Saturday 3 January 2015

JAN 2015 15 FAAAABULOUS RELEASES

NEW YEARS RESOLUTION
OR
2015 READING CHALLENGE?

This year my Challenge for my Reading/ New Years Resolution for my Reading is to be more spontaneous when reading. I usually end up booking my reading time for book tours etc, then when my health plays up (which it inevitably does) I find it difficult to make deadlines occasionally (I haven't missed any reading deadlines but do stress about maybe doing it! ) So my resolution/challenge is to only book one set title per month to read and then choose the other titles I read more randomly and hopefully therefore feel less pressure. As the stress and pressure irritate my already not so great health problems.

So onto blogging business!

Here are the 15 (15 as it's 2015. . .thought I'd continue with the theme as I did 14 titles in 2014 etc etc) January's New Releases that I am looking forward to reading or adding either to my wishlist, or want to buy list!

1

I have seen and requested this one on Netgalley so fingers crossed that I accepted and receive an e-arc to read and review for my blog soon! 
Title: The Conspiracy Of Us
Series: N/A
Author: Maggie Hall
Publisher: Putnam Juvenile
Release Date: 13th January 2015

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To fight her destiny as the missing heir to a powerful and dangerous secret society, sixteen-year-old Avery West must solve an ancient puzzle in a deadly race across Europe. Forbidden love and code-breaking, masked balls and explosions, destiny and dark secrets collide in this romantic thriller, in the vein of a YA DaVinci Code.

Avery West's newfound family can shut down Prada at the Champs-Elysees when they want to shop in peace, and can just as easily order a bombing when they want to start a war. 

They are part of a powerful and dangerous secret society called the Circle of Twelve, and Avery is their missing heir. If they discover who she is, some of them will want to use her as a pawn. Some will want her dead. 

To thwart their plans, Avery must follow a trail of clues from the landmarks of Paris to the back alleys of Istanbul and through a web of ancient legends and lies. And unless she can stay one step ahead of beautiful, volatile Stellan, who knows she’s more than she seems, and can decide whether to trust mysterious, magnetic Jack, she may be doomed after all.

2

I am lucky enough to have an interview with this author which will be appearing on the 5th January. I'm trying to broaden my reading genre selection this year so I'm adding this one to my Want To Read Wishlist too!
Title: Gone Too Far
Series: N/A
Author: Natalie D. Richards
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Release Date: 6th January 2015

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Keeping secrets ruined her life. But the truth might just kill her.

Piper Woods can't wait for the purgatory of senior year to end. She skirts the fringes of high school like a pro until the morning she finds a notebook with mutilated photographs and a list of student sins. She's sure the book is too gruesome to be true, until pretty, popular Stella dies after a sex-tape goes viral. Everyone's sure it's suicide, but Piper remembers Stella's name from the book and begins to suspect something much worse.

Drowning in secrets she doesn't want to keep, Piper's fears are confirmed when she receives an anonymous text message daring her to make things right. All she needs to do is choose a name, the name of someone who deserves to be punished...

3

As I have already said one of my aims is to try a wider range of genres, so this one is still sort of paranormal as the blurb mentions astral-projection but still more contemporary sounding than some books I've been reading! So on the Want To Read Wishlist.
Title: Fifteen
Series: The Dreamwalker Diaries
Author: Jen Estes
Publisher: Curiosity Quills Press
Release Date: 15th January 2015

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Legend has it if you die in your dreams, you die in real life. Fifteen-year-old Ashling Campbell knows that’s not true because when she closes her eyes each night, she doesn’t dream about public nudity or Prom dates. Instead, she’s catapulted to the front row of her future self’s execution - fifteen years from now - where monsters have taken control of her hometown and she, or rather, her 30-year-old counterpart, is their public enemy number one.

For three months and counting, it’s been the same dream… until an encounter with an antique dreamcatcher. Ash falls asleep to discover she’s no longer a mere spectator in these dreams - now she’s astral-projecting into the body of her future self. Each night, she goes on the run with a ragtag group of rebels - who have no idea she’s really a high school sophomore and not their noble warrior. She has to make it through each night so that she can wake up and find a way to change the future. For every action she does in the present day, she falls asleep to discover it had an equal impact fifteen years later. It’s up to her to manage her two worlds and make sure she’s still got a place in both.
 

4

This one reminds me of Dash & Lily's Book Of Dares and what I've heard about Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist too, so that's why this one made the January listing.
Title: Playlist For The Dead
Series: N/A
Author: Michelle Falkoff
Publisher: HarperTeen
Release Date: 27th January 2015

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A teenage boy tries to understand his best friend's suicide by listening to the playlist of songs he left behind in this smart, voice-driven debut novel.

Here's what Sam knows: There was a party. There was a fight. The next morning, his best friend, Hayden, was dead. And all he left Sam was a playlist of songs, and a suicide note: For Sam—listen and you'll understand.

As he listens to song after song, Sam tries to face up to what happened the night Hayden killed himself. But it's only by taking out his earbuds and opening his eyes to the people around him that he will finally be able to piece together his best friend’s story. And maybe have a chance to change his own.

Part mystery, part love story, and part coming-of-age tale in the vein of Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Tim Tharp’s The Spectacular NowPlaylist for the Dead is an honest and gut-wrenching first novel about loss, rage, what it feels like to outgrow a friendship that's always defined you—and the struggle to redefine yourself. But above all, it's about finding hope when hope seems like the hardest thing to find.

5

I have book one of this series still on my To Read List, I've seen some good reviews about the book so  decided to add the next book in the trilogy to my Want To Read Wishlist.
Title: Golden Son
Series: Red Rising Trilogy
Author: Pierce Brown
Publisher: Del Ray, Random House
Release Date: 6th January 2015

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With shades of The Hunger GamesEnder’s Game, and Game of Thrones, debut author Pierce Brown’s genre-defying epic Red Rising hit the ground running and wasted no time becoming a sensation. Golden Son continues the stunning saga of Darrow, a rebel forged by tragedy, battling to lead his oppressed people to freedom from the overlords of a brutal elitist future built on lies. Now fully embedded among the Gold ruling class, Darrow continues his work to bring down Society from within. A life-or-death tale of vengeance with an unforgettable hero at its heart, Golden Songuarantees Pierce Brown’s continuing status as one of fiction’s most exciting new voices.


6

I've been reading more "knights, soldiers & castles" books so this fits that type of genre.
I also liked the look of the cover too.
Title: Woven
Series: N/A
Author: Michael Jensen, David Powers King
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Release Date: 27th January 2015

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Two unlikely allies must journey across a kingdom in the hopes of thwarting death itself.

All his life, Nels has wanted to be a knight of the kingdom of Avërand. Tall and strong, and with a knack for helping those in need, the people of his sleepy little village have even taken to calling him the Knight of Cobblestown.

But that was before Nels died, murdered outside his home by a mysterious figure.

Now the young hero has awoken as a ghost, invisible to all around him save one person—his only hope for understanding what happened to him—the kingdom’s heir, Princess Tyra. At first the spoiled royal wants nothing to do with Nels, but as the mystery of his death unravels, the two find themselves linked by a secret, and an enemy who could be hiding behind any face.

Nels and Tyra have no choice but to abscond from the castle, charting a hidden world of tangled magic and forlorn phantoms. They must seek out an ancient needle with the power to mend what has been torn, and they have to move fast. Because soon Nels will disappear forever.

7

I like the sound of this one with a kind of alternate society, yet with a historical, maybe Greek mythology thrown in? So that's why this one made this list and my 
Want To Read List.
Title: The Just City
Series: Thessaly
Author: Jo Walton
Publisher: Tor Books
Release Date: 13th January 2015

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"Here in the Just City you will become your best selves. You will learn and grow and strive to be excellent."

Created as an experiment by the time-traveling goddess Pallas Athene, the Just City is a planned community, populated by over ten thousand children and a few hundred adult teachers from all eras of history, along with some handy robots from the far human future—all set down together on a Mediterranean island in the distant past.

The student Simmea, born an Egyptian farmer's daughter sometime between 500 and 1000 A.D, is a brilliant child, eager for knowledge,  ready to strive to be her best self. The teacher Maia was once Ethel, a young Victorian lady of much learning and few prospects, who prayed to Pallas Athene in an unguarded moment during a trip to Rome—and, in an instant, found herself in the Just City with grey-eyed Athene standing unmistakably before her.

Meanwhile, Apollo—stunned by the realization that there are things mortals understand better than he does—has arranged to live a human life, and has come to the City as one of the children. He knows his true identity, and conceals it from his peers. For this lifetime, he is prone to all the troubles of being human.

Then, a few years in, Sokrates arrives—the same Sokrates recorded by Plato himself—to ask all the troublesome questions you would expect. What happens next is a tale only the brilliant Jo Walton could tell.
 

8

Not so keen on the cover of this one but the blurb sound like it may be a pretty interesting read, it's published on the 6th January, so its on this months list.
Title: The Galaxy Game
Series: N/A
Author: Karen Lord
Publisher: Del Rey
Release Date: 6th January 2015

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For years, Rafi Delarua saw his family suffer under his father's unethical use of psionic power. Now the government has Rafi under close watch, but, hating their crude attempts to analyse his brain, he escapes to the planet Punartam, where his abilities are the norm, not the exception. Punartam is also the centre for his favourite sport, wallrunning - and thanks to his best friend, he has found a way to train with the elite. But Rafi soon realises he's playing quite a different game, for the galaxy is changing; unrest is spreading and the Zhinuvian cartels are plotting, making the stars a far more dangerous place to aim. There may yet be one solution - involving interstellar travel, galactic power and the love of a beautiful game.


9

This is a series I keep meaning to start reading but sadly have just not got around to yet.
Title: A Cold Legacy
Series: The Madman's Daughter
Author: Megan Shepherd
Publisher: Balzer+Bray/Harpercollins
Release Date: 27th January 2015

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After killing the men who tried to steal her father’s research, Juliet—along with Montgomery, Lucy, Balthazar, and a deathly ill Edward—has escaped to a remote estate on the Scottish moors. Owned by the enigmatic Elizabeth von Stein, the mansion is full of mysteries and unexplained oddities: dead bodies in the basement, secret passages, and fortune-tellers who seem to know Juliet’s secrets. Though it appears to be a safe haven, Juliet fears new dangers may be present within the manor’s own walls.

Then Juliet uncovers the truth about the manor’s long history of scientific experimentation—and her own intended role in it—forcing her to determine where the line falls between right and wrong, life and death, magic and science, and promises and secrets. And she must decide if she’ll follow her father’s dark footsteps or her mother’s tragic ones, or whether she’ll make her own.

With inspiration from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, this breathless conclusion to the Madman’s Daughter trilogy is about the things we’ll sacrifice to save those we love—even our own humanity.



10

I'm interested in this one as it sounds like a good dystopian/sci-fi mash up. I'll have to put this on the Want To Read Wishlist along with book one in this series.
Title: Polaris
Series: Avalon
Author: Mindee Arnett
Publisher: Balzer+Bray
Release Date: 20th January 2015

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Following the events of Avalon, Jeth Seagrave and his crew are on the run. Jeth is desperate to find the resources and funding he needs to rescue his mother from an ITA’s research lab and leave this whole galaxy behind for a new life somewhere else. But the ITA is just as desperate, and soon Jeth finds himself pursued by a mysterious figure hell-bent on capturing Jeth and his crew—dead or alive. In a last-ditch effort to save everyone he holds dear, Jeth enters into a bargain with the last person he ever thought he'd see again: Dax Shepherd, the galaxy’s newest and most fearsome crime lord. And he’s not the only one: upon arriving back at Peltraz spaceport for the first time since he witnessed the death of his old employer, Jeth discovers Dax has a new partner: Jeth’s mother, Marian.

This shocking turn of events is only the first in another breathless, action-packed sci-fi adventure rife with danger, love, and betrayal, as Jeth has to once again ask himself how much he’s willing to invest in a morally bankrupt galaxy in the hopes of saving those he cares for.

Goodreads Link

11

I don't think I've read many books from this publisher, so this one is going on the Want To Read Wishlist and fits a lot of my "New Years Resolution" lists, as it is part of my wanting to read more "contemporary", authors new to me and "publishers new to me" too.
Title: Vendetta
Series: Vendetta
Author: Catherine Doyle
Publisher: Chicken House
Release Date: 1st January 2015

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Sophie's life changes the moment five brothers move into the house next door. Irresistibly drawn to bad boy, Nic, she finds herself caught between two warring underworld families: her own and the one she is falling in love with. Whichever side she chooses, a debt of blood will spill and hearts will break.


12

I totally admit I love the cover of this book, and I'd like to read more shifter/otherworldly people books so this book fits that list and is going on my Want To Read Wishlist because it has mermaids! I think I may have an e-copy of the first book of this brilliant sounding series.
Title:  Rogue Waves
Series: Waterfire Saga
Author: Jennifer Donnelly
Publisher: Disney Press
Release Date: 6th January 2015

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In this exciting sequel to DEEP BLUE, Serafina uncovers more clues about the talismans, Neela ventures into a sea dragon's nest, and Ling learns the identity of their foe.

Serafina, Neela, Ling, Ava, Becca, and Astrid, six mermaids from realms scattered throughout the seas and freshwaters, were summoned by the leader of the river witches to learn an incredible truth: the mermaids are direct descendants of the Six Who Ruled-powerful mages who once governed the lost empire of Atlantis. The ancient evil that destroyed Atlantis is stirring again, and only the mermaids can defeat it. To do so, they need to find magical talismans that belonged to the Six.

Serafina believes her talisman was buried with an old shipwreck. While researching its location, she is almost discovered by a death rider patrol led by someone familiar. . . . The pain of seeing him turned traitor is devastating.

Neela travels to Matali to warn her parents of the grave threat facing their world. But they find her story outlandish; a sign that she needs to be confined to her chamber for rest and recovery. She escapes and travels to Kandina, where her talisman is in the possession of fearsome razormouth dragons.

As they hunt for their talismans, both Serafina and Neela find reserves of courage and cunning they didn't know they possessed. They face down danger and death, only to endure a game-changing betrayal, as shocking as a rogue wave.


13

This one makes the Want To Read Wishlist for obvious reasons I mean wow how would you feel if you could just look at someone and know the date of their death? What a responsibility that would be! Do you tell them, try to change fate? and the death date?
Title: When
Series: N/A
Author: Victoria Laurie
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Release Date: 13th January 2015

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Maddie Fynn is a shy high school junior, cursed with an eerie intuitive ability: she sees a series of unique digits hovering above the foreheads of each person she encounters. Her earliest memories are marked by these numbers, but it takes her father’s premature death for Maddie and her family to realize that these mysterious digits are actually death dates, and just like birthdays, everyone has one.

Forced by her alcoholic mother to use her ability to make extra money, Maddie identifies the quickly approaching death date of one client's young son, but because her ability only allows her to see the when and not the how, she’s unable to offer any more insight. When the boy goes missing on that exact date, law enforcement turns to Maddie.

Soon, Maddie is entangled in a homicide investigation, and more young people disappear and are later found murdered. A suspect for the investigation, a target for the murderer, and attracting the attentions of a mysterious young admirer who may be connected to it all, Maddie's whole existence is about to be turned upside down. Can she right things before it's too late?
 


14 
This one is another title to add to my read more contemporary list. My daughter has also read other titles by Ally Carter and recommended I try her books, so it's right there on my Want To Read List too
Title: All Fall Down
Series: Embassy Road
Author: Ally Carter
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Release Date: 27th January 2015

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Grace can best be described as a daredevil, an Army brat, and a rebel. She is also the only granddaughter of perhaps the most powerful ambassador in the world and Grace has spent every summer of her childhood running across the roofs of Embassy Row.

Now, at age sixteen, she's come back to stay - in order to solve the mystery of her mother's death. In the process, she uncovers an international conspiracy of unsettling proportions, and must choose her friends and watch her foes carefully if she and the world are to be saved.


15

The final book in my list is by new/debut author Jenny Elliott. This book has been chosen by readers, writers, and publishers for the first list in the new Swoon Reads imprint. I love to try authors I haven't read before so I'll be adding this to my Want To Read Wishlist
Title: Save Me
Series: N/A
Author: Jenny Elliott
Publisher: Swoon Reads
Release Date: 6th January 2015

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Something strange is going on in the tiny coastal town of Liberty, Oregon. Cara has never seen a whale swim close enough for her to touch it—let alone knock her into the freezing water. Fortunately, cute newcomer David is there to save her, and the rescue leads to a bond deeper than Cara ever imagined.

But then she learns something about David that changes everything, and Cara is devastated. She turns to her best friend for support, but Rachel has changed. She’s suddenly into witchcraft, and is becoming dangerously obsessed with her new boyfriend….

Cara has lost her best friend, discovered that her soul mate is off limits, and has attracted the attention of a stalker. But she’s not completely alone. Her mysterious, gorgeous new friend Garren is there to support her. But is Garren possibly too perfect?


So that's my 15 books that I have added to my Want To Read Wishlist and what my initial thoughts are on each book. what books are YOU interested that are published in January?

2 comments:

  1. Rogue Wave has such a beautiful cover! I love it! It looks like you have lots of great books waiting to be read in 2015. I like your goal of trying to be a little more spontaneous. I hope that will relieve some of your stress!

    Happy New Year!
    ~Jess

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  2. Hi Jess!
    Happy New Year to you too!
    I don't actually have all the books on my list lol (wow I'd be super lucky if I did have them all!) some are on my Wishlist to buy when they are available. (though of course I'll keep checking Netgalley & Edelweiss for e-arcs too).
    I am also trying to read more e-books as the space on my bookshelves (my daughter and I have 3 book cases) is super limited. . .but its like an addiction if you go in a store and see a book you'd love, or if you check out a title on Amazon UK and its not available as an e-book yet it's so tempting to say "oh, just get the hardback/paperback and find some room lol! I had been waiting since publication dates for 3 books I eventually treat myself to at Christmas, 2 Shannon Stoker titles and finally finally bought myself (in hardback as weirdly it was cheaper than the paperback) Mothership by Isla Neal & Martin Lebreicht.
    I jeep looking at Jennifer Donnelly's book and thinking "wow that would look oh so pretty on our book shelf on out=r main bookcase in the living room" I keep staring wistfully at the cover lol! ~ Jeanz

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