Archive for the ‘New Releases’ Category

I have decided to do a weekly feature highlighting any interesting looking books that are being released during that week.  Today I will be concentrating on any books being released between the 15th and 21st March.

Claudia Gray – Hourglass (Released 15th March)

Book 3 in the Evernight series.

Bianca will risk everything to be with Lucas.  After escaping from Evernight Academy, the vampire boarding school where they met, Bianca and Lucas take refuge with Black Cross, a fanatical group of vampire hunters.  Bianca must hide her supernatural heritage or risk certain death at their hands.  But when Black Cross captures her friend - the vampire Balthazar - hiding is no longer an option.  Soon, Bianca and Lucas are on the run again, pursued not only by Black Cross, but by the powerful leaders of Evernight.  Yet no matter how far they travel, Bianca can’t escape her destiny.  Bianca has always believed their love could survive anything! but can it survive what’s to come?

Carrie Vaughn – Voices of Dragons (Released 16th March)

On one side of the border lies the modern world: the internet, homecoming dances, cell phones.  On the other side dwell the ancient monsters who spark humanity’s deepest fears: dragons.
Seventeen-year-old Kay Wyatt knows she’s breaking the law by rock climbing near the border, but she’d rather have an adventure than follow the rules.  When the dragon Artegal unexpectedly saves her life, the rules are abruptly shattered, and a secret friendship grows between them.
But suspicion and terror are the legacy of human and dragon interactions, and the fragile truce that has maintained peace between the species is unraveling.  As tensions mount and battles begin, Kay and Artegal are caught in the middle.  Can their friendship change the course of a war?

Kimberly Derting – The Body Finder (Released 16th March)

Violet Ambrose is grappling with two major issues: Jay Heaton and her morbid secret ability.  While the sixteen-year-old is confused by her new feelings for her best friend since childhood, she is more disturbed by her “power” to sense dead bodies – or at least those that have been murdered.  Since she was a little girl, she has felt the echoes the dead leave behind in the world… and the imprints that attach to their killers.
Violet has never considered her strange talent to be a gift; it mostly just led her to find dead birds her cat left for her. But now that a serial killer is terrorizing her small town, and the echoes of the local girls he’s claimed haunt her daily, Violet realizes she might be the only person who can stop him.
Despite his fierce protectiveness over her, Jay reluctantly agrees to help Violet find the murderer – and Violet is unnerved by her hope that Jay’s intentions are much more than friendly.  But even as she’s falling intensely in love, Violet is getting closer and closer to discovering a killer… and becoming his prey herself.

Young Kim and Stephenie Meyer – Twilight: The Graphic Novel – Volume 1 (Released 17th March)

When Isabella Swan moves to the gloomy town of Forks and meets the mysterious, alluring Edward Cullen, her life takes a thrilling and terrifying turn.  With his porcelain skin, golden eyes, mesmerizing voice, and supernatural gifts, Edward is both irresistible and impenetrable.  Up until now, he has managed to keep his true identity hidden, but Bella is determined to uncover his dark secret…

Angela Morrison – Sing Me to Sleep (Released 18th March)

THE TRANSFORMATION
Beth has always been ‘The Beast’ – that’s what everyone at school calls her because of her awkward height, facial scars, and thick glasses.  Beth’s only friend is geeky, golden-haired Scott.  That is, until she’s selected to be her choir’s soprano soloist, and receives the makeover that will change her life forever.
THE LOVE AFFAIR
When Beth’s choir travels to Switzerland, she meets Derek: pale, brooding, totally dreamy.  Derek’s untethered passion – for music, and for Beth – leaves her breathless.  Because in Derek’s eyes she’s not The Beast, she’s The Beauty.
THE IMPOSSIBLE CHOICE
When Beth comes home, Scott, her best friend in the world, makes a confession that leaves her completely torn. Should she stand by sweet, steady Scott or follow the dangerous, intense new feelings she has for Derek?
THE HEARTBREAK
The closer Beth gets to Derek, the further away he seems.  Then Beth discovers that Derek’s been hiding a dark secret from her.  One that could shatter everything.

I have decided to do a weekly feature highlighting any interesting looking books that are being released during that week.  Today I will be concentrating on any books being released between the 8th and 14th March.

Linwood Barclay – Never Look Away (Released 9th March)

David Harwood, a reporter in Promise Falls, New York, is stressed out.  The newspaper he works for is outsourcing jobs to India, he can’t get a solid lead on the corrupt for-profit prison moving to town, and his wife, Jan, is struggling with a bout of depression.  As a much-needed break, David and Jan decide to take their four-year-old son, Ethan, to a local amusement park for a day of ice cream, rollercoasters, and carefree fun.  But revelry is quickly replaced by panic when, within an hour of arriving at the park, Ethan goes missing.  Though he is soon found, panic escalates to full-blown terror when Jan suddenly disappears.  Confused and worried, David finds himself desperately searching for any clue that could lead him to his wife – even if it means unraveling a tangle of lies and deception that become more complicated at every turn.

Michele Greene – Keep Sweet (Released 9th March)

Alva Jane has never questioned her parents, never questioned her faith, never questioned her future.  She is content with the strict rules that define her life in Pineridge, the walled community where she lives with her father, his seven wives, and her twenty-eight siblings.  This is the only world Alva has ever known, and she has never thought to challenge it.
But everything changes when Alva is caught giving her long-time crush an innocent first kiss.  Beaten, scorned, and now facing a forced marriage to a violent, fifty-year old man, Alva suddenly realizes how much she has to lose – and how impossible it will be to escape.

Jandy Nelson – The Sky is Everywhere (Released 9th March)

Seventeen-year-old Lennie Walker spends her time tucked safely and happily in the shadow of her fiery older sister, Bailey.  But when Bailey dies abruptly, Lennie is catapulted to centre stage of her own life – and, despite her nonexistent history with boys, suddenly finds herself struggling to balance two.  Toby was Bailey’s boyfriend; his grief mirrors Lennie’s own.  Joe is the new boy in town, with a nearly magical grin.  One boy takes Lennie out of her sorrow, the other comforts her in it.  But the two can’t collide without Lennie’s world exploding…

I have decided to do a weekly feature highlighting any interesting looking books that are being released during that week.  Today I will be concentrating on any books being released between the 1st and 7th March.

Kate White – Hush (Released 1st March)

When Lake Warren learns that her husband Jack is suing for full custody of their two kids, four months after their separation, she’s pretty certain that things can’t get any worse.  The upside is that she’s working with the Advanced Fertility Center as a marketing consultant, alongside the attractive, flirtatious Dr. Keaton.  But when, the morning after their one-night stand, she finds Keaton with his throat slashed, Lake learns that things can indeed become worse – they can become deadly.  So not to jeopardise her case for custody, Lake is forced to lie to the police.  Having just been intimate with a man who has been murdered, and wanting to protect herself from being charged with the crime, she begins her own investigation.  But when the police start looking at her closely, people at the clinic start treating her with hostility, and strange and dangerous clues begin dropping – quite literally – on her doorstep, Lake realises that she is dangerously close to dark truths about Keaton and the clinic.  But can Lake stop what she’s started before it’s too late?

Rachel Vincent – Shift (Released 1st March)

Book 5 in the Faythe Sanders series.

Being the first female werecat enforcer isn’t easy.  Scars accumulate, but I’m stronger in so many ways.
As for my personal life?  It’s complicated.  Choices worth making always are.  Ever since my brother’s death and my father’s impeachment, it’s all I can do to prevent more blood from spilling.  Now our Pride is under attack by a flight of vicious thunderbirds.  And making peace with our new enemies may be the only way to get the best of our old foe.
With the body count rising and treachery everywhere, my instincts tell me to look before I leap.  But sometimes a leap of faith is the only real option…

Rachel Hawkins – Hex Hall (Released 2nd March)

In the wake of a love spell gone horribly wrong, Sophie Mercer, a sixteen-year-old witch, is shipped off to Hecate Hall, a boarding school for witches, shapeshifters and faeries.  The traumas of mortal high school are nothing compared to the goings on at “Freak High.”  It’s bad enough that she has to deal with a trio of mean girls led by the glamorous Elodie, but it’s even worse when she begins to fall for Elodie’s gorgeous boyfriend, Archer Cross, and frankly terrifying that the trio are an extremely powerful coven of dark witches.  But when Sophie begins to learn the disturbing truth about her father, she is forced to face demons both metaphorical and real, and come to terms with her own growing power as a witch.

Lauren Oliver – Before I Fall (Released 4th March)

They say that when you die your whole life flashes before your eyes, but that’s not how it happened for me
Sam Kingston is dead.  Except she isn’t.
On a rainy February night, eighteen-year-old Sam is killed in a horrific car crash.  But then the impossible happens: she wakes up in her own bed, on the morning of the day that she died.
Forced to live over and over the last day of her life the drive to school, skipping class, the fateful party she desperately struggles to alter the outcome, but every morning she wakes up on the day of the crash.
This is a story of a girl who dies young, but in the process learns how to live.  And who falls in love… a little too late.

Alexander McCall Smith – Double Comfort Safari Club ( Released 4th March)

Book 11 in the No 1 Ladies Detective Agency series.

Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi are called to a safari lodge in Botswana’s Okavango Delta to carry out a delicate mission on behalf of a former guest.  The Okavango makes Precious appreciate once again the beauty of her homeland: it is a paradise of teeming wildlife, majestic grasslands and sparkling water.  However, it is also home to rival safari operators, fearsome crocodiles and disgruntled hippopotamuses.  What’s more, Mma Makutsi still does not have a date for her wedding to Phuti Radiphuti and is feeling rather tetchy herself.  But Precious knows that with a little patience, just as the wide river will gently make its way round any obstacle, so will everything work out for the best in the end…

I have decided to do a weekly feature highlighting any interesting looking books that are being released during that week.  Today I will be concentrating on any books being released between the 22nd and 28th February.

Kim Harrison – Black Magic Sanction (Released 23rd February)

Book 8 in the Rachel Morgan series.

The latest stirring instalment of the urban fantasy-thriller series starring Rachel Morgan.  A pacey and addictive novel of sexy bounty-hunting witches, cunning demons and vicious vampires.  Having barely escaped being skewered by the criminal vampire overlord of Cinncinati, Rachel now has even bigger problems to contend with.  The demon, Algaliarept, although banished back into the everafter has infected others of his kind with his interest in a witch who can channel demon magic.  Rachel soon finds herself with not one but three hellions on her tail; and one of them is even crazier and more dangerous than all the fairy assassins, weres and vampires on the planet.

Martin Stratford – Double Jeopardy (Released 26th February)

Detective Sergeant Julie Cooper has been working undercover to crack a major drugs ring.  With the drugs baron jailed, Julie thinks she can relax until she becomes the victim of a drive-by shooting that leaves her seriously injured and her aunt dead.  Fuelled by grief, anger and guilt, Julie hires private detective Alec Tanner to help her track down the killers.  Set in the fictitious English city of Havenchester, “Double Jeopardy” follows Julie and Tanner as they investigate a number of potential suspects, including a vicious gangland boss who is plotting to avenge himself on his cheating girlfriend.  As their personal lives become increasingly entangled, Julie and Tanner find themselves in a race against time to uncover the truth and prevent more murders, including their own…

I have decided to do a weekly feature highlighting any interesting looking books that are being released during that week.  Today I will be concentrating on any books being released between the 15th and 21st February.

Jill Mansell – Take a Chance on Me (Released 18th February)

Cleo Quinn doesn’t have the greatest track record when it comes to men, but now Will’s come along.  Handsome and attentive, he could be her Mr Right.  Things are definitely looking up for Cleo… apart from one small problem with a rather large ego.  Johnny LaVenture, sculptor extraordinaire and her personal childhood nemesis, is back in Channing’s Hill and tormenting her as if he’d never been away.  Meanwhile Cleo’s sister Abbie has a problem of her own – husband Tom has become distant and withdrawn, and she’s determined to find out why.  But will the shocking truth mean the end of their idyllically happy marriage?  The sisters are about to discover that the past can come back to haunt you, and that love can flourish in the unlikeliest of places…

Linwood Barclay – Fear the Worst (Released 18th February)

The worst day of Tim Blake’s life started out with him making breakfast for his seventeen-year-old daughter Sydney. Syd was staying with him while she worked a summer job – even if he wasn’t entirely sure what her job at the Just Inn Time motel actually was – and Tim hoped this quality father-daughter time would somehow help her deal with his divorce.  When she didn’t arrive home at her usual time, he thought she’d probably gone to the mall to hang with her friends.  When she didn’t answer her phone he began to worry.  When she didn’t come home at all, he began to panic. And when the people at the Just Inn Time said they had no Sydney Blake working at the motel and never had, he began to see his life going into freefall.  If she hadn’t been working at the Just Inn Time every day, what had she been doing? Something she couldn’t – or wouldn’t – tell her own father about?  To find his daughter Tim doesn’t need to simply track her down – he needs to know who she really was, and what could have made her step out of her own life without leaving a trace.  Only one thing has him convinced the worst hasn’t already happened: the fact that some very scary people seem just as eager as he is to find her.  The question is: who’s going to find her first?

Dorothy Koomson – The Ice Cream Girls

At only eighteen years of age, Poppy and Serena were the only witnesses to a tragic event.  Amid heated public debate and scrutiny, the two glamorous teens were dubbed ‘The Ice Cream Girls’ by the press and forced to go their separate ways and to lead very different lives.  Twenty years later, Poppy is keen to set the record straight about what really happened, while married mother-of-two Serena wants no one in her present to find out about her past.  But some secrets will not stay buried – and if theirs is revealed, their lives will start to unravel all over again…

I have decided to do a weekly feature highlighting any interesting looking books that are being released during that week.  Today I will be concentrating on any books being released between the 8th and 14th February.

Jeaniene Frost – First Drop of Crimson (Released 9th February)

Book 1 in the Night Huntress World series.

The night is not safe for mortals.  Denise MacGregor knows all too well what lurks in the shadows – her best friend is half-vampire Cat Crawfield – and she has already lost more than the average human could bear.  But her family’s past is wrapped in secrets and shrouded in darkness – and a demon shapeshifter has marked Denise as prey.  Now her survival depends on an immortal who lusts for a taste of her.
He is Spade, a powerful, mysterious vampire who has walked the earth for centuries and is now duty-bound to protect this endangered, alluring human – even if it means destroying his own kind.  Denise may arouse his deepest hungers, but Spade knows he must fight his urge to have her as they face the nightmare together…
Because once the first crimson drop falls, they will both be lost.

Janne Teller – Nothing (Released 9th February)

“Nothing matters.”
“From the moment you are born, you start to die.”
“The Earth is 4.6 billion years old. You’ll live to be a maximum of one hundred. Life isn’t worth the bother!”
So says Pierre Anthon when he decides that there is no meaning to life, leaves the classroom, climbs a plum tree, and stays there.
His friends and classmates cannot get him to come down, not even by pelting him with rocks.  So to prove to him that there is a meaning to life, they set out to build a heap of meaning in an abandoned sawmill.
But it soon becomes obvious that each person cannot give up what is most meaningful, so they begin to decide for one another what the others must give up.  The pile is started with a lifetime’s collection of Dungeons & Dragons books, a fishing rod, a pair of green sandals, a pet hamster – but then, as each demand becomes more extreme, things start taking a very morbid twist, and the kids become ever more desperate to get Pierre Anthon down.  And what if, after all these sacrifices, the pile is not meaningful enough?

Carla Buckley – The Things That Keep Us Here (Released 9th February)

How far would you go to protect your family?
Ann Brooks never thought she’d have to answer that question.  Then she found her limits tested by a crisis no one could prevent.  Now, as her neighborhood descends into panic, she must make tough choices to protect everyone she loves from a threat she cannot even see.  In this chillingly urgent novel, Carla Buckley confronts us with the terrifying decisions we are forced to make when ordinary life changes overnight.
A year ago, Ann and Peter Brooks were just another unhappily married couple trying – and failing – to keep their relationship together while they raised two young daughters.  Now the world around them is about to be shaken as Peter, a university researcher, comes to a startling realization: A virulent pandemic has made the terrible leap across the ocean to America’s heartland.
And it is killing fifty out of every hundred people it touches.
As their town goes into lockdown, Peter is forced to return home – with his beautiful graduate assistant.  But the Brookses’ safe suburban world is no longer the refuge it once was.  Food grows scarce, and neighbor turns against neighbor in grocery stores and at gas pumps.  And then a winter storm strikes, and the community is left huddling in the dark.
Trapped inside the house she once called home, Ann Brooks must make life-or-death decisions in an environment where opening a door to a neighbor could threaten all the things she holds dear.

I have decided to do a weekly feature highlighting any interesting looking books that are being released during that week.  Today I will be concentrating on any books being released between the 1st and 7th February.

Laurell K. Hamilton – Flirt (Released 2nd February)

Book 18 in the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series.

When Anita Blake meets with prospective client Tony Bennington, who is desperate to have her reanimate his recently deceased wife, she is full of sympathy for his loss.  Anita knows something about love, and she knows everything there is to know about loss.  But what she also knows, though Tony Bennington seems unwilling to be convinced, is that the thing she can do as a necromancer isn’t the miracle he thinks he needs.  The creature that Anita could coerce to step out of the late Mrs. Bennington’s grave would not be the lovely Mrs. Bennington.  Not really.  And not for long.

James Patterson – Fang (Released 4th February)

Book 6 in the Maximum Ride Series.

Fang will be the first to die.  For years, Max has been on the run from evil forces threatening her and the Flock – but nothing could have prepared her for this horrifying prophesy delivered to her by Angel.  Fang is Max’s best friend, her soulmate, her partner in leadership of her flock of winged children.  A life without Fang is a life unimaginable.  Max’s desperate desire to protect Fang brings the two closer than ever.  But their world is turned upside down yet again when the Flock meet a wealthy scientist who has a great interest in the birdkids.  He introduces them to another winged boy, the beautiful Dylan.  Raised in a lab like the Flock, he exists for only one reason: he was created to be Max’s perfect other half.  Now, a battle of science against soul, perfection versus passion unfolds, twists, and turns… and meanwhile, the apocalypse is coming.

Robert Winder – The Final Act of Mr Shakespeare (Released 4th February)

In the spring of 1613 Mr William Shakespeare, a gentleman farmer in Warwickshire, returns to London.  It is a ceremonial visit; he has no further theatrical ambitions.  But the city is still reeling from the terrorist panic of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, and fate soon forces him to take up his pen again.  It was never possible to write about Henry VII while his granddaughter Elizabeth was Queen, but now he must.  It is a perilous enterprise: King James I’s spies are everywhere.  There is no evidence that Shakespeare wrote Henry VII, but in a compelling piece of historical recreation, Robert Winder asks: what if he did?  And after 400 years, he gives us a unique world premiere – a brand-new, full-length Shakespeare play, incorporated brilliantly into this extraordinary novel.  The Final Act of Mr Shakespeare is an exhilarating portrait of England’s greatest author – not in love but raging against the dying of the light.  It is an outrageous tour de force of theatrical imagination, full of the spirit of the Bard.

David Hewson – The Blue Demon (Released 5th February)

Book 8 in the Nic Costa series.

Twenty years ago, a mysterious group called the Butteri committed a series of bizarre crimes evoking the lost race of the Etruscans, and leaving in their wake a several bodies, a cryptic message, and a kidnapped child.
Now, the leaders of the G8 are descending on Rome for a summit at the Quirinale Palace.  But when a politician is found ritually murdered, seemingly by a strange young man dressed as the Etruscan blue demon, detective Nic Costa suspects that the old case was never really solved.  The Butteri have returned – and are planning to unleash a devastating sequence of attacks on the city.
Officially sidelined from the investigation but encouraged by the wily old Italian President, Dario Sordi, Costa and his team start to dig deeper into the past.  There are still too many questions left unanswered – and much more to the history of the Butteri than anyone wants to admit…

I have decided to do a weekly feature highlighting any interesting looking books that are being released during that week.  Today I will be concentrating on any books being released between the 25th and 31st January.

Elizabeth Kostova – The Swan Thieves (Released 26th January)

Psychiatrist Andrew Marlowe has a perfectly ordered life – solitary, perhaps, but full of devotion to his profession and the painting hobby he loves.  This order is destroyed when renowned painter Robert Oliver attacks a canvas in the National Gallery of Art and becomes his patient.  Desperate to understand the secret that torments this genius, Marlowe embarks on a journey that leads him into the lives of the women closest to Oliver and a tragedy at the heart of French Impressionism.  Kostova’s masterful new novel travels from American cities to the coast of Normandy; from the late nineteenth century to the late twentieth, from young love to last love.  The Swan Thieves is a story of obsession, history’s losses, and the power of art to preserve hope.

Kay Hooper – Blood Ties (Released 26th January)

 The elite Special Crimes Unit, the FBI’s most controversial and effective team, is a group of mavericks and misfits trained to use their unique psychic abilities to hunt the worst monsters imaginable—human ones.  Led by the enigmatic Noah Bishop, the SCU has earned a reputation for pitting their skills and cunning against killers that other cops fear.  But this time Bishop and his agents face an enemy who has them in his sights, a trained sniper with a deadly plan—and more than one ace up his sleeve.
It starts with an unspeakable series of grisly murders across three states, a trail of blood leading, finally, to the small Tennessee town of Serenade.  There, two more brutal killings lure the SCU into what may be the ultimate trap.
One of the first investigators on the scene, Special Agent Hollis Templeton, is willing to push herself as hard and as far as necessary.  Risking more than her life to help and protect her SCU colleagues, Hollis must cope with her own psychic abilities, which are evolving in unprecedented ways, an attraction to the most complex man she’s ever known, and a serial murder investigation that turns very, very personal.
In her time with the SCU, Hollis has shown an uncanny ability to survive even the deadliest attacks.  But what she can’t know is that this killer intends to destroy the team from within.
The clock is ticking.  The body count is rising.  And as Bishop and his agents race to uncover the true identity of their enemy, not even their special senses can warn them just how bloody, and how terrifyingly close, the truth will be.

Lesley Pearse – Stolen

Sussex, 2003.  When a beautiful blonde girl is found half-drowned on a beach, she has no memory of who she is or what horrors have left her there.  But an article about her in a Brighton newspaper rings alarm bells for beautician Dale, who shows the police photographs of Lotte Wainright.  The girls met working on a cruise ship and their friendship blossomed as they sailed the seas of South America, until Lotte fell under the sinister influence of an older American couple.  To her regret, Dale hasn’t seen Lotte since leaving the ship months earlier… but the girl on the beach – although badly bruised – is indeed her much missed friend.  Their reunion only marks the beginning of a dangerous tidal wave of secrets, lies and nightmares.  Where has Lotte been?  Who is the man who seems to want to kill her?  And what has become of the baby she’s recently given birth to?  Dale and Lotte must dig deep and find the strength to hold on against the odds if they are to rebuild their friendship and survive Lotte’s stolen – and deadly – past…