Welcome to Modest Musings!
This is were we tell you about the 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 us review. We hope you enjoy what we found this week!
Jessica’s Musings
First World (A Walker Saga) by Jaymin Eve – Abigail Swish might not love her life, living in gang-ridden New York in 2035 and training to fight and survive with Compound 23. But she is grateful for a few things, especially her no-filter-between-brain-and-mouth best friend Lucy and her escape each night into a dream world far different from her own.
In fact, sometimes she lives for the fleeting moments she spends at night with the man who fuels every romantic fantasy she’s ever had. But each morning reality returns. She could just cry. But she won’t. Tears don’t change a damn thing.
Then without any warning, a month before her eighteenth birthday, everything does change. A guardian finds her. He explains, in a strangely familiar accent, that she was stashed on Earth for safekeeping and has been lost to her family ever since. And it is time to return home. To First World; a land of unimagined beauty.
Abigail and Lucy find themselves thrust from New York and into another world. Day one: traversing through an unforgiving wilderness. Yeah, because that sort of thing just happens every day. Luckily an unexpected savior arrives; the man from her dream-world. Brace is six-and-a-half feet of gorgeous perfectness, wrapped in an arrogance like no other. Unable to trust his assistance, and unsure which of her instincts to follow – kiss him or punch him in the mouth – Abigail eventually accepts his help to find her family.
And what a family. Enter Josian, her father, larger than life and apparently not even human. He is Walker, a planet-less race revered as gods, causing mischief and mayhem through-out this star-system. Unfortunately, there is no time for a cozy reunion, since her return to First World is the unknown catalyst, setting forth a chain of events which could spell disaster for all worlds.
Dog Days of Summer by L.M. Pfalz – In the small town of Moonridge, Theresa and her best friends, Beth and Donna, reminisce about their youth when David, Wil, and Paul—their old friends and childhood crushes—come back to town. The six friends share memories of the summer of 1983, when troubles with their families and three bullies strengthened their bond and changed their lives forever. Fifteen years later, in the midst of their happy reunion, they are reacquainted with their childhood bullies: the sadistic Jordan brothers. Theresa and her friends must pull together in order to survive the present, while facing their darkest memories of the past.
Long Time Coming by Edie Claire – Eighteen years have passed since Joy’s childhood best friend, Jenny, met her death in a tragic car accident just a few days after their senior prom. A broken Joy left their small Kentucky hometown shortly after – determined never to come back. But when her father’s illness forces her to return, she realizes that neither time nor distance have truly healed her troubled soul.
Plagued with nightmares of the accident and crippled by a vague fear whose source she can’t identify, Joy realizes that in order to move on she must face the truth behind several disturbing gaps in her memory of that fateful spring. But the only person who can help her is a man she despises – Jenny’s erstwhile boyfriend Jeff, now a respected doctor, whose carelessness as a teenager was the cause of Jenny’s horrendous death – and Joy’s own emotional destruction. Can she ever forgive? She may have no choice but to try. Because both the danger she sensed – and the childhood friendship she treasured – now suddenly seem very much alive…
The Adventures of Jillian Spectre by Nic Tatano – Welcome to the Mystic Quarter…
Jillian Spectre knows what happens after you die because the seventeen-year-old mystic seer can see the future of her clients even after they’ve passed on. And that’s not even her coolest power… she can be in two places at once. Problem is, her heart can only be in one.
Supernatural abilities aside, she’s a typical high school senior torn between two guys. But that gets put on the back burner when she discovers the father she had long assumed was dead is actually alive, with unique powers of his own. He’s a technopath, with the ability to interface his mind with technology. And he’s got a plan to take down society.
Unless Jillian can stop him.
The Adventures of Jillian Spectre is the story of a very special girl who learns that the power of love is more important than supernatural powers.
Lynn’s Musings
Heretic by Joseph Nassise – Boston SWAT officer Cade Williams didn’t believe in the supernatural until a chance meeting with a fallen angel left his wife dead and him hanging on to life by the thinnest of margins. When he was discharged from the hospital he discovered that not only was he scarred, body and soul, but that the encounter had left him with a few otherworldly talents of his own.
Now, several years later, Knight Commander Cade Williams runs the elite Templar combat unit known as the Echo Team, which puts him in the perfect position to search for the creature that so viciously attacked him and his family that night. His efforts yield little success, however, until a cabal of necromancers attempts to seize an ancient Templar artifact for their own nefarious purposes and gives him the first real lead he’s had in ages. Cade sets out to find the necromancers and, through them, the Adversary, only to encounter something much worse…
These Old Shades by Georgette Heyer – Under the reign of Louis XV, corruption and intrigue have been allowed to blossom in France, and Justin Alastair, the notorious Duke of Avon and proud of his soubriquet ‘Satanas’, flourishes as well. Then, from a dark Parisian back alley, he plucks Leon, a redheaded urchin with strangely familiar looks, just in time for his long over-due schemes of revenge on the Comte de St. Vire. Among the splendours of Versailles and the dignified mansions of England, Justin begins to unfold his sinister plans — until, that is, Leon becomes the ravishing beauty Leonie…
Unanswered questions.
Lovely, titian-haired Leonie, ward of the dashing Duke of Avon, had all Paris at her feet. Yet her true origins remained shrouded in mystery. And neither the glittering soirees nor the young aristocrats who so ardently courted her could still the question that plagued her young heart.
What was her mysterious parentage?
Just one man held the secret, the one she feared most in the world–the iron-willed Comte de Saint-Vire, deadly enemy of the Duke. He would give her the answer–for a price. But could she betray the man she secretly, helplessly loved? And could this proud young beauty bear to face the truth when it came?
Dark Hope by Monica McGurk – For years, Hope Carmichael, survivor of a shocking child abduction, has lived a sheltered existence under the protection of her fanatically religious father. Now, liberated by her mother, Hope prepares to start life over as a normal kid in an Atlanta, Georgia, high school.
Normal, that is, until Hope meets Michael, a gorgeous emancipated teen with a mysterious past and a strong interest in Hope. And soon, Hope’s life is filled with questions. What’s behind the angry looks Hope gets from Lucas, leader of a gang of students? Who’s responsible for sending Hope a strange valentine inscribed with Bible quotations? How does this relate to the sinister business of human trafficking that operates on the periphery of Hope’s suburban world? And is Michael really a protector, or something more sinister—and just why does he seem so familiar?
In an epic narrative that takes readers from the back streets of Atlanta to the height of Vegas penthouses and beyond, Dark Hope introduces readers to The Archangel Prophecies, a new young adult saga that blends the feeling of Twilight with a vast mythological scope and moral urgency, as well as to Hope Carmichael—a young woman instantly memorable for her endurance, heart, and determination—and Michael, Hope’s dangerous companion who’s fated either to save Hope—or to kill her.
Ghosts of July: Shamans of the Divide by Megan Applegate – FIVE months until graduation frees her from Shades, Wyoming. Life is waiting for her in Denver.
FOUR varsity volleyball players who promise to make her senior year a nightmare.
THREE ghosts terrorizing her life—two are recently deceased, and one’s a geezer who randomly appears in the least convenient places.
TWO ancient Shoshone demons on the loose through a rip in the Continental Divide.
ONE mysterious guy with amazing eyes and stunning commitment issues—and the only one who doesn’t think she’s descending into insanity.
July Henry’s always assumed shamans were the loincloth-wearing green trolls in the latest game techies rave about.
But suddenly she’s on a crash course to becoming one when the newly dead begin wandering through the desolate town of Shades, WY in search of answers.
Only Renn Hollingsworth, half-Shoshone and all-confusing to July, believes her and holds what may be the key to saving not only themselves, but Shades as well.
It’s an ancient society that guards the length of the Continental Divide, the source of all creation in the myths of many Native American tribes. An old-boys’ club that doesn’t welcome outsiders, July’s about to show them what a little girl from Denver can do when it comes to protecting the ones she loves.
The Immortal Collection by Eva Garcia Sanez – When Adriana, a brilliant young archaeologist, accepts a position at the Museum of Archaeology in her hometown of Santander, Spain, she never imagines that her new boss has lived through the history she can only study. Iago, the charismatic technical director of the museum, is more than ten thousand years old but appears to be only thirty-five. Iago and his family are longevos?people who never seem to age after reaching adulthood. The ancient family is divided: Iago’s brother and sister seek the source of their longevity in hopes of creating more like themselves, while Iago and his father fear the repercussions of the true Fountain of Youth. A dangerous game of power and knowledge that has played out over eons becomes even more complicated when Adriana attracts both brothers? attention?and learns their secret. Filled with science, history, and passion, The Immortal Collection transports the reader through time and space, from the days of cavemen, through the Roaring Twenties, to the charming plazas of contemporary Spain. Ancient history meets cutting-edge research in this modern love story and sweeping historical saga.
THE MODEST VERGE 