New Release: The Huntress of Thornbeck Forest (A Medieval Fairy Tale) by Melanie Dickerson

(US/UK Links)

The Huntress of Thornbeck Forest (A Medieval Fairy Tale) by Melanie Dickerson is released this week in the US and UK, see The Huntress of Thornbeck Forest (Medieval Fairy Tale Romance) (UK Link). This is the first book in a new series by Dickerson. She previously wrote  another series of fairy tale inspired romances, the last one was The Princess Spy, a Frog Prince inspired novel.

Book description:

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?

Win a Copy of The Next Full Moon by Carolyn Turgeon

The Next Full Moon by Carolyn Turgeon will be released on March 13th and Carolyn has offered up a copy for a giveaway here on SurLaLune.

She and I have been trying to come up with a fun giveaway idea--I like to make you work for it a little--by providing a question to answer.

Carolyn's thoughts:

Well the book's about a 12-year-old girl who, to her extreme embarrassment, begins growing feathers, and eventually a feathered robe, and then discovers that her mother (whom she thought died when she was a child) was (and is) a swan maiden... It's based on the old swan maiden stories but here's the child left behind... So it could be something like "what do you imagine happened to the swan maiden's children?" (after recounting some old tales...) Or "what would you do if YOU started growing feathers?" Or maybe something about the magical feathered robe and/or magical objects generally..???

And I am not sure how familiar many of the readers here are with Swan Maiden tales. I have the tale up on SurLaLune for annotation, but it's not annotated although variants and interpretations are listed there. And, for full disclosure, a Swan Maiden collection from SurLaLune is slated for release in 2013. I have so MANY variants collected now, but I need to edit, translate and gloss to produce a worthy book. But that's a while off. Until I started reading so much about fairy tales, I myself was most familiar with the Swan Lake ballet more than any other version of Swan Maiden stories. The ballet is a derivative of the ATU 400 Swan Maiden tales that are quite abundant in parts of the world.

So I will leave it open--share your thoughts on Swan Maidens, from your lack of familiarity to a favorite version to how you would reimagine it. Comment here or send me an email to share. I will draw a name from the entries to win a copy of the book. Deadline is March 9, 2012.

Book description:

This thoroughly compelling, gorgeously told tale, begins as the weather turns warm enough to swim in the local lake, twelve-year-old Ava is looking forward to a lazy summer, and her crush, Jeff is most definitely taking notice of her. Everything is going beautifully. Until Ava starts to grow feathers—all over her shoulders, arms, and back. Horrified, mortified, and clad in a hoodie, she hides out in her bedroom missing her dead mother and worrying about the summer, and the rest of her freakish life... Carolyn Turgeon has a gift for imagining magical worlds. In Ava’s case, this other-worldly place belongs to the Swan Maidens, one of whom is Ava’s mother. Ava goes back and forth between middle school and this magical realm taking the reader along for an exhilarating, extraordinary ride.

Ella Bella Ballerina and Her Fairy Tale Ballets

Ella Bella Ballerina and Cinderella by James Mayhew isn't new, first published in 2009, but I've never featured it or its companion titles on SurLaLune, so why not today? I would have regularly devoured these when I was in the intended audience age. I hungered for ballet books and imagery for years and used up the resources at my libraries and bookstores.

Book description from the publisher:

Ella Bella loves Madame Rosa's ballet class, which is held at an old theater that seems touched by magic. One day, when Ella loses one of her slippers, Madame Rosa lends her another pair for dancing--and is then reminded of Cinderella and her story of the lost slipper. Madame Rosa recounts the tale to her students, and Ella Bella listens with heightened interest. When their day's lesson is over, Ella lingers at the theater, then opens Madame Rosa's magical music box and listens as it plays melodies from the Cinderella ballet. Suddenly, Cinderella's fairy godmother appears, and Ella Bella is transported into the beloved story of Cinderella. This delightful book's final page describes the ballet Cinderella, with music by the great Russian composer, Sergei Prokofiev.

Ella Bella Ballerina and The Sleeping Beauty description from the publisher:

Little Ella Bella loves attending Madame Rosa's ballet class at the old theater. Most of all she loves the music that plays from Madame Rosa's special music box, the theme from The Sleeping Beauty ballet. One day, after ballet class has ended, Ella Bella is left alone with the music box on the theater stage. As its music begins playing, Ella is transported to the magical world where the Sleeping Beauty's story takes place. Entering the palace of Princess Aurora, the Sleeping Beauty, Ella meets all the story's characters--not only the good ones, but also the sinister bad fairy--and she sees the famous story unfold before her very eyes. Here is an unusually imaginative retelling of the classic fairy tale, with illustrations that capture the story's magic and mystery. A brief postscript on the book's final page summarizes the history of ballet from its origins during the Italian Renaissance to the late nineteenth-century, when the famous Russian composer Piotr Ilich Tchaikovsky wrote music for The Sleeping Beauty ballet.

Ella Bella Ballerina and Swan lake description from the publisher:

The newest title in Barron's charming Ella Bella series tells another story of Ella Bella, a little girl who loves to dance. In this story, Ella's kindly ballet teacher Madame Rosa is preparing her class to dance in Tchaikovsky's immortal Swan Lake, and as Ella learns the story and listens to the music she is transported in a dream into Swan Lake's setting. There, she meets Odette, a beautiful princess who is transformed into a swan by an evil sorcerer. This beautiful volume's story is enhanced with James Mayhew's color illustrations. A brief passage at the back of the book recounts the life of Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and his creation of the music for this famous ballet.

Swan Lake Ballet & Anna Pavlova

Here is Anna Pavlova's tutu for the her role in Swan Lake, one of the most famous of all the fairy tale and folklore based ballets. This was displayed in a special exhibit in the Opéra de Paris Garnier in Paris. Of course, in the U.S. the opera house is perhaps most famous as the residence of the Phantom of the Opera, but it has hosted many famous performers and performances, including Pavlova. The costume was designed by Leon Bakst for her role as the white swan in 1905.