Dark Days Make Me Happy

I love the gloom of a Pacific Northwest Winter. Grey skies just fill my soul with happiness. Don;t get me wrong. I enjoy some Winter sunshine, too, but I love the atmosphere of a grey sky: brooding and thoughtful. Perfect for staying at home.

While staying at home the last few days, I read The Dark Days Club by Alison Goodman.

Publisher’s Summary:London, April 1812. On the eve of eighteen-year-old Lady Helen Wrexhall’s presentation to the queen, one of her family’s housemaids disappears-and Helen is drawn into the shadows of Regency London. There, she meets Lord Carlston, one of the few who can stop the perpetrators: a cabal of demons infiltrating every level of society. Dare she ask for his help, when his reputation is almost as black as his lingering eyes? And will her intelligence and headstrong curiosity wind up leading them into a death trap?

This wonderful  blend of Regency romance and dark fantasy was the  perfect read after Christmas. I lost myself in the familiar historical setting and enjoyed the fantastic twists Goodman included. She has created a complex fantasy world without being onerous.

I’m not sure how I missed this one. It was published in January and I have only just heard about it. My timing, however, seems to have served me well. The sequel, The Dark Days Pact,  is due for publication on January 31, 2017, so I don’t have to wait long to find out what happens to Lady Helen following the climactic events at the end of the first book.

Another “last” on my TBR pile

Looking through the archives of this blog, I realize I’ve never written about Catherine Jinks’ Bogle books. Well, the last book, The Last Bogler,  is now out,

so it is about time I talk about the series, which opened with How to Catch a Bogle.

Which was followed by  A Plague of Bogles.

The three-part series is sort of a Ghostbusters set in Dickensian England. In the first book, we  meet Birdie McAdam, a ten-year-old orphan, who is proud of her job as apprentice to Alfred the Bogler, a man who catches monsters for a living. Birdie lures the bogles out of their lairs with her sweet songs, and Alfred kills them before they kill her. On the mean streets of Victorian England, hunting bogles is actually less dangerous work than mudlarking for scraps along the vile river Thames. Or so it seems—until the orphans of London start to disappear . Book two focuses more on Jem Barabary, a minor character in the first book.  According to descriptions, book three centers on  Ned Roach who becomes a bogler’s apprentice, and works with Birdie, Jem and Alfred to rid London of bogles once and for all.

As I was looking for pictures of the books, I learned that the Bogle series is known as the City of Orphans series elsewhere in the world and the book also have different titles (A Very Unusual Pursuit, A Very Peculiar Plague, and A Very Singular Guild)  with very different covers.

 

No matter where you live or what they are called, this is a fun series that upper elementary readers will enjoy.

An eerie tale

Like many teachers, I dislike Halloween. It makes teaching difficult for the days leading up to the holiday and, for days following, there is the candy issue. I also dislike the scariness factor.I have never liked scary stories, or too much graphic nastiness, and Halloween brings out the worst aspect of this.

So I approached The Nest,  written by Kenneth Oppel and illustrated by Jon Klassen, with great caution.

It is a short chapter book that is more eerie than scary, and that is Ok with me, though I still only read such books early in the day, or listen to them in the car. I did a bit of both with The Nest in part because I wanted to enjoy Klassen’s illustrations along with the text.

Publisher’s summary:Steve just wants to save his baby brother—but what will he lose in the bargain? This is a haunting gothic tale for fans of Coraline, from acclaimed author Kenneth Oppel (Silverwing, The Boundless) with illustrations from Caldecott Medalist Jon Klassen.

For some kids summer is a sun-soaked season of fun. But for Steve, it’s just another season of worries. Worries about his sick newborn baby brother who is fighting to survive, worries about his parents who are struggling to cope, even worries about the wasp’s nest looming ominously from the eaves. So when a mysterious wasp queen invades his dreams, offering to “fix” the baby, Steve thinks his prayers have been answered.

All he has to do is say “Yes.” But “yes” is a powerful word. It is also a dangerous one. And once it is uttered, can it be taken back?

This book is terrifying, but not scary in the way I hate. If you are loping for a short read to set the mood for Halloween, I highly recommend The Nest.