Top 5 Best Book Covers: December 2015

Top 5 Best Book Covers is monthly meme created by The Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer. The rules are simple: on the first Saturday of every month, post your 5 favorite books covers that are being released in the current month!

#1
THE YEAR OF LIGHTNING
Book Series:  The Time Shift Trilogy, Book #1
Author: Ryan Dalton (Twitter)
Genre(s): YA, Fantasy, Retellings
Release Date: December 8, 2015

When 15-year-old twins Malcolm and Valentine Gilbert moved to a new town, they never imagined that the old house across the street could bring them so much trouble. A secret machine has reawakened inside, with the power to pierce time itself.

Meanwhile, lightning storms are breaking out all over town. They’re getting worse every week, and seem to enjoy striking kids who just want to pass science class and mind their own business. When Malcolm and Valentine discover a connection between the house and the storms, their situation goes from mysterious to crazy stupid dangerous. Someone is controlling the great machine, and their purpose is nearly complete.

In a race against time, the twins must uncover the chilling plan, the mastermind behind it, and the force that’s driving the deadly storms. They’ll hunt a powerful enemy that threatens their town’s existence, and the only clues are written in the sky.

 

 

Cover Characteristic: Chess Pieces

Hosted by Sugar & Snark

Each week we will post a characteristic and choose 5 of our favorite cover’s with that characteristic. 

Cover Characteristic: Bridges

Hosted by Sugar & Snark

Each week we will post a characteristic and choose 5 of our favorite cover’s with that characteristic. 

Cover Characteristic: Cigarette/Smoking

Hosted by Sugar & Snark

Each week we will post a characteristic and choose 5 of our favorite cover’s with that characteristic. 

Cover Characteristic: Red Covers

Hosted by Sugar & Snark

Each week we will post a characteristic and choose 5 of our favorite cover’s with that characteristic. 

Top 5 Best Book Covers: May 2015

Top 5 Best Book Covers is monthly meme created by The Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer. The rules are simple: on the first Saturday of every month, post your 5 favorite books covers that are being released in the current month!

#1
RICOCHET
Author:  Keri Lake (Twitter) 
Genre(s):  Adult, Contemporary Romance, Romantic Suspense
Release Date:  May 2015

The only sure way to destroy a man is to take what he cannot live without.
Three years ago, I had everything.

A beautiful wife.
A son.
A reason for living.

Until a ruthless task force, assembled under Mayor Michael Culling, with a brutal strategy to make the streets of Detroit ‘safe’, ripped away everything I loved in a deadly hunt called The Culling.

They tried to kill me, too. I wish they had. Now I'm cursed by the memories of that night, and the words I whispered to my dying wife.

A promise—to avenge the wrong and set it right.

I’m no longer Nick Ryder. I’m a masked vigilante. Faceless. Loveless. Fearless. A man with nothing left to lose—one who's seen the dark and violent truth behind the city’s flawless veneer.

Michael Culling doesn’t know who I am. Or what I want. All he knows is that I’ve kidnapped his beautiful wife.

An eye for an eye—isn’t that how the saying goes? And Aubree Culling is the perfect pawn to destroy him.

If she doesn’t destroy me first.

 

Audiobook Review: The Martian by Andy Weir

Title: The Martian

Author: Andy Weir (Facebook)

Genres: Science Fiction, Adventure, Thriller

Format: Audiobook (Amazon | Audible)

Format: R. C. Bray (Audible)

Length: 10 hours and 53 minutes

Release Date: February 11, 2013

Book Club (Feb Book of the Month): Nerds and Novels (SoCal Chapter)

Reading Challenges: 2015 Goodreads Challenge, 2015 Audiobook Challenge

Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first men to walk on the surface of Mars. Now, he's sure he'll be the first man to die there.

It started with the dust storm that holed his suit and nearly killed him, and that forced his crew to leave him behind, sure he was already dead. Now he's stranded millions of miles from the nearest human being, with no way to even signal Earth that he's alive--and even if he could get word out, his food would be gone years before a rescue mission could arrive. Chances are, though, he won't have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old "human error" are much more likely to get him first.

But Mark isn't ready to give up yet. Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills--and a relentless, dogged refusal to quit--he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. But will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him?

FIRST IMPRESSION:: From the very first sentence, I knew I was going to love this book.

Cover Characteristic: Science/Sciency

Hosted by Sugar & Snark

Each week we will post a characteristic and choose 5 of our favorite cover’s with that characteristic. 

It’s Monday What Are You Reading?: 02/16/15

Hosted by Sheila @ Book Journey

This meme shares what we read this past week and what our plans are for the upcoming week. It’s a great way to see what others are reading and add to your own To Be Read list.

• Cover Characteristic: Vegetarian/Vegan
• Audiobook Review: Storm (The SYLO Chronicles #2) by D.J. MacHale
• It’s Monday What Are You Reading?: 02/09/15
• Making Up for Monday: Most Hated School Reads
• "Waiting On" Wednesday: The Dangers of Dating a Rebound Vampire (Half Moon Hollow #3) by Molly Harper
• Book Beginnings & The Friday 56: The Martian by Andy Weir

Book Beginnings & The Friday 56: The Martian by Andy Weir

Hosted By Rose City Reader & Freda's Voice

"Book Beginnings" is a weekly event that shares the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. "The Friday 56" is also a weekly event, sharing a sentence from page 56 or 56% in your eReader (If you have to improvise, that's ok.)


My Pick This Week: The Martian by Andy Weir

“I’m pretty much fucked. 

That’s my considered opinion. 

Fucked.

Six days into what should be the greatest two months of my life, and it’s turned into a nightmare.

I don’t even know who’ll read this. I guess someone will find it eventually. Maybe a hundred years from now. ”

~ p. 1 

Top 5 Best Book Covers: November 2014

Top 5 Best Book Covers is monthly meme created by The Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer. The rules are simple: on the first Saturday of every month, post your 5 favorite books covers that are being released in the current month!

#1
Title:  The Silence of Six
Author:  E.C. Myers (Twitter)
Genre:  YA, Contemporary, Mystery, Thriller
Release Date:  November 5, 2014

“What is the silence of six, and what are you going to do about it?”

These are the last words uttered by 17-year-old Max Stein’s best friend, Evan: Just moments after hacking into the live-streaming Presidential debate at their high school, he kills himself.

Haunted by the image of Evan’s death, Max’s entire world turns upside down as he suddenly finds himself the target of a corporate-government witch-hunt. Fearing for his life and fighting to prove his own innocence, Max goes on the run with no one to trust and too many unanswered questions.

Max must dust off his own hacking skills and maneuver the dangerous labyrinth of underground hacktivist networks, ever-shifting alliances, and virtual identities — all while hoping to find the truth behind the “Silence of Six” before it’s too late.

Top 5 Best Book Covers: October 2014

Top 5 Best Book Covers is monthly meme created by The Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer. The rules are simple: on the first Saturday of every month, post your 5 favorite books covers that are being released in the current month!

#1
Title:  The Passage
Series:  Beyond Two Worlds, Book #1
Author:  Nabille De La Luz
Genre:  YA, Dystopian, Science Fiction
Release Date:  October 6, 2014

It's finally Kino's turn to help The Passage; A virtual world with four zones and four tests that all of Zero's young people have to attempt in order to deserve to live in Lumen, far from the radiation that everyone in the world is exposed to. But there's just one thing... if you die in the game, you die in real life.

In The Passage, Kino meets Axel and the others that will be part of her team. But she is different. Kino is covering up something more than a slight mutation in her eyes. Something that she will discover that can change not just her body, but her life and also the lives of everyone in the world.

KINO:
''The Passage is not anything more than that; a test. And it depends on the score that you ended the Passage with, whether they give you a job or they let you study at the university of Lumen, or if not, you end up being an erotic ballerina or an escort to someone who bought you to avoid your almost certain death in Zone Four. Despite how weird, dirty, and ugly it sounded to have hopes of being acquired by a man, the majority of girls from Zero were anxious for that moment. It was like everyone's fairytale. But, instead of being saved by a prince, it was being bought by one.''

 

Book Review: A Wanted Woman by Eric Jerome Dickey (ADULT)

Title: A Wanted Woman

Author: Eric Jerome Dickey

Genres: Thriller, African American, Action, Crime

Format: Audiobook

Narrators: Zoë Bell & Dominic Hoffman

Length: 14 hours & 26 minutes

Release Date: April 15, 2014

Book Club Selection: May Book of the Month -- Mocha Girls Read

She is a woman of a thousand faces, an assassin who could be anyone, anywhere.

The Trinidad contract was supposed to be simple: to make a living man become a dead man. When the job goes bad under the watchful eye of a bank security camera, there is nowhere for agent MX-401, known as Reaper, to hide from the fearsome local warlords, the Laventille Killers.

Her employers, the Barbarians, send her to Barbados, the next island over, barely two hundred miles away, with the LK’s in hot pursuit of the woman who took many of their own. With the scant protection of a dank safe house, no passport, and no access to funds, an island paradise becomes her prison.

While she trawls for low-profile assignments to keep her skills sharp and a few dollars in her pocket, Reaper discovers that family ties run deep, on both sides of the fight. Will the woman everyone wants, who has lived countless lives in the service of others, finally discover who she really is?

In A Wanted Woman, New York Times bestselling author Eric Jerome Dickey delivers an adrenaline-pumping rush of a read.

FIRST IMPRESSION:: Had this book not been required reading for my book club, I never would have picked this up. I approached with extreme prejudice, thinking this was going to be a romance novel with a dash of mystery and a pinch of action and suspense. I was wrong dead wrong -- on an epic proportion. This was probably the bloodiest, goriest and the most crude books I have ever encountered. Definitely the most racist and misogynistic. So much so, that it was hard to enjoy.