Hi Cara,
For me, February has several books in existing series that I am excited to get my hands on.
4th February
Book: The Library of the Dead
Author: T.L Hutchu
Synopsis: When a child goes missing in Edinburgh’s darkest streets, young Ropa investigates. She’ll need to call on Zimbabwean magic as well as her Scottish pragmatism to hunt down clues. But as shadows lengthen, will the hunter become the hunted?
When ghosts talk, she will listen…
Ropa dropped out of school to become a ghostalker. Now she speaks to Edinburgh’s dead, carrying messages to the living. A girl’s gotta earn a living, and it seems harmless enough. Until, that is, the dead whisper that someone’s bewitching children–leaving them husks, empty of joy and life. It’s on Ropa’s patch, so she feels honor-bound to investigate. But what she learns will change her world.
She’ll dice with death (not part of her life plan…), discovering an occult library and a taste for hidden magic. She’ll also experience dark times. For Edinburgh hides a wealth of secrets, and Ropa’s gonna hunt them all down.
Link to my Review: The Library of the Dead.
Book: The Art of Death
Author: David Fennell
Synopsis: AN INTENSELY CREEPY SERIAL KILLER THRILLER DEBUT, FOR FANS OF CHRIS CARTER, M. W. CRAVEN AND THE WHISPER MAN.
London’s latest art installation is a real killer . . . An underground artist leaves three glass cabinets in Trafalgar Square that contain a gruesome installation: the corpses of three homeless men. With the artist promising more to follow, newly-promoted Detective Inspector Grace Archer and her caustic DS, Harry Quinn, must race against time to follow what few clues have been left by a savvy killer. As more bodies are exhibited at London landmarks and live streamed on social media, Archer and Quinn’s pursuit of the elusive killer becomes a desperate search. But when Archer discovers that the killer might be closer than she originally thought – she realises that he has his sights set firmly on her . . . He is creating a masterpiece. And she will be the star of his show.
9th February
Book: Faithless in Death
Author: J.D Robb
Synopsis: The scene in the West Village studio appears to be classic crime-of-passion: two wineglasses by the bed, music playing, and a young sculptor named Ariel Byrd with the back of her head bashed in. But when Dallas tracks down the wealthy Upper East Side woman who called 911, the details don’t add up. Gwen Huffman is wealthy, elegant, comforted by her handsome fiancé as she sheds tears over the trauma of finding the body–but why did it take an hour to report it? And why is she lying about little things?
As Eve and her team look into Gwen, her past, and the people around her, they find that the lies are about more than murder. As with sculpture, they need to chip away at the layers of deception to find the shape within–and soon they’re getting the FBI involved in a case that involves a sinister, fanatical group and a stunning criminal conspiracy.
Book: Rafael
Author: Laurell. K. Hamilton
Synopsis: Rafael, king of the wererats, must fight to the death to defend his crown. He wants Anita Blake, one of his closest allies, with him as he faces an opponent unlike any he’s faced before. He will ask Anita to risk everything to be at his side.…
But some of the wererats fear that Rafael depends too much on Anita and her ties to the vampires. They believe that there is only room in America for one supernatural king, and Rafael will turn them into nothing more than food for the bloodsuckers.
Among his enemies, a new challenger has arisen who is younger, hungrier, and has dark secrets that could destroy both the wererats and the vampires. Rafael will go into the magical heart of his people to find the power and violence that he needs to save them all, or die trying.
14th February
Book: The Wisdom of Blood
Author: A.G Howard
Synopsis: The gaslit gothic atmosphere of a Victorian penny dreadful meets the dangerous romance of Hades and Persephone in A.G. Howard’s newest lush adult vampire fantasy fraught with passion, horror, and mystery.
In 1832 England, to fall from the peerage is the kiss of death. Yet penniless Mordecai Dureance still has a life worth living: an honest vocation and a humble cottage where he, his new bride, Lynora, and his little brother, Isaac, can be a family. But Mordecai knows he’s meant for more than gardening, if only society wouldn’t shun the unholy byproducts of his horticultural experiments. When an ancient sect of vampires lures him into their hidden city, Nocturnus—an ornate labyrinth of tunnels deep beneath Tatabury’s substratum—they promise wealth and acceptance beyond his imaginings. Discarding his human trappings, Mordecai embraces the darkness and its foundation of sins and blood. Yet he can’t forget his light: the woman who loved him, poverty notwithstanding. To contact Lynora on topside is forbidden, but to live an eternity without her is unthinkable. So, Mordecai will break any laws—natural and unnatural alike—to bring her down into his monstrous world.
Lynora Dureance’s life has crumbled under her blue-stockinged feet. Her wealthy family turned away when she married beneath their class. And now, mere weeks after abandoning Lynora and his young brother, her groom returns to claim her. When Lynora awakens, a victim of Mordecai’s bite, she finds herself cloistered in a castle outside of Tatabury. Her rescuers, a clandestine group of women who raise bats, share her gruesome fate—not yet full vampire but starving for blood. By isolating themselves and holding galas to entrance men, the Sisterhood survives without resorting to murder. In contrast, the vampires’ lethal feedings mark them as monsters. Each sister learns to defend herself, honing combative skills that will help Lynora reclaim her humanness and retrieve Isaac from the local orphan house. The one caveat: she must kill the seductive creature who tainted her blood—if she can see past his face and forget the brilliant gardener she once loved.
Lynora’s and Mordecai’s conflicting paths converge on one explosive night as they discover a strange blood-related illness infecting the children at the orphanage. Only by violating the laws that separate them, and bridging the broken trust between their worlds, can Lynora and Mordecai uncover the real monster and stop the evil force behind the plague—before it claims Isaac as its final victim.
16th February
Book: A Court of Silver Flames
Author: Sarah. J. Maas
Synopsis: Nesta Archeron has always been prickly-proud, swift to anger, and slow to forgive. And ever since being forced into the Cauldron and becoming High Fae against her will, she’s struggled to find a place for herself within the strange, deadly world she inhabits. Worse, she can’t seem to move past the horrors of the war with Hybern and all she lost in it.
The one person who ignites her temper more than any other is Cassian, the battle-scarred warrior whose position in Rhysand and Feyre’s Night Court keeps him constantly in Nesta’s orbit. But her temper isn’t the only thing Cassian ignites. The fire between them is undeniable, and only burns hotter as they are forced into close quarters with each other.
Meanwhile, the treacherous human queens who returned to the Continent during the last war have forged a dangerous new alliance, threatening the fragile peace that has settled over the realms. And the key to halting them might very well rely on Cassian and Nesta facing their haunting pasts.
Against the sweeping backdrop of a world seared by war and plagued with uncertainty, Nesta and Cassian battle monsters from within and without as they search for acceptance-and healing-in each other’s arms.
18th February
Book: Reaper of Souls
Author: Rena Barron
Synopsis: After so many years yearning for the gift of magic, Arrah has the one thing she’s always wanted—at a terrible price. Now the last surviving witchdoctor, she’s been left to pick up the shattered pieces of a family that betrayed her, a kingdom in shambles, and long-buried secrets about who she is.
Desperate not to repeat her mother’s mistakes, Arrah must return to the tribal lands to search for help from the remnants of her parents’ people. But the Demon King’s shadow looms closer than she thinks. And as Arrah struggles to unravel her connection to him, defeating him begins to seem more and more impossible—if it’s something she can bring herself to do at all.
Link to my Review: Reaper of Souls
23rd February
Book: A Dark and Hollow Star
Author: Ashley Shuttleworth
Synopsis: The Cruel Prince meets City of Bones in this thrilling urban fantasy set in the magical underworld of Toronto where four queer teens race to stop a serial killer before their crimes expose the hidden world of faeries to humans.
Choose your player.
The half-fae outcast, desperate for acceptance.
The tempestuous Fury, exiled and hellbent on revenge.
The dutiful prince, determined to earn his place.
The brooding guardian, burdened by a terrible secret.
Each holds a key to solving a series of ritualistic murders that threaten to expose faeries to the human world. But they cannot do it alone. To track down the killer, they will have to form a tenuous alliance, putting their differences – and conflicts – aside.
Failure risks the destruction of the faerie and human worlds alike. And time is running out.
Time to roll the dice.
(Synopsis and cover art from Goodreads.com)
What books are you looking forward to this month?
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Thanks for reading,
