Death of a Unicorn is one of those English novels which at some point you realize is all about inheritance. Lady Margaret, who goes by Mabs, is older than her twin sister Penny by twenty minutes. Those twenty minutes mean that Mabs who will inherit their stately home, Cheadle, which as someone says, “Looks kind of like it was waiting to eat someone.” Cheadle looms in the background behind every family squabble and argument:

When Bartrand Millett built Cheadle in 1712 he effectively bankrupted all his heirs, in perpetuity. Looking through the account books I can see the same scrimping going on generation after generation. My mother and I are only the last two in a long line of cheeseparers. 

Death of a Unicorn starts off with Mabs bored at a party, ”hiding from Mark Babington and trying to get squiffy.” She is surprised to received help from someone she does not know and that first meeting leads to all sorts of interesting complications between Mabs, her mother and her sister.

We’re following Death of a Unicorn with another Peter Dickinson mystery, The Poison Oracle, this summer. Book Groups take note: There’s a Reading Group Guide in Death of a Unicorn which we hope you will take advantage of and for The Poison Oracle we have an interview with Peter Dickinson carried out by none other than New York Times bestselling author of the V. I. Warshawski novels, Sara Paretsky!

A. Yes! Review copies are going out and we are getting ready to receive complaints and plaudits. It is scary!

Q. Gavin, are you asking yourself questions?

A. You have no idea.

Q. So where can I get Nathan’s book signed?

A. Readercon, Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh and  Malaprop’s, both in North Carolina.

Ok, now I’m done with the Q&A.

What else? Peter Dickinson! We have just published a new edition of Death of a Unicorn, a fascinating novel in two parts, thirty years apart, which follows a young woman as she gets her first job and has her first affair. The book picks up 30 years later as truths unknown to said young woman surface.

Book Groups take note: There’s a Reading Group Guide in Death of a Unicorn which we hope you will take advantage of.

Next: the sky in Easthampton is so low that I can reach up and touch it. Blech!

After Ysabeau Wilce tweeted about finding her Led Zep albums:

I found all my Led Zeppelin albums.#beenalonglonelylonelylonelytime
— Ysabeau Wilce (@crackpothall) May 14, 2013

My 12th grade drama teacher gave them to me. She saw Zep on their first US tour, that’s how cool she was. All original pressings.
— Ysabeau Wilce (@crackpothall) May 14, 2013

I dug out my CDs—not as cool, but I got a boxed set of all the recordings a couple of years ago from my excellent wife. How luxurious they seem compared to the tapes of tapes we had as kids! (The CDs are not as well worn as those tapes were.) I am listening to Presence. I know I-IV better, so time to explore the later years.

But I am also wishing I were going to WisCon—all those people, going to have so much fun! I love Madison, too. One of these years we’ll get back there.

What else? I’ve sent off another draft of a contract (short story collection FTW!). Also trying to see if I can bend a contract for good for all (I’m down with it, will everyone else go for it?), sent off ebooks for a secret fun thing, working on Google ebooks (why are they so opaque? our books were there for a couple of years and now I find they haven’t been there since last summer. Argh.), and waiting for another contract to appear so that I can jump up, jump around and spread the good word. Jump? Who has the energy for that? Eek!

Checkkkk it out:

Ray Vukcevich, “Whisper“

Maureen F. McHugh, “The Naturalist”

Karen Joy Fowler, “The Pelican Bar”

Kelly Link, “The Faery Handbag”

Benjamin Rosenbaum, “Start the Clock”

Maureen F. McHugh, “Ancestor Money”

Download the app in the iTunes store.

And watch a video on it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySL1bvyuNUE

When this month’s issue of Locus came in the mail I forgot to say that they have a fascinating indie publishing section where they asked the same couple of questions of many independent presses. I answered for Small Beer and am glad I did because it is awesome to be included with some of my favorite indies out there.  And, for a Locus trifecta, Rich Horton reviews Angélica Gorodischer’s Trafalgar and picks “Trafalgar and Josefina” as his favorite. (For instant gratification, you can pick up Locus from Weightless.)

COLLECTION

• The Best of Kage Baker, Kage Baker (Subterranean)
• Shoggoths in Bloom, Elizabeth Bear (Prime)
• At the Mouth of the River of Bees, Kij Johnson (Small Beer)
• The Unreal and the Real: Selected Stories Volume One: Where on Earth and Volume Two: Outer Space, Inner Lands, Ursula K. Le Guin (Small Beer)
• The Dragon Griaule, Lucius Shepard (Subterranean)

THE SMALL & INDEPENDENT PRESS 

Susan is a force of nature (keep up with her here) and fittingly will be reading at Shape&Nature Press’s Summertime Reading and Music Party! along with many other readers on June 2nd 5-9pm, at Bishop’s Lounge in Northampton, 4th floor. They promise 8 amazing readers, 4 rockin’ musicians, and a raffle—which will include some books of ours.

Hey, go read the poem.

Solarize Massachusetts is a state program that uses group buying to bring down the installment cost of solar power. I’ve long wanted to add solar power at home—at work at the Paragon Arts building I don’t choose the electricity provider. But the cost, the cost. We are signed up for Greenstart so we are paying slightly more than the average but are buying into solar, wind, etc.—although it is mostly hydroelectric. (Not as good as the rest, but better than fossil fuels.)

Anyway. The first round of towns in the 2013 Solarize Massachusetts program are Bourne,Brookline, Carlisle, Chelmsford, Lee, Medford, Medway, Newton, Northampton, and Williamstown. The program selects one solar power installer who does site checks and so on to see if the interested people (me!) can actually have panels installed. The installer offers the town a deal: the more people who buy in by the end of the program (September 30, 2013), the lower the price. The average savings in previous rounds of the program have been 20%. Not bad!

There are also Federal tax credits worth about 25% of the cost, a $1,000 Massachusetts income tax credit, “solar renewable energy credit” (SRECs), net metering (you get a credit if your solar panels generate more power than you need), and the possibility of a few other credits. Overall, if the town gets enough people into the program—and there were 100+ people there last night—the panels usually pay for themselves within 5-7 years.

Any Northamptonites interested in the program should email Susan Lantz at solarizenorthampton@gmail.com. Send that email!

You can of course read an excerpt on Tor.com or download a pdf of the first 70 pages; read Sofia’s The Big Idea, and an Interview on the Qwillery. More reviews—yours?— will be coming soon. It’s a big beautiful book and we’re very happy to see it out there in the world being read. Raul M. Chapa of BookPeople in Austin, TX, gave us a great early boost when he sent us this note from reading a galley, thanks Raul!

If you’re curious for some of the inspirations for this huge book and the deep love of reading that thrums all through it, check out Sofia’s What Were They Reading post.