Waiting on Wednesday: June 8, 2011

Waiting On Wednesday is a weekly event from Jill at Breaking the Spine. To participate, simply share that book(s) you are eagerly awaiting the release of and report back to Breaking the Spine with the link to your post. Clicking the image above will take you straight to her post and link widget. (Special note: The nifty button above comes from Lindsay at The Violet Hour. Isn't it pretty?)

This week I am waiting on Dearly, Departed by Lia Habel, which will hit stores on October 18. I just finished The Forest of Hands and Teeth, so I've broken into my first non-P&P&Z/non-early Anita Blake zombie book (i.e. well written zombie book), plus I've been on a steampunk kick lately, making this one a win-win.

From Goodreads:

Love can never die.

Love conquers all, so they say. But can Cupid’s arrow pierce the hearts of the living and the dead—or rather, the undead? Can a proper young Victorian lady find true love in the arms of a dashing zombie?

The year is 2195. The place is New Victoria—a high-tech nation modeled on the manners, mores, and fashions of an antique era. A teenager in high society, Nora Dearly is far more interested in military history and her country’s political unrest than in tea parties and debutante balls. But after her beloved parents die, Nora is left at the mercy of her domineering aunt, a social-climbing spendthrift who has squandered the family fortune, and now plans to marry her niece off for money. For Nora, no fate could be more horrible—until she’s nearly kidnapped by an army of walking corpses.

But fate is just getting started with Nora. Catapulted from her world of drawing-room civility, she’s suddenly gunning down ravenous zombies alongside mysterious black-clad commandos and confronting “The Laz,” a fatal virus that raises the dead—and hell along with them. Hardly ideal circumstances. Then Nora meets Bram Griswold, a young soldier who is brave, handsome, noble . . . and dead. But as is the case with the rest of his special undead unit, luck and modern science have enabled Bram to hold on to his mind, his manners, and his body parts. And when his bond of trust with Nora turns to tenderness, there’s no turning back. Eventually, they know, the disease will win, separating the star-crossed lovers forever. But until then, beating or not, their hearts will have what they desire.

In Dearly, Departed, steampunk meets romance meets walking-dead thriller, spawning a madly imaginative novel of rip-roaring adventure, spine-tingling suspense, and macabre comedy that forever redefines the concept of undying love.