March 1, 2024
UK author Howard (Library Cat) makes his U.S. debut with this tale of a ghost cat, who spends his last day alive curled up by the fire in 1902. He returns as a ghost cat, haunting the inhabitants of an Edinburgh tenement and witnessing history across two centuries. Prepub Alert.
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May 15, 2024
Grimalkin is an elderly tabby cat who lives comfortably in a Scottish Victorian house in 1902. Upon his accidental death, he is given a choice--take peaceful oblivion, or experience the rest of his nine lives as a ghost, which he chooses. His story proceeds in small bursts of time as he moves from 1902 to September of 2022, hitting all the important points of human history. Along the way, he learns more about what kind of cat he aspires to be as each new experience in his life gives him more emotional intelligence. Howard's latest (after The Library Cat, 2016) is a quintessentially British book, almost comically stereotypical in attitudes and writing style. Grimalkin stands in for the British nation as a whole, as it goes from being a tightly wound Victorian society to a more liberal-minded nation in modern times. Although there are small moments of indecision and struggle in the writing, anyone who loves cats and considers them family will adore Grimalkin, whose emotional attachments become the sweet center of the novel.
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