Tuesday, January 10, 2017

Top Ten Tuesday: 2016 Releases I Failed To Read


Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This week’s topic is top ten 2016 releases I meant to read, but didn’t. I totally planned on reading these books when I put them on my TBR list. The problem is that I like to buy books, and I haven’t found dirt-cheap copies of these yet.


2016 Releases I Meant To Read







The Long Shadow of Small Ghosts: Murder and Memory in an American City – Laura Tillman

On March 11, 2003, in Brownsville, Texas—one of America’s poorest cities—John Allen Rubio and Angela Camacho murdered their three young children. The apartment building in which the brutal crimes took place was already rundown, and in their aftermath a consensus developed in the community that it should be destroyed. It was a place, neighbors felt, that was plagued by spiritual cancer. 
In 2008, journalist Laura Tillman covered the story for The Brownsville Herald. The questions it raised haunted her, particularly one asked by the sole member of the city’s Heritage Council to oppose demolition: is there any such thing as an evil building? Her investigation took her far beyond that question, revealing the nature of the toll that the crime exacted on a city already wracked with poverty. It sprawled into a six-year inquiry into the larger significance of such acts, ones so difficult to imagine or explain that their perpetrators are often dismissed as monsters alien to humanity.






The Butcher’s Hook – Janet Ellis

Anne Jaccob is coming of age, the daughter of a wealthy merchant. When she is taken advantage of by her tutor—a great friend of her father’s—and is set up to marry a squeamish snob named Simeon Onions, she begins to realize just how powerless she is in Georgian society. Anne is watchful, cunning, and bored. 
Her savior appears in the form of Fub, the butcher’s boy. Their romance is both a great spur and an excitement. Anne knows she is doomed to a loveless marriage to Onions and she is determined to escape with Fub and be his mistress. But will Fub ultimately be her salvation or damnation? And how far will she go to get what she wants?






Deceit and Other Possibilities: Stories – Vanessa Hua

From a Hong Kong movie idol fleeing a sex scandal, to an obedient daughter turned Stanford imposter, to a Chinatown elder summoned to his village, to a Korean-American pastor with a secret agenda, the characters in these ten stories vividly illustrate the conflict between self and society, tradition and change.





Salt to the Sea – Ruta Sepetys

As thousands of desperate refugees flock to the coast in the midst of a Soviet advance, four paths converge, vying for passage aboard the Wilhelm Gustloff, a ship that promises safety and freedom. 
Yet not all promises can be kept.






The Smell of Other People’s Houses – Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock

In Alaska, 1970, being a teenager here isn’t like being a teenager anywhere else. Ruth has a secret that she can’t hide forever. Dora wonders if she can ever truly escape where she comes from, even when good luck strikes. Alyce is trying to reconcile her desire to dance, with the life she’s always known on her family’s fishing boat. Hank and his brothers decide it’s safer to run away than to stay home—until one of them ends up in terrible danger.






A Head Full of Ghosts – Paul G. Tremblay

The lives of the Barretts, a normal suburban New England family, are torn apart when fourteen-year-old Marjorie begins to display signs of acute schizophrenia. 
To her parents' despair, the doctors are unable to stop Marjorie's descent into madness. As their stable home devolves into a house of horrors, they reluctantly turn to a local Catholic priest for help. Father Wanderly suggests an exorcism; he believes the vulnerable teenager is the victim of demonic possession. He also contacts a production company that is eager to document the Barretts' plight. With John, Marjorie's father, out of work for more than a year and the medical bills looming, the family agrees to be filmed, and soon find themselves the unwitting stars of The Possession, a hit reality television show. When events in the Barrett household explode in tragedy, the show and the shocking incidents it captures become the stuff of urban legend.






Marrow Island – Alexis M. Smith

Twenty years ago Lucie Bowen left Marrow Island; along with her mother, she fled the aftermath of an earthquake that compromised the local refinery, killing her father and ravaging the island’s environment. Now, Lucie’s childhood friend Kate is living within a mysterious group called Marrow Colony—a community that claims to be “ministering to the Earth.” There have been remarkable changes to the land at the colony’s homestead. Lucie’s experience as a journalist tells her there’s more to the Colony—and their charismatic leader—than they want her to know, and that the astonishing success of their environmental remediation has come at great cost to the Colonists themselves. As she uncovers their secrets and methods, will Lucie endanger more than their mission? What price will she pay for the truth?






Mr. Splitfoot – Samantha Hunt
Nat and Rose are young orphans, living in a crowded foster home run by an eccentric religious fanatic. When a traveling con-man comes knocking, they see their chance to escape and join him on the road, proclaiming they can channel the dead—for a price, of course. 
Decades later, in a different time and place, Cora is too clever for her office job, too scared of her abysmal lover to cope with her unplanned pregnancy, and she too is looking for a way out. So when her mute Aunt Ruth pays her an unexpected visit, apparently on a mysterious mission, she decides to join her. 
Together the two women set out on foot, on a strange and unforgettable odyssey across the state of New York. Where is Ruth taking them? Where has she been? And who—or what—has she hidden in the woods at the end of the road?





Nora & Kettle – Lauren Nicolle Taylor

Seventeen-year-old Kettle has had his share of adversity. As an orphaned Japanese American struggling to make a life in the aftermath of the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II and the removal of children from orphanages for having "one drop of Japanese blood in them" things are finally looking up. He has his hideout in an abandoned subway tunnel, a job, and his gang of Lost Boys. 
Desperate to run away, the world outside her oppressive brownstone calls to naive, eighteen-year-old Nora, the privileged daughter of a controlling and violent civil rights lawyer who is building a compensation case for the interned Japanese Americans. But she is trapped, enduring abuse to protect her younger sister Frankie and wishing on the stars every night for things to change. 
For months, they've lived side by side, their paths crossing yet never meeting. But when Nora is nearly killed and her sister taken away, their worlds collide as Kettle, grief stricken at the loss of a friend, angrily pulls Nora from her window. 
In her honeyed eyes, Kettle sees sadness and suffering. In his, Nora sees the chance to take to the window and fly away.




What 2016 release did you fail to read?








20 comments:

  1. There was a lot I didn't get to last year, most of it released before 2016! Gah, I need to be at the top of my reading game this year to get as much read as possible!

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  2. Salt to the Sea was so good!! I totally forgot to add Nora & Kettle to my list!! Hope you get to these all!

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  3. I just added The Butcher's Hook to my TBR, love the sound of it! Thanks for sharing these!

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  4. Salt to the Sea is the only one of these I've read, and Nora & Kettle and The Smell of Other People's Houses are the only others I've heard of.

    This is sort of a grim sounding list, but I guess you knew that! The first book and the exorcism/schizoprenia book sound painful, but fascinating.

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  5. I've been back on forth regarding if I want to read Salt to Sea. I hope you get around to reading some of these!

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  6. I still haven't read Salt to the Sea either! It seems like it has been on my list forever. I hope you enjoy reading these!

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  7. So many books last year and so little time! Also in my case I was not in the mood of reading a lot, I am getting older and I get too tired that when I sit to read I fall sleep 😛

    My TTT.

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  8. Great list! These all sound awesome!
    Krystianna @ Downright Dystopian

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  9. Salt to the sea sounds really interesting and I love the front cover.
    Aleeha xXx
    http://www.halesaaw.com/

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  10. Salt To The Sea was on my list this week too!
    My TTT: https://jjbookblog.wordpress.com/2017/01/10/top-ten-tuesday-91/

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  11. Ohhhhh read Nora & Kettle for SURE! It's a favorite of mine! And Smelly Houses is so good too! I really need to read Salt to the Sea too- I'd have added it to my list, but I fear my list would never have ended haha. Hope you get to read these soon!

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  12. I also failed to read Mr. Splitfoot, even though it's on my Nook. SOON!!!

    The Smell of Other People’s Houses sounds great. And that cover, wow!

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  13. I'm with you...if I can't find a secondhand paper copy or a Kindle sale, it's realllllly hard to buy a book!

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  14. I did enjoy The Smell of Other People's Houses. I have Salt to the Sea and A Head Full of Ghosts at my house and ready to read but haven't got to them yet. I hope you enjoy these when you do get to them.

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  15. I really loved both Salt to the Sea and Nora & Kettle. And I've heard good things about TSoOPH!!

    Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction

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  16. Man, I totally forgot about Mr. Splitfoot and A Head Full of Ghosts. Man, can we redo 2016 - no, I take that back. Definitely don't want to go back there again. Great list and hope you get them read this year!

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  17. Ooooh! I loved Salt to the Sea! I hope you get to read that one soon! Marrow Island has been on my radar but I haven't seen much about it. I'm eagerly awaiting your review!!

    Here are my Top Ten!

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  18. I'm hoping to read Mr. Splitfoot soon, too. :)

    Lauren @ Always Me

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  19. Omg I meant to read Salt to the Sea too...or basically any book by that author?!? I confess the covers never grab me but she's SO highly recommended!! I need to work on this.😂

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  20. There are several on here that I am not familiar with. Bravo for sharing books that I haven't seen a million times!

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