In My Mailbox (73)

This week I'm playing catch-up.  I haven't done an In My Mailbox post in a couple of weeks, and it's caught up with me.  I should call this feature "Really Amazing Book Bargains" or something along those lines...  The most I paid for any of these e-books was $2.99.  Most were less than that.  And I got a lot of freebies, too (including two audio books).

Borrowed from the library:

Days of Blood & Starlight (Daughter of Smoke & Bone #2)
by Laini Taylor

Once upon a time, an angel and a devil fell in love and dared to imagine a world free of bloodshed and war.

This is not that world.

Art student and monster's apprentice Karou finally has the answers she has always sought. She knows who she is—and what she is. But with this knowledge comes another truth she would give anything to undo: She loved the enemy and he betrayed her, and a world suffered for it.

In this stunning sequel to the highly acclaimed Daughter of Smoke & Bone, Karou must decide how far she'll go to avenge her people. Filled with heartbreak and beauty, secrets and impossible choices, Days of Blood & Starlight finds Karou and Akiva on opposing sides as an age-old war stirs back to life.

While Karou and her allies build a monstrous army in a land of dust and starlight, Akiva wages a different sort of battle: a battle for redemption. For hope.

But can any hope be salvaged from the ashes of their broken dream?

Bought from Amazon.ca:

Homeless Bird
by Gloria Whelan

Like many girls her age in India, thirteen-year-old Koly is getting married. Full of hope and courage, she leaves home forever. But in a grim turn of events Koly finds herself cast out into a current of cruel tradition. Her future, it would seem, is lost. Yet this rare young woman, bewildered and brave, sets out to forge her own exceptional future.

Princess of the Midnight Ball (Princess #1)
by Jessica Day George

Galen is a young soldier returning from war; Rose is one of twelve princesses condemned to dance each night for the King Under Stone. Together Galen and Rose will search for a way to break the curse that forces the princesses to dance at the midnight balls. All they need is one invisibility cloak, a black wool chain knit with enchanted silver needles, and that most critical ingredient of all—true love—to conquer their foes in the dark halls below. But malevolent forces are working against them above ground as well, and as cruel as the King Under Stone has seemed, his wrath is mere irritation compared to the evil that awaits Galen and Rose in the brighter world above.

Swipe (Swipe #1)
by Evan Angler

Everyone gets the Mark. It gives all the benefits of citizenship. Yet if getting the Mark is such a good thing, then why does it feel so wrong?

Set in a future North America that is struggling to recover after famine and global war, "Swipe" follows the lives of three kids caught in the middle of a conflict they didn't even know existed. United under a charismatic leader, every citizen of the American Union is required to get the Mark on their 13th birthday in order to gain the benefits of citizenship.

The Mark is a tattoo that must be swiped by special scanners for everything from employment to transportation to shopping. It's almost Logan Langly's 13th birthday and he knows he should be excited about getting the Mark, but he hasn't been able to shake the feeling he's being watched. Not since his sister went to get her Mark five years ago... and never came back.

When Logan and his friends discover the truth behind the Mark, will they ever be able to go back to being normal teenagers?

Umbrella Summer
by Lisa Graff

Annie Richards knows there are a million things to look out for -- bicycle accidents, food poisoning, chicken pox, smallpox, typhoid fever, runaway zoo animals, and poison oak. That's why being careful is so important, even if it does mean giving up some of her favorite things, like bike races with her best friend, Rebecca, and hot dogs on the Fourth of July. Everyone keeps telling Annie not to worry so much, that she's just fine. But they thought her brother, Jared, was just fine too, and Jared died.

The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer (Mara Dyer #1)
by Michelle Hodkin

Mara Dyer doesn’t think life can get any stranger than waking up in a hospital with no memory of how she got there.

It can.

She believes there must be more to the accident she can’t remember that killed her friends and left her mysteriously unharmed.

There is.

She doesn’t believe that after everything she’s been through, she can fall in love.

She’s wrong.

The Watcher
by Lisa Voisin

Fascinated with ancient civilizations, seventeen-year-old Mia Crawford dreams of becoming an archaeologist. She also dreams of wings—soft and silent like snow—and somebody trying to steal them.

When a horrible creature appears out of thin air and attacks her, she knows Michael Fontaine is involved, though he claims to know nothing about it. Secretive and aloof, Michael evokes feelings in Mia that she doesn’t understand. Images of another time and place haunt her. She recognizes them—but not from any textbook.

In search of the truth, Mia discovers a past life of forbidden love, jealousy and revenge that tore an angel from Heaven and sent her to an early grave. Now that her soul has returned, does she have a chance at loving that angel again? Or will an age-old nemesis destroy them both?

Ancient history is only the beginning.

Freebie from Amazon.ca:

A Death Displaced (Lansin Island #1)
by Andrew Butcher

Nicolas Crystan, struggling to cope with his traumatic past, shuffles through life keeping mostly to himself... until he has a disturbing daydream of a woman's death. At first he tries to forget it, but when real life mimics the daydream, he realises it was no ordinary fantasy—it was a vision of the future. To save a life, he must act fast.

When Juliet Maystone escapes death, defying fate, she becomes 'displaced' in this world. All she wants is to return to her bustling day-to-day routine, successfully running her own business, but as hard as she tries, she can't ignore that things have changed for her. She has to face up to the fact that being 'displaced' comes with an unexpected ability.

On Lansin Island, a quaint place with a dark history of its own, Nicolas and Juliet must learn to use their newfound abilities and work together to unravel a mystery more connected to Nicolas than he could ever have imagined...

Magic Unbound (Fae Unbound #1)
by Jill Nojack

Not-quite-sixteen year old Lizbet Moore expects a boring last month of summer vacation -- and she gets what she’s expecting until a fifteen hundred year old Fae named Eamon shows up in her backyard disguised as a down-on-his-luck garden gnome. When Eamon slips an ancient amulet around her neck, the memories of Lizbet’s many past lives come slamming back to her to change her summer plans in a way she could never have expected.

Forced to go on the run when murderous monks show up at the back door, Lizbet hops a plane to Scotland accompanied by Eamon, the whispering voices of her past lives, and geekily cute James, the college boy from next door. Not only does she have to dodge the monks, but she’s racing against time and greedy land developers to prevent the entire race of the Fae from being destroyed.

The only thing Lizbet knows for sure is that if she fails and can't produce a few live fairies at the end of her journey, she is going to be grounded for life... and probably for her next life, too.

Open Minds (Mindjack Trilogy #1)
by Susan Kaye Quinn

Sixteen-year-old Kira Moore is a zero, someone who can’t read thoughts or be read by others. Zeros are outcasts who can’t be trusted, leaving her no chance with Raf, a regular mindreader and the best friend she secretly loves. When she accidentally controls Raf’s mind and nearly kills him, Kira tries to hide her frightening new ability from her family and an increasingly suspicious Raf. But lies tangle around her, and she’s dragged deep into a hidden world of mindjackers, where having to mind control everyone she loves is just the beginning of the deadly choices before her.

Princess Callie and the Totally Amazing Talking Tiara (Callie Chronicles #1)
by Daisy Piper

Despite her highly abnormal name, Calandria Arabella Philomena Louisa Anastasia Richards tries very hard to fly under the radar. So she knows her life has gone crazy when she passes a note to her best friend:

"Lewis—something strange happened to me this morning.I got a message in my Alpha Bits that said I was a princess and I had to help this place called Albion in their fight against an evil queen.

C.

P.S. Dad says you can come for pizza tonight."

On her quest to stop a bloodthirsty queen, Callie will have to steer a near-sighted dragon, decipher an ancient riddle, and learn to command a tiara that talks back! And to save this magical world she only just discovered, Callie must risk more than she ever thought possible...

Prisoner of Glass
by Mark Jeffrey

It starts with a kiss from the Dolphin Queen...

When the freakishly tall -- yet elegant -- Doctor Elspeth Lune is abducted from the airport, she awakens in the mysterious Glass Prison.

Location: Unknown. Reason: Unknown.

Odd things happen in this dark, circular facility - her severed pinkie grows back overnight and chess games end exactly the same way each time. To top it all off, Elspeth mysteriously finds herself assigned to cell block 1515: the exact same number as her ATM PIN and cell phone unlock code...

But when she encounters the Order of the Black Dove and the Vizier, an inmate with an inordinate amount of power, she finds that she must crack the mystery of the Prison with even more urgency. Who built this — the NSA? Al-Qaeda? The New World Order? And why is she – and everyone else - here?

In the prison's central axis is the Panopticon, from within which the guards see all — and is undoubtedly where the answers lie...

Freebie from Kobo:

Molly Fyde and the Parsona Rescue (The Bern Saga #1)
by Hugh Howey

When Molly gets kicked out of the Naval Academy, she loses more than just another home, she loses the only two things that truly matter: flying in space and her training partner, Cole. A dull future seems to await, until a marvelous discovery changes everything. Her father's old starship, missing for a decade, turns up halfway across the galaxy. Its retrieval launches Molly and Cole on the adventure of a lifetime, one that will have lasting consequences for themselves and billions of others. What starts off as a simple quest to reconnect with her past, ends up forging a new future. And the forgotten family she hoped to uncover becomes one she never foresaw: a band of alien misfits and runaways--the crew of the starship Parsona.

Freebie from SYNC AudioFile:

The Case of the Cryptic Crinoline (Enola Holmes Mysteries #5)
by Nancy Springer

Other than her occasional run-ins with her brother Sherlock, and missing her mother, Enola has little friends and family. While kind, homely Mrs Tupper is nearly deaf and cannot cook to save her life, the landlady is her nearest and dearest - and kidnapped. And somehow Florence Nightingale is involved. Enola is on the case.

Torn from Troy (Odyssey of a Slave #1)
by Patrick Bowman

Two-and-a half millennia after it was created, Homer's Odyssey remains one of humanity's most memorable adventure stories. In this re-creation of Homer's classic as a young adult novel, we see the aftermath of the Trojan War through the eyes of Alexi, a fifteen-year-old Trojan boy. Orphaned by the war and enslaved by Odysseus himself, Alexi has a very different view of the conquering heroes of legend. Despite a simmering anger towards his captors, Alexi gradually develops a grudging respect for them. As the Greeks fight off the angry Cicones, weather a storm that pushes them far beyond charted waters, and nearly succumb to the blandishments of the bewitching Lotus-eaters, he realizes that they are not the demons they were said to be, but people like himself.

What was in your "mailbox" this week?  Let me know in the comments!


In My Mailbox was started by Kristi of The Story Siren.