Mailbox Monday – 11/9

Mailbox Monday can be found at: The Printed Page

A lot of wonderful books this week! I got a couple books for new series I want to start reading. I got both “Unshapely Things” (Connor Grey, Book 1) by Mark Del Franco and “Wicked Game” (WVMP Radio, Book 1)by Jeri Smith-Ready through Paperbackswap.com. I also got the 2nd book in Kim Harrison’s Darkest Powers series “The Awakening” though Paperbackswap.com. I have been waiting to start the first book until I got the second book; so now I can read full speed ahead!

I also bought two books. “Boneshaker” by Cherie Priest. I have heard so many wonderful things about this book and I love the premise. I can’t get it at my library and no one is swapping it; so I went ahead and bought it. I hope it is worth it! I also bought “The Dust of 100 Dogs” by A.S. King. I have been wanting to read this book forever. The library doesn’t carry it and no one is swapping, so again I broke down and bought it for $1 online.

The books are shown below. Happy reading to you all!

“Unshapely Things” (Connor Grey, Book 1) by Mark Del Franco

First Sentence: “The alley was slick with rain and a rainbow-hued slop I didn’t want to think about.”
From Amazon.com: “In the alleys of the decrepit Boston neighborhood known as the Weird, fairy prostitutes are turning up dead. The crime scenes show signs of residual magic, but the Guild, which polices the fey, has more “important” crimes to investigate and dumps the case on human law enforcement.

Boston police call in Connor Grey, a druid and former hotshot Guild investigator-whose magical abilities were crippled after a run-in with a radical environmentalist elf. As Connor battles red tape and his own shortcomings, he realizes that the murders are not random, but part of an ancient magical ritual. And if Connor can’t figure out the killer’s M.O., the culmination of the spell might just bring about a worldwide cataclysm.”

“The Awakening” (Darkest Powers, Book 2) by Kelley Armstrong

First Sentence: “When the door to my cell clicked open, the first thought that flitted through my doped-up brain was that Liz had changed her mind and come back.”
From Amazon.com: “If you had met me a few weeks ago, you probably would have described me as an average teenage girl—someone normal. Now my life has changed forever and I’m as far away from normal as it gets. A living science experiment—not only can I see ghosts, but I was genetically altered by a sinister organization called the Edison Group. What does that mean? For starters, I’m a teenage necromancer whose powers are out of control; I raise the dead without even trying. Trust me, that is not a power you want to have. Ever.

Now I’m running for my life with three of my supernatural friends—a charming sorcerer, a cynical werewolf, and a disgruntled witch—and we have to find someone who can help us before the Edison Group finds us first. Or die trying.”

“Wicked Game” (WVMP Radio, Book 1) by Jeri Smith-Ready

First Sentence: “Family curses never die, they just mutate.”
From Amazon.com: “Recovering con artist Ciara Griffin is trying to live the straight life, even if it means finding a (shudder!) real job. She takes an internship at a local radio station, whose late-night time-warp format features 1940s blues, ’60s psychedelia, ’80s goth, and more, all with an uncannily authentic flair. Ciara soon discovers just how the DJs maintain their cred: they’re vampires, stuck forever in the eras in which they were turned.

Ciara’s first instinct, as always, is to cut and run. But communications giant Skywave wants to buy WVMP and turn it into just another hit-playing clone. Without the station — and the link it provides to their original Life Times — the vampires would “fade,” becoming little more than mindless ghosts of the past. Suddenly a routine corporate takeover is a matter of life and undeath.

To boost ratings and save the lives of her strange new friends, Ciara rebrands the station as “WVMP, the Lifeblood of Rock ‘n’ Roll.” In the ultimate con, she hides the DJs’ vampire nature in plain sight, disguising the bloody truth as a marketing gimmick. WVMP becomes the hottest thing around — next to Ciara’s complicated affair with grunge vamp Shane McAllister. But the “gimmick” enrages a posse of ancient and powerful vampires who aren’t so eager to be brought into the light. Soon the stakes are higher — and the perils graver — than any con game Ciara’s ever played….”

“Boneshaker” by Cherie Priest

First Sentence: “Unpaved, uneven trails pretended to be roads; they tied the nation’s coasts together like laces holding a boot, binding it with crossed strings and crossed fingers.”
From Amazon.com: “In the early days of the Civil War, rumors of gold in the frozen Klondike brought hordes of newcomers to the Pacific Northwest. Anxious to compete, Russian prospectors commissioned inventor Leviticus Blue to create a great machine that could mine through Alaska’s ice. Thus was Dr. Blue’s Incredible Bone-Shaking Drill Engine born.
But on its first test run the Boneshaker went terribly awry, destroying several blocks of downtown Seattle and unearthing a subterranean vein of blight gas that turned anyone who breathed it into the living dead.
Now it is sixteen years later, and a wall has been built to enclose the devastated and toxic city. Just beyond it lives Blue’s widow, Briar Wilkes. Life is hard with a ruined reputation and a teenaged boy to support, but she and Ezekiel are managing. Until Ezekiel undertakes a secret crusade to rewrite history.
His quest will take him under the wall and into a city teeming with ravenous undead, air pirates, criminal overlords, and heavily armed refugees. And only Briar can bring him out alive.”

“The Dust of 100 Dogs” by A.S. King

First Sentence: “Imagine my surprise when, after three centuries of fighting with siblings over a spare furry teat and licking my water from a bowl, I was given a human nipple, all to myself, filled with warm mother’s milk.”
From Amazon.com: “In the late seventeenth century, famed teenage pirate Emer Morrisey was on the cusp of escaping the pirate life with her one true love and unfathomable riches when she was slain and cursed with “the dust of one hundred dogs,” dooming her to one hundred lives as a dog before returning to a human body-with her memories intact.

Now she’s a contemporary American teenager and all she needs is a shovel and a ride to Jamaica.”