My library got one half of their new shipment of books in today.
My updated NICOLE NEEDS TO READ THIS SOON! list...
Magic lies at the heart of Cassaforte, medieval city of bewitchments and intrigue. Cassaforte is home to sixteen-year-old Risa Divetri, whose fate is about to be decided by the gods.
Risa has led the sheltered life of a nobleman's daughter, but soon she plans to leave home to study the family craft-creating enchanted glass objects. When the gods are consulted to determine which school she will attend, the impossible happens: Risa remains unchosen. The rejection sends Risa into a spiral of shame, anger, and confusion. If she's not meant to be a glass maker, what will she do?
But when Cassaforte's age-old magic begins to unravel and dark forces threaten the kingdom, Risa's fiery spirit and untapped powers take her on a perilous journey—one that will lead her to her true destiny.
In the blink of an eye everything changes. Seventeen-year-old Mia has no memory of the accident; she can only recall what happened afterwards, watching her own damaged body being taken from the wreck. Little by little she struggles to put together the pieces—to figure out what she has lost, what she has left, and the very difficult choice she must make. Heart-wrenchingly beautiful, Mia's story will stay with you for a long, long time.
Maia Morland is pretty, only not pretty-pretty. She’s smart. She’s brave. She’s also a self-proclaimed train wreck.
Leigh Hunter is smart, popular, and extremely polite. He’s also completely and forever in love with Maia Morland.
Their young love starts off like a romance novel—full of hope, strength, and passion. But life is not a romance novel and theirs will never become a true romance. For when Maia needs him the most, Leigh betrays both her trust and her love.
Told with compassion and true understanding, After the Moment is about what happens when a young man discovers that sometimes love fails us, and that, quite often, we fail love.
A tale of twelve princesses doomed to dance until dawn… 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.
A war-dragon of Babel crashes in the idyllic fields of a post-industrialized Faerie and, dragging himself into the nearest village, declares himself king and makes young Will his lieutenant. Nightly, he crawls inside the young fey's brain to get a measure of what his subjects think. Forced out of his village, Will travels with female centaur soldiers, witnesses the violent clash of giants, and acquires a surrogate daughter, Esme, who has no knowledge of the past and may be immortal. Evacuated to the Tower of Babel -- infinitely high, infinitely vulgar, very much like New York City -- Will meets the confidence trickster Nat Whilk. Inside the Dread Tower, Will becomes a hero to the homeless living in the tunnels under the city, rises as an underling to a politician, and meets his one true love–a high-elven woman he dare not aspire to. You've heard of hard SF: This is hard fantasy from a master of the form.
Sadima lives in a world where magic has been banned, leaving poor villagers prey to fakes and charlatans. A "magician" stole her family's few valuables and left Sadima's mother to die on the day Sadima was born. But vestiges of magic are hidden in old rhymes and hearth tales and in people like Sadima, who conceals her silent communication with animals for fear of rejection and ridicule. When rumors of her gift reach Somiss, a young nobleman obsessed with restoring magic, he sends Franklin, his lifelong servant, to find her. Sadima's joy at sharing her secret becomes love for the man she shares it with. But Franklin's irrevocable bond to the brilliant and dangerous Somiss traps her, too, and she faces a heartbreaking decision.
Centuries later magic has been restored, but it is available only to the wealthy and is strictly controlled by wizards within a sequestered academy of magic. Hahp, the expendable second son of a rich merchant, is forced into the academy and finds himself paired with Gerrard, a peasant boy inexplicably admitted with nine sons of privilege and wealth. Only one of the ten students will graduate — and the first academic requirement is survival.
When Rio Jones's wealthy family moves from New York City to southern California in the middle of her junior year, Rio is worried. She saw herself as an unattractive geek in her old school, but she was happy with her friends Paige and Hud. The first day at her new school brings her up against Kristi, a petite, beautiful cheerleader who is also the class bully. In AP Art, she meets Mason and Jas, who befriend her but also cause her to get a week's detention for leaving campus at lunchtime. When Rio later comes to school in the trendy clothes her mother convinces her to wear, Kristi decides to bring her into her circle as long as she agrees to reject Mason and Jas. Feeling that it is her first chance to be popular, she goes along with Kristi although she has a crush on Jas. Her mother, a former model, encourages her friendship with Kristi, not knowing that the association will teach Rio to drink till she gets sick, use cocaine, mistreat less popular people, and go farther sexually than she really wants to. After she talks back to Kristi at a party, Kristi destroys her reputation at school and turns her into an outcast...