Buongiorno a voi booklovers, ieri era il giorno del Capodanno Cinese 2023, quindi ho pensato di fare un piccolo post di raccomandazioni secondo il segno zodiacale cinese!
I dodici segni sono, con esempi di anni recenti:
- Topo (1984, 1996, 2008, 2020)
- Bue (1985, 1997, 2009, 2021)
- Tigre (1986, 1998, 2010, 2022)
- Coniglio (1987, 1999, 2011, 2023)
- Drago (1988, 2000, 2012)
- Serpente (1989, 2001, 2013)
- Cavallo (1990, 2002, 2014)
- Capra (1991, 2003, 2015)
- Scimmia (1992, 2004, 2016)
- Gallo (1993, 2005, 2017)
- Cane (1994, 2006, 2018)
- Maiale (1995, 2007, 2019)
1. TOPO - ONCE UPON A BROKEN HEART, STEPHANIE GARBER
TRAMA:
How far would you go for happily ever after?
For as long as she can remember, Evangeline Fox has believed in true love and happy endings... until she learns that the love of her life will marry another.
Desperate to stop the wedding and to heal her wounded heart, Evangeline strikes a deal with the charismatic but wicked Prince of Hearts. In exchange for his help, he asks for three kisses, to be given at the time and place of his choosing.
But after Evangeline’s first promised kiss, she learns that bargaining with an immortal is a dangerous game—and that the Prince of Hearts wants far more from her than she’d pledged. He has plans for Evangeline, plans that will either end in the greatest happily ever after or the most exquisite tragedy...
2. BUE - SPELLS FOR FORGETTING, ADRIENNE YOUNG
TRAMA:
A deeply atmospheric story about ancestral magic, an unsolved murder, and a second chance at true love.
Emery Blackwood’s life changed forever the night her best friend was found dead and the love of her life, August Salt, was accused of murdering her. Years later, she is doing what her teenage self swore she never would: living a quiet existence on the misty, remote shores of Saoirse Island and running the family’s business, Blackwood’s Tea Shoppe Herbal Tonics & Tea Leaf Readings.
But when the island, rooted in folklore and magic, begins to show signs of strange happenings, Emery knows that something is coming. The morning she wakes to find that every single tree on Saoirse has turned color in a single night, August returns for the first time in fourteen years and unearths the past that the town has tried desperately to forget.
August knows he is not welcome on Saiorse, not after the night everything changed. As a fire raged on at the Salt family orchard, Lily Morgan was found dead in the dark woods, shaking the bedrock of their tight-knit community and branding August a murderer. When he returns to bury his mother’s ashes, he must confront the people who turned their backs on him and face the one wound from his past that has never healed—Emery.
The town has more than one reason to want August gone, and the emergence of deep betrayals and hidden promises spanning generations threaten to reveal the truth behind Lily’s mysterious death once and for all.
3. TIGRE - NEVERNIGHT, JAY KRISTOFF
TRAMA:
Destinata a distruggere imperi, Mia Corvere ha solo dieci anni quando riceve la sua prima lezione sulla morte. Sei anni dopo, la bambina cresciuta tra le ombre si avvia a mantenere la promessa che ha fatto il giorno in cui ha perso tutto. Ma le possibilità di sconfiggere nemici così potenti sono davvero esili, e Mia è costretta a trasformarsi in un'arma implacabile. Deve mettersi alla prova tra i nemici - e gli amici - più letali, e sopravvivere alla protezione di assassini, mentitori e demoni, nel cuore stesso di una setta dedita all'omicidio. La Chiesa Rossa non è una scuola come le altre, ma neanche Mia è una studentessa come le altre. Le ombre la amano. Si nutrono della sua paura.
4. CONIGLIO - THESE VIOLENT DELIGHTS, CHLOE GONG
TRAMA:
These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong is an incredible retelling of Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare, set in the 1920’s, in a Shanghai partially controlled by different European foreigners and by the White Flowers, a gang ruled by the austere Lord Montagov, constituted of Russian descendants and refugees of the 1917 revolution; and partially ruled by Lord Cai and the autochthonous people that make up the Scarlet Gang.
In 1926, a monster awakens in the waters of the Huangpu river. A contagious madness floods the crowded streets of the city, jumping from person to person and causing them to gash at their throats with their own nails until they bleed to death. Rivals and heirs to their respective gangs, Juliette Cai and Roma Montagov set out independently to find out what is afflicting Shanghai, but their tangled fate will force them to work together to save it while there is still a city to save...
5. DRAGO - THE POPPY WAR, REBECCA F. KUANG
TRAMA:
Orfana, cresciuta in una remota provincia, la giovane Rin ha superato senza battere ciglio il difficile esame per entrare nella più selettiva accademia militare dell’Impero. Per lei significa essere finalmente libera dalla condizione di schiavitù in cui è cresciuta. Ma la aspetta un difficile cammino: dovrà superare le ostilità e i pregiudizi. Ci riuscirà risvegliando il potere dell’antico sciamanesimo, aiutata dai papaveri oppiacei, fino a scoprire di avere un dono potente. Deve solo imparare a usarlo per il giusto scopo.
6. SERPENTE - THE WHISPERING DARK, KELLY ANDREW
TRAMA:
Delaney Meyers-Petrov is tired of being seen as fragile just because she's Deaf. So when she's accepted into a prestigious program at Godbole University that trains students to slip between parallel worlds, she's excited for the chance to prove herself. But her semester gets off to a rocky start as she faces professors who won't accommodate her disability, and a pretentious upperclassman fascinated by Delaney's unusual talents.
Colton Price died when he was nine years old. Quite impossibly, he woke several weeks later at the feet of a green-eyed little girl. Now, twelve years later, Delaney Meyers-Petrov has stumbled back into his orbit, but Colton's been ordered to keep far away from the new girl... and the voices she hears calling to her from the shadows.
Delaney wants to keep her distance from Colton -- she seems to be the only person on campus who finds him more arrogant than charming -- yet after a Godbole student turns up dead, she and Colton are forced to form a tenuous alliance, plummeting down a rabbit-hole of deeply buried university secrets. But Delaney and Colton discover the cost of opening the doors between worlds when they find themselves up against something old and nameless, an enemy they need to destroy before it tears them -- and their forbidden partnership -- apart.
7. CAVALLO - THE DIVINERS, LIBBA BRAY
TRAMA:
SOMETHING DARK AND EVIL HAS AWAKENED… Evie O’Neill has been exiled from her boring old hometown and shipped off to the bustling streets of New York City—and she is pos-i-tute-ly ecstatic. It’s 1926, and New York is filled with speakeasies, Ziegfeld girls, and rakish pickpockets. The only catch is that she has to live with her uncle Will and his unhealthy obsession with the occult. Evie worries her uncle will discover her darkest secret: a supernatural power that has only brought her trouble so far. But when the police find a murdered girl branded with a cryptic symbol and Will is called to the scene, Evie realizes her gift could help catch a serial killer. As Evie jumps headlong into a dance with a murderer, other stories unfold in the city that never sleeps. A young man named Memphis is caught between two worlds. A chorus girl named Theta is running from her past. A student named Jericho is hiding a shocking secret. And unknown to all, something dark and evil has awakened…
8. CAPRA - EMILY WILDE'S ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF FAIRIES, HEATHER FAWCETT
TRAMA:
A curmudgeonly professor journeys to a small town in the far north to study faerie folklore and discovers dark fae magic, friendship, and love in the start of a heartwarming and enchanting new fantasy series.
Cambridge professor Emily Wilde is good at many things: She is the foremost expert on the study of faeries. She is a genius scholar and a meticulous researcher who is writing the world's first encyclopaedia of faerie lore. But Emily Wilde is not good at people. She could never make small talk at a party--or even get invited to one. And she prefers the company of her books, her dog, Shadow, and the Fair Folk to other people.
So when she arrives in the hardscrabble village of Hrafnsvik, Emily has no intention of befriending the gruff townsfolk. Nor does she care to spend time with another new arrival: her dashing and insufferably handsome academic rival Wendell Bambleby, who manages to charm the townsfolk, get in the middle of Emily's research, and utterly confound and frustrate her.
But as Emily gets closer and closer to uncovering the secrets of the Hidden Ones--the most elusive of all faeries--lurking in the shadowy forest outside the town, she also finds herself on the trail of another mystery: Who is Wendell Bambleby, and what does he really want? To find the answer, she'll have to unlock the greatest mystery of all--her own heart.
9. SCIMMIA - THE ATLAS SIX, OLIVIE BLAKE
TRAMA:
The Alexandrian Society is a secret society of magical academicians, the best in the world. Their members are caretakers of lost knowledge from the greatest civilizations of antiquity. And those who earn a place among their number will secure a life of wealth, power, and prestige beyond their wildest dreams. Each decade, the world’s six most uniquely talented magicians are selected for initiation – and here are the chosen few...
- Libby Rhodes and Nicolás Ferrer de Varona: inseparable enemies, cosmologists who can control matter with their minds.
- Reina Mori: a naturalist who can speak the language of life itself.
- Parisa Kamali: a mind reader whose powers of seduction are unmatched.
- Tristan Caine: the son of a crime kingpin who can see the secrets of the universe.
- Callum Nova: an insanely rich pretty boy who could bring about the end of the world. He need only ask.
When the candidates are recruited by the mysterious Atlas Blakely, they are told they must spend one year together to qualify for initiation. During this time, they will be permitted access to the Society’s archives and judged on their contributions to arcane areas of knowledge. Five, they are told, will be initiated. One will be eliminated. If they can prove themselves to be the best, they will survive. Most of them.
10. GALLO - BABEL, REBECCA F. KUANG
TRAMA:
Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal.
1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation—also known as Babel.
Babel is the world's center for translation and, more importantly, magic. Silver working—the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars—has made the British unparalleled in power, as its knowledge serves the Empire’s quest for colonization.
For Robin, Oxford is a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge obeys power, and as a Chinese boy raised in Britain, Robin realizes serving Babel means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress, Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to stopping imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide…
Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence?
11. CANE - LA CASA SUL MARE CELESTE, TJ KLUNE
TRAMA:
Un'incantevole storia d'amore ambientata in una realtà fantastica, meravigliosamente narrata, su cosa significhi accorgersi che, a volte, si può scegliere la vita che si vuole. E, se si è abbastanza fortunati, magari quella vita ci sceglie a sua volta.
Linus Baker è un assistente sociale impiegato al Dipartimento della Magia Minorile. Il compito che esegue con scrupolosa professionalità è assicurarsi che i bambini dotati di poteri magici, cresciuti in appositi istituti in modo da proteggere quelli "normali", siano ben accuditi. La vita di Linus è decisamente tranquilla, per non dire monotona: vive in una casetta solitaria in compagnia di una gatta schiva e dei suoi amati dischi in vinile. Tutto cambia quando, inaspettatamente, viene convocato nell'ufficio della Suprema Dirigenza. È stato scelto per un compito inconsueto e top secret: dovrà recarsi su un'isola remota, Marsyas, e stabilire se l'orfanotrofio diretto da un certo Arthur Parnassus abbia i requisiti per rimanere aperto. Appena mette piede sull'isola, Linus si rende conto che i sei bambini ospitati nella struttura sono molto diversi da tutti quelli di cui ha dovuto occuparsi in passato. Il più enigmatico tra gli abitanti di Marsyas è però Arthur Parnassus, che dietro ai modi affabili nasconde un terribile segreto.
12. MAIALE - LEGENDBORN, TRACY DEONN
TRAMA:
After her mother dies in an accident, sixteen-year-old Bree Matthews wants nothing to do with her family memories or childhood home. A residential program for bright high schoolers at UNC–Chapel Hill seems like the perfect escape—until Bree witnesses a magical attack her very first night on campus.
A flying demon feeding on human energies.
A secret society of so called “Legendborn” students that hunt the creatures down.
And a mysterious teenage mage who calls himself a “Merlin” and who attempts—and fails—to wipe Bree’s memory of everything she saw.
The mage’s failure unlocks Bree’s own unique magic and a buried memory with a hidden connection: the night her mother died, another Merlin was at the hospital. Now that Bree knows there’s more to her mother’s death than what’s on the police report, she’ll do whatever it takes to find out the truth, even if that means infiltrating the Legendborn as one of their initiates.
She recruits Nick, a self-exiled Legendborn with his own grudge against the group, and their reluctant partnership pulls them deeper into the society’s secrets—and closer to each other. But when the Legendborn reveal themselves as the descendants of King Arthur’s knights and explain that a magical war is coming, Bree has to decide how far she’ll go for the truth and whether she should use her magic to take the society down—or join the fight.
