Modest Musings

Welcome to Modest Musings!

This is were we will tell you what books we have acquired this week.  Whether it is through purchases, NetGalley or one of our many book list emails.  Please feel free to tell us what you think and if there is a particular book you are interested in seeing a review of.  Hope you enjoy!

Jessica’s Modest Musings

A White so Red by K.D. Jones – Take back what is yours.

Seventeen-year-old Snow’s life changed forever the night her stepmother, the Queen, sent her huntsman to cut out her heart. Fleeing for her life, Snow runs to the Silver Forest, a place as dangerous as it is enchanting, and begins an adventure she could never have dreamed.

With no one at her side but a rowdy band of carnivorous dwarves and an arrogant, rogue prince who’s too handsome for his own good, Snow must confront the challenge that’s been laid before her: Kill the Queen, and take back the kingdom that should have been hers.

But if she is to succeed, Snow will have to tap into a powerful, ancient form of magic, one that may have been sleeping inside her all along.

See Me by Wendy Higgins – While most seventeen-year-old American girls would refuse to let their parents marry them off to a stranger, Robyn Mason dreams of the mysterious McKale in Ireland, wondering how he’ll look and imagining his cute Irish accent. Prearranged bindings are common for magical families like her own, however when she travels to the whimsical Emerald Isle she discovers there’s more to her betrothal and McKale’s clan than she was led to believe. 

What starts as an obligatory pairing between Robyn and McKale morphs over time into something they both need. But one giant obstacle stands in the way of their budding romance: a seductive and deadly Fae princess accustomed to getting what she wants—and what she wants is McKale as her plaything. Love, desire, and jealousies collide as Robyn’s family and McKale’s clan must work together to outsmart the powerful Faeries and preserve the only hope left for their people.

Lynn’s Modest Musings 

Thrilling Thirteen – The Thrilling Thirteen includes ten thrilling novels, two page-flipping novellas and an action-packed short story collection from the minds of today’s bestselling and award winning authors. That’s nearly 750,000 words for just a buck.

A Touch of Deceit (Nick Bracco Series) – Gary Ponzo
Russian Hill (Abby Kane FBI Thriller) – Ty Hutchinson
Arctic Wargame (Justin Hall Series) – Ethan Jones
Look For Me (Rachel Scott Adventure)- Traci Hohenstein
The Last Horseman – Frank Zafiro
The Diplomat (Justin Hall Series) – Ethan Jones
The Recruiter (A Thriller) – Dani Amore
Mark Taylor: Genesis (Mark Taylor Series) – M.P. McDonald
In the Shadow of El Paso – Frank Zafiro
Don’t Close Your Eyes (Stephanie Chalice Thriller) – Lawrence Kelter
Quicksilver (Forensic Geology Series) – Toni Dwiggins
Least Wanted (Sam McRae Mystery) – Debbi Mack
Absence of Light (Charlie Fox Thriller) – Zoë Sharp

Source of the River by Lana Axe – Journey into the mountain home of the dwarves, where an evil spirit dwells.

High in the mountains, an evil presence has unleashed a plague upon the dwarves. When news reaches River, he begins a quest to retrieve an ancient artifact that will expel the entity, freeing the dwarves from its murderous grasp. Along the way, he finds friendship in a dwarf girl, who possesses extraordinary magical powers of her own. Together they will be the key to preventing a genocide among the dwarves.

Without his knowledge, River is pursued by a powerful elven sorcerer who is determined to bind the soul of an elemental. Using a practice that has been banned for centuries, he plans to combine River’s power with his own. If he succeeds, he will possess the strength to become a god himself.

Fracture by Megan Miranda – Eleven minutes passed before Delaney Maxwell was pulled from the icy waters of a Maine lake by her best friend Decker Phillips. By then her heart had stopped beating. Her brain had stopped working. She was dead. And yet she somehow defied medical precedent to come back seemingly fine. Everyone wants Delaney to be all right, but she knows she’s far from normal. Pulled by strange sensations she can’t control or explain, Delaney finds herself drawn to the dying. Is her altered brain now predicting death, or causing it?

Then Delaney meets Troy Varga, who recently emerged from a coma with similar abilities. At first she’s reassured to find someone who understands the strangeness of her new existence, but Delaney soon discovers that Troy’s motives aren’t quite what she thought. Is their gift a miracle, a freak of nature-or something much more frightening?

For fans of best-sellers like Before I Fall and If I Stay, this is a fascinating and heart-rending story about love and friendship and the fine line between life and death.

Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s by Frederick Lewis Allen –Only Yesterday deals with that delightful decade from the Armistice in November 1918 to the panic and depression of 1929-30. Here is the story of Woodrow Wilson’s defeat, the Harding scandals, the Coolidge prosperity, the revolution in manners and morals, the bull market and its smash-up. Allen’s lively narrative brings back an endless variety of half-forgotten events, fashions, crazes, and absurdities. Deftly written, with a humorous touch, Only Yesterday traces, beneath the excitements of day-to-day life in the 20s, those currents in national life and thought which are the essence of true history.

A Matter of Circumstance and Celludrones (Dark Matters) by Claire Robyns – Lady Lily d’Bulier is prim, proper, and prefers to think of herself as pragmatic rather than timid. And avoiding life-threatening situations at all costs is just plain practical. But everything changes when Lord Adair tracks her down in London; searching for answers he seems to think she has.

Greyston Adair is a blackguard and a smuggler, although British Customs will have to catch him red-handed to prove the latter. Fortunately, the dirigibles they float around in have never been able to get near his air dust.

Hell is rising, One Demon at a Time…

With Lady Ostrich hunting them, and the mystery of how their lives tie back to Cragloden Castle and the powerful McAllister clan, Lily has no option but to throw propriety to the wind and run off with Greyston to Scotland, away from the immediate danger and toward possible answers.