White Cat takes place in a fantasy version of America where certain people called “curse workers” have the ability to do magic on other people by touching their bare skin. Everyone wears gloves to protect against curses. It’s illegal to perform curse magic, so most curse workers keep their skills secret since they are met with fear and suspicion. This creates an underworld of curse workers that is populated by powerful and mob-like families. Cassel, the main character, feels like an outsider because he’s the only one in his family of notorious criminals who is not a curse worker.

Cassel tries to break away from his criminal family and blend in at his boarding school, but he’s haunted by dreams of a white cat and memories of things that he’s sure never happened. His paranoia grows when he finds out that his family is keeping secrets from him. His brother is a curse worker who can influence thoughts and alter memories, so Cassel can’t even trust his own mind.

I thought the world of White Cat was fascinating, and the twists and turns in the story had me hooked. Cassel is a great character and I loved seeing him struggle to balance his “normal” life with his criminal tendencies. White Cat is the first book in the Curse Workers trilogy and I think they get even better with each book. The audio book version is also excellent and is read by actor Jesse Eisenberg from Zombieland and The Social Network.

Faye is a young woman who is a traveler which means she can go to another place in an instant. Her power is raw and grows every day, but she lives isolated on a farm until the war between the two secret organizations comes to her with tragic results. Suddenly she is in the city to discover who is behind the secret organizations and find revenge.

The war is intensifying and both Jake and Faye are about to be swept up and thrown into the fight in Hard Magic is Book I of the Grimnoir Chronicles. This is a new series by Larry Correia that takes place in an alternate 1930’s that is filled with action, guns, and magic. Spellbound is Book II of the Grimnoir Chronicles which continues the war and discovers a danger behind the magic.

Baker-turned-painter Lucien Lessard grew up around his father’s friends — Monet, Renoir, Pissaro, Cezanne. Now Lucien, with his friend Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, are questioning the circumstances surrounding their fellow painter Vincent Van Gogh’s apparent suicide. The best painters in the art work of late 19th century Paris seemed to be plagued by troubles and haunted by a particularly strange salesman of pigments,  and a very captivating woman in blue.

Sacre Bleu is Moore at his strange, fantastic, witty and sarcastic best – bringing history alive through quirky characterizations, mystical mystery and hilarious dialogue. The blue text started to freak me out — I was watching over my shoulder for the Colorman. Gorgeous illustrations with witty captions were a visual treat!

Sacre Bleu: a Comedy d’Art by Christopher Moore

There was a price for the Feierabend’s good fortune and one of the sisters was going to have to pay it. Will is determined to save her from her fate but his only link to the truth was a fairy tale from the Brothers Grimm. In The Uncertain Places by Lisa Goldstein an age old bargain feeds and haunts a family and Will must tread into a supernatural world that isn’t suppose to exist.

Listen now, download the mp3, or subscribe to “Hush: a podcast from your library” through iTunes.

Steampunk – the books, the movies, the genre, the sub-culture

Our guest this episode is Susan Schafer, Public Services Specialist to talk about the genre of Steampunk. Susan also presented on this topic for the Celebrate the Book Reader’s Advisory Conference in November 2011.

As Cherie Priest says “steampunk is what the past would have looked like if the future had happened sooner.”

Books and Movies mentioned

• Wild Wild West television series and movie
• H.G. Wells
• Jules Verne
• Back to the Future III 
• Infernal Devices by KW Jeter
• Queen Victoria’s Bomb by Ronald Clark
• Anubis Gates by Tim Powers
• The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling
• The Leviathan series by Scott Westerfeld
• Clockwork Century series by Cherie Priest, first book is Boneshaker
• Parasol Protectorate series by Gail Carriger
• New Crobuzon series by China Mieville
• Aurorarama by Jean-Christophe Valtat
• Burton and Swinburne  presents series by Mark Hodder, start with The Strange Affair of Spring-Heeled Jack
• The Half-Made World by Felix Gilman
• Steampunk and Steampunk II by Jeff and Ann VanderMeer
• Steampunk Bible by Jeff VanderMeer
• Airborn by Kenneth Oppel
• Steamed by Katie McAllister
• Iron Duke by Meljean Brook
• The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. the complete series
• The Prestige
• Three Musketeers (newest movie version)
• etsy.com for corsets, goggles, Victorian clothing, modified Steampunk things
• Steamcon
• Steampunk Scholar
• Steampunk Tribune
• Clockwork Dolls
• Abney Park
• Stormdancer by Jay Kristoff (forthcoming)

Your turn to talk

If you have questions, comments or suggestions for future topics please comment on our blog post or send us an email at asktscpl@tscpl.org

Some in the Free Cities would like to escape before war arrives. Young Cithrin, disguised as a man, tries to smuggle out the gold into a safer area. Then there is Marcus, a former soldier who the authorities would like to impress into the army, but he is willing to go to extraordinary lengths to evade the service.

The troops and the nobility of the Sacred Throne prepare for war, but that doesn’t stop the threat of assassination or the intrigue. Young and inexperienced, Geder is tormented by the other officers, but instead of destroying him he becomes much more dangerous.

The Dragon’s Path by Daniel Abraham is the first book in the series The Dagger and The Coin which promises to be an epic fantasy with intense world building and complexity. Multiple characters tell their stories creating numerous story lines that don’t intersect even in this first book. Abraham is also the author of the popular Long Price Quartet.

Guardians of Havenshire

For a thousand years, the Guardians protected Havenshire from all evil. Now, the Dark One comes. After an epic battle, the king and most of the Guardians lie dead. The few surviving Guardians with the young Prince Roman flee to Riverway. From Riverway, the Guardians frantically search for the fabled city of Haven. They believe Have holds the key to finally defeating the Dark One. Now, the Dark One nears Riverway. The People of Riverway rush to build defenses. The Guardians race to Haven hoping to save Riverway. Will Riverway withstand the Dark One’s onslaught? Can the Guardians reach Haven in time? Or will the fall of Riverway mark the end of the Guardians and all Havenshire?

George Feliu moved to Kansas in 2000 when he married his wife, Sarah. They then spent five years in New York before returning to Kansas. He participated in NaNoWriMo here at the Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library and wrote his first novel. Guardians of Havenshire is his second novel and was published in May, 2011. Additional novels are set to be published in 2012.

To find out more about NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) check out www.nanowrimo.org.

A book signing will follow the author talk. For more information please call the Topeka Room at 785-580-4510.

*Book description provided by the author.

This is the first book in a madcap series featuring Thursday by Jasper Fforde. The world in this series is similar to our own, but there are some big differences like Time Travel is just another part of Special Operations or that England is still fighting the Crimean War. Characters of books can step outside their novels and readers can slip into them. With humor, sarcasm, and the unexpected, this series is a fun trip through literature and a time bending adventure. There are six books in the series with the latest being One of Our Thursdays is Missing.

Sir Richard Francis Burton, the famous explorer, and his assistant Algernon Charles Swinburne, the poet, are hired to investigate the werewolves and Spring Heeled Jack. It’s not going to be that easy especially since Burton is now a man of two destinies- the one he’s known for in history and this other new dangerous life.

In The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack by Mark Hodder famous figures from the past suddenly have entirely different lives and histories. This novel adroitly moves the characters into their new roles in history as it is finally revealed what happened to change history. This is the first in a new series featuring Burton and Swinburne. The book that follows is The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man, with The Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon due out in January 2012.

This 2011 winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award is so many things- noir, urban, fantasy, and science fiction. It’s a wild ride about Zinzi December, a woman with a past and a sloth on her back- literally. In this alternate world those who have committed murder find themselves with an animal familiar. The animal is always nearby, and it’s hard to make it when the world sees your guilt, but Zinzi has a magical skill: finding missing items that can make her very useful at times.

Finding things is her specialty, not people, but hard times and bad luck changed Zinzi’s mind when she’s offered a job with lots of money involved. The job is also dangerous as Zinzi must find a missing teen pop star, especially when the fact the pop star’s disappearance must be kept a secret. Zinzi must weave her way through the streets of Johannesburg, South Africa returning to her old haunts before her own fall and the appearance of the sloth. Zoo City by Lauren Beukes is edgy with a constant feel of danger and yet Zinzi somehow manages to have her own running commentary and observations about life.