Coronets and Steel - Softcover

Smith, Sherwood

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0756406854 ISBN 13: 9780756406851

Publisher: DAW, 2011

Synopsis

Too much imagination was tantamount to lying―that’s what my grandmother taught me. So when I first got the sense that someone was following me, I ignored it. Who’d waste time following me?

Me, being Aurelia Kim Murray, a grad student from California with a passion for ballet and fencing, and a hopelessly romantic vision of the world. I had some to Europe to track down my grandparents’ families, but so far I’d had no luck.

I couldn’t explain the sense of urgency that drove me, even to myself. It has begun that day four months ago when my grandmother lay restlessly in her bed, her eyes glittering with fever as she gripped my hand. “Your mother is too gentle,” she’s whispered in her aristocratic Parisian French. “I cannot send her to steal the breach.”

Breach? What breach? With her family? With my grandfather’s family? Neither Mom nor I knew anything about Grandmother’s family or the handsome man in the silver-framed photo that Gran always kept on her bedside table.

“She wouldn’t talk about her life before California,” my mom has said, as we waited in yet another specialist’s office, hoping to find out why, though Gran had recovered from her fever, she had not spoken since.

Nothing had come of my search in Paris, or Vienna, and no matter how fast I walked along the grand boulevards, I knew I couldn’t outpace my sense of failure.

And that’s when I met my first ghost.

But seeing ghosts wasn’t my biggest problem. I was being followed, and I was about to find out more about my lineage than I had ever imagined possible in my wildest, most fanciful dreams...or nightmares.

About this title

About the Author

Sherwood Smith started making books out of paper towels at age six. In between stories, she studied and traveled in Europe, got a Masters degree in history, and now lives in Southern California with her spouse, two kids, and two dogs. She’s worked in jobs ranging from counter work in a smoky harbor bar to the film industry. Writing books is what she loves best. She’s the author of the high fantasy History of Sartorias-deles series as well as the modern-day fantasy adventures of Kim Murray in Coronets and Steel. Learn more at www.sherwoodsmith.net or on Twitter at twitter.com/sherwood_smith.

From Booklist

Smith’s modern-day fairy tale, influenced by the current urban-fantasy rage, finds 23-year-old Kim traveling across Europe to learn about her grandmother’s mysterious past (Grandma has becomes terribly ill and refuses to speak). Kim’s questions are much more dangerous than she realizes after she is kidnapped in Budapest. Taking matters into her own hands, she travels to the little-known Eastern European country of Dobrenica; there she not only uses her language and fencing skills but also accepts her ability to see ghosts. With two darkly attractive men (not to mention her grandmother’s secret husband) pursuing Kim, the romance plot is nicely woven into the story, both its contemporary and past components, along with plenty of action and adventure. Enough plotlines are left unresolved that at least one sequel must be in the works. Highly recommended for all fantasy and general-fiction collections, as the potential readership is wide, from urban-fantasy readers looking for something lighter but still complex to young women who grew up reading the Princess Diaries series. --Jessica Moyer

About this edition

• Publisher: DAW
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0756406854
• ISBN 13: 9780756406851
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 448