Indies Introduce

Fiction

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  The Watchmaker of Filigree Street: A Novel, Natasha Pulley
  Bloomsbury, 9781620408339, July 14, 2015 (Fiction)
  

  THE WATCHMAKER OF FILIGREE STREET is a magical work of historical fiction that really did make me lose track of time. This is a really fun read!

  Kathleen Johnson, Prairie Lights Books (Iowa City, IA)
  
  

  It takes a special talent to truly suspend disbelief, but Natasha Pulley pulls it off spectacularly well in her debut. Thaniel Steepleton is a telegraphist in 1880s London whose life is saved by a very timely pocket watch. When he meets its maker, Keita Mori, his entire life is upended and made more beautiful -- and dangerous. The clock is ticking on this new friendship, and Thaniel must use his ingenuity and previously untapped chutzpah to save Keita’s life and his own future. I was reminded of both David Mitchell and Erin Morgenstern while reading this novel, and I think it’s safe to say we can expect great things from Pulley.

  Amanda Hurley, Inkwood Books (Tampa, FL)
  

  Victorian cross-cultural hijinks, love, clockwork, a female scientist, a thwarted bomb plot, AND a mind-bending meditation on the nature of fate and free will, not to mention power, identity, and prejudice? That's my kind of book. Natasha Pulley evokes her setting and characters with a light touch that belies the heavy metaphysical (and emotional) lifting that is evident by the book's end.  Like the fantastical clockwork of Keita Mori, the eponymous watchmaker, this is a book more complicated than it looks, and lovelier. I read it in great gulps (The telegraph office! The Gilbert & Sullivan production! The tea and sympathy! The chase scenes!), found myself completely surprised at every turn, and spent a long time thinking about its occupants (dear Thaniel, brilliant Grace, unfathomable Mori).  It's one of my favorite books of the year so far, easy to recommend to many kinds of members, from fantasy or genre fans to book club readers to historical fiction or highbrow literary fiction readers.

  Jessica Stockton Bagnulo, Greenlight Bookstore (Brooklyn, NY)