Sunday Post #35

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by Kimba the Caffeinated Book Reviewer ~ It's a chance to share news ~ A post to recap the past week on your blog, showcase books and things we have received and share new about what is coming up on our blog for the week ahead.

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I MISSED YOU ALL!!! I do hope everyone is doing well and preparing for holidays.

It's Sunday. And it's the first of December. November has passed us by in a blink of an eye. I hope all my USA friends, who are coming off the Thanksgiving Day hangover, enjoyed their holiday with friends and family.

November is now behind us. I finished, and WON! NaNoWriMo. Am I done? No. Thanks to this project, I have two others floating around my head I want to get out. So, onward we go!

I've done a great deal of thinking during November as well. I'm not going anywhere, but I think I'm going to change things around a bit. Maybe even start with discussions on things that pop into my head. We'll see. But I do know I want to write more. So, being here with all the meme's...I think I'm going to cut back on the extra posts. BUT! watch for a post about that too as I'm going to need your help situating what I'll be doing.

Onward to what I got through in books during the month of November...

What's Happening in Books:

Current Read:
Cursed by Destiny by Cecy Robson

Murder At Avedon Hill by P.G. Holyfield (in audiobook while at work)


Finished Last (2) Weeks:
The Shambling Guide to New York City by Mur Lafferty (in audiobook while at work - waiting for the episodes to come, one chapter a week! Then purchased the book to finish as I couldn't wait.)
The Quill & The Crow by Lilith Saintcrow
A Cursed Moon by Cecy Robson

Wasteland by Mur Lafferty (in audiobook while at work)
War by Mur Lafferty (in audiobook while at work)
Hapax by K.T. Bryski (in audiobook while at work)

Finished Podcast Book Listen:
I haven't got to the Podcasts yet.  I will, they are lining up on me.

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Last Week on the Blog:

Cover Reveals: (click titles to go to post & learn more)
Walker by Michelle Flick

Posts:

Reviews:

GIVEAWAYS:



Weekly Posts:

***NEW*** Mythical Monday - Freya Robertson - English Folklore that inspires Heartwood
Teaser Tuesday
Who? What? Where? Wend.
Throwback Thursday
Looking Forward To...
Freebies and Deals, on Nook too

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This Week to Come on the Blog:

Hmmm, I have two reviews ready for you!
Progeny by S.A. Huchton - I'm soooo thrilled to be continuing on with this series. Loving the romance!
A Cursed Moon by Cecy Robson - Mhmhm. Loving this world and seeing Bren. *giggle*

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Received Last Week:

These are all for the month of November.
Review:

God Save the Queen by Kate Locke
Goodreads Review:
Queen Victoria rules with an immortal fist. 

The undead matriarch of a Britain where the Aristocracy is made up of werewolves and vampires, where goblins live underground and mothers know better than to let their children out after dark. A world where being nobility means being infected with the Plague (side-effects include undeath), Hysteria is the popular affliction of the day, and leeches are considered a delicacy. And a world where technology lives side by side with magic. The year is 2012 and Pax Britannia still reigns.

Xandra Vardan is a member of the elite Royal Guard, and it is her duty to protect the Aristocracy. But when her sister goes missing, Xandra will set out on a path that undermines everything she believed in and uncover a conspiracy that threatens to topple the empire. And she is the key-the prize in a very dangerous struggle.


Purchased/Winnings/Gifts:

The Quill & The Crow by Lilith Saintcrow
Goodreads Synopsis:
Essays on writing from the prolific Lilith Saintcrow, compiled from her popular blog. This first of three volumes ranges from the writer's craft to pro tips, musings on art to how to write a better sex scene and more, salted with her trademark pungent phrasing and self-deprecating wit.

Time Traveled Tales edited by Jean Rabe
Goodreads Synopsis:
Time Traveled Tales is an exciting journey through stories of time travel, possible futures, and supernatural and alien beings from authors like Aaron Allston, Maxwell Alexander Drake, R.T. Kaelin, Janine Spendlove, Michael A. Stackpole, Bryan Young, Timothy Zahn, and many others. Each story is beautifully illustrated by artist Matt Slay.

The Coffee Legacy by Katharina Bordet
Goodreads Synopsis:
An old café, an even older legend and a new threat.

When Isabelle's secret past returns to haunt her nightmares, she must take action to protect her family from a threat that is closer than she realises.

Set within the traditional Viennese café culture, The Coffee Legacy is the story of café owner Isabelle Schindler-Krug and her role in a struggle for power that stretches back for centuries.

As she tells her sons the legends behind coffee and Vienna, it becomes clear that one such legend is still in the making, with her own family caught right in the middle.

Echoes of Angels by Devyn Quinn
Goodreads Synopsis:
Julienne Blackthorne grew up in the school of hard knocks.

Dragged around the country by an unstable mother, she grew up on the fringes of poverty, unloved and unwanted. With the face of an angel and a body made for sin, her dream to reinvent herself in Hollywood goes crushingly awry. Though marriage to her manager leads to minor success as a model and D-list celebrity, her husband’s violent temper and her own crack-cocaine habit can only lead to one thing: disaster. A near brush with death leaves her broke, alone and scarred for life. By the time she emerges from rehab, her life is in ruins, and her soul little more than ashes.

But old bodies will not stay buried, and Julienne is about to learn the truth behind her own lost past. The chance to begin her life over lures her back to the family home her mother abandoned over twenty-one years ago — and straight into the unwelcome embrace of the man Cassandra Blackthorne feared most.

Morgan Saint-Evanston.

Dark. Brooding. Sexy as hell. He’s everything a woman desires, yet his own frightening secrets have tainted his heart and blackened his soul. He is a man Julienne will dare to take as her lover even as he plunges her into an occult realm, where human souls are open barter and swords and sorcery still rule…

Seasons of Insanity by Gill Ainsworth & Frank W. Haubold
Goodreads Synopsis:
A collection of horror from Stoker Award-nominated author Gill Ainsworth and The Kurd-LaBwitz Award-winning Frank W. Haubold.

At what point does an innocent girl grow to find her teddy bear is her lover?

When does a fun Halloween trick-or-treat become a dash for life--or, if you're lucky, death?

When does insanity become reality? Beware. Beyond pleasure is pain. And the next step you take may lead to a slip, a slide, a downward spiral into your own psychotic world.

Dare you open that Christmas present, or hold your lover's hand on a moonlit night? If you don't want to know, then don't turn these pages.

Glitter & Mayhem
Goodreads Synopsis:
Welcome to Glitter & Mayhem, the most glamorous party in the multiverse.

Step behind the velvet rope of these fabulous Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror tales of roller rinks, nightclubs, glam aliens, party monsters, drugs, sex, glitter, and debauchery.

Dance through nightclubs, roller derby with cryptids and aliens, be seduced by otherworldly creatures, and ingest cocktails that will alter your existence forever. Your hosts are the Hugo Award-winning editors John Klima (Electric Velocipede) and Lynne M. Thomas (Apex Magazine), and the Hugo-nominated editor Michael Damian Thomas (Apex Magazine).

Join glittery authors Christopher Barzak (One for Sorrow) and Daryl Gregory (Pandemonium) on the dance floor, drink cocktails with Maria Dahvana Headley (Queen of Kings: A Novel of Cleopatra, the Vampire) and Tim Pratt (Marla Mason series), and skate with Seanan McGuire (InCryptid series), Diana Rowland (Kara Gillian series), and Maurice Broaddus (The Knights of Breton Court series). The fantastic Amber Benson gets the party started with her floor-rattling introduction (Calliope Reaper-Jones series).

We’re waiting.

Table of Contents

Introduction by Amber Benson
Sister Twelve: Confessions of a Party Monster by Christopher Barzak
Apex Jump by David J. Schwartz
With Her Hundred Miles to Hell by Kat Howard
Star Dancer by Jennifer Pelland
Of Selkies, Disco Balls, and Anna Plane by Cat Rambo
Sooner Than Gold by Cory Skerry
Subterraneans by William Shunn & Laura Chavoen
The Minotaur Girls by Tansy Rayner Roberts
Unable to Reach You by Alan DeNiro
Such & Such Said to So & So by Maria Dahvana Headley
Revels in the Land of Ice by Tim Pratt
Bess, the Landlord’s Daughter, Goes for Drinks with the Green Girl by Sofia Samatar
Blood and Sequins by Diana Rowland
Two-Minute Warning by Vylar Kaftan
Inside Hides the Monster by Damien Walters Grintalis
Bad Dream Girl by Seanan McGuire
A Hollow Play by Amal El-Mohtar
Just Another Future Song by Daryl Gregory
The Electric Spanking of the War Babies by Maurice Broaddus & Kyle S. Johnson
All That Fairy Tale Crap by Rachel Swirsky

Earth Girls are Difficult by Frances Pauli
Goodreads Synopsis:
Eight tales of wily women from author, Frances Pauli...

Whether they are causing trouble or just getting into it, they've got what it takes to get the job done. Need a little bacon to domesticate a hell hound? Looking to seduce an Italian vampire? You need look no further. From vengeful goddesses to mythical tattooists, from train robbery to the local spelling bee, these women are well prepared and fully armed for adventure. They have the tools. They have the attitude. They're tough, tricky, and possibly just a teeny bit wicked.

Table of Contents:

Idol Games
Offerings
Bad Dog
El Emperador
Forbidden
Silent Partner
Priceless
Promises


Free Ebooks:

Haunted by Amanda Bonilla
Goodreads Synopsis:
A short story from the Sentry of Evil world… 

Working on a TV special about one of McCall, Idaho’s legendary “haunted” hotels isn’t exactly how production assistant Alyssa Shaw wants to spend her weekend. But when the hotel’s handsome caretaker finds her outside at night, Alyssa forgets all about ghosts and her annoying boss. 

Alec Bailey knows a thing or two about the supernatural world and its dangers. When the local news crew shows up to do a piece on his hotel, he knows he should send them away…especially with that unchecked demon lurking on the property perimeter. Supernatural protocol dictates he call in Jacquelyn, McCall’s own demon hunter, but he isn’t ready to say goodbye to the beautiful crew member who reminds of a time in his life long past… 

If Alec can’t keep Alyssa from the forest, she’s as good as dead. When she ventures past the iron fence, Alec realizes that he’ll have to defy supernatural law if he’s going to save her. And it may be that defiance, this time, will save him right back… 

Frostbite by Lynn Rush
Goodreads Synopsis:
Amanda gives a whole new meaning to cool…

Amanda Smith is sick of getting chased from town-to-town. So when she lands in tiny Trifle, Arizona, she hopes it’s her last move for a long time. Despite hating the smallness of the town, she settles in and finds a best friend, and even a boyfriend. Normality at its finest.

But for a girl who can shoot snow from her hands and lift a two-ton truck over her head like a bag of feathers—normal is not an option.

The scientists who murdered her mother come barreling into Amanda’s quiet life. She must decide if she’ll run again or stay and fight. The price of either choice might be her life or the lives of those she’s come to love…

Wasteland by Susan Kim & Laurence Klavan
Goodreads Synopsis:
Welcome to the Wasteland. Where all the adults are long gone, and now no one lives past the age of nineteen. Susan Kim and Laurence Klavan’s post-apocalyptic debut is the first of a trilogy in which everyone is forced to live under the looming threat of rampant disease and brutal attacks by the Variants —- hermaphroditic outcasts that live on the outskirts of Prin. Esther thinks there’s more to life than toiling at harvesting, gleaning, and excavating, day after day under the relentless sun, just hoping to make it to the next day. But then Caleb, a mysterious stranger, arrives in town, and Esther begins to question who she can trust. As shady pasts unravel into the present and new romances develop, Caleb and Esther realize that they must team together to fight for their lives and for the freedom of Prin.

Ghost in the Machine by C.E. Kilgore
Goodreads Synopsis:
"Love is like a wormhole. You stumble on to it blindly, it sucks you in and takes you somewhere completely unexpected, but you sure have one hell of a ride. You can’t fight it, because that would tear your ship apart. You can’t control it, either. All you can do is set your thrusters on glide and let it take you where it's going to take you."

Take part in an exploration of the heart through a richly built and diverse universe of cultures, planets and people. As a member of the Vesparian race that seeks to keep its entire existence secret, Orynn is thrown into the open by a request for help that she could not refuse. Seeking to reconcile past mistakes and gain a forgiveness she feels she does not deserve, the control over her empathic abilities is put to the test when the darkness that lives within her spirit threatens to once again destroy any piece of happiness that she allows herself to find. 

Joining a rag-tag crew of Central Agents, who are part of an organization that maintain a counterbalance against the encroaching Xen’dari Empire, Orynn finds unexpected friendship and a trust she struggles not to betray. When her heart grows an attachment for one of the crew members, a Mechatronic Automaton who reminds her of a lost and cherished friendship, the darkness within her fights against it and begins to rip her spirit in two. When another Agent tries to bring out the darkness in order to witness her races’ rumored capabilities, she is brought to the edge of the abyss within her soul. With a gentle push, she jumps.

As a Mechatronic Automaton, Ethan defines his world through a set of logically defined values and understandings. Encountering Orynn throws his system out of balance as he tries to decide if he should trust the feelings he is developing, or if he should follow the logic telling him that she is trying to control him for some unknown purpose. Should he keep her at a distance despite his want to bring her near, or should he follow the heart he swears he does not have? As his understanding of her develops, he begins to question all of his preconceived notions about both himself and the universe around him.

In his attempts to capture the Vesparian prey he has been hunting after for two decades, the First Commander of the Xen’dari fleet will stop at nothing and track Orynn to the ends of the universe. On a path of vengeance for a past he can’t let go of, he will do everything in his power to burn her world down around her feet until nothing is left but ash and the bitter taste of regret. The Central Agents’ mission to save a planet from a genetically created plague is put in jeopardy by the First Commander’s advances. The crew must fight against the unknown foe as they travel between systems in their search for the plague’s cure.

Orynn guides the crew through these systems with her knowledge of the cultures and peoples, giving the young captain a crash course in the uncommon races of the Outer Rim. Captain Hankarron Eros is in for the ride of his life as he tries to put aside his preconceived ideas about Vesparians and give Orynn his trust. Struggling with his own relationship woes and a reputation for rash and strategically lacking decisions, Hank fights to hold on to his Captain’s chair as the legendary legacy of his Uncle overshadows him. 

Ghosts of the past clash with hopes for the future in this first book of the series, set in a universe where nothing is as it seems at first glance and trust is a highly priced commodity.

Mechanics of Survival by C.E. Kilgore
Goodreads Synopsis:
Mechanics of Survival is available FREE!

Stranded on an unpopulated planet, an ambassador for the Xen’dari Empire and a Mechatronic Central Agent must overcome their differences and accept their similarities if they hope to survive.

Birth of an Empire: The Beginning by Catrina Taylor
Goodreads Synopsis:
Kala, a once timid Xenonian slave girl, possesses a unique psionic signature exploited by the military to create a powerful weapon of war. Climbing to the rank of Fleet Commander, the compassionate Kala stirs controversy when she pushes for peace in the chaos of the great war.

A skilled but reckless soldier from the opposing Dentonian fleet, Yatrell struggles to hone his unique talents. The skills and abilities that help him become the formidable leader are the same that may be the undoing of his entire planet. 

Brax left his clan when his psionic ability surfaced. A gentle giant, he has become an exceptional fighter whose only weakness is his desperation for acceptance. 

When the three are reunited, they become a dynamic force...and the key to peace.

Present Company by R.M. Prioleau
Goodreads Synopsis:
A master of the Dark Arts searches for his prized experiment. A commoner woman with a torn past seeks a new life. The story of death’s love and life’s fate, “Present Company” chronicles events preceding R.M. Prioleau’s novella, “The Necromancer’s Apprentice.”

Wolf Spell by M.R. Polish
Goodreads Synopsis:
With a death starts a new beginning...

Eighteen-year-old Esmerelda thinks she’s just a normal girl, but all of that changes the day of her mom’s funeral, when a warlock, intent on using her special powers, kidnaps her. Powers she didn’t know existed. Thrown in the middle of a magical battle, Es struggles to learn her magic while fleeing both vampires and warlocks, at the same time, hunting for the witches that can help defeat her adversary. The only problem is that they are dead.

Thankfully, she has the help of Jarak—her Guardian—who quickly captures her heart, but she wonders if she can win his? Just when she thinks Jarak is the one for her, Ian appears with daggers drawn to save Es from a vampire attack. Ian is cocky and rude, but there is something magnetic about him—something that attracts her to him. With her heart torn between two men, she faces the foes that are out for her blood. Can Es do the unthinkable and awaken them from their graves before time runs out?

The Penitent Damned by Django Wexler
Goodreads Synopsis:
Alex is a master thief, with dark magic to give her an edge. When she goes up against Duke Orlanko's Concordat secret police, though, she may have taken on more than she bargained for...

This is a prequel short story to The Thousand Names. It was released for free on io9 -- http://io9.com/the-coolest-fantasy-st... -- and is also available on the Kindle Store.



Free Audio Books:

Hapax by K.T. Bryski
Goodreads Synopsis:
The Apocalypse has come, and in seven days the world will be no more. Only the Hapax, the Word which began the universe, can recreate the world and avert the Apocalypse, but that Word has been lost. Brother Gaelin finds his faith crumbling as he is forced to shelter two fugitives from the Magistatiem, the college of magi which has been divorced from the Ecclesiat monks for centuries. As time slips away, the monks and magi must do more than just heal the ancient rift that divides them—they must trust in the very Being who drove them apart.

Murder at Avedon Hill by P.G. Holyfield
Goodreads Synopsis:
Lord Avedon has a problem. Generations of Avedons have watched over Avedon Hill and controlled the only pass through the Lantis Mountains. Traditions are important to the Avedon family, but one tradition has tragically come to an end. Gretta Platt, Housemistress of Avedon Manor, has been murdered. A member of the Platt family has always served the Avedons as Housemistress. until now. Only a handful of people live at Avedon Hill, and most are suspects. Arames Kragen, retired Aarronic Advisor and scholar of prophecy, arrives at the gates of Avedon Hill, hoping to gain access to the mountain pass. Lord Avedon is not in a giving mood, however.

This is the story of Arames Kragen and his attempt not only to discover who killed Gretta Platt, but also to uncover the truth about a town that apparently has more secrets than inhabitants.

The Land of Caern: It is a world where the gods, the Children of Az, can choose to be born as mortals to directly affect events in the world, and often do. It is a world where the Priests of Caern frantically search for the mortal incarnations of any of the Children, in order prevent the Prophecies of Iberian from coming to pass.

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Reviews in the Works:

Quarter Share by Nathan Lowell - a podcast reading of the book

Magic Rises by Ilona Andrews

Half Share by Nathan Lowell - a podcast reading of the book

Full Share by Nathan Lowell - a podcast reading of the book
Double Share by Nathan Lowell - a podcast reading of the book

Captain's Share by Nathan Lowell - a podcast reading of the book

Owners Share by Nathan Lowell - a podcast reading of the book

Ravenwood by Nathan Lowell - a podcast reading of the book

The Coffee Legacy by Katharine Bordet - a podcast reading of the book

Working for the Devil by Lilith Saintcrow
Shadow Sight by E.J. Stevens (in audiobook while at work)

Marco and The Red Granny by Mur Lafferty (in audiobook while at work)

Into Destiny by S.A. Archer & S. Ravynheart

Seducing Her Rival by Seleste deLaney

Heaven by Mur Lafferty (in audiobook while at work)
Hell by Mur Lafferty (in audiobook while at work)
Earth by Mur Lafferty (in audiobook while at work)
Wasteland by Mur Lafferty (in audiobook while at work)

War by Mur Lafferty (in audiobook while at work)

The Shambling Guide to New York City by Mur Lafferty (in audiobook while at work)
The Quill & The Crow by Lilith Saintcrow
Hapax by K.T. Bryski (in audiobook while at work)
A Cursed Moon by Cecy Robson