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Saturday, February 25, 2012

Fresh Batch (Feb. 26th – March 3rd)

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

Flavour of the week:

When the Sea is Rising Red

Cat Hellisen
Goodreads / Purchase 

After seventeen-year-old Felicita’s dearest friend, Ilven, kills herself to escape an arranged marriage, Felicita chooses freedom over privilege. She fakes her own death and leaves her sheltered life as one of Pelimburg’s magical elite behind. Living in the slums, scrubbing dishes for a living, she falls for charismatic Dash while also becoming fascinated with vampire Jannik. Then something shocking washes up on the beach: Ilven’s death has called out of the sea a dangerous, wild magic. Felicita must decide whether her loyalties lie with the family she abandoned . . . or with those who would twist this dark power to destroy Pelimburg’s caste system, and the whole city along with it. 

Cat Hellisen is an author of fantasy for adults and young adults. Born in 1977 in Cape Town, South Africa, she has also lived in Johannesburg, Knysna, and Nottingham.

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

Can love really heal all things? If Sam Carroll hadn’t shown up, she might have been able to get to her mother in time. Instead, Allie Everly finds herself at a funeral, mourning the loss of her beloved mother.

Purchase

Hiding is Roo Fanshaw’s special skill. Living in a frighteningly unstable family, she often needs to disappear at a moment’s notice. When her parents are murdered, it’s her special hiding place under the trailer that saves her life.

An eighteen-year-old queen in love with the enemy as their countries pass the point of no return… Bound to a man she cannot love, Queen Alera of Hytanica must forget Narian, the young man who holds her heart. For Narian is destined to conquer Hytanica at the behest of his master, the powerful magic-user known as the Overlord.

Purchase

Ivy is a determined young faery, living in an abandoned tin mine with her clan. In a cruel twist of fate she was born without wings, and she longs to fly like the others. When she meets an enigmatic stranger, he seems to offer an answer. But there is more to him than meets the eye…

A vacation in Greece sounds like the perfect way for Kate Winters to spend her first sabbatical away from the Underworld…until she gets caught up in an immortal feud going back millennia.

Purchase (Amazon)

Kelsey Finkelstein is fourteen and FRUSTRATED. Every time she tries to live up to her awesome potential, her plans are foiled – by her impossible parents, her annoying little sister, and life in general. But with her first day of high school coming up, Kelsey is positive that things are going to change.

When Wendy Everly first discovers the truth about herself–that she’s a changeling switched at birth-she knows her life will never be the same. Now she’s about to learn that there’s more to the story… She shares a closer connection to her Vittra rivals than she ever imagined-and they’ll stop at nothing to lure her to their side.

Purchase

Eden won the battle-she saved her true love from the darkest evil. But the war has only just begun. With secrets swirling around her, powerful allies unraveling, and life-and death-as she knows it eroding, Eden and those she loves tread dangerous ground.

It’s an unsettled summer for Sirena. Back in Texas, her family’s splitting apart, but here in Rhode Island, at the cottage of her aunt, it’s a different world. There are long days at the beach and intriguing encounters with Pilot, the lifeguard with shamanic skills.

Purchase

Seventeen-year-old Greg has managed to become part of every social group at his Pittsburgh high school without having any friends, but his life changes when his mother forces him to befriend Rachel, a girl he once knew in Hebrew school who has leukemia.

Queen Victoria has a little problem: there’s a petty thief at work in Buckingham Palace. Charged with discretion, the Agency puts quickwitted Mary Quinn on the case, where she must pose as a domestic while fending off the attentions of a feckless Prince of Wales.

Purchase

 

Lucy Marinn is a glass artist living in mystical, beautiful, Friday Harbor, Washington. She is stunned and blindsided by the most bitter kind of betrayal: her fiancé Kevin has left her. His new lover is Lucy’s own sister.

A mysterious girl, with luminous green eyes, stares back and from that moment on she haunts Katy and appears to know her every move, even what she is thinking. What is the strange connection between them? And what is the power of the emerald pendant which the girl bestows on her?

Life can’t get much better for Sam Lock. Popular, good-looking, and with a future as a professional football player. That is, until his championship football game, when Sam accidentally links with an ancient source of energy known as the Veil and reveals his potential to become a powerful sorcerer. 

When you can see things others can’t, what do you do when someone’s watching you? Everybody knows about Clarity “Clare” Fern. She’s the psychic girl in school, the one who can place her hands on something and see hidden visions from the past. But then someone starts playing with her head . . . and heart.

Purchase

Kate is devastated to find herself back in a group home after a peaceful year of living with her loving foster parents, Lynn and Ted. The fantasy life of having the perfect family has come to an abrupt end and Kate’s reeling from having to return to the place she’s fought so hard to avoid. 

A dark twist on Faeries. For Shade, a chance meeting with a powerful Teleen faery warrior who wields electrical currents and blue fires along his skin- has her , joining him on a treacherous mission for the good Seelie Faerie Court across the land of Faerie.

Purchase

Elyse knows what it means to keep a secret. She’s been keeping secrets her whole life. Two, actually. First, that she ages five times slower than the average person, so that while she looks eighteen years old, she’s closer to eighty. Second, that her blood has a mysterious power to heal.

After an idyllic childhood of homeschooling with her mother and rough-housing with her older brothers, it’s time for Maggie to face the outside world, all on her own. But that means facing high school first. And it also means solving the mystery of the melancholy ghost who has silently followed Maggie throughout her entire life.

Purchase

 

When killing people is your job, there’s no such thing as a vacation.
Then again, how often does an assassin live long enough to enjoy her retirement? And since I destroyed my nemesis Mab Monroe a few weeks ago, all of Ashland’s lowlifes are gunning to make a name for themselves by taking out the lethal Spider—me, Gin Blanco.

Edward Warren, twenty-four, has been living in Thailand for five years, a prodigal son who left his family after an irreparable fight with his father, Luke. But he gets a frantic phone call: His dad lies comatose, gravely injured in the same accident that has also injured his younger sister Cara.

Purchase

Carver Young dreams of becoming a detective, despite growing up in an orphanage with only crime novels to encourage him. But when he is adopted by Detective Hawking of the world famous Pinkerton Agency, Carver is given not only the chance to find his biological father, he finds himself smack in the middle of a real life investigation.

Humanity is all but extinguished after a war with partials-engineered organic beings identical to humans-has decimated the world’s population. Reduced to only tens of thousands, the survivors in North America have huddled together on Long Island. The threat of the partials is still imminent, but, worse, no baby has been born immune to the disease in over a decade. Humanity’s time is running out.

Purchase

The boarding school known as Archangel Academy possesses a legacy of secrets known only to a privileged few. For in this peaceful, charming part of England lives a population of vampires at war with one another–and Michael Howard is caught in the middle of it all. . .   

I’m pushing aside the memory of my nightmare, pushing aside thoughts of Alex, pushing aside thoughts of Hana and my old school, push, push, push, like Raven taught me to do. The old life is dead. But the old Lena is dead too. I buried her. I left her beyond a fence, behind a wall of smoke and flame.

Purchase

Despite having never gone swimming, Lucy feels an intense connection to the ocean, and meets a handsome ship-builder who shows Lucy a world she’s never known, yet somehow always longed for.However, her mother will stop at nothing to keep Lucy and the ship builder apart, even if it means throwing Lucy into the arms of a wealthy man with a dangerous secret.

Alexia Tarabotti, Lady Maccon, has settled into domestic bliss. Of course, being Alexia, such bliss involves integrating werewolves into London High society, living in a vampire’s second best closet, and coping with a precocious toddler who is prone to turning supernatural willy-nilly.

Purchase

In 2027, destroying an embryo is considered first-degree murder. Fertility clinics still exist, giving hope and new life to thousands of infertile families, but they have to pass rigorous inspections by the United States Department of Embryo Preservation. Fail an inspection, and you will be prosecuted.

The best pint-sized photographer of them all, Jo doesn’t mind doing what it takes to get that perfect shot, until she’s sent on an undercover assignment to shoot Ned Hartnett—teen superstar and the only celebrity who’s ever been kind to her—at an exclusive rehabilitation retreat in Boston.

Purchase

Zach is riding the Greyhound bus through a snowstorm to visit his older brother Derek, whom he hasn’t seen in seven months. That’s when their parents finally went broke paying Derek’s doctor’s bills and had to give him up as a ward of the state.

Forever altered by his experience in Furnace Penetentiary, Alex has done the impossible and escaped. But the battle for freedom is only just beginning.

Purchase

 Whew! This is quite a week of releases!
What are you getting?

Review: Partials by Dan Wells

Posted by on 02/24/2012 • 36 Comments

PartialsDan WellsSeries: Partials, #1 Release date: February 28th, 2012by Balzer + Bray

Goodreads / Purchase

Humanity is all but extinguished after a war with partials–engineered organic beings identical to humans–has decimated the world’s population. Reduced to only tens of thousands by a weaponized virus to which only a fraction of humanity is immune, the survivors in North America have huddled together on Long Island. The threat of the partials is still imminent, but, worse, no baby has been born immune to the disease in over a decade. Humanity’s time is running out.

When sixteen-year-old Kira learns of her best friend’s pregnancy, she’s determined to find a solution. Then one rash decision forces Kira to flee her community with the unlikeliest of allies. As she tries desperately to save…

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Massive Cover Reveal – 5 New Pretties

Posted by on 02/24/2012 • 36 Comments

Out of ReachCarrie ArcosRelease date: October 2012by Simon Pulse

Add it to your Goodreads

When Micah disappears from home, his sister Rachel decides to secretly take matters into her own hands. Armed with Micah’s best friend Tyler, she travels from the hazy, lazy suburbs of Southern California to the seedy side of San Diego’s beach communities following the clues that Micah left behind. As each lead arrives at a dead end, she is left to piece together the puzzle that is her brother’s life. And the sketchy characters Rachel and Tyler encounter make Rachel wonder if she can reach Micah before it’s too late.

Hanging by a Thread Sophie Littlefield Release date: September 11th, 2012 by Delacorte Books for Young Readers Add it to your Goodreads

Summer is the…

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Review: Torn by Amanda Hocking

Posted by on 02/23/2012 • 32 Comments

TornAmanda HockingSeries: Trylle Trilogy, #2Release date: February 28th, 2012by St. Martin’s Press

Goodreads / Purchase

When Wendy Everly first discovers the truth about herself–that she’s a changeling switched at birth–she knows her life will never be the same. Now she’s about to learn that there’s more to the story… She shares a closer connection to her Vittra rivals than she ever imagined–and they’ll stop at nothing to lure her to their side.

With the threat of war looming, her only hope of saving the Trylle is to marry a powerful royal. But that means walking away from Finn, her handsome bodyguard who’s strictly off limits…and Loki, a Vittra prince with whom she shares a growing attraction.

Torn between her heart and her people, between love and duty, Wendy must…

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Review: The First Days by Rhiannon Frater

Posted by on 02/22/2012 • 38 Comments

The First DaysRhiannon FraterSeries: As The World Dies: A Zombie Trilogy, #1 Release date: July 5th, 2011by Tor Books

Goodreads / Purchase

The morning that the world ends, Katie is getting ready for court and housewife Jenni is taking care of her family. Less than two hours later, they are fleeing for their lives from a zombie horde.

Thrown together by circumstance, Jenni and Katie become a powerful zombie-killing partnership, mowing down zombies as they rescue Jenni’s stepson, Jason, from an infected campground.

They find sanctuary in a tiny, roughly fortified Texas town.  There Jenni and Katie find they are both attracted to Travis, leader of the survivors; and the refugees must slaughter people they know, who have returned in zombie form. 

*This review is part of Zombies vs Unicorns month…

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Waiting on Wednesday (24)

Posted by on 02/22/2012 • 67 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:

Silver Talia Vance Release date: September 8th, 2012 by Flux Add it to your Goodreads

Beauty is pointless when no one’s looking.

Brianna Paxton has been invisible to guys since the eighth grade. She’s pretty enough, it’s just that no one bothers to look. There’s almost nothing that can’t be explained with science, and Brianna has a theory: she’s missing the pheromone that attracts people to one another. Brianna’s theory is shot to hell in one frozen, silver moment, when time stops and Blake Williams not only sees her, he recognizes something inside her that she’s been hiding from even herself.

Before…

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Review: Die For Me by Amy Plum

Posted by on 02/21/2012 • 37 Comments

Die For MeAmy PlumSeries: Revenants, #1 Release date: May 10th, 2011by HarperTeen

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In the City of Lights, two star-crossed lovers battle a fate that is destined to tear them apart again and again for eternity.

When Kate Mercier’s parents die in a tragic car accident, she leaves her life–and memories–behind to live with her grandparents in Paris. For Kate, the only way to survive her pain is escaping into the world of books and Parisian art. Until she meets Vincent.

Mysterious, charming, and devastatingly handsome, Vincent threatens to melt the ice around Kate’s guarded heart with just his smile. As she begins to fall in love with Vincent, Kate discovers that he’s a revenant–an undead being whose fate forces him to sacrifice himself over…

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Review: The Vanishing Game by Kate Kae Myers

Posted by on 02/20/2012 • 36 Comments

The Vanishing GameKate Kae MyersRelease date: February 14th, 2012by Bloomsbury Children’s Books

Goodreads / Purchase

Seventeen-year-old Jocelyn follows clues apparently from her dead twin, Jack, in and around Seale House, the terrifying foster home where they once lived. With help from childhood friend Noah she begins to uncover the truth about Jack’s death and the company that employed him and Noah.

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. Only one other person knows about Jason December: Noah, Jocelyn’s…

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