The Shapeshifters: The Kiesha’ra of the Den of Shadows (Paperback)
By: Amelia Atwater-Rhodes
Release Date: 1/12/2010
(From Borders.com) Five shapeshifter novels-one fascinating read! Hawksong Danica Shardae, an avian shapeshifter, will do anything in her power to stop the war that has raged between her people and the serpiente-even pretend to be in love with Zane Cobriana, the terrifying leader of her kind’s greatest enemy, and accept him as her pair bond. But will Zane strike as swiftly and lethally as the cobra that is his second form? Snakecharm A surprising union has brought peace to the avians and serpiente. Soon a child will be born to carry on their royal lines. But Syfka, an ancient falcon, is claiming that one of her people is hidden in the avian and serpiente land. Is Syfka’s lost falcon just a ruse to stir up controversy among them? Falcondance Nicias is a falcon, the son of two exiles from Ahnmik, and images of this distant island have always haunted his dreams. When his visions become more like reality, his parents send him back to the homeland-and a royal falcon-they’ve tried their best to forget. Wolfcry…
The Betrayal of the Blood Lily (Hardcover)
By: Lauren Willig
Release Date: 1/12/2010
(From Amazon.com): The heroines of Lauren Willig’s bestselling Pink Carnation series have engaged in espionage all over nineteenth-century Europe. In the sixth stand-alone volume, our fair English heroine travels to India, where she finds freedom-and risk-more exciting than she ever imagined. Everyone warned Miss Penelope Deveraux that her unruly behavior would land her in disgrace someday. She never imagined she’s be whisked off to India to give the scandal of her hasty marriage time to die down. AS Lady Frederick Staines, Penelope plunges into the treacherous waters of the court of the Nizam of Hyderabad, where no one is quite what they seem-even her husband. In a strange country, where elaborate court dress masks even more elaborate intrigues and a dangerous spy called the Marigold leaves venomous cobras as his calling card, there is only one person Penelope can trust…Captain Alex Reid has better things to do than play nursemaid to a pair of aristocrats. Or so he thinks-until Lady Frederick Staines out- shoots, out-rides, and out-swims every man in the camp. She also has an uncanny ability to draw out the deadly plans of the Marigold and put herself in harm’s way. With danger looming from local warlords, treacherous court officials, and French spies, Alex realizes that an alliance with Lady Staines just might be the only thing standing in the way of a plot designed to rock the very foundations of the British Empire…
Sleepless
By: Charlie Huston
Release Date: 1/12/2010
(From BarnesandNoble.com) In Huston’s impressive, challenging thriller set in a postapocalyptic Los Angeles, a devastating illness renders the afflicted unable to sleep. In about a year, those with SLP (as the sleepless illness is known) deteriorate and die. Amid the city’s rampant violence and lawlessness, LAPD cop Parker “Park” Haas tries to persuade himself that a future exists for his newborn daughter. As the outside world becomes increasingly dangerous, Park pursues an undercover investigation that takes him deep into the milieu of an online game called Chasm Tide, into which many people have retreated. As in the author’s Joe Pitt vampire series (My Dead Body, etc.), this book has at its heart a love story: Park’s wife is dying from SLP, and Park begins to fear he may be getting it, too. Can the mysterious mercenary known only as Jasper help? Some fans of Huston’s crime fiction may not be comfortable with a novel that itself resembles a role-playing game, but it will gain him a whole new readership.
Persistence of Memory
By: Amelia Atwater-Rhodes
Release Date: 1/12/2010
(From BarnesandNoble.com) Sixteen-year-old Erin Misrahe just wants to be like everyone else in her new school. But Erin has more to worry about than passing AP Chemistry or making friends. In times of stress, she has always been overcome by her alter ego, Shevaun, whose violent behavior wreaks havoc on those around her. Erin can never remember anything about these episodes, and she’s grateful to have been spared them for a while. But when a protective friend comes back into Erin’s life, he insists that Shevaun is a vampire who actually exists apart from Erin. Shevaun has dangerous allies, like the handsome witch Adjila—and they’re determined to sever Shevaun’s connection to Erin once and for all.
Burn (Hardcover)
By: Ted Dekker & Erin Healy
Release Date: 1/12/2010
(From BarnesandNoble.com) Dekker and Healy follow their collaboration in Kiss with another odyssey into the paranormal that transports readers into another dimension and returns them head spinning, never to see their own world in quite the same way. Two young friends are propelled out of their Gypsy clan when shady characters burn their kumpania (community). The girls lose family and friends in the fire and grow up separated from each other and the boy they both loved. One is faced with an impossible choice that haunts her until the girls meet 15 years later, where a reality-bender twist is revealed. Readers who enjoy allegorical stories that are rooted in the Bible will find dozens of connections, some force-fed (“He was the Jesus to Janeal’s Judas”) and others unorthodox but mind-zinging (“ ‘Who can imagine what God and Satan discuss? Certainly Job had no idea God was gambling with his life.’ ”) Christian fiction lovers who enjoy romantic interest, frantic chases by sinister figures of biblical proportions, suspense, and the old-fashioned joy of suspending disbelief will find this new dynamic writing duo, once a writer-editor combo, fiery hot.
Alice I Have Been (Hardcover)
By: Melanie Benjamin
Release Date: 1/12/2010
(From BarnesandNoble.com) Few works of literature are as universally beloved as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Now, in this spellbinding historical novel, we meet the young girl whose bright spirit sent her on an unforgettable trip down the rabbit hole–and the grown woman whose story is no less enthralling. But oh my dear, I am tired of being Alice in Wonderland. Does it sound ungrateful?
Alice Liddell Hargreaves’s life has been a richly woven tapestry: As a young woman, wife, mother, and widow, she’s experienced intense passion, great privilege, and greater tragedy. But as she nears her eighty-first birthday, she knows that, to the world around her, she is and will always be only “Alice.” Her life was permanently dog-eared at one fateful moment in her tenth year–the golden summer day she urged a grown-up friend to write down one of his fanciful stories.
That story, a wild tale of rabbits, queens, and a precocious young child, becomes a sensation the world over. Its author, a shy, stuttering Oxford professor, does more than immortalize Alice–he changes her life forever. But even he cannot stop time, as much as he might like to. And as Alice’s childhood slips away, a peacetime of glittering balls and royal romances gives way to the urgent tide of war.
For Alice, the stakes could not be higher, for she is the mother of three grown sons, soldiers all. Yet even as she stands to lose everything she treasures, one part of her will always be the determined, undaunted Alice of the story, who discovered that life beyond the rabbit hole was an astonishing journey.
A love story and a literary mystery, Alice I Have Been brilliantly blends fact and fiction to capture the passionate spirit of a woman who was truly worthy of her fictional alter ego, in a world as captivating as the Wonderland only she could inspire.
Dream Life (Hardcover)
By: Lauren Mechling
Release Date: 1/12/2010
(From Borders.com) Claire Voyante’s first semester at Henry Hudson High School was eventful, to say the least. As she heads into her second semester, things are calming down a bit. But Claire has a few secrets that are getting harder to keep. Her biggest secret of all? The onyx and ivory cameo necklace her grandmother gave her for her 15th birthday. Ever since she started wearing it, her dreams have been coming to her in black and white and turning out to be oddly prophetic. Becca’s been hanging out with her old prep school friends and never seems to have time for Claire anymore. And soon, Claire discovers whythere’s a secret group of society girls with a mysterious identity. And, turns out, a mysterious enemy who’s out to get them. The second she sniffs out trouble, Claire jumps on the case. But is it someone close to Claire who’s in danger againor could it be Claire herself whose life is at stake?
Eulalia!
By: Brian Jacques
Release Date: 1/12/2010
(From Borders.com) The golden fox Vizka Longtooth and his scurrilous crew of Sea Raiders are bound for plunder and conquest; in their ship’s hold, a young badger lies captive. At the same time, the aged badger lord of Salamandastron has sent forth a haremaid, questing for his successor.
Haunted (Paperback)
By: Meg Cabot
Release Date: 1/15/2010
Mr. Shivers (Hardcover)
By: Robert Jackson Bennett
Release Date: 1/15/2010
(From Borders.com) It is the time of the Great Depression. Thousands have left their homes looking for a better life, a new life. But Marcus Connelly is not one of them. He searches for one thing, and one thing only. Revenge. Because out there, riding the rails, stalking the camps, is the scarred vagrant who murdered Connelly’s daughter. No one knows him, but everyone knows his name: Mr. Shivers. In this extraordinary debut, Robert Jackson Bennett tells the story of an America haunted by murder and desperation. A world in which one man must face a dark truth and answer the question-how much is he willing to sacrifice for his satisfaction?
Vampire Beach (Paperback)
By: Alexa Hayes
Release Date: 1/16/2010
(From Borders.com) Alexandra Hart is content with her life in the small California coastal town of Santa del Sol. But when 400-year-old Master Vampire Rafferty O’Neill arrives with a small entourage of followers depending on him, all that is about to change.
Sherwood: A Novel of Robin Hood And His Times
By: Parke Godwin
Release Date: 1/16/2010
(From Borders.com) The stirring tale of England’s artful outlaw who challenged the throne itself is known to everyone, as are Marian, the Lady he loved, Will Scatloch, Little John, and the other men who gathered around him. But where might their legend have come from? Who might the historical Robin have been all those years ago in the now-famous Sherwood Forest? Parke Godwin’s Robin Hood is subtly different from the known version of the tale. His setting is shortly after the conquest of Anglo-Saxon England by William of Normandy in 1066. Young Robin is a lesser Saxon landowner who must bow to a brutal king or lose everything his family and people have fought to hold. Sherwood is realistic, historical fiction of the highest order. It is a compelling, richly detailed narrative that evokes and illuminates a lost time.
Ultimate Undead: 23 Tales of Terror
By: Byron Preiss
Release Date: 1/16/2010
(From Borders.com) Celebrating the strange and unusual, some of the best-known authors of the fantastic and the horrific explore the myths and legends surrounding a creature both dead and the undead — the zombie!
From Anne Rice’s chilling portrait of a woman more dead than alive to Chelsea Quinn Yarbro’s future where nobody dies forever, from Nina Kirki Hoffman’s powerful story of the dead returned for love to Gene Wolfe’s tale of computer-driven corpses, “The Ultimate Undead” feature spectacular zombie stories of the modern ages.
Will you be picking up any of these books this week? Join us in the forum to discuss!
