A New Kind of Ordinary: To Be Read Thursday {22}

TBR Thursday is a weekly post where I draw attention to books by sharing with you the books I've either purchased, received, borrowed, or received for review, plus 10 books currently on my TBR list.

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Books for Review:

HollyWeird, Terri Clark

Source: ARC from publisher

Publisher: Flux Books

Publication Date: 5/8/2012

Synopsis from Goodreads: Paranormal + Hollywood + cute fallen angel = WIN

When sixteen-year-old Aly King is the grand prizewinner in the "Win a Date with Dakota" contest, it seems like a dream come true. Along with her best friend Desi, and soap star wannabe sister Missy, she flies from Colorado to Hollywood for her celebrity date. Like every other girl in America, Aly knows that Dakota Danvers is a smoking hot movie star. What she doesn't know is that he's also Satan's son.

Luckily for Aly, in the City of Angels there is one actual angel, Jameson Dagon. Granted, Jameson is a fallen angel, but he has one last chance at salvation if he can derail Dakota's evil machinations. Can Jameson protect Aly and Desi from Dakota's damning influence, put up with Missy's prima donna antics--and ignore his smoldering attraction to Aly?

Goodreads / Amazon

Long Lankin, Lindsey Barraclough

Source: ARC from publisher

Publisher: Candlewick Press

Publication Date: 7/10/2012

Synopsis from Goodreads: In an exquisitely chilling debut novel, four children unravel the mystery of a family curse - and a ghostly creature known in folklore as Long Lankin.

When Cora and her younger sister, Mimi, are sent to stay with their elderly aunt in the isolated village of Byers Guerdon, they receive a less-than-warm welcome. Auntie Ida is eccentric and rigid, and the girls are desperate to go back to London.

But what they don't know is that their aunt's life was devastated the last time two young sisters were at Guerdon Hall, and she is determined to protect her nieces from an evil that has lain hidden for years. Along with Roger and Peter, two village boys, Cora must uncover the horrifying truth that has held Bryers Guerdon in its dark grip for centuries - before it's too late for little Mimi.

Riveting and intensely atmospheric, this stunning debut will hold readers in its spell long after the last page is turned.

Goodreads / Amazon

Slipping Reality, Emily Beaver

Source: eBook from JKS Communications & NetGalley

Publisher: AuthorHouse

Publication Date: 7/16/2011

Synopsis from Goodreads: In a time of hardship and heartbreak, sometimes, reality just isn't enough. Slipping Reality is the story of fourteen-year-old Katelyn Emerson, who, when faced with the glaring reality of her brother's illness, rebels against the truth by slipping away into the depths of her own imagination. There, she finds the kind of support and comfort she feels she deserves. There, she does not have to feel so alone. And yet, as Katelyn's grasp on reality begins to unravel, so too does the story of a girl who grew up too fast and fell apart too soon.

Emily Beaver's debut novel is a coming of age story that deals with the trials of young grief, insight, and growth where it's least expected.

Goodreads / Amazon

The Awakening of Leeowyn Blake (The Kahl'Nar Saga #1), Mary Parker

Source: eBook from publisher

Publisher: Wordcrafts Press

Publication Date: 1/2/2012

Synopsis from Amazon: I'm a normal teenager. I have a normal teenage life with normal teenage problems.
The summer is my heaven. I live with my mom during the summer months. We stay in her tiny condo in Jacksonville, Florida. My parents split up when I was little. I'm not sure why. My mom never talks about it. Whatever it was, it was bad enough to make my mom pack me up in the middle of the night when I was four years old and run to my Gran's condo.

My mom got the condo after Gran died. From that time on all I had known my entire life was beach life.

Until four years ago.

Until my uncle found me.

Goodreads / Amazon

Cycles, Lois D. Brown

Source: eBook from author

Publisher: Levanter Publishing

Publication Date: 12/20/2011

Synopsis from Goodreads: She remembers things that never happened.
She's a stranger in her own home.
She always knew she was different.
She just didn't know why.
Until now.

Renee Beaumont is about to die . . . again.

Goodreads / Amazon

Unraveling, Elizabeth Norris

Source: ARC from publisher

Publisher: Balzer + Bray

Publication Date: 4/24/2012

Synopsis from Goodreads: Two days before her junior year, Janelle Tenner is hit by a pickup truck and killed —as in blinding light, her life flashing before her, then nothing. Except the next thing she knows, she's opening her eyes to find Ben Michaels, a loner from her high school whom Janelle has never talked to, leaning over her. And though it isn’t possible, she knows with every fiber of her being that Ben has brought her back to life.

But her revival, and Ben’s possible role in it, is only the first of the puzzles that Janelle must solve. W hile snooping in her FBI agent father’s files for clues about her accident, she uncovers a clock that seems to be counting down to something — but to what? And when someone close to Janelle is killed, she can no longer deny what’s right in front of her: Everything that’s happened—the accident, the countdown clock, Ben’s sudden appearance in her life—points to the end of life as she knows it.

As the clock ticks down, she realizes that if she wants to put a stop to the end of the world, she needs to uncover Ben’s secrets—and keep from falling...

Goodreads / Amazon

The Red Book, Deborah Copaken Kogan

Source: ARC from publisher

Publisher: Hyperion Books

Publication Date: 4/3/2012

Synopsis from author's website: The Big Chill meets The Group in Deborah Copaken Kogan’s wry, lively, and irresistible new novel about a once-close circle of friends at their twentieth college reunion.  

Clover, Addison, Mia, and Jane were roommates at Harvard until their graduation in 1989. Clover, homeschooled on a commune by mixed-race parents, felt woefully out of place, both among the East Coast elite and within the social milieu of her prep-schooled beau, Bucky. Addison yearned to shed the burden of her Mayflower heritage, finding escape in both art and in the arms of another woman. Mia mined the depths of her suburban ennui to enact brilliant performances on the Harvard stage, including a heartrending turn as Nora in A Doll’s House. Jane, an adopted Vietnamese war orphan, made sense of her fractured world through words, spending long hours as an editor at the Crimson.

Twenty years later, all their lives are in free fall. Clover, once a securities broker with Lehman, is out of a job and struggling to reproduce before her fertility window slams shut. Addison’s marriage to a writer’s-blocked novelist is as stale as her so-called career as a painter, as troubled as her children’s psyches, and as mismanaged as her trust fund. Hollywood shut its gold-plated gates to Mia, who now stays home with her four children, renovating and acquiring faster than her director husband can pay the bills. Jane, the Paris bureau chief for a newspaper whose foreign bureaus are now shuttered, is caught in a vortex of loss, having lost her journalist husband—the father of her young child—to war, her adoptive mother to cancer, and quite possibly her current partner due to an errant email.

Like all Harvard grads, they’ve kept abreast of one another via the red book, a class report published every five years, containing brief autobiographical essays by fellow alumni. But there’s the story we tell the world, and then there’s the real story, as these former classmates will learn during their twentieth reunion weekend, when they arrive with their families, their histories, their dashed dreams, and their secret yearnings to a relationship-changing, score-settling, unforgettable weekend.  

Goodreads / Amazon

Glow (Sky Chasers #1), Amy Kathleen Ryan

Source: Audiobook from Macmillan Audio

Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin

Publication Date: 9/13/2011

Synopsis from Goodreads: What if you were bound for a new world, about to pledge your life to someone you'd been promised to since birth, and one unexpected violent attack made survival—not love—the issue?

Out in the murky nebula lurks an unseen enemy: the New Horizon. On its way to populate a distant planet in the wake of Earth's collapse, the ship's crew has been unable to conceive a generation to continue its mission. They need young girls desperately, or their zealous leader's efforts will fail. Onboard their sister ship, the Empyrean, the unsuspecting families don't know an attack is being mounted that could claim the most important among them...

Fifteen-year-old Waverly is part of the first generation to be successfully conceived in deep space; she was born on the Empyrean, and the large farming vessel is all she knows. Her concerns are those of any teenager—until Kieran Alden proposes to her. The handsome captain-to-be has everything Waverly could ever want in a husband, and with the pressure to start having children, everyone is sure he's the best choice. Except for Waverly, who wants more from life than marriage—and is secretly intrigued by the shy, darkly brilliant Seth.

But when the Empyrean faces sudden attack by their assumed allies, they quickly find out that the enemies aren't all from the outside.

Goodreads / Amazon

Bloodland, Alan Glynn

Source: ARC from publisher

Publisher: Picador

Publication Date: 1/31/2012

Synopsis from Goodreads: A helicopter crash off the coast of Ireland sends unexpected ripples through the international community in this intricate new thriller from the author of Winterland and Limitless (now a major motion picture).

Susie Monaghan was on the cusp of stardom when her life was cut short by a tragic helicopter crash. After a full investigation, her death was ruled an accident: case closed. But a hungry young journalist named Jimmy Gilroy isn't buying the official story. Before dying, Susie's path had crossed with an unlikely gallery of powerful men: an ex-Prime minister with a carefully guarded secret; the businessman brother of a U.S. Senator angling for the Oval Office; and a billionaire investor with his eye on an extremely rare commodity. Might there also be a link between Susie's death and a deranged security contractor operating in Congo? Piece by piece, Jimmy uncovers a bizarre nexus of coincidence among these disparate people and events, revealing a conspiracy of frightening reach and consequence--one that could cost him his life.

Set against a vividly drawn world of corporate and political intrigue, Alan Glynn's Bloodland is a riveting paranoid thriller of uncommon depth and page-turning suspense.

Goodreads / Amazon

Theft of Swords (The Riyria Revelations, #1-2)

Theft of Swords (Riyria Revelations Vol. 1), Michael J. Sullivan

Source: Book from Publisher

Publisher: Orbit

Publication Date: 11/23/2011

Synopsis from Goodreads: THEY KILLED THE KING. THEY PINNED IT ON TWO MEN. THEY CHOSE POORLY.

Royce Melborn, a skilled thief, and his mercenary partner, Hadrian Blackwater, make a profitable living carrying out dangerous assignments for conspiring nobles--until they are hired to pilfer a famed sword. What appears to be just a simple job finds them framed for the murder of the king and trapped in a conspiracy that uncovers a plot far greater than the mere overthrow of a tiny kingdom.

Can a self-serving thief and an idealistic swordsman survive long enough to unravel the first part of an ancient mystery that has toppled kings and destroyed empires in order to keep a secret too terrible for the world to know?

And so begins the first tale of treachery and adventure, sword fighting and magic, myth and legend.

Goodreads / Amazon

See You at Harry's, Jo Knowles

Source: ARC from Publisher

Publisher: Candlewick Press

Publication Date: 5/8/2012

Synopsis from Goodreads: Starting middle school brings all the usual challenges - until the unthinkable happens, and Fern and her family must find a way to heal.

Twelve-year-old Fern feels invisible. It seems as though everyone in her family has better things to do than pay attention to her: Mom (when she's not meditating) helps Dad run the family restaurant; Sarah is taking a gap year after high school; and Holden pretends that Mom and Dad and everyone else doesn't know he's gay, even as he fends off bullies at school. Then there's Charlie: three years old, a "surprise" baby, the center of everyone's world. He's devoted to Fern, but he's annoying, too, always getting his way, always dirty, always commanding attention. If it wasn't for Ran, Fern's calm and positive best friend, there'd be nowhere to turn. Ran's mantra, "All will be well," is soothing in a way that nothing else seems to be. And when Ran says it, Fern can almost believe it's true.

But then tragedy strikes- and Fern feels not only more alone than ever, but also responsible for the accident that has wrenched her family apart. All will not be well. Or at least all will never be the same.

Goodreads / Amazon

Shadows on the Moon, Zoe Marriott

Source: ARC from publisher

Publisher: Candlewick Press

Publication Date: 4/24/2012

Synopis from Goodreads: A powerful tale of magic, love, and revenge set in fairy-tale Japan.

Trained in the magical art of shadow-weaving, sixteen-year-old Suzume is able to re-create herself in any form - a fabulous gift for a girl desperate to escape her past. But who is she really? Is she a girl of noble birth living under the tyranny of her mother's new husband, Lord Terayama? Or a lowly drudge scraping a living in the ashes of Terayama's kitchens? Or is she Yue, the most beautiful courtesan in the Moonlit Lands?

Whatever her true identity, Suzume is destined to use her skills to steal the heart of a prince in a revenge plot to destroy Terayama. And nothing will stop her, not even the one true aspect of her life- her love for a fellow shadow-weaver.

Goodreads / Amazon

Books Purchased: