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Showing posts with label New To The Bookshelf. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New To The Bookshelf. Show all posts

New To The Bookshelves


If you read my post about Mailbox Memes in a Post "Sirengate" Bloggosphere, you'll know that the popular "In My Mailbox" meme has taken a bit of a battering recently, due to the allegations of plagiarism surrounding the hostess of said meme. 

I've always enjoyed sharing my excitement about the new books I've received with you guys, so I'm really glad that so many other bloggers have taken it upon themselves to continue the premise. I've decided to follow two of these new features. 

The first is Letterbox Love, hosted by Lynsey of Narratively Speaking. This is a mailbox meme which focuses on UK bloggers. I want to show support for my fellows on this side of the Atlantic, but take a look at this:

Yes. I made a pie chart depicting where my blog traffic comes from. Geeky, huh? But it clearly shows that a whopping percentage of my traffic comes from across the pond (various ponds actually!). Therefore, I figured I'd be a bit of a meme-hussy and will also sign up for Stacking The Shelves, hosted by Tynga of Tynga's Reviews.

So! Welcome to New To The Bookshelves, or NTTB

I've got a whole BUNCH of new additions to share with you today as I haven't posted an update on my new books in over a month! Therefore, I'm just going to post a few pictures and link up to Goodreads, instead of the usual synopsis for each book!

New Paperbacks




New Audiobooks

 



Freebies from NetGalley

  

  



Special NetGalley Mention


I am still in a state of super-excitement about this one! So effing happy!


New on my Kindle

   


A whole bunch to be excited about, eh? Let me know your thoughts and your own hauls too! 
Later days! Lx

In My Mailbox #18


In My Mailbox (IMM) is a weekly feature organised by The Story Siren. IMM is a post where you can show which books entered your house and it also gives you a chance to say thank you to the people that kindly sent them. To find out more about how you can join in, click here


Title: Shift 
Author: M.R. Merrick
Series: Second book in The Protector Series
Format: Kindle ebook
Publisher: M.R. Merrick
Release Date: February 1st 2012 

Synopsis
Taken from Goodreads

Devastated by the loss of his mother, Chase is trying to balance the life he’s been left with, a family he’s still getting to know, and power he never thought he’d have. He doesn’t understand why the Goddess has named him the Protector and granted him two gifts: the Mark, a tattoo that now covers his back, and the ring. But between getting interrogated by the Circle and psychic attacks from Riley, the Mark is the least of his concern. There’s a demon inside Rayna that’s fighting to be released, and it’s not her inner witch. It’s something else–a monster threatening to tear her apart. 

As Chase struggles to control his magic, his enemies are closing in. Everyone has staked a claim on his ring, and destroying it may be his only chance to stop Riley. But Chase must decide if stopping him is worth risking the lives of everyone he cares about, or if protecting the ring will be enough to save his world.


Title: Drowning Instinct
Author: Ilsa J. Bick
Narrated by: Kathleen McInerney
Format: Unabridged Audiobook
Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins
Audible Release Date: 05/03/2012
Publisher: Audible Inc.


Synopsis
Taken From Audible

There are stories where the girl gets her prince, and they live happily ever after. (This is not one of those stories.)

Jenna Lord's first 16 years were not exactly a fairy tale. Her father is a controlling psycho and her mother is a drunk. She used to count on her older brother - until he shipped off to Iraq. And then, of course, there was the time she almost died in a fire. There are stories where the monster gets the girl, and everyone cries for his innocent victim. (This is not one of those stories either.)

Mitch Anderson is many things: A dedicated teacher and coach. A caring husband. A man with a certain... magnetism. And there are stories where it's hard to be sure who's a prince and who's a monster, who is a victim and who should live happily ever after. (These are the most interesting stories of all.)

Drowning Instinct is a novel of pain, deception, desperation, and love against the odds - and the rules.

In My Mailbox #17



In My Mailbox (IMM) is a weekly feature organised by The Story Siren. IMM is a post where you can show which books entered your house and it also gives you a chance to say thank you to the people that kindly sent them. To find out more about how you can join in, click here


Fear, by Michael Grant



Series: #5 in the Gone Series
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 549 
Publisher: Egmont
Release Date: Well, it was meant to be the 3rd April 2012, but it was on shop shelves last week. Not sure what happened there...

Synopsis
Taken from Goodreads

Despite the hunger, despite the lies, even despite the plague, the kids of Perdido Beach are determined to survive. Creeping into the tenuous new existence they've built, though, is perhaps the worst incarnation yet of the enemy known as the Darkness: fear.

I was SO excited to buy this that I read it in one sitting. You can read my review of it HERE.


The Green, by Karly Kirkpatrick


Format: Kindle eBook
Publisher: Dark Side Publishing
Release Date: January 15th 2012 (first published January 15th 2011)


Sent to me free in exchange for an honest review.


Synopsis
Taken from Goodreads


Seventeen-year-old Ariceli Pisa is a senior at the prestigious Cambridge High School and has her sights set on Northwestern University. She's a cheerleader, a member of the National Honor Society, and a drug dealer. 


That’s the secret she has to keep from her best friend Naomi, in addition to the fact that she’s madly in love with Naomi’s ex-boyfriend. 


Trying to balance her life at Cambridge High with her new demanding job keeps her teetering on the edge of disaster.

In My Mailbox #16

First of all, I've decided that my IMM needs a wee bit of a change. Cute as the little snailmail pic, is, I've decided to retire it. After spending far too long looking online for a new image to use, I stumbled across an amazing craft blog called Hungry Hippy. She had a tutorial up on how to make beautiful gift-wrap out of sheet music. A permission-seeking email later, I'm happy to announce that my IMM image is changing from this:


To this!

Far, more sophisticated, don't you think? And I need all the help I can get to at least appear sophisticated. I'm definitely going to try my hand at making the giftwrap so that all my letters and parcels look amazing too. You can check out the tutorial here.

In My Mailbox (IMM) is a weekly feature organised by The Story Siren. IMM is a post where you can show which books entered your house and it also gives you a chance to say thank you to the people that kindly sent them. To find out more about how you can join in, click here.

I haven't done one of these for a couple of weeks so I have quite a few books to share! Always a joy. Click on the titles to be linked to Goodreads for a bit more info on each book. 

From Me Mam!
White Crow by  Marcus Sedgewick
Red Leaves by Paullina Simons
The Surgeon by Tess Gerritsen

Charity Shop Finds
What The Night Knows by Dean Koontz
Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King
Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson
The Harrowing by Alexandra Sokoloff

Won from Quercus a Facebook competition
Bereft by Chris Womersley
 [The challenge was to write an anagram of "Valentine's Day". I came up with these gems: An invested lay. A Nasty, evil den. Anal dye: invest. Ale Van Destiny! (If I ever start a band, that should be our name...). I don't know which one won, but I suspect it was the one about the anal dye...]

Sent to me by Hodder & Stoughton for an honest review. 
Advent by James Treadwell

From Audible
The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey 
I am simply incapable of turning down the £5.99 Audible sale. It took all of my restraint (though, admittedly, I don;t have much...) to just buy one. But out of 500 titles, I chose this one , so let's hope it's good!

So there you have it. As ever, let me know if you've read them, want to read them and so on. Oh, and remember I'm always up for a UK book swap if you see any titles you fancy. 

Love and peaceful reading.
L x

In My Mailbox #15


In My Mailbox (IMM) is a weekly feature organised by The Story Siren. IMM is a post where you can show which books entered your house and it also gives you a chance to say thank you to the people that kindly sent them. To find out more about how you can join in, click here.

Two new editions to my bookshelves this week!

Title: Big Frog
Author: Rob Badcock
Publisher: Book Guild Ltd. 
Format: Hardback
Pages: 352
Released: July 13th 2011
Sent to me free of charge in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis
Taken from Amazon
In this brilliantly entertaining and zany novel, author Rob Badcock takes us on a roller-coaster ride through a Britain of the near future. The environment has gone crazy and most of the human race has decamped to a new planet billions of miles away. A few hangers-on, however, have remained, living in vast domed cities, towering above the ruins of the old ones. Outside the citidomes is a treacherous rainforest, a wilderness stalked by giant elephants and ruthless bounty hunters. 

Rib Meskitoe - a fourteen-year-old student of Nanozoomology from Milton Keynes citidome - has run away from home and is working on a lottery till in Wigan. There he takes it into his head to steal a winning ticket worth 250 million dollars and suddenly he finds himself on the run, a fugitive in the rainforest with a price on his head. All he has is the money and an incomprehensible set of instructions from his oddball friend Kaddie... 

Weird and wonderful, hilarious and exhilarating, Big Frog is a surreal trip into the future.



Title: Exiled
Author: M.R. Merrick
Publisher: M.R. Merrick
Format: Kindle eBook
Released: 28 June 2011

Synopsis
Taken from Goodreads
Chase Williams is a demon hunter in the Circle, or at least he was supposed to be. On his fifteenth birthday, Chase stepped up to the altar to claim his elemental power, but it never came. Elemental magic is passed down to a hunter through the bloodline, but on Chase's birthday, the bloodline stopped.

Exiled without the Circle's protection, Chase has spent two years trying to survive a world riddled with half-demons and magic. When he has a run in with a frightened and seemingly innocent demon, he learns the Circle's agenda has changed: the Circle plans to unlock a portal and unleash pure-blood demons into the world. Vowing to stop them, and knowing he can't do it alone, Chase forms a reluctant alliance with Rayna — a sexy witch with an attitude and a secret.

In their attempt to stop them, Chase and Rayna find themselves in the middle of the Circle's plan, leaving one of them to decide what their friendship is worth, and the other's life depending on it.

I wouldn't have known that they were listing this book for £0.00 on the Amazon Kindle store yesterday if Ashley, from The Bookish Brunette, hadn't been practically jumping out of her pants with excitement on Facebook! Check out her blog. She has good taste so I took her advice! 


There we have it! As usual, let me know if you've read these and what you thought, and if you visit and comment, I always do my best to visit you back!

Lx

In My Mailbox #14


In My Mailbox (IMM) is a weekly feature organised by The Story Siren. IMM is a post where you can show which books entered your house and it also gives you a chance to say thank you to the people that kindly sent them. To find out more about how you can join in, click here

I have four newbies to Show off this week. Take a look. 


In case you can't see them clearly, the books are:





The first three books I got an Amazon and the fourth book I found for 50p in a charity shop. I love charity shops! You can click on the books to be linked over to Goodreads for a detailed summary. I basically got the writing books as they are the ones that seem to come most recommended by published writers, especially The Creative Writing Coursebook, Edited by Julia Bell and Paul Magrs

To take the picture of the books, I put them on the floor and zoomed in. I just thought I'd show you what I could see through the lense before I hit zoom. 


That cute and curious little fringe-challenged ragamuffin is my Shih-Tzu, Ewok. Cute eh? The leg on the left belongs to Rikku, my Border Collie, who's a bit more camera shy!

Leave me a comment if you want me to check out your IMMs, or if you've got any feedback on the new editions to my paper family. 

Lx 

In My Mailbox #13


In My Mailbox (IMM) is a weekly feature organised by The Story Siren. IMM is a post where you can show which books entered your house and it also gives you a chance to say thank you to the people that kindly sent them. To find out more about how you can join in, click here

Most of them were on the freebie list as I'm a pauper these days!


Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, by Harriet Ann Jacobs


Synopsis 
Taken from Amazon

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is a book that was published in 1861 by Harriet Jacobs, using the pen name "Linda Brent". While on one level it chronicles the experiences of Harriet Jacobs as a slave, and the various humiliations she had to endure in that unhappy state, it also deals with the particular tortures visited on women at her station. Often in the book, she will point to a particular punishment that a male slave will endure at the hands of slave holders, and comment that, although she finds the punishment brutal in the extreme, it cannot compare to the abuse that a young woman must face while still on the cusp of girlhood.

Incidents in the Life of Slave Girl is considered a slave narrative. Portions of it were first published in serial form before being published as a complete work in 1861, after some difficulty finding a publisher. It is also considered an example of feminist literature.


Quit Your Rotten Job...and Become a Successful Freelance Writer Instead: The Quick and Easy Way To Launch a Writing Career, by John Hadyn
Synopsis
Taken from Amazon

If you have ever dreamed of being a professional writer, this book will set you on course for success beyond your wildest dreams. Here you will discover the quick and easy way to build a fun and profitable career in the writing business. 

There has never been a better time to be a freelance writer - the Internet has opened up amazing opportunities for ordinary people to create a great income working from home. Replacing your regular income with writing income is relatively easy, and there are opportunities to make a high-six figure income...or even more. 

Better still, you can do all this working from the comfort of your own home, working the hours you choose, and making more money than you have ever earned in your day job. 


So You Want To Be A Freelance Writer, by Felicia A Williams

Synopsis
Taken from Amazon

So You Want to Become a Freelance Writer provides the foundational information that every online writer should know. 
This book talks specifically about becoming a successful online freelance writer. Felicia A. Williams has been a writer for over 20 years and started writing online in 2006. After finding how easy and lucrative it could be, she dropped her offline endeavors and concentrated 100% on earning money writing online. 
She shares her knowledge, experience and writing philosophy in So You Want to Become a Freelance Writer. Anyone with a desire to learn, work hard and remain consistent can earn a living working from home as an online freelance writer. The book explains the different opportunities available to online writers, the payment options, what types of content works best where and much more. 
So You Want to Become a Freelance Writer is a reference tool that every newbie freelance writer should have. That's why the book is priced so attractively.
Felicia is a full-time freelance writer/blogger and owner of the site www.nojobformom.com where she shares her trials, errors and successes as an online freelance writer. 


FarsightedEmlyn Chand
Synopsis
Taken from Goodreads

Alex Kosmitoras's life has never been easy. The only other student who will talk to him is the school bully, his parents are dead broke and insanely overprotective, and to complicate matters even more, he's blind. Just when he thinks he'll never have a shot at a normal life, an enticing new girl comes to their small Midwest town all the way from India. Simmi is smart, nice, and actually wants to be friends with Alex. Plus she smells like an Almond Joy bar. Sophomore year might not be so bad after all. 

Unfortunately, Alex is in store for another new arrival—an unexpected and often embarrassing ability to "see" the future. Try as he may, Alex is unable to ignore his visions, especially when they suggest Simmi is in mortal danger. With the help of the mysterious psychic next door and friends who come bearing gifts of their own, Alex embarks on a journey to change his future and save the woman of his dreams.


Broadmoor Revealed: Victorian Crime and the Lunatic Asylum, by Mark Stevens

Synopsis
Taken from Amazon

Broadmoor Revealed gives the reader a glimpse behind the walls of England’s first Criminal Lunatic Asylum.

Focused on the Victorian period, the book tells the stories of some of the hospital’s best-known patients. There is Edward Oxford, who shot at Queen Victoria, and Richard Dadd, the brilliant artist and murderer of his father. There is also William Chester Minor, the surgeon from America who killed a stranger in London, and then played a key part in creating the world's finest dictionary. Finally, there is Christiana Edmunds, ‘The Chocolate Cream Poisoner’ and frustrated lover.

To these four tales are added new ones, previously unknown. There were five women who went on to become mothers in Broadmoor, giving birth to life when three of them had previously taken it. Then there were the numerous escapes, actual and attempted, as the first doctors tried to assert control over their residents.

These are stories from the edge of where true crime meets mental illness. Broadmoor Revealed recounts what life was like for the criminally insane, over one hundred years ago.


250 Things You Should Know About Writing, by Chuck Wendig

Synopsis
Taken from Goodreads

"Chuck Wendig hammers out writing and career advice that's always brave, profane, creative, clever, and honest. And don't forget hilarious. You'll never laugh so hard learning so much." 

Matt Forbeck, game designer and author of AMORTALS and VEGAS KNIGHTS (Angry Robot).

"You walk into this book a quivering neophyte crusted with writer fantasies and walk away a seasoned word warrior ready to do battle in the arena we call publishing."

- Kristen Lamb, author of ARE YOU THERE BLOG, IT'S ME, WRITER


Beautiful Disaster, by Jamie McGuire

Synopsis
Taken from Goodreads
The new Abby Abernathy is a good girl. She doesn’t drink or swear, and she has the appropriate percentage of cardigans in her wardrobe. Abby believes she has enough distance between her and the darkness of her past, but when she arrives at college with her best friend America, her path to a new beginning is quickly challenged by Eastern University’s Walking One-Night Stand. 

Travis Maddox, lean, cut, and covered in tattoos, is exactly what Abby needs—and wants—to avoid. He spends his nights winning money in a floating fight ring, and his days as the charming college co-ed. Intrigued by Abby’s resistance to his charms, Travis tricks her into his daily life with a simple bet. If he loses, he must remain abstinent for a month. If Abby loses, she must live in Travis’ apartment for the same amount of time. Either way, Travis has no idea that he has met his match.


Produce, Publish, Publicize, by Sabrina Sumsion

Synopsis
Taken from Amazon

Are you getting ready to publish a book? Have you published a book before but weren't really satisfied with the experience and want to find a new publisher? Are you confused by all the options available to you as a writer? Maybe you want to make a million dollars or maybe you only want to record something for posterity. Whatever you motivation for venturing into the literary world, let Sabrina Sumsion, a publishing insider, help you navigate the muddied waters of the literary world.


Write Good or Die, Scott Nicholson

Synopsis
Taken from Amazon

Survival tips for 21st century writers, from best-selling authors Kevin J. Anderson, M.J. Rose, Heather Graham, J.A. Konrath, Gayle Lynds, Alexandra Sokoloff, Jonathan Maberry, and more. How to develop your craft, improve your writing, get an agent, promote your work, embrace the digital age, and prepare yourself for the coming changes in the publishing industry. Edited by Scott Nicholson.

Other contributors include Elizabeth Massie, Harley Jane Kozak, Douglas Clegg, Brandon Massey, Mur Lafferty, Dean Wesley Smith, David J. Montgomery, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Robert Kroese, and Adrienne Jones. Covering art, craft, and business, the ever-evolving manual supports the writing blog writegoodordie.blogspot.com.

All proceeds benefit the non-profit organization Literacy Inc., which promotes reading among teens.


On Writing, by Stephen King

Synopsis
Taken from Goodreads

"Long live the King" hailed "Entertainment Weekly" upon the publication of Stephen King's "On Writing." Part memoir, part master class by one of the bestselling authors of all time, this superb volume is a revealing and practical view of the writer's craft, comprising the basic tools of the trade every writer must have. King's advice is grounded in his vivid memories from childhood through his emergence as a writer, from his struggling early career to his widely reported near-fatal accident in 1999 -- and how the inextricable link between writing and living spurred his recovery. Brilliantly structured, friendly and inspiring, "On Writing" will empower and entertain everyone who reads it -- fans, writers, and anyone who loves a great story well told.

[Note: I've read this last one before, but I loved it a bit hard and it fell apart... I'm special sometimes...]

So! There we have it. As you can probably see, I've decided to give my writing a bit of fine tuning. I'll let you know if these books help me to do so!