Snowflakes and Spider Silk

Title: The Night Circus Author:  Erin Morgenstern Genre: Magical realism, fantasy, historical fiction My rating: 5 of 5 stars Goodreads Summary: The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it, no paper notices plastered on lampposts and billboards. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within these nocturnal black-and-white striped tents awaits an utterly unique, a feast for the senses, where one can get lost in a maze of clouds, meander through a lush garden made of ice, stare in wonderment as the tattooed contortionist folds herself into a small glass box, and become deliciously tipsy from the scents of caramel and cinnamon that waft through the air. Welcome to Le Cirque des Rêves. Beyond the smoke and mirrors, however, a fierce competition is under way--a contest between two young illusionists, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood to compete in a "game" to which they have been irrevocably bound by their mercurial maste...

Title;  The Lost Author:  Sarah Beth Durst Genre: Science fiction, magical realism, adult fiction My rating: 4 of 5 stars Goodreads Summary : It was only meant to be a brief detour. But then Lauren finds herself trapped in a town called Lost on the edge of a desert, filled with things abandoned, broken and thrown away. And when she tries to escape, impassable dust storms and something unexplainable lead her back to Lost again and again. The residents she meets there tell her she's going to have to figure out just what she's missing--and what she's running from--before she can leave. So now Lauren's on a new search for a purpose and a destiny. And maybe, just maybe, she'll be found... Against the backdrop of this desolate and mystical town, Sarah Beth Durst writes an arresting, fantastical novel of one woman's impossible journey...and her quest to find her fate. This book was surprisingly poignant . I don't really know what I was expecting with ...

Title:  The World Before Us Author:  Aislinn Hunter Genre: Contemporary, magical realism My rating: 3 of 5 stars Goodreads Summary : When she was just fifteen, smart, sensitive Jane Standen lived through a nightmare: she lost the sweet five-year-old girl she was minding during a walk in the woods. The little girl was never found, leaving her family, and Jane, devastated. Now the grown-up Jane is an archivist at a small London museum that is about to close for lack of funding. As her one last project, she is searching the archives for scraps of information related to another missing person--a woman who disappeared some 125 years ago from a Victorian asylum. As the novel moves back and forth between the museum in contemporary London, the Victorian asylum, and a dilapidated country house that seems to connect both missing people, it unforgettably explores the repercussions of small acts, the power of affection, and the irrepressible vitality of everyday objects and even...

Title:  Blue Lily, Lily Blue Author:  Maggie Stiefvater Genre: Young adult, fantasy, magical realism My rating: 4 of 5 stars Goodreads Summary : There is danger in dreaming. But there is even more danger in waking up. Blue Sargent has found things. For the first time in her life, she has friends she can trust, a group to which she can belong. The Raven Boys have taken her in as one of their own. Their problems have become hers, and her problems have become theirs. The trick with found things though, is how easily they can be lost. Friends can betray. Mothers can disappear. Visions can mislead. Certainties can unravel. I think The Dream Thieves is my favorite of the series so far (RONAN) but BLLB was excellent as well. This was the first book of the series that I read on audio, and the narrator did a fantastic job with all the characters. I finally know what a Henrietta accent sounds like! Blue Lily, Lily Blue picks up almost immediately where The Dream Thi...

Title:  Boy, Snow, Bird Author:  Helen Oyeyemi Genre: historical fiction, magical realism, adult fiction, retelling (very loosely) My rating: 3 of 5 stars Goodreads Summary: In the winter of 1953, Boy Novak arrives by chance in a small town in Massachusetts, looking, she believes, for beauty—the opposite of the life she’s left behind in New York. She marries a local widower and becomes stepmother to his winsome daughter, Snow Whitman. A wicked stepmother is a creature Boy never imagined she’d become, but elements of the familiar tale of aesthetic obsession begin to play themselves out when the birth of Boy’s daughter, Bird, who is dark-skinned, exposes the Whitmans as light-skinned African Americans passing for white. Among them, Boy, Snow, and Bird confront the tyranny of the mirror to ask how much power surfaces really hold. Dazzlingly inventive and powerfully moving, Boy, Snow, Bird is an astonishing and enchanting novel. With breathtaking feats of imagination,...

Title:  The Falling Woman Author:  Pat Murphy Genre: (science fiction), magical realism, historical fiction My rating: 3 of 5 stars Goodreads Summary: Winner of the Nebula Award: An archaeologist with a strange power risks death to unlock the secret of the Mayans When night falls over the Yucatan, the archaeologists lay down their tools. But while her colleagues relax, Elizabeth Butler searches for shadows. A famous scientist with a reputation for eccentricity, she carries a strange secret. Where others see nothing but dirt and bones and fragments of pottery, Elizabeth sees shades of the men and women who walked this ground thousands of years before. She can speak to the past—and the past is beginning to speak back. As Elizabeth communes with ghosts, the daughter she abandoned flies to Mexico hoping for a reunion. She finds a mother embroiled in the supernatural, on a quest for the true reason for the Mayans’ disappearance. To dig up the truth, the archaeologist who...

Title:  Bellman & Black: A Ghost Story Author:  Diane Setterfield Genre: literary fiction, historical fiction, paranormal/magical realism My rating: 5 of 5 stars Goodreads Summary: As a boy, William Bellman commits one small, cruel act: killing a bird with his slingshot. Little does he know the unforeseen and terrible consequences of the deed, which is soon forgotten amidst the riot of boyhood games. By the time he is grown, with a wife and children of his own, William seems to be a man blessed by fortune—until tragedy strikes and the stranger in black comes. Then he starts to wonder if all his happiness is about to be eclipsed. Desperate to save the one precious thing he has left, William enters into a rather strange bargain, with an even stranger partner, to found a decidedly macabre business. And Bellman & Black is born. Bellman & Black is a very quiet book. Not much really happens , but that's because it doesn't need to. The story is chilling, ...