Saturday, February 11, 2012

Fresh Batch (Feb. 12th – 18th)

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Exclusively titled for Xpresso Reads, Fresh Batch features the hottest releases of this upcoming week.

Flavour of the week:

The Fine Art of Truth or Dare

Melissa Jensen
Goodreads / Purchase 

Ella is nearly invisible at the Willing School, and that’s just fine by her. She’s got her friends – the fabulous Frankie and their sweet cohort Sadie. She’s got her art – and her idol, the unappreciated 19th-century painter Edward Willing. Still, it’s hard being a nobody and having a crush on the biggest somebody in the school: Alex Bainbridge. Especially when he is your French tutor, and lessons have started becoming, well, certainly more interesting than French ever has been before. But can the invisible girl actually end up with a happily ever after with the golden boy, when no one even knows they’re dating? And is Ella going to dare to be that girl?

Melissa’s Website / Goodreads / Facebook / Twitter

I grew up in San Francisco, which gave me a love of fog and funny-colored houses. My mother is an amazing watercolorist, my father an architect. I can’t draw. Never could. But I always loved telling stories (occasionally of the sort involving passing Vegetable Fairies and disappearing sweet potatoes at dinnertime). I read lots of pretty wonderful books as a kid, but haven’t been quite the same since I was fourteen and my English teacher handed me a copy of Pride and Prejudice. I still want to be Elizabeth Bennet when I grow up. Elizabeth Bennet with a career and jeans, anyway. My husband got a second date by telling me he had once played Mr. Darcy on stage. There would have been a second date, in any case, but still…


 Other releases this week (click on cover for Goodreads):
*In no particular order*  *Purchase links are for Book Depository*

Once she was Adrienne Satti. An orphan of Davillon, she had somehow escaped destitution and climbed to the ranks of the city’s aristocracy in a rags-to-riches story straight from an ancient fairy tale. Until one horrid night, when a conspiracy of forces—human and other—stole it all away in a flurry of blood and murder.

Purchase

Everything Aoife thought she knew about the world was a lie. There is no Necrovirus. And Aoife isn’t going to succumb to madness because of a latent strain—she will lose her faculties because she is allergic to iron. Aoife isn’t human. She is a changeling—half human and half from the land of Thorn. And time is running out for her.

Hannah believes she’s being brought from Moldova to Los Angeles to become a nanny for a Russian family. But her American dream quickly spirals into a nightmare. The Platonovs force Hannah to work sixteen-hour days, won’t let her leave the house, and seem to have a lot of secrets – from Hannah and from each other.

Purchase

Colby and Bev have a long-standing pact: graduate, hit the road with Bev’s band, and then spend the year wandering around Europe. But moments after the tour kicks off, Bev makes a shocking announcement: she’s abandoning their plans – and Colby – to start college in the fall.  

Just when things start to move forward with Robert, the guy Jenna’s been crushing on for a year now, in walks the man of her dreams – literally. Chance suddenly appears in her dream every time she closes her eyes. So it’s Robert by day and Chance by night. One in the real world and one in the dream world. What could possibly go wrong?

Jocelyn’s twin brother Jack was the only family she had growing up in a world of foster homes-and now he’s dead, and she has nothing. Then she gets a cryptic letter from “Jason December”-the code name her brother used to use when they were children at Seale House, a terrifying foster home that they believed had dark powers. 

Lo’s hoarding has blossomed into a full-blown, potentially dangerous obsession. She discovers a beautiful, antique butterfly pendant during a routine scour at a weekend flea market, and recognizes it as having been stolen from the home of a recently murdered girl. As usual when Lo begins to obsess over something, she can’t get the murder out of her mind.

Purchase

August (Auggie) Pullman was born with a facial deformity that prevented him from going to a mainstream school—until now. He’s about to start 5th grade at Beecher Prep, and if you’ve ever been the new kid then you know how hard that can be. The thing is Auggie’s just an ordinary kid, with an extraordinary face. But can he convince his new classmates that he’s just like them, despite appearances?

Purchase

Posing as one of Robin Hood’s thieves to avoid the wrath of the evil Thief Taker Lord Gisbourne, Scarlet has kept her identity secret from all of Nottinghamshire. Only the Hood and his band know the truth: the agile thief posing as a whip of a boy is actually a fearless young woman with a secret past.

Purchase

A Celtic warrior girl is held captive and enslaved by a rival tribe. When fever takes her only friend, she knows she must escape, but she runs straight into the path of two Roman foot soldiers. Thinking they will kill a warrior instantly, the girl disguises herself as a beggar and asks to share their fire. Using her gift as a seer she discovers that one of the soldiers is not what he seems.
Purchase

Marcus Hardy had hoped to enjoy a year away at college while he put the summer he’d rather forget behind him. But instead, he’s jerked right back to the coastal town of Sea Breeze, Alabama due to a family crisis.

 

When 17-year-old Rosie’s mother, Trudie, dies from Huntington’s Disease, her pain is intensified by the knowledge that she has a fifty percent chance of inheriting the crippling disease herself. Only when Rosie tells her mother’s best friend, “Aunt Sarah,” that she is going to test for the disease does Sarah, a midwife, reveal that Trudie wasn’t her real mother after all.

His work is all over the city, but he is nowhere.
Ed, the last guy she wants to see at the moment, says he knows where to find him. He takes Lucy on an all-night search to places where Shadow’s thoughts about heartbreak and escape echo around the city walls.

To Rosa Alcantara, the exotic world of Sicily, with its network of Mafia families and its reputation for murder and intrigue, is just that—exotic and wholly unknown. But when her life in Brooklyn begins to fall apart, she must travel there, to her family’s ancestral home, where centuries of family secrets await her.

Bewitching can be a beast. . . . Once, I put a curse on a beastly and arrogant high school boy. That one turned out all right. Others didn’t. I go to a new school now—one where no one knows that I should have graduated long ago. I’m not still here because I’m stupid; I just don’t age.

Purchase

I’ve lost it. The only thing in the world I wasn’t supposed to lose. My engagement ring. It’s been in Magnus’s family for three generations. And now, the very same day his parents are coming, I’ve lost it. The very same day. Do not hyperventilate Poppy. Stay positive!!

Thirteen-year-old Aluna has lived her entire life under the ocean with the Coral Kampii in the City of Shifting Tides. But after centuries spent hidden from the Above World, her colony’s survival is at risk.

What are you most excited for?

Review: The Disenchantments by Nina LaCour

Posted by on 02/10/2012 • 24 Comments

The DisenchantmentsNina LaCourRelease date: February 16th, 2012By Dutton Children’s Books

Goodreads / Purchase

Colby and Bev have a long-standing pact: graduate, hit the road with Bev’s band, and then spend the year wandering around Europe. But moments after the tour kicks off, Bev makes a shocking announcement: she’s abandoning their plans—and Colby—to start college in the fall.

But the show must go on and The Disenchantments weave through the Pacific Northwest, playing in small towns and dingy venues, while roadie-Colby struggles to deal with Bev’s already-growing distance and the most important question of all: what’s next?

Morris Award–finalist Nina LaCour draws together the beauty and influences of music and art to brilliantly capture a group of friends on the brink of the rest of their lives.

*A copy…

Cover Reveal: The Color of Snow, The Watchers Trilogy

Posted by on 02/10/2012 • 24 Comments

The Legions Trilogy (Cover redesign) Karice Bolton Add it to your Goodreads

Awakening Synopsis:Alone in snowy, remote Whistler village, Ana tries to build a new life since losing her parents. With a cozy condo, a sweet-faced bulldog and an evening job to leave the days free for the slopes, life slips into a great routine. If only she could shake the guilt for not remembering anything about her parents and banish the night terrors that haunt her every dream. On a whim, Ana goes out with Athen, a guy she’s just met in the Grizzly Pub… The only problem is that she feels like she already knows him. Within 48 hours of meeting Athen and his family, Ana’s world implodes. She falls for Athen quickly and before she knows it,…

All’s Fair in Vanities War Tour Stop

Posted by on 02/09/2012 • 23 Comments

As part of the All’s Fair in Vanities War blog tour, Elizabeth Marx is coming over to Xpresso Reads to list her top ten Celtic Goddesses. There is also a giveaway… or 2… or none… I guess you’ll have to check! 🙂If you haven’t heard of Elizabeth’s book before, here’s the deal:

All’s Fair in Vanities WarElizabeth MarxRelease date: October 24th, 2011

Add it to your Goodreads

Salem’s always held sinister secrets. No one understands this better than a sixteen-year-old girl who dies on Halloween night and is reborn a Seer. The Seer can’t imagine anything worse than being an invisible teenager with enormous black wings. Until she finds out she’s been sacrificed to watch over Locke’s new flame.

Locke Cavanaugh is a Druid, and part of the…

Review: Zombies vs Unicorns – Inoculata & Cold Hands

Posted by on 02/08/2012 • 29 Comments

Zombies vs UnicornsMultiple authors (anthology)Release date: September 21st, 2010by Margaret K. McElderry

Goodreads / Purchase

It’s a question as old as time itself: which is better, the zombie or the unicorn? In this anthology, edited by Holly Black and Justine Larbalestier (unicorn and zombie, respectively), strong arguments are made for both sides in the form of short stories. Half of the stories portray the strengths–for good and evil–of unicorns and half show the good (and really, really bad-ass) side of zombies. Contributors include many bestselling teen authors, including Cassandra Clare, Libba Bray, Maureen Johnson, Meg Cabot, Scott Westerfeld, and Margo Lanagan. This anthology will have everyone asking: Team Zombie or Team Unicorn?

*This review is part of Zombies vs Unicorns month co-hosted with Literary Exploration, YA-Aholic and YA Bookmark*

Waiting on Wednesday (22)

Posted by on 02/08/2012 • 68 Comments

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly event that is hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine and spotlights upcoming releases that we’re eagerly anticipating.  My pick this week:

Never Let You Go                                     Emma Carlson Berne                                     Release date: Fall, 2012 by Simon Pulse Add it to your Goodread

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. . .

You always want what you can’t have.

Megan never meant to hurt her best friend Anna. She made a mistake, and she’s spent all year trying to regain Anna’s trust. So when Anna invites her to spend the summer on her uncle’s farm, Megan is excited…and relieved. The past is finally behind them.

On the farm, Anna quickly falls for Jordan, a rugged summer-hand. Megan and Jordan have their own spark,…

Review: Pure by Julianna Baggott

Posted by on 02/07/2012 • 36 Comments

PureJulianna BaggottRelease date: February 8th, 2012by Grand Central Publishing

Goodreads / Purchase

We know you are here, our brothers and sisters . . . Pressia barely remembers the Detonations or much about life during the Before. In her sleeping cabinet behind the rubble of an old barbershop where she lives with her grandfather, she thinks about what is lost-how the world went from amusement parks, movie theaters, birthday parties, fathers and mothers . . . to ash and dust, scars, permanent burns, and fused, damaged bodies. And now, at an age when everyone is required to turn themselves over to the militia to either be trained as a soldier or, if they are too damaged and weak, to be used as live targets, Pressia can no longer pretend to be…

Cover Reveal: Awaited & Live Through This

Posted by on 02/07/2012 • 10 Comments

Awaited(Wasteland, #2)Lynn RushRelease date: May 2012by Crescent Moon Press

Add it to your Goodreads

The voice is a powerful thing…

Russell Leonard is a centuries-old Guardian who’s lost faith in his purpose. So when he’s charged with procuring the first female Guardian in over two centuries, he can only hope it’s the red-headed beauty who’s been haunting his dreams for months. And if it is, he intends to claim her as his. But when he finds his dream woman, Annabelle is mute and bears no Guardian’s Mark.

He soon realizes she’s been tainted by an ancient evil. Russell must somehow release the secrets trapped within this delicate soul to help her tap into the only weapon powerful enough to silence a millennia-old demon—her voice.

The Wasteland series: