Stacking the Shelves

Stacking the Shelves is a weekly feature all about sharing your good luck in book acquisitions! So here’s what came my way since my last post!

This is another amazing haul, I am so excited about some of these books!

Received for Review

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This book just sounds like an incredibly fun western/urban fantasy, can’t wait to read it. Many thanks to DAW books!

Life and Limb (Blood & Bone, #1) by Jennifer Roberson
Published by Daw Books on November 5, 2019
Pages: 352

   

A biker and a cowboy must stop the apocalypse in the first book of the Blood and Bones western urban fantasy series.

'The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.' --Baudelaire

He is, after all, the master of lies. But is it lies when a man comes calling and says the End of Days is nearing? That you must do everything within your power to stop it? Even when you have no powers. You are, after all, just a human.

Or do you have no powers? Are you just a human? And what the hell are you supposed to do about preventing hell-on-earth when you're fresh out of prison, a biker ex-con who can't even vote?

But the man who bears the message, the mission, is not a stranger shouting on a street corner while hoisting a sign promising death and damnation. He is someone you've known since boyhood, someone you trust implicitly. Someone who has never, ever lied to you. He's Grandaddy.

But who is he really? And who are you? Are you truly a weapon meant to be wielded against the devil's return? Against the End Times. The End of Days. Apocalypse and Armageddon.

Demons, Grandaddy says, are now loosed upon the earth in the first spasms of a most unholy war. Demons inhabit and make real the beasts and characters of fiction, folklore, fairytales. Gods and goddesses walk the earth. The minotaur. Murderers. A horseman without his head. Myth becomes reality. Legends--and lies--are truths.

And maybe the man you've always trusted isn't entirely human.

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OK, I was sooo excited when this one showed up. I loved the Blackthorn and Grim series and have been eager to read more Marillier. This new series, with a warrior-bard protagonist? I am so anxious to read it! So many thanks to Ace Books!

The Harp of Kings (Warrior Bards #1) by Juliet Marillier
Also by this author: Dreamer's Pool, Tower of Thorns
Published by Ace Books on September 3, 2019
Pages: 464

   

A young woman is both a bard--and a warrior--in this thrilling historical fantasy from the author of the Sevenwaters novels.

Eighteen-year-old Liobhan is a powerful singer and an expert whistle player. Her brother has a voice to melt the hardest heart, and a rare talent on the harp. But Liobhan's burning ambition is to join the elite warrior band on Swan Island. She and her brother train there to compete for places, and find themselves joining a mission while still candidates. Their unusual blend of skills makes them ideal for this particular job, which requires going undercover as traveling minstrels. For Swan Island trains both warriors and spies.

Their mission: to find and retrieve a precious harp, an ancient symbol of kingship, which has gone mysteriously missing. If the instrument is not played at the upcoming coronation, the candidate will not be accepted and the people could revolt. Faced with plotting courtiers and tight-lipped druids, an insightful storyteller, and a boorish Crown Prince, Liobhan soon realizes an Otherworld power may be meddling in the affairs of the kingdom. When ambition clashes with conscience, Liobhan must make a bold decision and is faced with a heartbreaking choice. . .

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This one might be a tad out of my wheel house, so I may wait to hear some reviews first. But if I get the urge to read something different, maybe I’ll give it a try. My thanks to Harper Voyager for the early copy!

Chilling Effect by Valerie Valdes
Published by Harper Voyager on September 17, 2019
Pages: 448

   

A hilarious, offbeat debut space opera that skewers everything from pop culture to video games and features an irresistible foul-mouthed captain and her motley crew, strange life forms, exciting twists, and a galaxy full of fun and adventure.

Captain Eva Innocente and the crew of La Sirena Negra cruise the galaxy delivering small cargo for even smaller profits. When her sister Mari is kidnapped by The Fridge, a shadowy syndicate that holds people hostage in cryostasis, Eva must undergo a series of unpleasant, dangerous missions to pay the ransom.

But Eva may lose her mind before she can raise the money. The ship’s hold is full of psychic cats, an amorous fish-faced emperor wants her dead after she rejects his advances, and her sweet engineer is giving her a pesky case of feelings. The worse things get, the more she lies, raising suspicions and testing her loyalty to her found family.

To free her sister, Eva will risk everything: her crew, her ship, and the life she’s built on the ashes of her past misdeeds. But when the dominoes start to fall and she finds the real threat is greater than she imagined, she must decide whether to play it cool or burn it all down.

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This is another book I was excited to have show up. The synopsis sounds beautiful and magical, so I’m excited to find out if it lives up to my expectations. So many thanks to Redhook for sending this my way!

The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow
Published by Redhook on September 10, 2019
Pages: 384

   

In the early 1900s, a young woman searches for her place in the world after finding a mysterious book in this captivating and lyrical debut.

In a sprawling mansion filled with peculiar treasures, January Scaller is a curiosity herself. As the ward of the wealthy Mr. Locke, she feels little different from the artifacts that decorate the halls: carefully maintained, largely ignored, and utterly out of place.

Then she finds a strange book. A book that carries the scent of other worlds, and tells a tale of secret doors, of love, adventure and danger. Each page turn reveals impossible truths about the world and January discovers a story increasingly entwined with her own.

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Tor Books was good to me this time again. So many thanks to them for sending me the following books!

I have to be honest, I did not love the first book in this series, and given that my reading rate has slowed lately, I am not sure I will get to it, but will see.

The Red-Stained Wings (Lotus Kingdoms, #2) by Elizabeth Bear
Also by this author: Karen Memory, The Stone in the Skull
Published by Tor Books on May 28, 2019
Pages: 384

   

Hugo Award-winning author Elizabeth Bear returns the epic fantasy world of the Lotus Kingdoms with The Red-Stained Wings, the sequel to The Stone in the Skull, taking the Gage into desertlands under a deadly sky to answer the riddle of the Stone in the Skull.

The Gage and the Dead Man brought a message from the greatest wizard of Messaline to the ruling queen of Sarathai, one of the Lotus Kingdoms. But the message was a riddle, and the Lotus Kingdoms are at war.

Elizabeth Bear created her secondary world of the Eternal Sky in her highly praised novel The Range of Ghosts and its sequels. She continued it the first book of the Lotus Kingdoms, The Stone in the Skull.

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I’ve not read the first in this series, so this is another I might be real likely to read soon, but the series does sound intriguing

The Hive by Orson Scott Card, Aaron Johnston
Published by Tor Books on June 11, 2019
Pages: 400

   

New York Times bestselling authors Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston return to the prequels to Ender's Game following The Swarm with The Hive, book two in the Second Formic War.

Card and Johnston continue the fast-paced hard science fiction history of the Formic Wars--the alien invasions of Earth's Solar System that ultimately led to Ender Wiggin's total victory in Ender's Game.

A coalition of Earth's nations barely fought off the Formics' first scout ship. Now it's clear that there's a mother-ship out on edge of the system, and the aliens are prepared to take Earth by force. Can Earth's warring nations and corporations put aside their differences and mount an effective defense?

Ender's Game is one of the most popular and bestselling science fiction novels of all time. The Formic War series (The First Formic War and The Second Formic War) are the prequels to Ender's story.

THE ENDER UNIVERSE

Ender seriesEnder's Game / Speaker for the Dead / Xenocide / Children of the Mind / Ender in Exile / Children of the Fleet

Ender's Shadow seriesEnder's Shadow / Shadow of the Hegemon / Shadow Puppets / Shadow of the Giant / Shadows in Flight

The First Formic War (with Aaron Johnston)Earth Unaware / Earth Afire / Earth Awakens

The Second Formic War (with Aaron Johnston)The Swarm / The Hive

Ender novellasA War of Gifts / First Meetings

Lent is one I am really looking forward to reading. I really enjoyed the other books I’ve read by Jo Walton, so looking forward to this new one.

Lent by Jo Walton
Also by this author: The Just City, The Philosopher Kings
Published by Tor on May 28, 2019
Pages: 320

   

From Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award-winning Jo Walton comes Lent, a magical re-imagining of the man who remade fifteenth-century Florence—in all its astonishing strangeness

Young Girolamo’s life is a series of miracles.

It’s a miracle that he can see demons, plain as day, and that he can cast them out with the force of his will. It’s a miracle that he’s friends with Pico della Mirandola, the Count of Concordia. It’s a miracle that when Girolamo visits the deathbed of Lorenzo “the Magnificent,” the dying Medici is wreathed in celestial light, a surprise to everyone, Lorenzo included. It’s a miracle that when Charles VIII of France invades northern Italy, Girolamo meets him in the field, and convinces him to not only spare Florence but also protect it. It’s a miracle than whenever Girolamo preaches, crowds swoon. It’s a miracle that, despite the Pope’s determination to bring young Girolamo to heel, he’s still on the loose… and, now, running Florence in all but name.

That’s only the beginning. Because Girolamo Savanarola is not who—or what—he thinks he is. He will discover the truth about himself at the most startling possible time. And this will be only the beginning of his many lives.

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