Publishers Weekly – July 29, 2019

® REVIEWS

54aBOOKLIFE, JULY 29, 2019

Fiction

All the Lonely People

Jess Riley. CreateSpace, $10.98 trade paper

(274p) ISBN 978-1-4801-0006-0

Riley (Mandatory Release) creates a

standout character in the sad, funny, irrev-

erent Jaime Collins, who posts an online ad

for a replacement family with which to

share Christmas. Jaime’s Thanksgiving at

her brother’s house was a disaster. Her

mother had recently died of ovarian cancer;

her father has been absent for decades; and

her brother Clint’s “kinder moments have

become about as rare and real as Yeti sight-

ings.” Their sister Gwen wasn’t even

present—she has always been an ice

queen—and the holiday finally fails when

Clint orders Jaime from his home. Jaime

doesn’t feel quite like she and her husband,

Erik, comprise a proper family because they

have no children, and so she places an online

ad seeking lonely people who wish to share

Christmas dinner. The responses are mixed,

but she chooses a diverse group of four to

share the holiday meal at a local restaurant:

the widow Evelyn; the transgender Chris;

Paul, “nuttier than your Uncle Pete and

entertaining as hell”; and grad student

Alyssa. Though they range in age and life-

style, they get along. The pain of Jaime’s

losses is profound, but this comic tragedy

is saturated with humor, which ranges from

slapstick to acerbically witty. Riley’s page-

turner is equally touching and laugh-out-

loud funny.

Anne and Louis: Passion and Poli-

tics in Early Renaissance France

Rozsa Gaston. Renaissance Editions, $14.95

trade paper (368p) ISBN 978-0-9847906-8-5

Gaston’s elegant second addition to the

Anne of Brittany series (after Anne and

Charles) continues in 1498 with Anne and

Louis building a life together after Charles’s

death—developing their marriage and

personal ambitions as their alliances and

conflicts with rivals play out. The story

begins when 21-year-old Anne, Duchess of

Brittany and King Charles VIII of France’s

widow, returns to her beloved duchy as its

sole ruler while Louis XII inherits the

throne. Popularly regarded as temperate

and sensible, Anne takes a pilgrimage

through her realm, noting the rising middle

class and its potential: she appoints middle

class administrators of Brittany’s thriving

sailcloth industry (not nobility) and begins

a revenue-building modernization of trade.

She and Louis marry after a controversial

annulment from his barren wife; wisely,

Anne requires a marriage contract so as to

protect her rights. She is intimately

involved in the enlightenment of her noble-

women, and uses finely honed match-

making skills to arrange their political mar-

riages to protect French interests.

Meanwhile, Louis is fixated on another

Italian military campaign (Charles had

tried and failed), which Gaston embellishes

with the colorful Cesare Borgia, illegiti-

mate son of the pope, and Machiavelli. With

smart characters and sweeping descriptions

of Brittany, Gaston takes readers on a mem-

orable adventure to the French Renaissance.

Beneath the Fallen City

(Omni Towers #1)

Jamie A. Waters. Jamie A. Waters, $12.99

trade paper (374p) ISBN 978-0-9996647-0-4

Waters builds this dystopian survival

novel around a reckless, talented heroine

who’s deeply loyal to those she loves. A dev-

astating nuclear war left huge swaths of land

uninhabitable. About 150 years later, “ruin

rats” like Kayla are hired by the wealthy,

who survived in self-contained towers and

boast psionic powers, to fetch relics of the

past from the ruins that litter the landscape.

Though she’s a talented scavenger, Kayla

doesn’t think she’s anything special, until a

chance encounter with representatives from

the OmniLab towers reveals that she’s the

lost child of a powerful family. Her world is

turned upside down as she is dragged from

the life she knows into the politics and

power plays of the tower elite. The ensuing

love triangle with a snooty tower scion and

a rough-edged artifact trader feels a little

forced at times, but fans of postapocalyptic

tales will appreciate the details of the

unusual setting. This clever story will draw

plenty of fans.

The Bug Hunter

Ken Davenport. Ken Davenport, $11.99 trade

paper (276p) ISBN 978-1-797971-64-3

In 2020, viticulturist and CIA recruit

Gabriel Marx, the hero of this tense thriller

from Davenport (The Two Gates), and

Adnan Mishner, an American Egyptian

entomologist, are in Afghanistan as part of

a U.S. effort to “develop insect-borne patho-

gens to combat bioterrorism and to ulti-

mately develop an offensive capability.”

Their efforts bear fruit when they create

genetically altered thrips, tiny insects that

carry a virus fatal to poppy plants, which

devastate the Taliban’s poppy fields. Six

years later, Marx is working for a winery,

but he’s pulled back into government work

after Americans start dying from a myste-

rious new illness. CDC investigators ascer-

tain that the victims all consumed orange

juice made from a particular batch of fruit,

and are horrified to discover that an altered

Mediterranean fruit fly was used to infect

the oranges with botulinum toxin. Marx is

unaware that Mishner, who has become

radicalized and is working with ISIS, is

behind that bio-attack—and that worse

ones are planned. Marx’s digging reveals an

even greater threat to the nation’s food

supply, and he works desperately with his

allies in law-enforcement to avert disaster.

Davenport keeps the science jargon-free and

accessible. This nail-biter doesn’t pull any

punches.

Empire of the Goddess

Matthew Warner. MW Publications, $9.99

trade paper (392p) ISBN 978-1-79823-795-3

Warner’s tale of a dystopian parallel

Earth run by religious fanatics is quick-

paced and intriguing, though sometimes

it’s a bit gimmicky. Thomas Dylan is dev-

astated when his four-year-old son is kid-

napped. A year later, Thomas discovers

what happened to his son when he is simi-

larly taken from Earth and brought to an

alternate Earth called Terra. Here, the citi-

zens of the Imperial Patriotic States (a par-

allel America) suffer from sin—various

diseases and ailments—and it is through

the sacrifice of human “lambs” from Earth

that citizens are healed. Thomas is rescued,

along with another lamb, Lily, by Andrew,

a radical, messianic leader whose healing

ability doesn’t require a lamb to be sacri-

ficed. Eventually, Thomas convinces

Andrew to subvert the priesthood’s power

by doing healings without charging his

patients. As Andrew becomes lost in the

notion that he is the Conquistador who will