST LONG-FORM FICTION since Beautiful You in 2014, the New York Times bestselling author of Fight Club and Chokedelivers another biting social satire in this riches-to-rags novella! With beautiful colorable illustrations by Steve Morris (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), who worked on Palahnuik’s Bait: Off-Color Stories for You to Color, and Mike Norton (Revival, Battlepug), and a cover by another Bait collaborator, Duncan Fegredo (Hellboy), Legacy pushes the readers’ boundaries while challenging their creative side through its visionary and twisted colorable imagery.

An amoral investment banker named Vincent receives an inheritance promising immortality. Unfortunately for Vincent, to obtain immortality he has to contend with a flame-retardant stripper, a ruthless stalker, and a bloodthirsty horde of aspiring immortals dead set in their desire to separate Vincent from his destiny.

Malibu Rising- Taylor Jenkins Reid

Malibu: August 1983. It’s the day of Nina Riva’s annual end-of-summer party, and anticipation is at a fever pitch. Everyone wants to be around the famous Rivas: Nina, the talented surfer and supermodel; brothers Jay and Hud, one a championship surfer, the other a renowned photographer; and their adored baby sister, Kit. Together the siblings are a source of fascination in Malibu and the world over–especially as the offspring of the legendary singer Mick Riva.

The only person not looking forward to the party of the year is Nina herself, who never wanted to be the center of attention, and who has also just been very publicly abandoned by her pro tennis player husband. Oh, and maybe Hud–because it is long past time for him to confess something to the brother from whom he’s been inseparable since birth.

Jay, on the other hand, is counting the minutes until nightfall, when the girl he can’t stop thinking about promised she’ll be there.

And Kit has a couple secrets of her own–including a guest she invited without consulting anyone.

By midnight the party will be completely out of control. By morning, the Riva mansion will have gone up in flames. But before that first spark in the early hours before dawn, the alcohol will flow, the music will play, and the loves and secrets that shaped this family’s generations will all come bubbling to the surface.

Malibu Rising is a story about one unforgettable night in the life of a family: the night they each have to choose what they will keep from the people who made them . . . and what they will leave behind.

The Initial Insult- Mindy McGinnis

Welcome to Amontillado, Ohio, where your last name is worth more than money, and secrets can be kept… for a price.

Tress Montor knows that her family used to mean something—until she didn’t have a family anymore. When her parents disappeared seven years ago while driving her best friend home, Tress lost everything. She might still be a Montor, but the entire town shuns her now that she lives with her drunken, one-eyed grandfather at what locals refer to as the “White Trash Zoo,” – a wild animal attraction featuring a zebra, a chimpanzee, and a panther, among other things.

Felicity Turnado has it all – looks, money, and a secret that she’s kept hidden. She knows that one misstep could send her tumbling from the top of the social ladder, and she’s worked hard to make everyone forget that she was with the Montors the night they disappeared. Felicity has buried what she knows so deeply that she can’t even remember what it is… only that she can’t look at Tress without having a panic attack.

But she’ll have to.

Tress has a plan. A Halloween costume party at an abandoned house provides the ideal situation for Tress to pry the truth from Felicity – brick by brick – as she slowly seals her former best friend into a coal chute. With a drunken party above them, and a loose panther on the prowl, Tress will have her answers – or settle for revenge.

In the first book of this duology, award-winning author Mindy McGinnis draws inspiration from Edgar Allan Poe and masterfully delivers a dark, propulsive mystery in alternating points of view that unravels a friendship… forevermore.