Today’s Steals and Deals at AAR…..
AAR’s Steals and Deals usually takes the weekend off. But there are two deals today, I’d hate for you to miss. Enjoy!
I love this book. As I wrote in my DIK review:
What was Maria Vale, she of the incredible shifter series The Legend of All Wolves, thinking? Who decides to make Azrael, the angel of death, an awkward and surprisingly, given his immortality, clueless romance hero? And to have him fall for his second (since the beginning of time) mistake, a mouthy, part-time stripper who struggles to pay the bills? It’s a mystery but whatever inspired Vale to write this gem of a story, all I can say is I’m damn glad she did.
As our story begins, Azrael has spent the past two hundred thousand years ushering the dead into the next stage which, somewhat off puttingly, involves their souls put through Mangles and being transformed into more or less nothingness. And lest you wonder–and I think Santa should use this trick–how one angel has managed to process the 108.234 billion people who have died since the beginning of time, Death has the ability to stop time.
In all the eons Death (the supernatural set calls him Ragpicker) has been at his job–he doesn’t really like it or the supernatural beings he reports to–he’s never been seen by a human. But, on the day he goes to collect the Rag or soul of a human with the last name of Molloy, he errs. Not only does he take the wrong one, the human whose soul he was supposed to (literally) pocket can see him–he’s inadvertently saved her from death by flaming hot chicken wing–and chats him up.
Death now has a problem. Molly, he explains to her, is supposed to be dead. Molly, understandably, would prefer to remain in the land of the living. And though Death knows he’s supposed to send Molly’s soul to be Mangled, he just can’t quite bring himself to. Initially, she’s just so entertaining–his life is one of solitude interspersed with angry lectures from his superiors. However, given time which Death has in spades (In the supernatural world, there is no such thing as time–in fact, there is a running well done joke about his peers inability to understand tense that anyone who’s ever struggled with high school Latin will love.) he, like the reader, finds himself falling head over immortal form for Molly Molloy.
It’s on sale today for 0.99 here.
I, and many others, picked this roundhouse punch of a novel by the great Denis Lehane as one of my top reads of 2023. It’s amazing. (To better understand its genesis, read this interview with the author at Shondaland.)
Here’s the blurb:
The acclaimed New York Times bestselling writer returns with a masterpiece to rival Mystic River—an all-consuming tale of revenge, family love, festering hate, and insidious power, set against one of the most tumultuous episodes in Boston’s history.
In the summer of 1974 a heatwave blankets Boston and Mary Pat Fennessy is trying to stay one step ahead of the bill collectors. Mary Pat has lived her entire life in the housing projects of “Southie,” the Irish American enclave that stubbornly adheres to old tradition and stands proudly apart.
One night Mary Pat’s teenage daughter Jules stays out late and doesn’t come home. That same evening, a young Black man is found dead, struck by a subway train under mysterious circumstances.
The two events seem unconnected. But Mary Pat, propelled by a desperate search for her missing daughter, begins turning over stones best left untouched—asking questions that bother Marty Butler, chieftain of the Irish mob, and the men who work for him, men who don’t take kindly to any threat to their business.
Set against the hot, tumultuous months when the city’s desegregation of its public schools exploded in violence, Small Mercies is a superb thriller, a brutal depiction of criminality and power, and an unflinching portrait of the dark heart of American racism. It is a mesmerizing and wrenching work that only Dennis Lehane could write.
It’s on sale for 2.99 here.