Posted February 9, 2016 by Carmel in Fresh Meat / 4 Comments
Urban Fantasy:
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The Witches of Cambridge
by Menna van Praag
Urban Fantasy
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[learn_more caption=”Book Description”]Be careful what you wish for. If you’re a witch, you might just get it.
Amandine Bisset has always had the power to feel the emotions of those around her. It’s a secret she can share only with her friends—all professors, all witches—when they gather for the Cambridge University Society of Literature and Witchcraft. Amandine treasures these meetings but lately senses the ties among her colleagues beginning to unravel. If only she had her student Noa’s power to hear the innermost thoughts of others, she might know how to patch things up. Unfortunately, Noa regards her gift as a curse. So when a seductive artist claims he can cure her, Noa jumps at the chance, no matter the cost.
Noa’s not the only witch who’s in over her head. Mathematics professor Kat has a serious case of unrequited love but refuses to cast spells to win anyone’s heart. Kat’s sister, Cosima, is not above using magic to get what she wants, sprinkling pastries in her bakery with equal parts sugar and enchantment. But when Cosima sets her sights on Kat’s crush, she conjures up a dangerous love triangle.
As romance and longing swirl through every picturesque side street, the witches of Cambridge find their lives unexpectedly upended and changed in ways sometimes extraordinary, sometimes heartbreaking, but always enchanting.[/learn_more] |
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Arcadia
by Iain Pears
Urban Fantasy
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[learn_more caption=”Book Description”]Three interlocking worlds. Four people looking for answers. But who controls the future—or the past?
In 1960s Oxford, Professor Henry Lytten is attempting to write a fantasy novel that forgoes the magic of his predecessors, J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. He finds an unlikely confidante in his quick-witted, inquisitive young neighbor Rosie. One day, while chasing Lytten’s cat, Rosie encounters a doorway in his cellar. She steps through and finds herself in an idyllic, pastoral land where Storytellers are revered above all others. There she meets a young man who is about to embark on a quest of his own—and may be the one chance Rosie has of returning home. These breathtaking adventures ultimately intertwine with the story of an eccentric psychomathematician whose breakthrough discovery will affect all of these different lives and worlds.
Dazzlingly inventive and deeply satisfying, Arcadia tests the boundaries of storytelling and asks: If the past can change the future, then might the future also indelibly alter the past?[/learn_more] |
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Black Rabbit Hall
by Eve Chase
Urban Fantasy
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[learn_more caption=”Book Description”]Ghosts are everywhere, not just the ghost of Momma in the woods, but ghosts of us too, what we used to be like in those long summers . . .
Amber Alton knows that the hours pass differently at Black Rabbit Hall, her London family’s country estate, where no two clocks read the same. Summers there are perfect, timeless. Not much ever happens. Until, of course, it does.
More than three decades later, Lorna is determined to be married within the grand, ivy-covered walls of Pencraw Hall, known as Black Rabbit Hall among the locals. But as she’s drawn deeper into the overgrown grounds, half-buried memories of her mother begin to surface and Lorna soon finds herself ensnared within the manor’s labyrinthine history, overcome with an insatiable need for answers about her own past and that of the once-happy family whose memory still haunts the estate.
Stunning and atmospheric, this debut novel is a thrilling spiral into the hearts of two women separated by decades but inescapably linked by the dark and tangled secrets of Black Rabbit Hall.[/learn_more] |
Science Fiction / Fantasy:
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The Complete Double Dead
(Double Dead #1-1.5)
by Chuck Wendig
Science Fiction
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[learn_more caption=”Book Description”]A Vampire in Zombieland.
You wouldn’t like Coburn. People don’t, as a rule; he’s not a nice man. And that’s okay, because he doesn’t like people much either. People are food. You see, Coburn’s a vampire, and has been for close on a century.
Five years ago, Coburn went to sleep – wasn’t exactly planned – and he’s just woken up to find most everybody in the world dead. And not cool, interesting dead like him; oh, no. Coburn looks basically human, and these guys… really don’t. He likes blood, and they like flesh. He’s smart; them, not so much. But they outnumber him by about a million to one, and their clotted blood cannot sustain him.
Now he’s starving, and on the run, and more pissed-off than a beestung rattlesnake. The vampire has to find blood, soon, and – like it or not – he’s gonna have to keep an eye on the frail flesh-bags he finds it in. Time for the wolf to turn shepherd.
No, Coburn doesn’t like people. But he’s gonna have to learn to.
The Complete Double Dead collects Chuck Wendig’s first novel and the follow-up novella, Bad Blood. Follow Coburn as he runs a gauntlet of supermarket cannibals, juggalos, super-zombies, and a ketamine-trip cult of zombie-worshipping New Age weirdos. It’s a road that’ll take him right back to himself, and onto the trail of his own vampiric sire. And on the way, he’ll become something entirely new.[/learn_more] |
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Homefront (Portal Wars #3)
by Jay Allan
Science Fiction
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[learn_more caption=”Book Description”]Jake Taylor and his cyborg soldiers have fought their way from one Portal planet to another, moving steadily homeward with one thought in mind. The utter destruction of the corrupt rulers who sent them to hell to fight and die as pawns in a dishonest war, one started not by the alien enemy, but by Earth’s own UNGov, as a tool in it plot to seize total power.
And now, after the fighting, the suffering, the bitter losses…finally, it is time. Time for the final invasion of Earth. Time to liberate their homeland from the totalitarian government that controls it utterly, to find those responsible for all that has happened…and to kill them all.
Jake and his warriors are hopelessly outnumbered, but they are determined to battle to the last, to sacrifice all for any hope of victory, however small. But Taylor and his soldiers are not alone in their fight, for in Earth’s shadows, in the rotting slums and the remote countryside, in dark corners and crumbling cellars, a spark of defiance has survived and grown, men and women who remember liberty, and are willing to die for the chance to regain what they lost a generation before. They are preparing…and waiting. Waiting for the chance to strike a blow for freedom.
But those who cling to power will not give it up easily. Indeed, the politicians who run UNGov will see Earth a charred ruin, the dead lying in unburied heaps before they will yield their positions. The battle is about to begin…and it cannot end until only one side remains.
Is Jake Taylor willing to go all the way, to fight to the end, do what he must…to accept nothing less than death or victory, whatever the cost? [/learn_more] |
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The Lost Time Accidents
by John Wray
Science Fiction
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[learn_more caption=”Book Description”]In his ambitious and fiercely inventive new novel, The Lost Time Accidents, John Wray takes us from turn-of-the-century Viennese salons buzzing with rumors about Einstein’s radical new theory to the death camps of World War Two, from the golden age of postwar pulp science fiction to a startling discovery in a Manhattan apartment packed to the ceiling with artifacts of modern life.
Haunted by a failed love affair and the darkest of family secrets, Waldemar ‘Waldy’ Tolliver wakes one morning to discover that he has been exiled from the flow of time. The world continues to turn, and Waldy is desperate to find his way back-a journey that forces him to reckon not only with the betrayal at the heart of his doomed romance but also the legacy of his great-grandfather’s fatal pursuit of the hidden nature of time itself.
Part madcap adventure, part harrowing family drama, part scientific mystery–and never less than wildly entertaining–The Lost Time Accidents is a bold and epic saga set against the greatest upheavals of the twentieth century.[/learn_more] |
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Angelus (The Books of Raziel #3)
by Sabrina Benulis
Fantasy
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[learn_more caption=”Book Description”]The heart-pounding conclusion to the Books of Raziel trilogy, a gothic supernatural tale about a girl who discovers she holds the keys to both Heaven and Hell—and that angels, demons, and all the creatures in between will stop at nothing to possess her and control that power.
Like sand in an hourglass, time is slipping away . . .
The war started by three powerful angel siblings—Raziel, Lucifel, and Israfel—has divided the kingdoms of both Heaven and Hell for ages. Now, that destruction is spilling over into the human world, and only the Archon can stop it.
She is Angela Mathers, a human who sits on the Devil’s vacant throne, seemingly fulfilling a prophecy of ruin. As the Archon, Angela alone can oppose Lucifel and open Raziel’s Book to use its power for good. But to do so would mean murdering her best friend, Sophia, and that’s a sacrifice Angela refuses to contemplate.
But ruin does not always mean destruction—sometimes it means revolution. Echoes of the past have resurrected the Angelus, the Song of Creation, and its notes are somehow linked to the Book. Now Angela must discover the truth behind the song and her own origins, but time is running out. There are dark forces who believe Angela’s success will not end tragedy but continue it, and they’re determined to stop the Archon’s destiny once and for all.[/learn_more] |
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The Guns of Ivrea (Tales of Valdur #1)
by Clifford Beal
Fantasy
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[learn_more caption=”Book Description”]Patrick O’Brian meets George R. R. Martin in a gritty new fantasy epic.
Acquel Galenus, former thief and now monk, uncovers a terrible secret under the Great Temple at Livorna, one that could shake the faith to its core. A secret that could get him killed. A secret that could enable an older, more sinister form of worship to be reborn.
Pirate princeling Nicolo Danamis, mercenary to the King and captain of the largest fleet in Valdur, has made one deal too many, and enemies are now closing in to destroy him.
Citala, fair-haired and grey-skinned, the daughter of the chieftain of the merfolk, finds herself implacably drawn to the affairs of men. She puts events in motion that will end her people’s years of isolation but that could imperil their very existence.
All their fates will intertwine as they journey across the land, through duchies and free cities riven by political intrigue, religious fervour, and ancient hatreds. Alliances are being forged anew and after decades of wary peace, war is on the wind once again… [/learn_more] |
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A Song for No Man’s Land
(A Song for No Man’s Land #1)
by Andy Remic
Fantasy
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[learn_more caption=”Book Description”]He signed up to fight with visions of honour and glory, of fighting for king and country, of making his family proud at long last.
But on a battlefield during the Great War, Robert Jones is shot, and wonders how it all went so very wrong, and how things could possibly get any worse.
He’ll soon find out. When the attacking enemy starts to shapeshift into a nightmarish demonic force, Jones finds himself fighting an impossible war against an enemy that shouldn’t exist.[/learn_more] |
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Dragon Hunters
(The Chronicle of the Exile #2)
by Marc Turner
Fantasy
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| [learn_more caption=”Book Description”]Once a year the Dragon Gate is raised to let a fabled beast pass into the Sabian Sea. There, the dragon will be hunted by the Storm Lords, a fellowship of powerful water-mages. Emira Imerle Polivar is coming to the end of her tenure as their leader, and has no intention of standing down. But Imerle is not the only one intent on destroying the Storm Lords, and when she sets her scheme in motion, that enemy uses the ensuing chaos to play its hand.[/learn_more] |
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The Bloody Quarrel
(The Arbalester Trilogy #2.1-2.5)
by Duncan Lay
Fantasy
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[learn_more caption=”Book Description”]The prince is dead.
Fooled by the treacherous King Aidan, Fallon has shot down the one man he trusted to save his beloved nation of Gaelland. And yet, when the King could grind Fallon underfoot, he draws the simple farmer and fighter closer, making a hero of him.
Embroiled in plots beyond his comprehension and weighted with the guilt of the prince’s murder, Fallon must tread carefully if he is to accomplish the task that first brought him to the cursed capital: rescue his wife, Bridgit, and the rest of his village from Kottermani slavery. If he and his hopelessly ensnared men can survive, they may yet find redemption.
Meanwhile, across the ocean, Bridgit is rallying those around her to spring an escape. But who can be trusted? The ever-present danger of traitors and liars among the slaves, and even among her fellow Gaelish, is poison to her plans.
With an ocean between them and fouler nightmares looming, Fallon and Bridgit will be driven to their very limits to escape their prisons, find each other, and bring justice to Gaelland.[/learn_more] |
Young Adult:
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Morning Star (Red Rising #3)
by Pierce Brown
Young Adult
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[learn_more caption=”Book Description”]Darrow would have lived in peace, but his enemies brought him war. The Gold overlords demanded his obedience, hanged his wife, and enslaved his people. But Darrow is determined to fight back. Risking everything to transform himself and breach Gold society, Darrow has battled to survive the cutthroat rivalries that breed Society’s mightiest warriors, climbed the ranks, and waited patiently to unleash the revolution that will tear the hierarchy apart from within.
Finally, the time has come.
But devotion to honor and hunger for vengeance run deep on both sides. Darrow and his comrades-in-arms face powerful enemies without scruple or mercy. Among them are some Darrow once considered friends. To win, Darrow will need to inspire those shackled in darkness to break their chains, unmake the world their cruel masters have built, and claim a destiny too long denied—and too glorious to surrender.[/learn_more] |
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Glass Sword (Red Queen #2)
by Victoria Aveyard
Young Adult
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[learn_more caption=”Book Description”]The electrifying next installment in the Red Queen series escalates the struggle between the growing rebel army and the blood-segregated world they’ve always known—and pits Mare against the darkness that has grown in her soul.
Mare Barrow’s blood is red—the color of common folk—but her Silver ability, the power to control lightning, has turned her into a weapon that the royal court tries to control. The crown calls her an impossibility, a fake, but as she makes her escape from Maven, the prince—the friend—who betrayed her, Mare uncovers something startling: she is not the only one of her kind.
Pursued by Maven, now a vindictive king, Mare sets out to find and recruit other Red-and-Silver fighters to join in the struggle against her oppressors. But Mare finds herself on a deadly path, at risk of becoming exactly the kind of monster she is trying to defeat.Will she shatter under the weight of the lives that are the cost of rebellion? Or have treachery and betrayal hardened her forever?[/learn_more] |
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Reign of Shadows (Reign of Shadows #1)
by Sophie Jordan
Young Adult
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[learn_more caption=”Book Description”]Seventeen years ago, an eclipse cloaked the kingdom of Relhok in perpetual darkness. In the chaos, an evil chancellor murdered the king and queen and seized their throne. Luna, Relhok’s lost princess, has been hiding in a tower ever since. Luna’s survival depends on the world believing she is dead.
But that doesn’t stop Luna from wanting more. When she meets Fowler, a mysterious archer braving the woods outside her tower, Luna is drawn to him despite the risk. When the tower is attacked, Luna and Fowler escape together. But this world of darkness is more treacherous than Luna ever realized.
With every threat stacked against them, Luna and Fowler find solace in each other. But with secrets still unspoken between them, falling in love might be their most dangerous journey yet.[/learn_more] |
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Blackhearts
by Nicole Castroman
Young Adult
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[learn_more caption=”Book Description”]When Edward “Teach” Drummond, son of one of Bristol’s richest merchants, returns home from a year at sea, he finds his life in shambles. Betrothed to a girl he doesn’t love and sick of the high society he was born into, all Teach wants is to return to the vast ocean he calls home. There’s just one problem: he must convince his father to let him leave and never come back.
Following the death of her parents, Anne Barrett is left penniless. Though she’s barely worked a day in her life, Anne takes a job as a maid in the home of Master Drummond. Lonely days stretch into weeks and Anne longs to escape the confines of her now mundane life. How will she ever achieve her dream of sailing to Curaçao—her mother’s birthplace—when she’s trapped in England?
From the moment Teach and Anne meet, they set the world ablaze. Drawn together by a shared desire for freedom, but kept apart by Teach’s father, their love is as passionate as it is forbidden. Faced with an impossible choice, Teach and Anne must decide whether to chase their dreams and leave England forever—or follow their hearts and stay together.[/learn_more] |
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The Abyss Surrounds Us
(The Abyss Surrounds Us #1)
by Emily Skrutskie
Young Adult
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[learn_more caption=”Book Description”]For Cassandra Leung, bossing around sea monsters is just the family business. She’s been a Reckoner trainer-in-training ever since she could walk, raising the genetically-engineered beasts to defend ships as they cross the pirate-infested NeoPacific. But when the pirate queen Santa Elena swoops in on Cas’s first solo mission and snatches her from the bloodstained decks, Cas’s dream of being a full-time trainer seems dead in the water.
Waiting for her on the pirate ship is an unhatched Reckoner pup. Santa Elena wants to take back the seas with a monster of her own, and she needs a proper trainer to do it. She orders Cas to raise the pup and teach him to fight for the pirates. If Cas fails, her blood will be the next to paint the sea.
But Cas has fought pirates her entire life. Santa Elena has no idea what she’s in for.[/learn_more] |
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The Hunt (Atlanta Burns #2)
by Chuck Wendig
Young Adult
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| [learn_more caption=”Book Description”]It’s Atlanta’s senior year of high school, and she is officially infamous. Not only has she saved herself from a predator, brought down an untouchable dogfighting ring, and battled a pack of high-school bullies, but she’s also proclaimed to the Internet her willingness to fight for anyone who needs help. And Atlanta can’t believe what’s coming out of the woodwork. From an old friend to a troop of troubled girls with connections to a local fracking company, there’s definitely fire in the water. As always, the girl with the unforgettable name is not afraid to burn it all down if it means making things right. But as high school races toward its inevitable end and the hornets begin to swarm from all directions, Atlanta must decide how much of herself and her growing group of friends she is willing to risk…before it’s too late.[/learn_more] |
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Inside the World of Die for Me
by Amy Plum
Young Adult
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[learn_more caption=”Book Description”]This can’t-miss companion to Amy Plum’s internationally bestselling series is a compendium of everything you’ve ever wanted to know about the eternally enchanting world of the revenants. Perfect for fans of Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instruments series and Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy series, the Die for Me series is wholly original and brimming with action and romance.
Set in Paris, Die for Me introduced readers to revenants, undead beings who must sacrifice themselves again and again to save the lives of strangers. This companion book is the guide to all things revenant, including loads of never-before-seen material. Fall in love all over again with Kate and Vincent by reading their private letters. Relive pivotal moments from other characters’ points of view. Discover deleted scenes from throughout the series. Learn all about the long history of the revenants and how Amy Plum went about creating it. And get a guided tour of the City of Light from the author herself. [/learn_more] |
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These Vicious Masks
(These Vicious Masks #1)
by Tarun Shanker, Kelly Zekas
Young Adult
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[learn_more caption=”Book Description”]Evelyn has no interest in marriage and even the dashing Mr. Kent can’t make her want to live up to society’s expectations. She’d much rather assist her beloved sister Rose in becoming the world’s first female doctor. But everything changes the night she meets Sebastian Braddock – not only is the reclusive lord both vexing and surprisingly attractive, he’s also quite possibly mad, and his interest in Rose is galling. So when Evelyn wakes up to discover that Rose has disappeared, she immediately suspects Sebastian.
But then she discovers that Sebastian’s strange tales of special powers are actually true, and that Rose’s kidnappers have worse in mind for her than simply ruining her reputation. Surrounded by secrets, lies, and unprecedented danger, Evelyn has no choice but to trust Sebastian, yet she can’t help but worry that Sebastian’s secrets are the most dangerous of all…[/learn_more] |
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Where Futures End
by Parker Peevyhouse
Young Adult
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[learn_more caption=”Book Description”]Five teens, five futures. Dylan develops a sixth sense that allows him to glimpse another world. Brixney must escape a debtor colony by finding a way to increase the number of hits on her social media feed so she’ll attract corporate sponsorship. Epony goes “High Concept” and poses as an otherworldly being to recapture her boyfriend’s attention. Reef struggles to survive in a city turned virtual gameboard. And Quinn uncovers the alarming secret that links them all.
These are stories about a world that is destroying itself, and about the alternate world that might be its savior. Unless it’s just the opposite.[/learn_more] |
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Fridays with the Wizards
(Castle Glower #4)
by Jessica Day George
Middle Grade
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| [learn_more caption=”Book Description”]Princess Celie and her companions have made it home safely from the Glorious Arkower, and everything is back to normal now that the Eye of the Castle is where it belongs. With more magical griffins to care for, Celie, Lilah, and Rolf have their hands full. But when the dangerous ancient wizard Arkwright escapes the dungeon and goes missing within the Castle, no one can rest until he is found. Only Celie knows where he is most likely hiding–deep within the secret passageways behind the walls of their beloved Castle. With danger lurking behind every tapestry and under every trap door, Celie must find the wizard and save her family.[/learn_more] |
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Ravenous (Monstrous #2)
by MarcyKate Connolly
Middle Grade
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[learn_more caption=”Book Description”]A witch has come to the city of Bryre. She travels in a hut that has chicken feet, and she’s ravenous for children.
When the witch captures Hans, Greta’s little brother, Greta refuses to let her have him. The two strike up a bargain. Greta will retrieve something the witch desires in exchange for her brother’s freedom.To get the prize Greta must travel to Belladoma—a city where she was once held captive. With the help of a new friend, Dalen, a magical half-boy and half-horse, Greta embarks on the journey and tries to overcome both foes and her own weaknesses. [/learn_more] |
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Hawking’s Hallway
(The Accelerati Trilogy #3)
by Neal Shusterman, Eric Elfman
Middle Grade
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| [learn_more caption=”Book Description”]Nick Slate, in order to protect his father and little brother, reluctantly must help the Accelerati complete Tesla’s great device. Their power-mad leader wants nothing less than to control the world’s energy–but there are still three missing objects to track down. Nick’s friends can’t help him, as they are spread across the globe grappling with their own mysteries–with Vince in Scotland, Caitlin and Mitch on their way to New Jersey, and Petula’s whereabouts unknown. On his own, Nick must locate Tesla’s final inventions– which are the most powerful of all, capable of shattering time and collapsing space.[/learn_more] |
Tags: February 2016, Fresh Meat
Great haul as usual! I already see awesome books like Morning start and Glass Sword. I also added Black Rabbit Hall to my TBR 🙂
Daniel;a Ark recently posted…What a Week [35] – Book Review: The Infinite Sea (The 5th Wave, #2), by Rick Yancey
I didn’t pick up any of these BUT I did get the new Lisa Gardner. I will read Morning Star from the library.
Morning Star will arrive next week for me since my Amazon preordered got messed up, but I need it like yesterday!!
Pili recently posted…Mark These Books Monday: I’ll Give You The Sun & Carry On!!!
Morning Star ..woot! I should have my copy tomorrow and plan to spend the weekend with it!
kimbacaffeinate recently posted…24 hour Take Control TBR Pile Read-A-Thon