To Read Tuesday – Murder, Mermaids, and Hunters…

To Read Tuesday – Murder, Mermaids, and Hunters…

This week’s to read is another mixed bag. MAY QUEEN MURDERS sounds intriguing, even though the actual description doesn’t give much away. CHANTRESS, which is the first in a series, is set in Tudor England and mixes myth and history, which I am a sucker for. Big bonus is that the rest of the series is almost all out, so if I like it, I won’t have to wait. (I know, I’m impatient.) THE HUNTRESS OF THORNBECK FOREST just looks like a great fairytale mash up, written without magic. I’m hoping its as good as Dickerson’s other retellings, which I have really enjoyed. 

Read any of these? Let me know what you thought!


May Queen Murders – Sarah Jude

Sixteen-year-old Ivy Templeton has lived her entire life in Rowan’s Glen, a remote farming commune in the Missouri Ozarks. She and her cousin Heather are closer than sisters and they share everything with each other—or so Ivy thinks. When Heather goes missing after a May Day celebration, Ivy discovers both her best friend and her community are as full of secrets as the woods that surround them.

Chantress – Amy Butler Greenfield

“Sing, and the darkness will find you.” 

This warning has haunted fifteen-year-old Lucy ever since she was eight and shipwrecked on a lonely island. Lucy’s guardian, Norrie, has lots of rules, but the most important is that Lucy must never sing. Not ever. Now it is 1667, Lucy is fifteen, and on All Hallows’ Eve, Lucy hears a tantalizing melody on the wind. She can’t help but sing—and she is swept into darkness.

When she awakes in England, Lucy hears powerful men discussing Chantresses—women who can sing magic into the world. They are hunting her, but she escapes and finds sanctuary with the Invisible College, an organization plotting to overthrow the nefarious Lord Protector. The only person powerful enough to bring about his downfall is a Chantress. And Lucy is the last one in England.

Lucy struggles to master the song-spells and harness her power, but the Lord Protector is moving quickly. And her feelings for Nat, an Invisible College apprentice and scientist who deeply distrusts her magic, only add to her confusion…

Time is running out, and the fate of England hangs in the balance in this entrancing novel that is atmospheric and lyrical, dangerous and romantic.


The Huntress of Thornbeck Forest – Melanie Dickerson

“Swan Lake” meets Robin Hood when the beautiful daughter of a wealthy merchant by day becomes the region’s most notorious poacher by night, and falls in love with the forester.

Jorgen is the forester for the wealthy margrave, and must find and capture the poacher who has been killing and stealing the margrave’s game. When he meets the lovely and refined Odette at the festival and shares a connection during a dance, he has no idea she is the one who has been poaching the margrave’s game.

Odette justifies her crime of poaching because she thinks the game is going to feed the poor, who are all but starving, both in the city and just outside its walls. But will the discovery of a local poaching ring reveal a terrible secret? Has the meat she thought she was providing for the poor actually been sold on the black market, profiting no one except the ring of black market sellers?

The one person Odette knows can help her could also find out her own secret and turn her over to the margrave, but she has no choice. Jorgen and Odette will band together to stop the dangerous poaching ring . . . and fall in love. But what will the margrave do when he discovers his forester is protecting a notorious poacher?

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