YA BOOK GIVEAWAYS THIS WEEK
Swagger
by Carl Deuker
Hardcover Giveaway
HMH Books for Young Readers
Released 11/5/2013
Levi was simple, like a child. It was the best thing about him, and it was the worst, too.
When high school senior Jonas moves to Seattle, he is glad to meet Levi, a nice, soft-spoken guy and fellow basketball player. Suspense builds like a slow drumbeat as readers start to smell a rat in Ryan Hartwell, a charismatic basketball coach and sexual predator. When Levi reluctantly tells Jonas that Hartwell abused him, Jonas has to decide whether he should risk his future career to report the coach. Pitch-perfect basketball plays, well-developed characters, and fine storytelling make this heartbreaking psychological sports novel a slam dunk.
Author Question: What is your favorite thing about Swagger?
What I like most about Swagger? I like that the book takes on a tough topic (sexual abuse) but doesn’t pander in any way. Readers of different ages will bring to the story their own awareness, so a 12 year-old will “get it” in a different way than and 18 year-old, and they will both understand the book in their own way. I’m getting a little tired of “edgy” being the preeminent quality in YA fiction. Sometimes edgy is another word for sensationalism. Swagger takes on a hot topic, but there’s no sensationalism in the story.
Purchase Swagger at Amazon
Purchase Swagger at IndieBound
View Swagger on Goodreads
Broken
by C. J. Lyons
Signed Hardcover Giveaway
U.S. Only
Sourcebooks Fire
Released 11/5/2013
New York Times bestselling author CJ Lyons makes her YA debut with a fast-paced thriller sure to keep readers guessing to the very last page
The only thing fifteen-year-old Scarlet Killian has ever wanted is a chance at a normal life. Diagnosed with a rare and untreatable heart condition, she has never taken the school bus. Or giggled with friends during lunch. Or spied on a crush out of the corner of her eye. So when her parents offer her three days to prove she can survive high school, Scarlet knows her time is now… or never. Scarlet can feel her heart beating out of control with every slammed locker and every sideways glance in the hallway. But this high school is far from normal. And finding out the truth might just kill Scarlet before her heart does.
Author Question: What is your favorite thing about Broken?
My favorite thing is the awesome cover! I often create visual images to inspire me while I write and while working on BROKEN I created this broken heart image made from a shattered mercury glass ornament. Now, I’m strictly an amateur photoshopper, so I didn’t show anyone this image.
Fast forward a few months and I get a call from my agent saying that Sourcebooks had just forwarded a preliminary copy of the cover for BROKEN and she was so excited that she wanted to blow it up and frame it as a poster! Then she sent it to me and I literally jumped for joy–I love, love, love it! It’s not only beautiful but also so very perfect for the story of a girl literally dying of a broken heart.
Purchase Broken at Amazon
Purchase Broken at IndieBound
View Broken on Goodreads
The Trap
by Andrew Fukuda
Hardcover Giveaway
St. Martin”s Griffin
Released 11/5/2013
From author Andrew Fukuda comes The Trap, the explosive finale to The Hunt trilogy–perfect for fans of The Hunger Games!
After barely escaping the Mission alive, Gene and Sissy face an impossible task: staying alive long enough to stop an entire world bent on their destruction. Bound on a train heading into the unknown with the surviving Mission girls, Gene, Sissy, David, and Epap must stick together and use everything they have to protect each other and their only hope: the cure that will turn the blood-thirsty creatures around them into humans again. Now that they know how to reverse the virus, Gene and Sissy have one final chance to save those they love and create a better life for themselves. But as they struggle to get there, Gene’s mission sets him on a crash course with Ashley June, his first love . . . and his deadliest enemy.
Author Question: What is your favorite thing about The Trap?
My favorite part about The Trap is the ending. I think it’s the perfect ending to the trilogy — it ties up all the loose ends, explains some of the key mysteries, and leaves one final kicker of a reveal that I’m guessing is going to stun quite a few readers.
I actually knew how the trilogy was going to end soon after I began writing The Hunt. For two years, I carried these scenes in my head, and before I’d even written a word, I had a fairly good idea of their shape and structure. When I finally got to pen them, my heart was thumping in my chest from the sheer excitement of finally bringing to paper the words and sentences and images and dialogue that until then had only existed in my head. It was such an intense feeling — and when I was finally done, I felt this thud of rightness in my gut. I’d nailed it. Everything I wanted in that ending was in there, in the right way.
I still remember that moment when I finished typing out the final sentence, the final word, the final period. I put my head down on the desk . . . and just exhaled. I felt such an immense relief. I’d completed something that I’d had, to be honest, my share of doubts. But I did it — I’d penned a whole trilogy and delivered a final book that I knew would please and even enthrall THE HUNT fans. I don’t want to be patting myself on my back too much, but I’m really happy to say that this series finale kicks.
Purchase The Trap at Amazon
Purchase The Trap at IndieBound
View The Trap on Goodreads
Twinmaker
by Sean Williams
Advance Reader Copy Giveaway
Balzer + Bray
Released 11/5/2013
High-stakes action combines with issues of friendship and body image in this timely and thought-provoking exploration of the intersection of technology and identity.
You can be Improved….
In a near-future world in which technology can transport you anywhere instantly, can a coded note enable you to change your body-to become taller, stronger, more beautiful? Clair is pretty sure the offer is too good to be true. But her best friend, Libby, is determined to give it a try, longing for a new, improved version of herself.
What starts as Libby’s dream turns into Clair’s nightmare when Libby falls foul of a deadly trap. With the help of Jesse, the school freak, and a mysterious-but powerful-stranger called Q, Clair’s attempt to protect Libby leads her to an unimagined world of conspiracies and cover-ups. Soon her own life is at risk, and Clair is chased across the world in a desperate race against time.
Action and danger fuel Sean Williams’s tale of technology, identity, and the lengths to which one girl will go to save her best friend.
Author Question: What is your favorite thing about Twinmaker?
My favourite thing about Twinmaker–and is this extraordinarily difficult to pick, because I haven’t had time to get sick of any of it yet–is a moment in the middle when the three main protagonists are alone together for the first time. I like it because they’re completely isolated from their futuristic world, physically, emotionally and socially, and forced to show their true colours. As a result of this small moment, two of them start to see each other in quite a different light (speaking vaguely in order to avoid a spoiler, but it’s not a huge one and I’m sure a lot of readers will see it coming). It’s the still heart at the centre of the book, and every time I read it I’m reminded of what it’s really about.
Twinmaker contains a lot of stuff that I think is really cool, from the observatory in the opening chapter–a real place!–to d-mat and fabbers and all that high-tech stuff, but at the end of the day it comes down to the characters. I find them admirable and fascinating, young people I’d be very proud to know, flaws and all.
Purchase Twinmaker at Amazon
Purchase Twinmaker at IndieBound
View Twinmaker on Goodreads
Palace of Spies
by Sarah Zettel
Advance Reader Copy Giveaway
HMH Books for Young Readers
Released 11/5/2013
A warning to all young ladies of delicate breeding who wish to embark upon lives of adventure: Don’t.
Sixteen-year-old Peggy is a well-bred orphan who is coerced into posing as a lady in waiting at the palace of King George I. Life is grand, until Peggy starts to suspect that the girl she’s impersonating might have been murdered. Unless Peggy can discover the truth, she might be doomed to the same terrible fate. But in a court of shadows and intrigue, anyone could be a spy–perhaps even the handsome young artist with whom Peggy is falling in love . . . History and mystery spark in this effervescent series debut.
Purchase A Most Dangerous Deception at Amazon
Purchase A Most Dangerous Deception at IndieBound
View A Most Dangerous Deception on Goodreads
Cold Spell
by Jackson Pearce
Advance Reader Copy Giveaway
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Released 11/5/2013
Kai and Ginny grew up together–best friends since they could toddle around their building’s rooftop rose garden. Now they’re seventeen, and their relationship has developed into something sweeter, complete with stolen kisses and plans to someday run away together.
But one night, Kai disappears with a mysterious stranger named Mora–a beautiful girl with a dark past and a heart of ice. Refusing to be cast aside, Ginny goes after them and is thrust into a world she never imagined, one filled with monsters and thieves and the idea that love is not enough.
If Ginny and Kai survive the journey, will she still be the girl he loved–and moreover, will she still be the girl who loved him?
Jackson Pearce, author of the acclaimed SISTERS RED and FATHOMLESS, has returned with a unique vision of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen,” one about power and redemption, failure and hope, and the true meaning of strength.
Purchase Cold Spell at Amazon
Purchase Cold Spell at IndieBound
View Cold Spell on Goodreads
YA BOOK GIVEAWAYS LAST WEEK: WINNERS
Sorrow’s Knot
by Erin Bow
Hardcover Giveaway
Arthur A. Levine Books
Released 11/1/2013
Winner – Kimberley Griffiths Little
From the acclaimed author of PLAIN KATE, a new novel about what lurks in the shadows, and how to put it to rest…
In the world of SORROW’S KNOT, the dead do not rest easy. Every patch of shadow might be home to something hungry, something deadly. Most of the people of this world live on the sunlit, treeless prairies. But a few carve out an uneasy living in the forest towns, keeping the dead at bay with wards made from magically knotted cords. The women who tie these knots are called binders. And Otter’s mother, Willow, is one of the greatest binders her people have ever known.
But Willow does not wish for her daughter to lead the lonely, heavy life of a binder, so she chooses another as her apprentice. Otter is devastated by this choice, and what’s more, it leaves her untrained when the village falls under attack. In a moment of desperation, Otter casts her first ward, and the results are disastrous. But now Otter may be her people’s only hope against the shadows that threaten them. Will the challenge be too great for her? Or will she find a way to put the dead to rest once and for all?
Author Question: What is your favorite thing about Sorrow’s Knot?
That is SUCH a hard question – it’s like asking me to choose my favorite thing about my kid. I like the way the setting came out, the creep of the haunted forest. I like the new monsters, the Ones with White Hands, with their bodies made of clotted shadow and their hands of “twigs and fingernails.” I like the way that magical power belongs to women, which leads everyone to underestimate and misunderstand the boys, without the book falling victim to Matriarchy as an Overwhelming Metaphor syndrome. I even like the food.
But in any book of mine, my heart will always belong to characters. They are very real to me – and Otter, particularly, I’ve known for ten years now. She’s born to power and privilege, and you could read her as a high priestess or a princess, and yet she came to the page warm-hearted, playful, a practical joker. She doesn’t look it on the cover, I know, but she’s short and sturdy, which I just love – take your image of an magical princess and stuff that in it.
Otter has two friends, quiet-until-you-get-to-know-her Kestrel, and silly, clumsy Cricket, who is full of hidden power. Kestrel’s a girl and Cricket’s a boy (one of the underestimated ones). Together they make one of those classic threesomes, like Harry, Ron, and Hermione. They are so much better as a triad than they could ever be alone, and it’s hard for me to remember how late in the drafting process they finally came together. I love them so much.
Here they are goofing around on a big rock in the sun:
Cricket, meanwhile, was holding his arrowhead up against the bright sky. He kept pinching it between two fingers and closing the fingers to tuck the little object into his palm. The third time the arrowhead dropped and went skittering down the slope of granite Otter sighed at him. “Cricket, you know that I love you, so trust me in this: that’s hopeless.”
“It’s part of my work,” said Cricket, which was true: many storytellers used sleights of hand and other small tricks to knot a gasp or a laugh into a well-know tale.
Kestrel picked up the arrowhead and handed it back to the sprawling boy. “That doesn’t mean you’re not bad at it.”
Cricket grinned up at her. “Do you think so?” He turned his hand over and opened it. There was an arrowhead there already. He closed his hand again, flipped it, righted it, opened it, and there were two arrowheads. He closed his hand a third time, and when he opened it there were three. “Keep near me, Kestrel,” he said. “I’ll show you wonders.”
As the Animaniacs said about Czar Nicholas: What nice people! I see nothing but good things in their future.
Purchase Sorrow’s Knot at Amazon
Purchase Sorrow’s Knot at IndieBound
View Sorrow’s Knot on Goodreads
The Eye of Minds
by James Dashner
Hardcover Giveaway
Delacorte Press
Released 10/8/2013
Winner – Kelsey Knupp
An all-new, edge-of-your seat adventure from James Dashner, the author of the New York Times bestselling Maze Runner series, The Eye of Minds is the first book in The Mortality Doctrine, a series set in a world of hyperadvanced technology, cyberterrorists, and gaming beyond your wildest dreams . . . and your worst nightmares.
Michael is a gamer. And like most gamers, he almost spends more time on the VirtNet than in the actual world. The VirtNet offers total mind and body immersion, and it’s addictive. Thanks to technology, anyone with enough money can experience fantasy worlds, risk their life without the chance of death, or just hang around with Virt-friends. And the more hacking skills you have, the more fun. Why bother following the rules when most of them are dumb, anyway?
But some rules were made for a reason. Some technology is too dangerous to fool with. And recent reports claim that one gamer is going beyond what any gamer has done before: he’s holding players hostage inside the VirtNet. The effects are horrific-the hostages have all been declared brain-dead. Yet the gamer’s motives are a mystery.
The government knows that to catch a hacker, you need a hacker.
And they’ve been watching Michael. They want him on their team.
But the risk is enormous. If he accepts their challenge, Michael will need to go off the VirtNet grid. There are back alleys and corners in the system human eyes have never seen and predators he can’t even fathom-and there’s the possibility that the line between game and reality will be blurred forever.
Purchase The Eye of Minds at Amazon
Purchase The Eye of Minds at IndieBound
View The Eye of Minds on Goodreads
MORE YOUNG ADULT FICTION IN STORES NEXT WEEK WITH AUTHOR INTERVIEWS
After Eden
by Helen Douglas
Hardcover
Bloomsbury USA Childrens; 1 edition
Released 11/5/2013
The day Eden met Ryan changed her world forever. Actually, not just her world. Ryan has time traveled from the future to save the world. In a few weeks, Eden’s best friend Connor will discover a new planet–one where human life is possible. The discovery will make him famous. It will also ruin the world as we know it. When Ryan asks Eden for help, she must choose between saving the world and saving her best friend’s greatest achievement. And a crush on Ryan complicates things more than she could have imagined. Because Connor is due to make the discovery after the girl he loves breaks his heart. That girl is Eden.
Grounded in a realistic teen world with fascinating sci-fi elements, After Eden is a heart-pounding love triangle that’s perfect for dystopian fans looking for something new to devour.
Author Question: What is your favorite thing about After Eden?
This is a difficult question to answer because to share my absolute favourite thing about writing After Eden would be too spoilery. But one thing I really enjoyed was getting to write characters who are far from perfect. Eden can be quite insecure and angsty and because of that she judges people and misinterprets the motives of others. Connor is so wrapped up in his own feelings that he often doesn’t behave very nicely. Ryan has his own agenda that he can’t share with anyone else, so can come across as distant. I enjoy creating characters who may not be the best version of themselves yet, because they’re still learning who they are.
Purchase After Eden at Amazon
Purchase After Eden at IndieBound
View After Eden on Goodreads
Champion
by Marie Lu
Hardcover
Putnam Juvenile
Released 11/5/2013
The explosive finale to Marie Lu’s New York Times bestselling LEGEND trilogy–perfect for fans of THE HUNGER GAMES and DIVERGENT!
He is a Legend.
She is a Prodigy.
Who will be Champion?
June and Day have sacrificed so much for the people of the Republic–and each other–and now their country is on the brink of a new existence. June is back in the good graces of the Republic, working within the government’s elite circles as Princeps Elect while Day has been assigned a high level military position. But neither could have predicted the circumstances that will reunite them once again. Just when a peace treaty is imminent, a plague outbreak causes panic in the Colonies, and war threatens the Republic’s border cities. This new strain of plague is deadlier than ever, and June is the only one who knows the key to her country’s defense. But saving the lives of thousands will mean asking the one she loves to give up everything he has. With heart-pounding action and suspense, Marie Lu’s bestselling trilogy draws to a stunning conclusion.
Author Question: What is your favorite thing about Champion?
CHAMPION was painfully difficult to write! I thought PRODIGY would be the hardest, but I really struggled with drafting CHAMPION because I underestimate how much work it would take to properly end a trilogy. Still, I’ve come to like it–after many, many revisions. I suppose my favorite thing about it is that it should give closure to fans who have followed the series so far. I’m very nervous about the ending, though. Closure doesn’t necessarily mean a Happily Ever After, and I’m unsure how my readers will take it. Fingers crossed!
Purchase Champion at Amazon
Purchase Champion at IndieBound
View Champion on Goodreads
MORE YOUNG ADULT NOVELS NEW IN STORES NEXT WEEK
Curtsies & Conspiracies
by Gail Carriger
Hardcover
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Released 11/5/2013
Does one need four fully grown foxgloves for decorating a dinner table for six guests? Or is it six foxgloves to kill four fully grown guests?
Sophronia’s first year at Mademoiselle Geraldine’s Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality has certainly been rousing! For one thing, finishing school is training her to be a spy (won’t Mumsy be surprised?). Furthermore, Sophronia got mixed up in an intrigue over a stolen device and had a cheese pie thrown at her in a most horrid display of poor manners.
Now, as she sneaks around the dirigible school, eavesdropping on the teachers’ quarters and making clandestine climbs to the ship’s boiler room, she learns that there may be more to a school trip to London than is apparent at first. A conspiracy is afoot–one with dire implications for both supernaturals and humans. Sophronia must rely on her training to discover who is behind the dangerous plot-and survive the London Season with a full dance card.
In this sequel to bestselling author Gail Carriger’s YA debut Etiquette & Espionage, class is back in session with more petticoats and poison, tea trays and treason. Gail’s distinctive voice, signature humor, and lush steampunk setting are sure to be the height of fashion this season.
Purchase Curtsies & Conspiracies at Amazon
Purchase Curtsies & Conspiracies at IndieBound
View Curtsies & Conspiracies on Goodreads
Daylighters
by Rachel Caine
Hardcover
NAL Hardcover
Released 11/5/2013
While Morganville, Texas, is often a troubled town, Claire Danvers and her friends are looking forward to coming home. But the Morganville they return to isn’t the one they know; it’s become a different place–a deadly one.
Something drastic has happened in Morganville while Claire and her friends were away. The town looks cleaner and happier than they’ve ever seen it before, but when their incoming group is arrested and separated–vampires from humans–they realize that the changes definitely aren’t for the better.
It seems that an organization called the Daylight Foundation has offered the population of Morganville something they’ve never had: hope of a vampire-free future. And while it sounds like salvation–even for the vampires themselves–the truth is far more sinister and deadly.
Now, Claire, Shane and Eve need to find a way to break their friends out of Daylighter custody, before the vampires of Morganville meet their untimely end
Purchase Daylighters at Amazon
Purchase Daylighters at IndieBound
View Daylighters on Goodreads
Engines of the Broken World
by Jason Vanhee
Hardcover
Henry Holt and Co.
Released 11/5/2013
Merciful Truth and her brother, Gospel, have just pulled their dead mother into the kitchen and stowed her under the table. It was a long illness, and they wanted to bury her–they did–but it’s far too cold outside, and they know they won’t be able to dig into the frozen ground. The Minister who lives with them, who preaches through his animal form, doesn’t make them feel any better about what they’ve done. Merciful calms her guilty feelings but only until, from the other room, she hears a voice she thought she’d never hear again. It’s her mother’s voice, and it’s singing a lullaby. . . .
Purchase Engines of the Broken World at Amazon
Purchase Engines of the Broken World at IndieBound
View Engines of the Broken World on Goodreads
Never Fade
by Alexandra Bracken
Hardcover
Disney-Hyperion
Released 11/5/2013
Ruby never asked for the abilities that almost cost her her life. Now she must call upon them on a daily basis, leading dangerous missions to bring down a corrupt government and breaking into the minds of her enemies. Other kids in the Children’s League call Ruby “Leader”, but she knows what she really is: a monster.
When Ruby is entrusted with an explosive secret, she must embark on her most dangerous mission yet: leaving the Children’s League behind. Crucial information about the disease that killed most of America’s children–and turned Ruby and the others who lived into feared and hated outcasts–has survived every attempt to destroy it. But the truth is only saved in one place: a flashdrive in the hands of Liam Stewart, the boy Ruby once believed was her future–and who now wouldn’t recognize her.
As Ruby sets out across a desperate, lawless country to find Liam–and answers about the catastrophe that has ripped both her life and America apart–she is torn between old friends and the promise she made to serve the League. Ruby will do anything to protect the people she loves. But what if winning the war means losing herself?
Purchase Never Fade at Amazon
Purchase Never Fade at IndieBound
View Never Fade on Goodreads
Revelations
by J. A. Souders
Hardcover
Tor Teen; 1 edition
Released 11/5/2013
The follow-up to J. A. Souders’s riveting SF psychological thriller for teens, Renegade
Six weeks ago, Evelyn Winters was locked away in Elysium, a city hidden miles beneath the sea, brainwashed into submission. With the help of Gavin, she fought free of her captors and the fog in her own mind. He took her back with him to the Surface, a world she’s never known. Now she will begin a new life.
But her past is closer than she thinks…
Purchase Revelations at Amazon
Purchase Revelations at IndieBound
View Revelations on Goodreads
Sentinel
by Jennifer L Armentrout
Paperback
Spencer Hill Press; 1 edition
Released 11/2/2013
It’s a beautiful day for a war.
As the mortal world slowly slips into chaos of the godly kind, Alexandria Andros must overcome a stunning defeat that has left her shaken and in doubt of their ability to end this war once and for all.
And with all the obstacles between Alex and her happily-ever-after with the swoonworthy Aiden St. Delphi, they must now trust a deadly foe as they travel deep into the Underworld to release one of the most dangerous gods of all time.
In the stunning, action-packed climax to the bestselling Covenant series, Alex must face a terrible choice: the destruction of everything and everyone she holds dear– or the end of herself.
Purchase Sentinel at Amazon
Purchase Sentinel at IndieBound
View Sentinel on Goodreads
The Naturals
by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
Hardcover
Miramax
Released 11/5/2013
Seventeen-year-old Cassie is a natural at reading people. Piecing together the tiniest details, she can tell you who you are and what you want. But it’s not a skill that she’s ever taken seriously. That is, until the FBI come knocking: they’ve begun a classified program that uses exceptional teenagers to crack infamous cold cases, and they need Cassie.
What Cassie doesn’t realize is that there’s more at risk than a few unsolved homicides– especially when she’s sent to live with a group of teens whose gifts are as unusual as her own.
Sarcastic, privileged Michael has a knack for reading emotions, which he uses to get inside Cassie’s head–and under her skin. Brooding Dean shares Cassie’s gift for profiling, but keeps her at arm’s length.
Soon, it becomes clear that no one in the Naturals program is what they seem. And when a new killer strikes, danger looms closer than Cassie could ever have imagined. Caught in a lethal game of cat and mouse with a killer, the Naturals are going to have to use all of their gifts just to survive.
Purchase The Naturals at Amazon
Purchase The Naturals at IndieBound
View The Naturals on Goodreads
