A Grab Bag of ARCs
It’s time to give away some more ARCs. Every time you enter a comment on any post between now and midnight next Thursday, July 15th, you’ll be entered in the drawing to win one of these. You can express a preference for or against a title but there are no guarantees 
Claire de Lune by Christine Johnson (Young Adult, May 2010)—Claire is having the perfect sixteenth birthday. Her pool party is a big success, and gorgeous Matthew keeps chatting and flirting with her as if she’s the only girl there. 
But that night, she discovers something that takes away all sense of normalcy: she’s a werewolf. As Claire is initiated into the pack of female werewolves, she must deal not only with her changing identity, but also with a rogue werewolf who is putting everyone she knows in danger. Claire’s new life threatens her blossoming romance with Matthew, whose father is leading the werewolf hunt. Now burdened with a dark secret and pushing the boundaries of forbidden love, Claire is struggling to feel comfortable in either skin. With her lupine loyalty at odds with her human heart, she will make a choice that will change her forever.
The Samaritan’s Secret by Matt Beynon Rees (February 2010)—A member of the tiny but ancient Samaritan community has been murdered. The dead man had controlled millions of dollars of government money. If the World Bank cannot locate it, all aid money to the Palestinians will be cut off. Omar Yussef must solve the murder and find the money, or all Palestinians will suffer.
The Prince of Mist by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (Young Adult, May 2010)—It’s war time, and the Carver family decides to leave the capital where they live and move to a small coastal village where they’ve recently bought a home. But from the minute they cross the threshold, strange things begin to happen. In that mysterious house still lurks the spirit of Jacob, the previous owners’ son, who died by drowning. With the help of their new friend Roland, Max and Alicia Carver begin to explore the strange circumstances of that death and discover the existence of a mysterious being called the Prince of Mist–a diabolical character who has returned from the shadows to collect on a debt from the past. Soon the three friends find themselves caught up in an adventure of sunken ships and an enchanted stone garden–an adventure that will change their lives forever.
The Osiris Ritual by George Mann (August 2010)—A steampunk mystery adventure featuring immortality, artifacts, and intrepid sleuths Sir Maurice Newbury and Miss Veronica Hobbes.  Sir Maurice Newbury, Gentleman Investigator for the Crown, imagines life will be a little quieter after his dual successes solving The Affinity Bridge affair. But he hasn’t banked on his villainous predecessor, Knox, who is hell-bent on achieving immortality, not to mention a secret agent who isn’t quite what he seems…. So continues an adventure quite unlike any other, a thrilling steampunk mystery and the second in the series of Newbury & Hobbes investigations.
The Curse Workers: White Cat by Holly Black (Young Adult, May 2010)—Cassel comes from a family of curse workers — people who have the power to change your emotions, your memories, your luck, by the slightest touch of their hands. And since curse work is illegal, they’re all mobsters, or con artists. Except for Cassel. He hasn’t got the magic touch, so he’s an outsider, the straight kid in a crooked family. You just have to ignore one small detail — he killed his best friend, Lila, three years ago. Ever since, Cassel has carefully built up a facade of normalcy, blending into the crowd. But his facade starts crumbling when he starts sleepwalking, propelled into the night by terrifying dreams about a white cat that wants to tell him something. He’s noticing other disturbing things, too, including the strange behavior of his two brothers. They are keeping secrets from him, caught up in a mysterious plot. As Cassel begins to suspect he’s part of a huge con game, he also wonders what really happened to Lila. Could she still be alive? To find that out, Cassel will have to out-con the conmen. Holly Black has created a gripping tale of mobsters and dark magic where a single  touch can bring love — or death — and your dreams might be more real than your memories.
The Ragtime Fool by Larry Karp (April 2010)— It’s 1951, and ragtime is making a comeback. In Sedalia, Missouri, plans are well along for a ceremony to honor Scott Joplin. Brun Campbell, the old Ragtime Kid, is working to establish Joplin’s legacy. Brun learns of a journal Joplin kept and wants to show it to Sedalia’s movers and shakers, hoping to persuade them to set up a ragtime museum. Unfortunately for Brun, author/historian Rudi Blesh is determined to publish the journal. Also, Joplin’s old friend wants to suppress the material. Even worse, two Sedalia Klansmen are hot after the journal, and don’t care if they have to kill someone to get it. What’s one murder, compared to the Klansmen’s grand plan to blow up the high school auditorium with its integrated audience during the ceremony? In the middle of this imbroglio is Alan Chandler, a 17-year-old pianist in love with ragtime. If Alan can stay alive, he may be able to prevent catastrophe and learn what it really means to be Black in mid-Twentieth Century America.
The Taken by Inger Ash Wolfe (July 2010)—Detective Inspector Hazel Micallef is having a bad year. After major back surgery, she has no real option but to move into her ex-husband’s basement and suffer the humiliation of his new wife bringing her meals down on a tray. As if that weren’t enough, Hazel’s octogenarian mother secretly flushes Hazel’s stash of painkillers down the toilet. It’s almost a relief when Hazel gets a call about a body fished up by tourists in one of the lakes near Port Dundas. But what raises the hair on the back of Micallef ‘s neck is that the local paper has just published the first installment of a serialized story featuring such a scenario. Even before they head out to the lake with divers to recover the body, she and DC James Wingate, leading the police detachment in Micallef ‘s absence, know they are being played. But it’s not clear who is pulling their strings and why, nor is what they find at the lake at all what they expected. It’s Micallef herself who is snared, caught up in a cryptic game devised by someone who knows how to taunt her into opening a cold case, someone who knows that nothing will stop her investigation.
The Joy of Spooking Book Two: Unearthly Asylum by P. J. Bracegirdle (Kids, August 2010)—Meet Joy Wells, an eleven-year-old literary horror fan and proud resident of Spooking, the eerie old town overlooking the plastic suburban paradise of Darlington where she and brother Byron are forced to go to school. Discover the sinister history hidden behind the spiked-lined walls of the mental asylum and descend into the dark underworld below Spooking’s streets.
On Deadly Ground by Michael Norman (March 2010)—Kanab, Utah is bitterly divided by the politics of land management. When environmentalist David Greenbriar is found dead, County Sheriff, Charley Sutter, seeks help from newly appointed Law Enforcement Ranger, J. D. Books. Books discovers that the victim’s widow has been having an affair with Lance Clayburn. Physical evidence links Clayburn to the killing. Books connects Greenbriar’s murder to a corrupt Kane County Sheriff’s deputy and a Las Vegas business conglomerate with ties to organized crime. Enter Peter Deluca, a very dangerous mob contract killer, who will eliminate anyone who can link him or his employer to Greenbriar’s murder.
The Missing Book 3: Sabotaged by Margaret Peterson Haddix (Kids, August 2010)—After helping Chip and Alex survive 15th-century London, time travelers Jonah and Katherine are summoned to help another missing child: Virginia Dare of the Lost Colony of Roanoke.
Deep Creek by Dana Hand (February 2010)—Idaho Territory, June 1887. A small-town judge takes his young daughter fishing, and she catches a man. Another body surfaces, then another. The final toll: over 30 Chinese gold miners brutally murdered. Their San Francisco employer hires Idaho lawman Joe Vincent to solve the case. Soon he journeys up the wild Snake River with Lee Loi, an ambitious young company investigator, and Grace Sundown, a mountain guide with too many secrets. As they track the killers across the Pacific Northwest, through haunted canyons and city streets, each must put aside lies and old grievances to survive a quest that will change them forever. Deep Creek is a historical thriller inspired by actual events and people: the 1887 massacre of Chinese miners in remote and beautiful Hells Canyon, the middle-aged judge who went after their slayers, and the sham race-murder trial that followed. This American tragedy was long suppressed and the victims nearly forgotten; Deep Creek teams history and imagination to illuminate how and why, in a seamless, fast-moving tale of courage and redemption, loss and love.
The Significant Seven by John McEvoy (April 2010)—Seven lifelong friends and racing fans from their student days at the University of Wisconsin strike it lucky at Saratoga Race Track when they combine to win a plus million dollar Pick Six. They subsequently use some of those profits to buy race horses, one of which, The Badger Express, turns out to be a sensational runner, stallion, and money maker. Seven years later, the men become targets of a professional assassin, an ex-Navy SEAL and Iraq private security guard named Orth. They begin dying, one by one. Jack Doyle returns to the race track, volunteering to aid FBI agents in a search for criminals fixing races. Doyle then becomes involved in protecting Rene Rison, the favored daughter of the Significant Seven’s leader Arnie Rison. Jack Doyle, as always irreverent, observant, opinionated, sometimes mistaken but always persistent, eventually manages to find answers to the questions of who is fixing the races and who is having members of the Significant Seven killed off.
Forbidden Sea by Sheila A. Nielson (Young Adult, July 2010)—When Adrianne comes face-to-face with the mermaid of Windwaithe Island, of whom she has heard terrible stories all her life, she is convinced the mermaid means to take her younger sister. Adrianne, fierce-willed and courageous, is determined to protect her sister from the mermaid, and her family from starvation. However, the mermaid continues to haunt Adrianne in her dreams and with her song. Yet, when the islanders find out about Adrianne’s encounters with the mermaid she is scorned, for this small and superstitious community believes the mermaid will bring devastation to the island if Adrianne does not give herself to the sea. A powerful and lyrical story of one girl who must choose between having everything and having those she loves.
Play Dead by Ryan Brown (May 2010)—For the first time in Killington High School history, the Jackrabbits football team is one win away from the district championship where it will face its most vicious rival, the Elmwood Heights Badgers. On the way to the game, the Jackrabbits’s bus plunges into a river, killing every player except for bad-boy quarterback Cole Logan who is certain the crash was no accident–given that Cole himself was severely injured in a brutal attack by three ski-masked men earlier that day. Bent on payback, Cole turns to a mysterious fan skilled in black magic to resurrect his teammates. But unless the undead Jackrabbits defeat their murderous rival on the field, the team is destined for hell. In a desperate race against time, with only his coach’s clever daughter, Savannah Hickman, to assist him, Cole must lead his zombie team to victory. . . in a final showdown where the stakes aren’t just life or death–but damnation or salvation.
The Wild Zone by Joy Fielding (February 2010)—Two brothers — Will and Jeff — and their friend Tom are out one night at their favorite South Beach bar, the Wild Zone, and decide to make a bet on who can be the fi rst to seduce a mysterious-looking young woman drinking by herself. Pretty, dark-haired, blue-eyed Suzy has an innocent, almost ordinary girl-next-door way about her. “Just waiting for Prince Charming to hit on her,” Jeff says. Little do they know the secrets she hides from the outside world, particularly those having to do with the daily horror she experiences under the watchful eye of her abusive husband. Little do they know she has an agenda of her own. Little do they know their harmless bet is about to take on a life of its own, a life full of deadly consequences for all concerned.
Don’t forget—every time you leave a comment on any post between now and midnight next Thursday, you’ll be entered in the drawing to win. If you win, I’d love it if you’d send me a review, even just a short paragraph, to let us know what you think.
July 8, 2010
Posted in: Tales of a Bookseller
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23 Responses
Wow, would love to have those books. Yes, I’d be glad to send you a review.
What fun to offer your extra ARCs in this manner! I definitely feel a pull toward The Ragtime Fool by Larry Karp and so, if I had my druthers, that is the book I would like to read.
I took the poll and, much to my surprise, Wizard came out on top and Wizard is what I picked. I hadn’t a clue so I was amazed. I am just not a werewolf person. My husband loves movies and books in which “normal” people are really something entirely different; whereas, I have enough trouble dealing with those who are what they seem, even if they are idiosyncratic as can be. That gives me quite enough to deal with, thank you very much!
Again, thank you for this contest. What an interesting assortment of ARCs.
Best, Karen Dyer (Estelle Oppers on DL)
P.S. A small review, done to the best of my ability, would be my pleasure.
Sounds like fun, I’m in. I’d best at reviewing a mystery since that’s my favorite genre and I read quite a bit of them.
The Holly Black book sounds intriguing!
Oh, what the heck. I’d love to read & review any of these, especially “The Osiris Ritual.”
Wow — lots of teen books, my reading preference of choice! I will take anything — as a small town library any gift is great! And I do try to review any book that I read on my blog, so can definitely send you a copy.
The Ragtime Fool is the one I would choose.
Who could resist such a generous offer? Thanks!
The Taken sounds good! Thanks for the giveaway!
If I’m lucky enough to win one of the ARCs offered, I’d prefer adult mystery to young adult. I haven’t been a young adult in quite some time.
So many of the books sounded interesting, but Deep Creek looks like the most intriguing. And if possible, I would be willing to post a review.
I did win one of your ARCs earlier this year and planned to write a review, but a family crisis took over my life. If things quiet down in the next few days, I will write a review for my precious win.
Thanks so much for your offerings.
It is fun to try for these. Thanks for the chance!
Please enter my name in the drawing. There are a lot of authors here I’ve never heard of, so it would be fun to just be surprised at what I might win. Thank you.
I’d love to win a book. I’ve read Prince of Mist (very good story) but any other would be fine. Thanks!
Mmmmm, I haven’t read any of these books, so any one would be a special surprise!
Thanks for a wonderful offer!
Great website, and I’d love to win a book.
It’s pretty bad when you misspell your own name.
I’ve got Larry Karp’s first in the series on my tbr pile, so book 3 The Ragtime Fool would be my choice as well.
He spoke at M is for Mystery about this series and it sounds wonderful, even if I am not a great fan of ragtime.
Larry is quite a salesman!
Would love to win a copy of John McEvoy’s book or any of the other adult mysteries as I am long past the Young Adult reading age. Thanks
Well, I commented once, but since you were nice enough to send a reminder that the contest was still open on DorothyL, I thought I’d swing by and comment once more.. smile..
I’d love to be surprised by winning any of your ARCs. Thanks.
I, too, would love to win these books. Thanks for the chance.
caroline@carolineclemmons.com
These books sound interesting. Thanks for the opportunity to enter the contest again!
Egypt and Young Adult … these are wonderful. Thanks for having such contests.
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