Another huge list for June. I keep telling myself to cut back on my lists but they just seem to get longer!
Reading at Fantasy Buddy Reads-
Mercy Thompson, car mechanic and
shapeshifter, must stop a disaster of world-shattering proportions in
this exhilarating entry in the #1 New York Times bestselling series.
In
the supernatural realms, there are creatures who belong to winter. I am
not one of them. But like the coyote I can become at will, I am
adaptable.
My name is Mercy Thompson Hauptman, and my mate, Adam,
is the werewolf who leads the Columbia Basin Pack, the pack charged
with keeping the people who live and work in the Tri-Cities of
Washington State safe. It’s a hard job, and it doesn’t leave much room
for side quests. Which is why when I needed to travel to Montana to help
my brother, I intended to go by myself.
But I’m not alone anymore.
Together,
Adam and I find ourselves trapped with strangers in a lodge in the
heart of the wilderness, in the teeth of a storm of legendary power,
only to discover my brother’s issues are a tiny part of a problem much
bigger than we could have imagined. Arcane and ancient magics are at
work that could, unless we are very careful, bring about the end of the
world. . . .
Will truth and virtue triumph over the deadly darkness of an all-consuming evil?
The
war against the dragon minions of Queen Takhisis rages on. Armed with
the mysterious, magical Dragon Orbs and the shining, silver Dragonlance,
the Companions of the Lance lead their people in a desperate final
battle. Knight and barbarian, warrior and mage, dwarf and kender—no one
has reckoned how high the price of defeat, or even victory, might be.
But
now, in the dawn of a new day, the dark secrets that have long shadowed
the hearts of the Companions come to light. If they are to truly defeat
the five-headed dragon goddess, they must find a way to overcome their
own personal conflicts and doubts. From betrayal and treachery to
fragility and weakness, the greatest battle now lies within each of
them.
Finally armed with dragonlances, a group of heroes,
composed of a knight, barbarian, dwarf, and half-elf, faces a deadly
showdown with the evil dragons and Takhisis, the Queen of Darkness.
Six months have passed since the reappearance of
the starship Phoenix - the same ship which brought humans to the world
of alien atevi nearly two hundred years ago, leaving a small and
vulnerable colony to struggle for survival in a hostile environment.
During these six months, the alien atevi have striven to reconfigure
their fledgling space program in a breakneck bid to take their place in
the heavens alongside humans. But the return of the Phoenix has added a
frighteningly powerful third party to an already volatile situation,
polarizing political factions in both human and atevi societies, and
making the possibility of all-out planetary war an even more likely
threat. On the atevi mainland, human ambassador Bren Cameron, in a
desperate attempt to maintain the peace, has risked alienation from his
own people by communicating with the staff of the Phoenix as spokesman
for the atevi, and has arranged for one human representative from the
Phoenix to take up residence with him in his apartments, and for another
to be stationed on Mosphiera, humanity's island enclave. Now, Bren has
the difficult task of indoctrinating Jason Graham, a young man who has
never before set foot on a planet, in the intricate, delicate, and
potentially lethal maneuverings of the human-atevi interface. And this
at a time when, thanks to the assassination of an atevi lord who had
been one of Bren's primary adversaries, and the near-collision of Bren's
personal plane with a jet manned by an unknown pilot, the relationship
between atevi factions is becoming more strained by the minute.
THIRTY YEARS AFTER THE ECHOES OF FATE CHANGED THE COURSE OF HISTORY, AN ANCIENT EVIL STIRS ONCE MORE.
Millennia
in the dark has left these lost and forgotten monsters hungry for war.
The people of Illian can do nothing but rely on their peacekeepers, the
Dragorn.
Are the dragon riders ready for what has been buried under their feet?
Gideon
Thorn, Master of the Dragorn, can feel the Third Age coming to an
ominous end. With Inara Galfrey and her dragon by his side, they must
investigate the return of this ancient evil.
Alijah Galfrey has
only one talent - getting into trouble. When he isn’t drinking, the
half-elf is gambling his life away in the pursuit of relics no one cares
about. Now, he finds himself at the sharp end of history. Can he take
charge of his own future, or is he destined to be controlled by others?
Deep
in the mines of Vengora, something ancient has been found, and the
dwarves of Dhenaheim would go to war with the North over it. After sixty
years in the world of men, Doran Heavybelly must finally return to his
homeland if any peace is to be found…
THE FALL OF NEVERDARK CONTINUES THIS UNMISSABLE EPIC FANTASY SERIES.
Reading with the Mystery Book Club-
Her first love confessed to five murders … but
the truth was so much worse. Will Hurley was an attractive, charming,
and impressive student at Dublin’s elite St. John’s College—and
Ireland’s most prolific serial killer. Having stalked his five young
victims, he drowned them in the muddy waters of the Grand Canal.
Sentenced to life imprisonment when he was just nineteen, Will is locked
away in the city’s Central Psychiatric Hospital. Freshman Alison Smith
moved to the Big Smoke to enroll in St. John’s and soon fell hard for
Will Hurley. Her world bloomed … and then imploded when Liz, her best
friend, became the latest victim of the Canal Killer—and the Canal
Killer turned out to be the boy who’d been sleeping in her bed. Alison
fled to the Netherlands and, in ten years, has never once looked back.
When a young woman’s body is found in the Grand Canal, Garda detectives
visit Will to see if he can assist them in solving what looks like a
copycat killing. Instead, Will tells them he has something new to
confess—but there’s only one person he’s prepared to confess it to. The
last thing Alison wants is to be pulled back into the past she’s worked
so hard to leave behind. Reluctantly, she returns to the city she hasn’t
set foot in for more than a decade to face the man who murdered the
woman she was supposed to become. Only to discover that, until now, Will
has left out the worst part of all …
The Great Depression. High-level corruption.
And a murder that’s about to become Seattle’s hottest mystery. It’s the
kind of story that can make a reporter’s career. If he lives to write
about it.
Seattle, 1933. The city is in the grips of the
Great Depression, Prohibition, and vice. Cutting his teeth on a
small-time beat, hungry and ambitious young reporter William “Shoe”
Shumacher gets a tip that could change his career. There’s been a murder
at a social club on Profanity Hill—an underworld magnet for vice crimes
only a privileged few can afford. The story is going to be front-page
news, and Shoe is the first reporter on the scene.
The victim,
Frankie Ray, is a former prizefighter. His accused killer? Club owner
and mobster George Miller, who claims he pulled the trigger in
self-defense. Soon the whole town’s talking, and Shoe’s first homicide
is fast becoming the Trial of the Century. The more Shoe digs, the more
he’s convinced nothing is as it seems. Not with a tangle of conflicting
stories, an unlikely motive, and witnesses like Miller’s girlfriend, a
glamour girl whose pretty lips are sealed. For now.
In a city
steeped in old west debauchery, Shoe’s following every lead to a very
dangerous place—one that could bring him glory and fame or end his life.
The hunter has become the hunted.
Ten years ago, DCI Jack Logan caught the twisted child killer known as Mister Whisper.
Two days ago, Mister Whisper escaped.
Now,
Jack must track down the most ruthless enemy he has ever faced before
he can strike again. But, after ten years behind bars, it isn't just
murder that Mister Whisper has in mind.
It's revenge.
A
Whisper of Sorrows is the sixth book in the DCI Jack Logan crime
thriller series, all based in the Highlands of Scotland, and perfect for
fans of Tartan Noir crime fiction.
Reading for NetGalley-
Midwife Sarah Malloy and her private
detective husband Frank discover that the cure is worse than the disease
when they investigate the death of a promising young woman in this
atmospheric, riveting mystery from the USA TODAY bestselling author of Murder on Bedford Street.
Sarah
Malloy has just helped with the delivery of a bouncing baby girl at her
women’s clinic, when she receives a visit from an engaging
and determined young woman writing an article for New Century Magazine.
Louisa Rodgers explains that she is researching the dangers of
patent remedies. Sarah is only too happy to tell Louisa exactly what she
thinks of the so-called medicines whose ingredients include heavy doses
of alcohol and other addictive drugs, and hurt much more than they
help.
A few days later, Sarah receives a visit from a bereft
Bernard Rodgers, who explains that his daughter, Louisa, has been found
strangled in the lobby of the building where New Century has its
offices. The police have decided it was a random attack and have made no
attempt to investigate, hinting that Louisa got what she deserved for
sticking her nose where it didn’t belong. Sarah wants justice for the
bright young woman but as she and Frank delve deeper into Louisa’s life,
they find that nothing is quite as it seemed and Louisa is not who she
claimed to be. The Malloys must first solve the mystery of Louisa’s life
before they can figure out who wanted to see her dead…
Chief of Police Kate Burkholder investigates a
gruesome murder that reveals a little-known chapter of early Amish
history in this new installment of the bestselling series by Linda
Castillo.
Newlywed Chief of Police Kate Burkholder is
awakened by an urgent midnight call summoning her to a suspicious fire
in the woods. When she arrives at the scene, she discovers a charred
body. According to the coroner, the deceased, an Amish man named Milan
Swanz, was chained to a stake and burned alive. It is an appalling and
eerily symbolic crime against an upstanding husband and father.
Kate
knows all too well that the Amish prefer to handle their problems
without interference from the outside world, and no one will speak about
the murdered man. From what she’s able to piece together, Swanz led a
deeply troubled life and had recently been excommunicated. But if that’s
the case, why are the Amish so reluctant to talk about him? Are they
protecting the memory of one of their own? Or are they afraid of
something they dare not share?
When her own brother is implicated
in the case, Kate finds herself not only at odds with the Amish, the
world of which she was once a part, but also the English community and
her counterparts in law enforcement. The investigation takes a violent
turn when Kate’s life is threatened by a mysterious stranger.
To
uncover the truth about the death of Milan Swanz, Kate must dive deep
into the Anabaptist culture, peering into all the dark corners of its
history, only to uncover a secret legacy that shatters everything she
thought she knew about the Amish themselves―and her own roots.
The Hercule Poirot book-
In this breathtaking Agatha Christie mystery, the Third Girl sharing
a London flat with two others announces to Hercule Poirot that she’s a
murderer and then disappears. The masterful investigator must figure out
whether the missing girl is a criminal, a victim, or merely insane.Three
young women share a London flat. The first is a coolly efficient
secretary. The second is an artist. The third interrupts Hercule
Poirot’s breakfast confessing that she is a murderer—and then promptly
disappears.
Slowly, Poirot learns of the rumors surrounding the
mysterious third girl, her family, and her disappearance. Yet hard
evidence is needed before the great detective can pronounce her guilty,
innocent, or insane...
Pick it for me book-
A year after getting divorced, Helen Carpenter,
thirty-two, lets her annoying, ten years younger brother talk her into
signing up for a wilderness survival course. It's supposed to be a
chance for her to pull herself together again, but when she discovers
that her brother's even-more-annoying best friend is also coming on the
trip, she can't imagine how it will be anything other than a disaster.
Thus begins the strangest adventure of Helen's well-behaved life: three
weeks in the remotest wilderness of a mountain range in Wyoming where
she will survive mosquito infestations, a surprise summer blizzard, and a
group of sorority girls.
Yet, despite everything, the vast
wilderness has a way of making Helen's own little life seem bigger, too.
And, somehow the people who annoy her the most start teaching her the
very things she needs to learn. Like how to stand up for herself. And
how being scared can make you brave. And how sometimes you just have to
get really, really lost before you can even have a hope of being found.
Reading for Book Club-
This will be a reread for me if I actually get around to reading it.
A mindbending, relentlessly surprising thriller from the author of the bestselling Wayward Pines trilogy.
Jason
Dessen is walking home through the chilly Chicago streets one night,
looking forward to a quiet evening in front of the fireplace with his
wife, Daniela, and their son, Charlie—when his reality shatters.
"Are you happy with your life?"
Those are the last words Jason Dessen hears before the masked abductor knocks him unconscious.
Before he awakens to find himself strapped to a gurney, surrounded by strangers in hazmat suits.
Before a man Jason's never met smiles down at him and says, "Welcome back, my friend."
In
this world he's woken up to, Jason's life is not the one he knows. His
wife is not his wife. His son was never born. And Jason is not an
ordinary college physics professor, but a celebrated genius who has
achieved something remarkable. Something impossible.
Is it this world or the other that's the dream?
And
even if the home he remembers is real, how can Jason possibly make it
back to the family he loves? The answers lie in a journey more wondrous
and horrifying than anything he could've imagined—one that will force
him to confront the darkest parts of himself even as he battles a
terrifying, seemingly unbeatable foe.
Dark Matter is a
brilliantly plotted tale that is at once sweeping and intimate,
mind-bendingly strange and profoundly human--a relentlessly surprising
science-fiction thriller about choices, paths not taken, and how far
we'll go to claim the lives we dream of.
Other books I would like to read-
I'm planning to reread Soul Taken with my husband before we read Winter Lost.
The vampire Wulfe is missing. Since he’s deadly,
possibly insane, and his current idea of “fun” is stalking me, some may
see it as no great loss. But, warned that his disappearance might bring
down the carefully constructed alliances that keep our pack safe, my
mate and I must find Wulfe—and hope he’s still alive. As alive as a
vampire can be, anyway.
But Wulfe isn’t the only one who has
disappeared. And now there are bodies, too. Has the Harvester returned
to the Tri-Cities, reaping souls with his cursed sickle? Or is he just a
character from a B horror movie and our enemy is someone else?
The
farther I follow Wulfe’s trail, the more twisted—and darker—the path
becomes. I need to figure out what’s going on before the next body on
the ground is mine.
As heroes and villains seek to secure the seven godblades, the greatest evil to threaten Kingfall draws ever closer.
Six
of the seven godblades have been revealed, but is Kingfall any safer
than it was before these ancient weapons were returned to the light?
This and myriad other questions must be answered before the world can
know true peace.
In the east, Sampson Gaard and his unexpected
band of traveling companions must navigate the dangers of the Spine as
they seek the source of the strange force drawing them ever onward.
Meanwhile, Roman Leary, burned and scarred beyond recognition, searches
for a purpose even he cannot hope to understand.
In the west,
Peony faces a newer, darker version of her bondmate, Dane, as well as a
looming threat of war from her own brother, the newly crowned King of
Odin. Dane, on the other hand, fights to restore his bond to the only
creature in all of Kingfall who truly understands him, his dragon
Daneus.
In the north, Rose grapples with the political pressures
inherent in her role as queen, while simultaneously staving off the
demons of her past. At the same time, Drake searches for answers to
explain the resurrection of his dragonbond, Draconus.
In the
south, Aisling, Amari and Prudence seek safe passage to Avadon, only to
find themselves facing an enemy worse than any they've encountered thus
far in the form of Pentockian slavers.
Be bright but do not burn. Embrace the shadows but do not live in the darkness.
Handsome appearance counts for naught unless matched by good character and actions.That's
the firm opinion of not-so-meek minister's daughter Lavinia Ellison. So
even though all the other villagers of St. Hampton Heath are swooning
over the newly returned seventh Earl of Hawkesbury, she is not
impressed. If a man won't take his responsibilities seriously and help
those who are supposed to be able to depend on him, he deserves no
respect from her. In Lavinia's pretty, gray eyes, Nicholas Stamford is
just as arrogant and reckless as his brother--who stole the most
important person in Livvie's world.Nicholas is weighed down by his own
guilt and responsibility, by the pain his careless brother caused, and
by the legacy of war he's just left. This quick visit home to St.
Hampton Heath will be just long enough to ease a small part of that
burden. Asking him to bother with the lives of the villagers when
there's already a bailiff on the job is simply too much to expect.That
is, until the hoydenish, intelligent, and very opinionated Miss Ellison
challenges him to see past his pain and pride. With her angelic voice in
his head, he may even be beginning to care. But his isn't the only
heart that needs to change.These two lonely hearts may each have
something the other needs. But with society's opposition, ancestral
obligations, and a shocking family secret, there may be too many
obstacles in their way.Fans of Georgette Heyer, Lori Wick, and Julie
Klassen will enjoy the spirited exchanges between the bluestocking
minister's daughter and the bruised war hero as they move past pride and
presumption to a humbled appreciation of God's grace and the true
strength of love.
Ellie Gleason has protected the town of Samford,
Alabama for decades. It’s not as glamourous as her glory days as the
WitchLight Hub, but it keeps her active during her golden years.
Life is good.
Well, it’s okay.
Fine.
It
could be bloodier with a smidge more gore, but retirement is meant to
be low-key. It’s not like her fragile bones could handle the strenuous
hunt for monsters anymore, even if her current duties are dull as
dishwater.
But when her great-nephew shows up on her doorstep in
tears—or is he her great-great nephew?—begging for help, Ellie straps on
her beloved shotgun Bam-Bam and gets the coven back together.
Sure,
Betty just had a hip replacement, and Flo would rather flirt than
fight, and Ida is busy with her anniversary plans, and Joan is…Joan. But
Ellie is certain she can whip the girls into shape in time to defeat
the creature preying on kids at a nearby summer camp. She might even
have them home in time for dinner.
