Monday's Beginnings (57)

How are you faring in reading at the beginning of this week?  Are you starting a new book or finishing one up?

Well, the weekend was tied up with more running and some fun too.  My son spent the night Saturday at a friends house.  So needless to say the reading I was hoping to get done, didn't happen.  We got to go out Saturday night as adults with friends and have a few drinks.  It's one thing we don't get to do very much so we take advantage of it when it's available for us.  We did have fun, and danced some too.

I did get my review up for my surprise book.  Wintertide by Michael J. Sullivan, I have really been loving this fantasy series.  Please stop by and read the review, HERE.

And a great friend, Jacob from Drying Ink, has posted a wonderful post on Original Concepts in Fantasy.  Have you read it yet?  Said hello to Jacob?  Or visited his blog?  Please do so.

What books am I working on?  Well, I started the monster read The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson.  This book is 1,000 pages long, so needless to say it will take me some time to get through.  But I want to savor this one as I go anyway, it will be a year until the next one is out and with all the details here.... well, I'm really loving this one at a slower pace.  I am working on a few other books as well.  I have Red-Headed Stepchild by Jaye Wells for our Blog Book Chat starting on Thursday, September 30th.  I also am reading The Better Part of Darkness by Kelly Gay for a book chat at Spincracker's blog on Friday October 1st.  Then I plan on picking up Double Cross by Carolyn Crane tomorrow to read for the Blog Book chat starting Monday October 4th.  So, I am planning on being a busy little reader. :)

As for my WANT List... it seems to have not grown this last week. Which is a shocker to me!  I know there are books I want to read out there.  I must have them on the list already as I was reading through the reviews and such.  I know I have been adding many books before they are released to the list lately, so that has to be the answer.

Books I Received Last Week:

Winnings:

I have to share this winning first! Because I LOVE it!  I won this book cover at Lovin & Livin Life Reviews.  I love it! I always carry my pocket size books in my purse and they start to get dinged up.  But this cover is just amazing! I covers and protects by books AND it has a pocket for me to put my sticky notes or notes in.  And see the handle there too!  It is great! Thank you Chasity!  Stop by and check out Chasity's blog, Lovin & Livin Life Reviews.

I won this book on Twitter from @Pocket_Books.  This is a new release anthology that looks amazing.

Synopsis from GoodReads:
From the Horror Writers Association comes a brand-new collection of darkly humorous tales! The Big Questions of Life (and Death) 

Can a killer’s basement blood-feast be a tax write-off (under Entertainment)? Not if Vlad the IRS agent nails him first in Heather Graham’s "Death and Taxes." 

What does a pack of hungry she-wolves do to solve their man troubles? Ladies Night Out takes a wicked turn in "Dog Tired (of the Drama!)" by L. A. Banks. 

How far will an elite call girl go to beat a murder rap? Stuck with a dead client in a luxury L.A. hotel room, she might strike a costly bargain with a woman of unearthly powers in Allison Brennan’s "Her Lucky Day." 

Who actually writes those tabloid stories about Bigfoot? Meet a journalist of the unexplained (she’s 50 percent demon) and her boyfriend (he’s 100 percent thief), as they heat up a museum exhibition that’s also a soul-snatching battleground in "Lucifer’s Daughter" by Kelley Armstrong. 

Plus tales from: 
KEVIN J. ANDERSON & JANIS IAN • SAM W. ANDERSON • MIKE BARON • EDWARD BRYANT • AMY STERLING CASIL • DEREK CLENDENING DON D’AMMASSA • BRIAN J. HATCHER • NINA KIRIKI HOFFMAN NANCY KIRKPATRICK • J. A. KONRATH • JOHN R. LITTLE • SHARYN MCCRUMB • SCOTT NICHOLSON • MARK ONSPAUGH • AARON POLSON • DANIEL PYLE • MIKE RESNICK & LEZLI ROBYN • JEFF RYAN • D. L. SNELL • LUCIEN SOULBAN • ERIC JAMES STONE • JEFF STRAND • JORDAN SUMMERS • JOEL A. SUTHERLAND • STEVE RASNIC TEM • CHRISTOPHER WELCH

I won this book from the GoodReads giveaway.  It sounds like a great read and I am looking forward to reading and reviewing this one soon as well.

Synopsis from GoodReads:
A fantastical reimagining of the American West which draws its influence from steampunk, the American western tradition, and magical realism 

The world is only half made. What exists has been carved out amidst a war between two rival factions: the Line, paving the world with industry and claiming its residents as slaves; and the Gun, a cult of terror and violence that cripples the population with fear. The only hope at stopping them has seemingly disappeared the Red Republic that once battled the Gun and the Line, and almost won. Now they’re just a myth, a bedtime story parents tell their children, of hope. 

To the west lies a vast, uncharted world, inhabited only by the legends of the immortal and powerful Hill People, who live at one with the earth and its elements. Liv Alverhyusen, a doctor of the new science of psychology, travels to the edge of the made world to a spiritually protected mental institution in order to study the minds of those broken by the Gun and the Line. In its rooms lies an old general of the Red Republic, a man whose shattered mind just may hold the secret to stopping the Gun and the Line. And either side will do anything to understand how. 

My last set of winnings here I am going to keep together.  I won all three books in The Makers Song by Adrian Phoenix at Literary Escapism.  I have been wanting these books and am so happy to have them... signed as well!

Synopsis of the First book in the series from GoodReads:
HIS NAME IS DANTE.



Dark. Talented. Beautiful. Star of the rock band Inferno. Rumored owner of the hot New Orleans nightspot Club Hell. Born of the Blood, then broken by an evil beyond imagination.

HIS PAST IS A MYSTERY.


F.B.I. Special Agent Heather Wallace has been tracking a sadistic serial murderer known as the Cross Country Killer, and the trail has led her to New Orleans, Club Hell, and Dante. But the dangerously attractive musician not only resists her investigation, he claims to be "nightkind": in other words, a vampire. Digging into his past for answers reveals little. A juvenile record a mile long. No social security number. No known birth date. In and out of foster homes for most of his life before being taken in by a man named Lucien DeNoir, who appears to guard mysteries of his own.


HIS FUTURE IS CHAOS.

What Heather does know about Dante is that something links him to the killer -- and she's pretty sure that link makes him the CCK's next target. Heather must unravel the truth about this sensual, complicated, vulnerable young man -- who, she begins to believe, may indeed be a vampire -- in order to finally bring a killer to justice. But Dante's past holds a shocking, dangerous secret, and once it is revealed not even Heather will be able to protect him from his destiny....

So, how are you faring this week?  Does it look like a good reading week?

Here's to you having a great week in words and pages.