PrincessReviews

  Title: Chime Author: Franny Billingsley About the Author (Goodreads): While Billingsley's first novel, Well Wished (1997), was warmly received by critics, a year ago she was a virtual unknown within a publishing climate that regarded fantasy as a specialty genre. Today, her name is on the lips of booksellers and reviewers throughout the country. Franny Billingsley was not always a writer. She graduated from Boston University law-school in 1979, and worked for 5 years as a lawyer — a profession which she “despised.” In 1983, Billingsley visited her sister in Barcelona, Spain where she was “entranced by a lifestyle in which people did not make a lot of money yet lived richly and artfully.” Realizing that she needed to change her life, Billingsley quit her job and moved to Spain with all of her favorite children's books. “Books like A Wrinkle in Time, Harriet the Spy, and The Narnia Chronicles seemed like the perfect antidote to hideously wearisome legal documents,” remembers Bi...

The Dread Witch Chronicles: Awakening by Dreck Sonnier Jr. Kallista is a 27-year-old antique storeowner who works when she wants thanks to her trusty employee Moira, and her boyfriend who owns the space. Well, things are going great until her boyfriend tells her he's selling the shop and closing her store, not to mention the fact that he's going to reconcile with his wife. And to top it all off, a hideous otherworldly creature chases Kallista home and breaks down her door. Fortunately, Kallista loses consciousness as the creature bares its razor-sharp teeth. It is the beginning of the awakening of her powers. Rhavi is a knight in a covert organization sworn to eliminate all witches and all those who wield magic. She is the best of the best and the leader of her unit until her superior Andrei talks her into using a magical object. Against her better judgment she does use it and loses everything: her honor, her post and she may lose her life. Solara is an accompli...