SEPTEMBER: WATCH/READ/PLAY
Wow, its September already. Where did my summer go? Actually where did the year go? University is back in session and with it my job gets a little crazy. That is what you get when you add a population in the span of two weeks. But I don’t mind…okay only a little. It does mean that my days go by quicker.
I love September. I love the chill starting to creep into the air, new seasons of my favorite shows returning and new ones to check out. September means Autumn with jewel tones, changing leaves, and the return of everything pumpkin or spice. It means football games and tailgates, bonfires with smores, even more zucchini from the garden, and breaking out the hoodies and sweaters at night. Autumn and Spring are my favorite seasons as they are a bit balanced. I get the best of both hot and cold. Yea September. Here are my warm fuzzies expected to be out this month in gaming, movies, and books.
MOVIES
Honeymoon
Genre: Horror
Stars: Rose Leslie, Harry Treadaway, Ben Huber, Hanna Brown
In short: Young newlyweds struggle as their honeymoon spirals mysteriously into chaos. Nice buzz around it. (September 12)
Hector and the Search for Happiness
Genre: Adventure | Comedy | Drama
Stars: Rosamund Pike, Simon Pegg, Stellan Skarsgård, Toni Collette
In short: A psychiatrist searches the globe to find the secret of happiness. (September 19)
The Maze Runner
Genre: Action | Mystery | Sci-Fi | Thriller
Stars: Dylan O'Brien, Will Poulter, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Kaya Scodelario
In short: Thomas (Dylan O'Brien) is deposited in a community of boys after his memory is erased, soon learning they're all trapped in a maze that will require him to join forces with fellow "runners" for a shot at escape. Based on the YA Novel. (September 19)
The Box Trolls
Genre: Animation | Adventure | Comedy | Family | Fantasy
Stars: Ben Kingsley, Jared Harris, Nick Frost, Richard Ayoade
In short: A young orphaned boy raised by underground cave-dwelling trash collectors tries to save his friends from an evil exterminator. Based on the children's novel 'Here Be Monsters' by Alan Snow. (September 26)
The Equalizer
Genre: Action | Crime | Thriller | Drama
Stars: Denzel Washington, Marton Csokas, Chloë Grace Moretz, David Harbour
In short: A former black ops commando who faked his death for a quiet life in Boston comes out of his retirement to rescue a young girl and finds himself face to face with Russian gangsters. One of E’s picks. (September 26)
BOOKS
The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell (Sept 2)
In short: Following a scalding row with her mother, fifteen-year-old Holly Sykes slams the door on her old life. But Holly is no typical teenage runaway: a sensitive child once contacted by voices she knew only as “the radio people,” Holly is a lightning rod for psychic phenomena. Now, as she wanders deeper into the English countryside, visions and coincidences reorder her reality until they assume the aura of a nightmare brought to life. For Holly has caught the attention of a cabal of dangerous mystics—and their enemies. But her lost weekend is merely the prelude to a shocking disappearance that leaves her family irrevocably scarred. This unsolved mystery will echo through every decade of Holly’s life, affecting all the people Holly loves—even the ones who are not yet born. A Cambridge scholarship boy grooming himself for wealth and influence, a conflicted father who feels alive only while reporting from occupied Iraq, a middle-aged writer mourning his exile from the bestseller list—all have a part to play in this surreal, invisible war on the margins of our world. From the medieval Swiss Alps to the nineteenth-century Australian bush, from a hotel in Shanghai to a Manhattan townhouse in the near future, their stories come together in moments of everyday grace and extraordinary wonder.
The Winter Long (October Daye #8) by Seanan McGuire (Sept 2)
In short: Toby thought she understood her own past; she thought she knew the score. She was wrong. It's time to learn the truth. Already in my hands people. Already in my hands.
Shifting Shadows: Stories from the World of Mercy Thompson by Patricia Briggs (Sept 2)
In short: Mercy Thompson’s world just got a whole lot bigger… A collection of all-new and previously published short stories featuring Mercy Thompson, “one of the best heroines in the urban fantasy genre today” (Fiction Vixen Book Reviews), and the characters she calls friends… Includes the new stories…“Silver” “Roses in Winter” “Redemption” “Hollow” …and reader favorites “Fairy Gifts” “Gray” “Alpha and Omega” “Seeing Eye” “The Star of David” “In Red, with Pearls”
Maplecroft (The Borden Dispatches #1) by Cherie Priest (Sept 2)
In short: Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks; and when she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one.... The people of Fall River, Massachusetts, fear me. Perhaps rightfully so. I remain a suspect in the brutal deaths of my father and his second wife despite the verdict of innocence at my trial. With our inheritance, my sister, Emma, and I have taken up residence in Maplecroft, a mansion near the sea and far from gossip and scrutiny. But it is not far enough from the affliction that possessed my parents. Their characters, their very souls, were consumed from within by something that left malevolent entities in their place. It originates from the ocean’s depths, plaguing the populace with tides of nightmares and madness. This evil cannot hide from me. No matter what guise it assumes, I will be waiting for it. With an axe.
Egg and Spoon by Gregory Maguire (Sept 9)
In short: A fantasy set in Tsarist Russia. Elena Rudina lives in the impoverished Russian countryside. Her father has been dead for years. One of her brothers has been conscripted into the Tsar’s army, the other taken as a servant in the house of the local landowner. Her mother is dying, slowly, in their tiny cabin. And there is no food. But then a train arrives in the village, a train carrying untold wealth, a cornucopia of food, and a noble family destined to visit the Tsar in Saint Petersburg — a family that includes Ekaterina, a girl of Elena’s age. When the two girls’ lives collide, an adventure is set in motion, an escapade that includes mistaken identity, a monk locked in a tower, a prince traveling incognito, and — in a starring role only Gregory Maguire could have conjured — Baba Yaga, witch of Russian folklore, in her ambulatory house perched on chicken legs.
The Iron Trial (Magisterium #1) by Holly Black & Cassandra Clare (Sept 9th)
In short: From NEW YORK TIMES bestselling authors Holly Black and Cassandra Clare comes a riveting new series that defies what you think you know about the world of magic. From two bestselling superstars, a dazzling and magical middle-grade collaboration centering on the students of the Magisterium, an academy for those with a propensity toward magic. In this first book, a new student comes to the Magisterium against his will -- is it because he is destined to be a powerful magician, or is the truth more twisted than that? It's a journey that will thrill you, surprise you, and make you wonder about the clear-cut distinction usually made between good and evil.
The Infinite Sea (The 5th Wave #2) by Rick Yancey (Sept 16th)
In short: How do you rid the Earth of seven billion humans? Rid the humans of their humanity. Surviving the first four waves was nearly impossible. Now Cassie Sullivan finds herself in a new world, a world in which the fundamental trust that binds us together is gone. As the 5th Wave rolls across the landscape, Cassie, Ben, and Ringer are forced to confront the Others’ ultimate goal: the extermination of the human race. Cassie and her friends haven’t seen the depths to which the Others will sink, nor have the Others seen the heights to which humanity will rise, in the ultimate battle between life and death, hope and despair, love and hate.
Made for You by Melissa Marr (Sept 16)
In short: Bestselling author of the Wicked Lovely books Melissa Marr’s first contemporary YA novel is a twisted southern gothic tale of obsession, romance, and murder. A killer is obsessed with Eva Tilling. Can she stop him, or will he claim her? When Eva Tilling wakes up in the hospital, she’s confused—who in her sleepy little North Carolina town could have hit her with their car? And why? But before she can consider the question, she finds that she’s awoken with a strange new skill: the ability to foresee people’s deaths when they touch her. While she is recovering from the hit-and-run, Nate, an old flame, reappears, and the two must traverse their rocky past as they figure out how to use Eva’s power to keep her friends—and themselves—alive. But while Eva and Nate grow closer, the killer grows increasingly frantic in his attempt to get to Eva.
An Age of License: A Travelogue by Lucy Knisley (Sept 22)
In short: Acclaimed cartoonist Lucy Knisley (French Milk, Relish) got an opportunity that most only dream of: a travel-expenses-paid trip to Europe/Scandinavia, thanks to a book tour. An Age of License is Knisley s comics travel memoir recounting her charming (and romantic!) adventures. It’s punctuated by whimsical visual devices (such as a new experiences funnel); peppered with the cute cats she meets along the way; and, of course, features her hallmark drawings and descriptions of food that will make your mouth water. But it’s not all kittens and raclette crepes: Knisley s experiences are colored by anxieties, introspective self-inquiries, and quotidian revelations about traveling alone in unfamiliar countries, and about her life and career that many young adults will relate to. An Age of License which takes its name from a French saying is an Eat, Pray, Love for the alternative comics fan.”
Soulminder by Timothy Zahn (Sept 23)
In short: In this new book by the author of "Blackcollar "and the #1 "New York Times"-bestselling "Heir to the Empire, "Timothy Zahn imagines a technology that could alter our perception of life and death foreverFor Dr. Adrian Sommers, a split second of driving while distracted leads to tragedy--and obsession. His family destroyed, he devotes his entire being to developing Soulminder, a technology that might have saved his son as he wavered on the edge of death. Sommers's vision is to capture a dying person's life essence and hold it safely in stasis while physicians heal the body from injury or disease. Years of experimentation finally end in success--but those who recognize Soulminder's possibilities almost immediately corrupt its original concept to pursue dangerous new frontiers: body-swapping, obstruction of justice, extortion, and perhaps even immortality.
Afterworlds by Scott Westerfeld (Sept 23)
In short: Darcy Patel has put college and everything else on hold to publish her teen novel, Afterworlds. Arriving in New York with no apartment or friends she wonders whether she's made the right decision until she falls in with a crowd of other seasoned and fledgling writers who take her under their wings… Told in alternating chapters is Darcy's novel, a suspenseful thriller about Lizzie, a teen who slips into the 'Afterworld' to survive a terrorist attack. But the Afterworld is a place between the living and the dead and as Lizzie drifts between our world and that of the Afterworld, she discovers that many unsolved - and terrifying - stories need to be reconciled. And when a new threat resurfaces, Lizzie learns her special gifts may not be enough to protect those she loves and cares about most.
Rooms by Lauren Oliver (Sept 23)
In short: The New York Times bestselling author of Before I Fall and the Delirium trilogy makes her brilliant adult debut with this mesmerizing story in the tradition of The Lovely Bones, Her Fearful Symmetry, and The Ocean at the End of the Lane—a tale of family, ghosts, secrets, and mystery, in which the lives of the living and the dead intersect in shocking, surprising, and moving ways. Wealthy Richard Walker has just died, leaving behind his country house full of rooms packed with the detritus of a lifetime. His estranged family—bitter ex-wife Caroline, troubled teenage son Trenton, and unforgiving daughter Minna—have arrived for their inheritance. But the Walkers are not alone. Prim Alice and the cynical Sandra, long dead former residents bound to the house, linger within its claustrophobic walls. Jostling for space, memory, and supremacy, they observe the family, trading barbs and reminiscences about their past lives. Though their voices cannot be heard, Alice and Sandra speak through the house itself—in the hiss of the radiator, a creak in the stairs, the dimming of a light bulb. The living and dead are each haunted by painful truths that will soon surface with explosive force. When a new ghost appears, and Trenton begins to communicate with her, the spirit and human worlds collide—with cataclysmic results. Elegantly constructed and brilliantly paced, Rooms is an enticing and imaginative ghost story and a searing family drama that is as haunting as it is resonant.
GAMES
Dance Central Spotlight (Xbox One) - September 2
Don't Starve: Giant Edition (Vita) - September 2
Sims 4 (PC) - September 2
Destiny (Xbox One, PS4, 360, PS3) - September 9
Gauntlet (PC) - September 23
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor (Xbox One, 360, PS4, PS3, PC) - September 30
Did I miss anything?
I love September. I love the chill starting to creep into the air, new seasons of my favorite shows returning and new ones to check out. September means Autumn with jewel tones, changing leaves, and the return of everything pumpkin or spice. It means football games and tailgates, bonfires with smores, even more zucchini from the garden, and breaking out the hoodies and sweaters at night. Autumn and Spring are my favorite seasons as they are a bit balanced. I get the best of both hot and cold. Yea September. Here are my warm fuzzies expected to be out this month in gaming, movies, and books.
Honeymoon
Genre: Horror
Stars: Rose Leslie, Harry Treadaway, Ben Huber, Hanna Brown
In short: Young newlyweds struggle as their honeymoon spirals mysteriously into chaos. Nice buzz around it. (September 12)
Genre: Adventure | Comedy | Drama
Stars: Rosamund Pike, Simon Pegg, Stellan Skarsgård, Toni Collette
In short: A psychiatrist searches the globe to find the secret of happiness. (September 19)
Genre: Action | Mystery | Sci-Fi | Thriller
Stars: Dylan O'Brien, Will Poulter, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Kaya Scodelario
In short: Thomas (Dylan O'Brien) is deposited in a community of boys after his memory is erased, soon learning they're all trapped in a maze that will require him to join forces with fellow "runners" for a shot at escape. Based on the YA Novel. (September 19)
Genre: Animation | Adventure | Comedy | Family | Fantasy
Stars: Ben Kingsley, Jared Harris, Nick Frost, Richard Ayoade
In short: A young orphaned boy raised by underground cave-dwelling trash collectors tries to save his friends from an evil exterminator. Based on the children's novel 'Here Be Monsters' by Alan Snow. (September 26)
Genre: Action | Crime | Thriller | Drama
Stars: Denzel Washington, Marton Csokas, Chloë Grace Moretz, David Harbour
In short: A former black ops commando who faked his death for a quiet life in Boston comes out of his retirement to rescue a young girl and finds himself face to face with Russian gangsters. One of E’s picks. (September 26)
The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell (Sept 2)
In short: Following a scalding row with her mother, fifteen-year-old Holly Sykes slams the door on her old life. But Holly is no typical teenage runaway: a sensitive child once contacted by voices she knew only as “the radio people,” Holly is a lightning rod for psychic phenomena. Now, as she wanders deeper into the English countryside, visions and coincidences reorder her reality until they assume the aura of a nightmare brought to life. For Holly has caught the attention of a cabal of dangerous mystics—and their enemies. But her lost weekend is merely the prelude to a shocking disappearance that leaves her family irrevocably scarred. This unsolved mystery will echo through every decade of Holly’s life, affecting all the people Holly loves—even the ones who are not yet born. A Cambridge scholarship boy grooming himself for wealth and influence, a conflicted father who feels alive only while reporting from occupied Iraq, a middle-aged writer mourning his exile from the bestseller list—all have a part to play in this surreal, invisible war on the margins of our world. From the medieval Swiss Alps to the nineteenth-century Australian bush, from a hotel in Shanghai to a Manhattan townhouse in the near future, their stories come together in moments of everyday grace and extraordinary wonder.
In short: Toby thought she understood her own past; she thought she knew the score. She was wrong. It's time to learn the truth. Already in my hands people. Already in my hands.
In short: Mercy Thompson’s world just got a whole lot bigger… A collection of all-new and previously published short stories featuring Mercy Thompson, “one of the best heroines in the urban fantasy genre today” (Fiction Vixen Book Reviews), and the characters she calls friends… Includes the new stories…“Silver” “Roses in Winter” “Redemption” “Hollow” …and reader favorites “Fairy Gifts” “Gray” “Alpha and Omega” “Seeing Eye” “The Star of David” “In Red, with Pearls”
In short: Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks; and when she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one.... The people of Fall River, Massachusetts, fear me. Perhaps rightfully so. I remain a suspect in the brutal deaths of my father and his second wife despite the verdict of innocence at my trial. With our inheritance, my sister, Emma, and I have taken up residence in Maplecroft, a mansion near the sea and far from gossip and scrutiny. But it is not far enough from the affliction that possessed my parents. Their characters, their very souls, were consumed from within by something that left malevolent entities in their place. It originates from the ocean’s depths, plaguing the populace with tides of nightmares and madness. This evil cannot hide from me. No matter what guise it assumes, I will be waiting for it. With an axe.
In short: A fantasy set in Tsarist Russia. Elena Rudina lives in the impoverished Russian countryside. Her father has been dead for years. One of her brothers has been conscripted into the Tsar’s army, the other taken as a servant in the house of the local landowner. Her mother is dying, slowly, in their tiny cabin. And there is no food. But then a train arrives in the village, a train carrying untold wealth, a cornucopia of food, and a noble family destined to visit the Tsar in Saint Petersburg — a family that includes Ekaterina, a girl of Elena’s age. When the two girls’ lives collide, an adventure is set in motion, an escapade that includes mistaken identity, a monk locked in a tower, a prince traveling incognito, and — in a starring role only Gregory Maguire could have conjured — Baba Yaga, witch of Russian folklore, in her ambulatory house perched on chicken legs.
In short: From NEW YORK TIMES bestselling authors Holly Black and Cassandra Clare comes a riveting new series that defies what you think you know about the world of magic. From two bestselling superstars, a dazzling and magical middle-grade collaboration centering on the students of the Magisterium, an academy for those with a propensity toward magic. In this first book, a new student comes to the Magisterium against his will -- is it because he is destined to be a powerful magician, or is the truth more twisted than that? It's a journey that will thrill you, surprise you, and make you wonder about the clear-cut distinction usually made between good and evil.
In short: How do you rid the Earth of seven billion humans? Rid the humans of their humanity. Surviving the first four waves was nearly impossible. Now Cassie Sullivan finds herself in a new world, a world in which the fundamental trust that binds us together is gone. As the 5th Wave rolls across the landscape, Cassie, Ben, and Ringer are forced to confront the Others’ ultimate goal: the extermination of the human race. Cassie and her friends haven’t seen the depths to which the Others will sink, nor have the Others seen the heights to which humanity will rise, in the ultimate battle between life and death, hope and despair, love and hate.
In short: Bestselling author of the Wicked Lovely books Melissa Marr’s first contemporary YA novel is a twisted southern gothic tale of obsession, romance, and murder. A killer is obsessed with Eva Tilling. Can she stop him, or will he claim her? When Eva Tilling wakes up in the hospital, she’s confused—who in her sleepy little North Carolina town could have hit her with their car? And why? But before she can consider the question, she finds that she’s awoken with a strange new skill: the ability to foresee people’s deaths when they touch her. While she is recovering from the hit-and-run, Nate, an old flame, reappears, and the two must traverse their rocky past as they figure out how to use Eva’s power to keep her friends—and themselves—alive. But while Eva and Nate grow closer, the killer grows increasingly frantic in his attempt to get to Eva.
In short: Acclaimed cartoonist Lucy Knisley (French Milk, Relish) got an opportunity that most only dream of: a travel-expenses-paid trip to Europe/Scandinavia, thanks to a book tour. An Age of License is Knisley s comics travel memoir recounting her charming (and romantic!) adventures. It’s punctuated by whimsical visual devices (such as a new experiences funnel); peppered with the cute cats she meets along the way; and, of course, features her hallmark drawings and descriptions of food that will make your mouth water. But it’s not all kittens and raclette crepes: Knisley s experiences are colored by anxieties, introspective self-inquiries, and quotidian revelations about traveling alone in unfamiliar countries, and about her life and career that many young adults will relate to. An Age of License which takes its name from a French saying is an Eat, Pray, Love for the alternative comics fan.”
In short: In this new book by the author of "Blackcollar "and the #1 "New York Times"-bestselling "Heir to the Empire, "Timothy Zahn imagines a technology that could alter our perception of life and death foreverFor Dr. Adrian Sommers, a split second of driving while distracted leads to tragedy--and obsession. His family destroyed, he devotes his entire being to developing Soulminder, a technology that might have saved his son as he wavered on the edge of death. Sommers's vision is to capture a dying person's life essence and hold it safely in stasis while physicians heal the body from injury or disease. Years of experimentation finally end in success--but those who recognize Soulminder's possibilities almost immediately corrupt its original concept to pursue dangerous new frontiers: body-swapping, obstruction of justice, extortion, and perhaps even immortality.
In short: Darcy Patel has put college and everything else on hold to publish her teen novel, Afterworlds. Arriving in New York with no apartment or friends she wonders whether she's made the right decision until she falls in with a crowd of other seasoned and fledgling writers who take her under their wings… Told in alternating chapters is Darcy's novel, a suspenseful thriller about Lizzie, a teen who slips into the 'Afterworld' to survive a terrorist attack. But the Afterworld is a place between the living and the dead and as Lizzie drifts between our world and that of the Afterworld, she discovers that many unsolved - and terrifying - stories need to be reconciled. And when a new threat resurfaces, Lizzie learns her special gifts may not be enough to protect those she loves and cares about most.
In short: The New York Times bestselling author of Before I Fall and the Delirium trilogy makes her brilliant adult debut with this mesmerizing story in the tradition of The Lovely Bones, Her Fearful Symmetry, and The Ocean at the End of the Lane—a tale of family, ghosts, secrets, and mystery, in which the lives of the living and the dead intersect in shocking, surprising, and moving ways. Wealthy Richard Walker has just died, leaving behind his country house full of rooms packed with the detritus of a lifetime. His estranged family—bitter ex-wife Caroline, troubled teenage son Trenton, and unforgiving daughter Minna—have arrived for their inheritance. But the Walkers are not alone. Prim Alice and the cynical Sandra, long dead former residents bound to the house, linger within its claustrophobic walls. Jostling for space, memory, and supremacy, they observe the family, trading barbs and reminiscences about their past lives. Though their voices cannot be heard, Alice and Sandra speak through the house itself—in the hiss of the radiator, a creak in the stairs, the dimming of a light bulb. The living and dead are each haunted by painful truths that will soon surface with explosive force. When a new ghost appears, and Trenton begins to communicate with her, the spirit and human worlds collide—with cataclysmic results. Elegantly constructed and brilliantly paced, Rooms is an enticing and imaginative ghost story and a searing family drama that is as haunting as it is resonant.
GAMES
Dance Central Spotlight (Xbox One) - September 2
Don't Starve: Giant Edition (Vita) - September 2
Sims 4 (PC) - September 2
Destiny (Xbox One, PS4, 360, PS3) - September 9
Gauntlet (PC) - September 23
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor (Xbox One, 360, PS4, PS3, PC) - September 30
Did I miss anything?
Comments