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To celebrate February 14 we selected Fourteen for February: Trade Paperback Picks

Plus Mass Markets and Staff Picks

To see our Picks, please click here

To see our January and  Picks, please click here,

then check out each club for what it offers and the new Picks

To join a book club, email sales@poisonedpen.com

Unsigned Hardcovers: click here

Signed Hardcovers, click here

Trade Paperbacks, click here

Mass Market Paperbacks, click here

Although these two novels tell stories set a millennium apart they are in fact similar: tales of two women facing change, challenge, disaster, with courage. Will either make a difference to their culture?

Bracewell, Patricia. Shadow on the Crown (Viking $28).

Starts a trilogy about a Norman princess who becomes a queen. In 1002, 15-year-oldEmma of Normandy crosses the Channel to wed the much older King Athelred of England, whom she meets for the first time at the church door. Thrust into an unfamiliar and treacherous court, with a husband who mistrusts her, stepsons who resent her and a bewitching rival who covets her crown, Emma must defend herself against her enemies and secure her status as queen by bearing a son. Determined to outmaneuver her adversaries, Emma forges alliances with influential men at court and wins the affection of the English people. But her growing love for a man who is not her husband and the imminent threat of a Viking invasion jeopardize both her crown and her life. 

Based on real events recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. And forbidden love is always enthralling, no?

Nayeri, Dina. A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea (Riverhead $28).

The publisher who brought you The Kite Runner, a Modern Firsts Club Pick back in the day (new book from Hosseini in May and no, we don't know if we can get signed copies yet), gives it another shot.

PW weighs in: "This ambitious novel set in northern Iran in the decade after the 1979 revolution contains not a teaspoon but a ton of history, imagination, and longing. Beginning with the 1981 disappearance of 11-year-old Saba Hafezi's twin sister, Mahtab, and their mother, Khanom, Nayeri interweaves Saba's family trauma as seen through the eyes of the women of her seaside village, along with fantasies about Mahtab's teenage fascination with everything American, shared by her friends Reza and Ponneh. Saba loves Reza, but allows herself to be married off to old Abbas Hossein Abbas, expecting to eventually gain freedom by becoming a rich widow. The characters' dreams are shattered, however....

"Nayeri's debut is, "The sort of embracing and embraceable culturally far-reaching fiction Riverhead does best."-LJ.  Kirkus adds, "It takes a village full of sometimes odd, sometimes ordinary people to afford Saba the wherewithal to realize her dreams, which take her far, far from there. Lyrical, humane and hopeful; a welcome view of the complexities of small-town life, in this case in a place that inspires fear instead of sympathy."

Kovacs, Ed. Good Junk (St Martins $26).

A novel I recommend gets this review in the NY Times:

"Ed Kovacs owes a lot to Hurricane Katrina. Picking up from his novel Storm Damage, a 2011 First Mystery Club Pick, Good Junk finds the fractured city of New Orleans struggling to put itself back together a year after the storm....the scenes of New Orleans are rich and real. Kovacs's hopeless, elegiac vision of the city is touching, and his quick studies of hidden landmarks like the outré bar in the French Quarter that calls itself Pravda, and Pampy's, a purveyor of soul food to politicians, are written with true affection and terrific humor." 

Former cop Cliff St James gets himself assigned to a wicked case as a private investigator and what with martial arts and murders, the plot rocks along. 

The characters, the arc of St. James' story outside and inside the NOPD, and the verve of the writing make this variant on the private eye novel a real mid-winter lift.

THE REST OF OUR FEBRUARY EVENTS

MONDAY FEBRUARY 18 7:00 PM

Maureen Jennings signs Beware This Boy (McClelland $23) Shropshire 1940 plus possible Bomb Girls preview

WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 20 7:00 PM

Deborah Crombie signs The Sound of Broken Glass (Morrow $26) Kincaid/James

MONDAY FEBRUARY 25 7:00 PM

John Joseph Adams/Diana Gabaldon sign The Mad Scientist's Guide to World Domination: Stories (Forge $26). Also in trade paper: see Event Books

TUESDAY FEBRUARY 26 Book Launch Party 7:00 PM

Dana Stabenow Launch Party

Dana signs Bad Blood (St Martins $26) Kate Shugak #20 and a 20^th Anniversary Mug with coffee beans ($24.95)

WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 27 7:00 PM

Sara J Henry signs A Cold and Lonely Place (Crown $24) Troy Chance

THURSDAY FEBRUARY 28 7:00 PM

The Hardboiled Crime Club reads Karin Fossum's Broken ($14)

Sat. March 2: Kent Harrington

Mon. March 4: Keith McCafferty

I am a longtime fan of the Canadian author who has written a variety of literate, unusual, moving novels of (romantic) suspense. See the February Booknews for a rerelease of Marianna. 

Her publisher is holding a contest to determine which five bookstores she visits in June with her new novel, The Firebird (Source Books $17).

To vote for us, please click here

Confirmation that bones discovered under a parking lot in Leicester has sparked over more than one debate. and recalls for many of Josephine Tey's  mystery classic, The Daughter of Time ($16).

Elizabeth Peters also sided with the Ricardians, those who reject Shakespeare's portrait of King Richard, in The Murders of Richard III ($9.99)

To read about the discovery and ensuing controversy over where to rebury the king, please click here

To read about Tey, even Hitchcock, and other history, please click here

On Wednesday 13 March 2013 John Grisham will be at the US Embassy talking about his novel A Time to Kill on World Book Club.

We need questions to be emailed from outside Britain and if you're in the UK we need guests to be part of the audience at the US Embassy, Grosvenor Square, London at 5pm for a 6pm recording (UK time) 

Please only request a place at this recording if you know that you will definitely attend.  Send in the names of anyone who would like a ticket.  Your name(s) will then be submitted to the Embassy who will send out an official invitation by email. 

Please do also send in your question for John Grisham to worldbookclub@bbc.co.uk 

Best wishes,

BBC World Book Club

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p003jhsk