We’ve got another great week of book releases coming up with four more fabulous giveaways. But we’re also picking the winners for our recent Blog Carnival featuring nine signed Southern Gothics you don’t want to miss. Click here to check them out, see who won, and find some amazing, haunting reads.

THIS WEEK’S GIVEAWAY

The Book of Broken Hearts

Praefatio
by Georgia McBride
Signed Paperback Giveaway
Month9Books, LLC
Released 5/21/2013

“With PRAEFATIO, Georgia McBride proves that you can take any genre to a higher level. This is teen fantasy at its most entertaining, most heartbreaking, most compelling. Highly recommended.” –Jonathan Maberry, New York Times bestselling author of ROT & RUIN and FIRE & ASH

Seventeen-year-old Grace Ann Miller is no ordinary runaway. After having been missing for weeks, Grace is found on the estate of international rock star Gavin Vault, half-dressed and yelling for help. Over the course of twenty-four hours Grace holds an entire police force captive with incredulous tales of angels, demons, and war; intent on saving Gavin from lockup and her family from worry over her safety. Authorities believe that Grace is ill, suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, the victim of assault and a severely fractured mind. Undeterred, Grace reveals the secret existence of dark angels on earth, an ancient prophecy and a wretched curse steeped in Biblical myth. Grace’s claims set into motion an ages-old war, resulting in blood, death and the loss of everything that matters. But are these the delusions of an immensely sick girl, or could Grace’s story actually be true? Praefatio is Grace’s account of weeks on the run, falling in love and losing everything but her faith. When it’s sister against brother, light versus darkness, corrupt police officers, eager doctors and accusing journalists, against one girl with nothing but her word as proof: who do you believe?

Author Question: What is your favorite thing about Praefatio?

One of my favorite things about PRAEFATIO is the notion that of all the things we know, there is still so much we do not know. This is true about ourselves, about the world, about the things beyond this world, etc. PRAEFATIO asks if we are ready to consider that what we’ve been taught and told to believe may not be entirely true. And, if all the evidence points to something peculiarly incredulous, would you believe it anyway?

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All I Need
by Susane Colasanti
Advance Reader Copy Giveaway
Viking Juvenile
Released 5/21/2013

The last night of summer is only the beginning.

Skye wants to meet the boy who will change her life forever. Seth feels their instant connection the second he sees her. When Seth starts talking to Skye at the last beach party of the summer, it’s obvious to both of them that this is something real. But when Seth leaves for college before they exchange contact info, Skye wonders if he felt the same way she did—and if she will ever see him again. Even if they find their way back to each other, can they make a long-distance relationship work despite trust issues, ex drama, and some serious background differences?

Teen favorite Susane Colasanti returns to the alternating-voice style of her beloved debut When It Happens in this Serendipity-inspired story about summer, soul mates, and the moments that change our lives forever.

Author Question: What is your favorite thing about All I Need?

My favorite thing about All I Need is the alternating girl/boy perspectives. While I was writing my first novel, When It Happens, I loved using alternating girl/boy perspectives to tell both sides of the story. I always wondered what the boy was thinking when I read teen novels back in high school. Did he like the girl? What did he talk about with his friends? What did his room look like? I wanted to know the boy’s side of the story so desperately that I promised myself I would tell it if I ever wrote a teen novel. That’s why I was stoked to return to the alternating points-of-view style with All I Need.

Another thing that was so fun about writing All I Need was including a main boy character who is in college. I would have loved to read about characters in college when I was a teen! Opening the world of my characters in that way took this story to a whole other level. Hopefully my readers will enjoy the adventure as much as I did.

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Imposter
by Susanne Winnacker
Signed Hardcover Giveaway
Razorbill
Released 5/23/2013

CAN TESSA POSE AS MADISON . . . AND STOP A KILLER BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE? Tessa is a Variant, able to absorb the DNA of anyone she touches and mimic their appearance. Shunned by her family, she’s spent the last two years training with the Forces with Extraordinary Abilities, a secret branch of the FBI. When a serial killer rocks a small town in Oregon, Tessa is given a mission: she must impersonate Madison, a local teen, to find the killer before he strikes again. Tessa hates everything about being an impostor—the stress, the danger, the deceit—but loves playing the role of a normal girl. As Madison, she finds friends, romance, and the kind of loving family she’d do anything to keep. Amid action, suspense, and a ticking clock, this super-human comes to a very human conclusion: even a girl who can look like anyone struggles the most with being herself.

Author Question: What is your favorite thing about Imposter?

My favorite thing about Impostor is without a doubt its main character Tessa. Despite her extraordinary abilities (she can absorb the
DNA of other people and take on their appearance), her longing for love and for a
loving family is one most of us can relate to. While writing Impostor, I sometimes just wanted to give her a hug. But Tessa is strong. Somehow I knew she wouldn¹t give up no matter what.

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LAST WEEK’S GIVEAWAY WINNERS

The Girl Guide: Finding Your Place in a Mixed Up World
by Christine Fonseca 
ARC
Prufrock Press
released 5/14/13

WINNER: Carol Baldwin

Finding your unique voice in a noisy world can be hard. Very hard. But not if you have a great guide! The Girl Guide: Finding Your Place in a Mixed-Up World is a must read for girls in grades 6-9 as they enter the tumultuous world of adolescence. Packed with fun worksheets and quizzes, as well as stories from older girls and women, The Girl Guide covers everything a teenage girl needs to know on the journey toward her own identity. Proven strategies for dealing with stress management, confronting relational aggression, being safe online, navigating the changing mother-daughter relationship, and more make this the ultimate guide for any girl to get through the teen years and discover her unique point of view in the world.

The Kissing Booth
by Beth Reekles
Paperback
Ember
Released 5/14/2013

WINNER: RivkaBelle

A cool, sexy romance novel written by seventeen-year-old British sensation Beth Reekles.

Meet Rochelle “Elle” Evans: pretty, popular—and never been kissed. Meet Noah Flynn: badass, volatile—and a total player.

When Elle decides to run a kissing booth at her school’s Spring Carnival, she locks lips with Noah and her life is turned upside down. Her head says to keep away, but her heart wants to draw closer. This romance seems far from a fairy tale.

Is Elle headed for heartbreak or will she get her happily ever after?

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The Rithmatist
by Brandon Sanderson
Hardcover
Tor Teen; 1 edition
Released 5/14/2013

WINNER: Michael Di Gesu

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Brandon Sanderson: his debut novel for the young adult audience
More than anything, Joel wants to be a Rithmatist. Chosen by the Master in a mysterious inception ceremony, Rithmatists have the power to infuse life into two-dimensional figures known as Chalklings. Rithmatists are humanity’s only defense against the Wild Chalklings—merciless creatures that leave mangled corpses in their wake. Having nearly overrun the territory of Nebrask, the Wild Chalklings now threaten all of the American Isles.
As the son of a lowly chalkmaker at Armedius Academy, Joel can only watch as Rithmatist students study the magical art that he would do anything to practice. Then students start disappearing—kidnapped from their rooms at night, leaving trails of blood. Assigned to help the professor who is investigating the crimes, Joel and his friend Melody find themselves on the trail of an unexpected discovery—one that will change Rithmatics—and their world—forever.
Bestselling author Brandon Sanderson brings his unique brand of epic storytelling to the teen audience with an engrossing tale of danger and suspense—the first of a series. With his trademark skills in world-building, Sanderson has created a magic system that is so inventive and detailed that that readers who appreciate games of strategy and tactics just may want to bring Rithmatics to life in our world.

Author Question: What is your favorite thing about The Rithmatist?

This answer was transcribed from audio the author recorded specifically for this interview: My favorite thing about The Rithmatist was the chance to write a world like our own, but not. Most of my other books take place in a secondary world fantasy, where the world I build from the ground up has no specific relationship to Earth. With The Rithmatist I wanted to do something that was more of a hybrid—a world that has one foot on Earth and one foot in the realm of fantasy.

So I really let my imagination go wild. I turned the United States into the United Isles. I played with U.S. history and did a lot of things that were, honestly, a little bizarre, like coming up with clockwork weapons. I didn’t restrain myself to the laws of physics, which I normally do in my fantasy novels. I let myself go in whatever imaginative direction I wanted to go and built the world from there.

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Out of This Place
by Emma Cameron
Hardcover
Candlewick
Released 5/14/2013

WINNER: Olivia Hinebaugh

A powerful novel in verse captures the voices of three teens as they struggle against hardscrabble realities — and move toward their dreams.

Luke spends his days hanging out at the beach, working shifts at the local supermarket, and trying to stay out of trouble at school. His mate Bongo gets wasted, blocking out memories of the little brother that social services took away from his addict mom and avoiding the stepdad who hits him. And Casey, the girl they both love, longs to get away from her strict, controlling father and start anew in a place where she can be free. But even after they each find a way to move on and lead very different lives, can they outrun their family stories — and will they ever be able to come together again? Set in Australia and narrated in alternating points of view, here is an affecting look at the evolving lives of three friends from talented new author Emma Cameron.

Author Question: What is your favorite thing about Out of This Place?

Prior to publication I was given literary feedback on Out Of This Place which said that besides being a strong written work for readers it also lends itself to being a performance monologue. The fact that Candlewick Press has chosen to release it not only as a hardback novel but also as an audio book validates this, so my current favourite thing about the novel is that people will be able to hear it as well as read it!!! The story is set in Australia and besides being stoked at how much effort the Candlewick editor took to hold its Australian flavour, I was also gobsmacked to learn that the readers of each character’s story in the audio edition all have Australian connections of sorts. I love it when something so serendipitous happens and I can’t wait to hear the audio version.

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Truth or Dare
by Jacqueline Green
Hardcover
Poppy
Released 5/14/2013

WINNER: Jeri Baird

When a simple round of truth or dare spins out of control, three girls find it’s no longer a party game. It’s do or die.

It all started on a whim: the game was a way for Tenley Reed to reclaim her popularity, a chance for perfect Caitlin “Angel” Thomas to prove she’s more than her Harvard application. Loner Sydney Morgan wasn’t even there; she was hiding behind her camera like usual. But when all three start receiving mysterious dares long after the party has ended, they’re forced to play along—or risk exposing their darkest secrets.

How far will Tenley, Caitlin and Sydney go to keep the truth from surfacing? And who’s behind this twisted game?

Set against the backdrop of Echo Bay, an isolated beach town haunted by misfortune, Truth or Dare is a highly charged debut that will keep readers in suspense from beginning to end.

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Formerly Shark Girl
by Kelly Bingham
Hardcover
Candlewick
Released 5/14/2013

Winner: Bridgid Gallagher

Jane Arrowood, otherwise known as Shark Girl, has been living with just one arm for over a year. Now she’s searching for a new normal.

It’s been a year since the shark attack that took Jane’s arm, and with it, everything she used to take for granted. Her dream of becoming an artist is on the line, and everything now seems out of reach, including her gorgeous, kind tutor, Max Shannon. While a perfectly nice guy from her science class is clearly interested in Jane — removing her fear that no one ever would want a one-armed girl — Jane can’t stop thinking about Max. But is his interest romantic? Or does he just feel sorry for her? Formerly Shark Girl picks up where Kelly Bingham’s artful, honest debut novel left off, following Jane as she deals with a career choice (should she “give back” by trying to become a nurse, or is art an equally valid calling?) along with family changes and her first real romance — all while remembering who she was before she was Shark Girl and figuring out who she is now.

Author Question: What is your favorite thing about Formerly Shark Girl?

My favorite thing about Formerly Shark Girl is getting to spend time with Jane again. I love Jane and I enjoy watching her work her way through the many ups and downs of life. In this book, it was fun for her to discover more about herself as she approaches high school graduation, and all the hopes and fears that accompany such a milestone. As she prepares to separate from her friends and possibly move from home, Jane really begins to think of herself as more of an individual, with a wide range of possibilities before her. I liked the experience of watching Jane deal with more of the typical struggles any girl her age would, and not have to be so frail and wounded this time around. Jane is very human to me, very real with a wide range of flaws that I can relate to. I kind of like it that she can be crabby at times, and insecure. But she’s also a very strong, kind, creative person. I enjoy her thought process, and her fumbling ways of dealing with awkward situations, such as first dates. I like it that she is so determined to get what she wants and is willing to work hard for those things. I think helping Jane find her way to the final choice she needed to make—artist or nurse?–was a joy. I hope everyone else feels the same way.

I have to say I also really enjoyed getting to know Rachel a bit better this time around. Rachel is Jane’s best friend and she has a little bit more prescence in this book. I also had a great time expanding the character of Max, who was pretty much only a fleeting character in Shark Girl. Both Rachel and Max were fun to be with.

And last but not least, I enjoyed the opportunity to answer my reader’s questions, which is the entire reason I wrote this book in the first place. Over the years, I have had many people ask the same handful of questions, and it was an honor to have a way to answer them. I hope they like what I came up with.

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The Cydonian Pyramid
by Pete Hautman
Hardcover
Candlewick
Released 5/14/2013

WINNER: Ava F.

The much-anticipated sequel to The Obsidian Blade transports readers to the terrifying and thrilling world of Lah Lia, the enigmatic girl who changed Tucker Feye’s life.

More than half a millennium in the future, in the shadow of the looming Cydonian Pyramid, a pampered girl named Lah Lia has been raised for one purpose: to be sacrificed through one of the mysterious diskos that hover over the pyramid’s top. But just as she is about to be killed, a strange boy appears from the diskos, providing a cover of chaos that allows her to escape and launching her on a time-spinning journey in which her fate is irreversibly linked to his. In this second volume of the Klaatu Diskos trilogy, Tucker Feye and Lah Lia each hurtle through time, relating their stories in alternating viewpoints that converge at crucial moments. Fans of the first adventure will be intrigued by the chance to see the world through Lah Lia’s eyes — no matter how disturbing the vision might be.

Author Question: What is your favorite thing about The Cydonian Pyramid?

The Cydonian Pyramid, the second book in The Klaatu Diskos trilogy, was a joy to write. In the first book, The Obsidian Blade, I spent a lot of time building the characters, the worlds, and the scaffolding. In The Cydonian Pyramid, I got to kick out the jams. The main character, Lah Lia, comes to life in a way I found extremely satisfying. I have a soft spot for smart, determined, ass-kicking young women in fiction, from Pippi Longstocking to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In real life, scary girls kind of terrify me, but Lah Lia was a gas to write about, and I think I did her justice.

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IN STORES NEXT WEEK WITH AUTHOR INTERVIEWS

Night School
by C.J. Daugherty
Hardcover
Katherine Tegen Books
Released 5/21/2013

Allie Sheridan’s world is falling apart. Her brother’s run away from home. Her parents ignore her. And she’s just been arrested.

Again.

This time her parents have had enough. They cut her off from her friends and send her away to boarding school, far from her London friends.

But at Cimmeria Academy, Allie is soon caught up in the strange activities of a secret group of elite students.

When she’s attacked late one night the incident sets off a chain of increasingly violent events. As the school begins to seem like a very dangerous place, she finds out that nothing at Cimmeria is what it seems to be.

And that she is not who she thought she was.

Author Question: What is your favorite thing about Night School?

Cimmeria Academy. The school where Allie is sent by her parents after her arrest is nothing like she expects. She thinks she’s going to reform school, with tough kids and iron bars on the windows. Instead she finds it’s an extraordinary place — a sprawling Victorian mansion set amid vast gardens and many acres of forests, and with a ruined castle on the hill above it. It’s Hogwarts without witches and she soon falls in love with it.

Buildings like Cimmeria are not at all uncommon in England — in fact, when creating it, I used as my inspiration a boarding school near my home — but, as an American ex-pat, I’ve never stopped being impressed by them. Every time I walk into a school that reminds me of Cimmeria — as I often do on book tours — I find myself wishing again I could have gone to a school like that. Had such beauty around me every day.

In Cimmeria I invented my dream school. Of course, it’s terribly dangerous there — everything beautiful has its price.

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MORE RELEASES IN STORES NEXT WEEK

The Eternal War
by Alex Scarrow
Hardcover
Walker Childrens; 1 edition
Released 5/21/2013

Continuing the heart-pounding, time-bending action of the TimeRiders series, The Eternal War brings readers back to a pivotal time period in American history: the Civil War. Only this alternate history is one where a young Abraham Lincoln has somehow followed Liam into the present from 1831, and the entire course of American history has changed. If the TimeRiders can’t return Lincoln to the past, the country could be trapped in a dangerous state of never-ending civil war. Can Maddy persuade two colonels on either side of no man’s land to cease fire long enough to save the future?

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Thousand Words
by Jennifer Brown
Hardcover
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Released 5/21/2013

Ashleigh’s boyfriend, Kaleb, is about to leave for college, and Ashleigh is worried that he’ll forget about her while he’s away. So at a legendary end-of-summer pool party, Ashleigh’s friends suggest she text him a picture of herself — sans swimsuit — to take with him. Before she can talk herself out of it, Ashleigh strides off to the bathroom, snaps a photo in the full-length mirror, and hits “send.”

But when Kaleb and Ashleigh go through a bad breakup, Kaleb takes revenge by forwarding the text to his baseball team. Soon the photo has gone viral, attracting the attention of the school board, the local police, and the media. As her friends and family try to distance themselves from the scandal, Ashleigh feels completely alone — until she meets Mack while serving her court-ordered community service. Not only does Mack offer a fresh chance at friendship, but he’s the one person in town who received the text of Ashleigh’s photo — and didn’t look.

Acclaimed author Jennifer Brown brings readers a gripping novel about honesty and betrayal, redemption and friendship, attraction and integrity, as Ashleigh finds that while a picture may be worth a thousand words . . . it doesn’t always tell the whole story.

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The Dark Shore
by Kevin Emerson
Hardcover
Katherine Tegen Books
Released 5/21/2013

BEWARE THE GODS AND THEIR HORRORS. Owen and Lilly have escaped Camp Eden, but the next step on their journey to find Atlantis and protect it from Paul and Project Elysium involves crossing the perilous wastelands of a wrecked planet. And unlike in EdenWest, where bloody truths were kept hidden beneath the surface, out here the horrors live bright beneath the poisonous sun.

With treachery at every turn, Owen has no choice but to bring his wounded clan to the dark shores of Desenna, a city built from the ashes of EdenSouth. Desenna’s blood-soaked walls may hold the key to Owen’s journey in the form of the third Atlantean as well as a deeper understanding of the true purpose of the Three, but there are also secrets lurking in the shadows, waiting to be unleashed, and once they rise, there may be no escape.

Filled with action, mind-bending twists, and powerful scenes of emotional and physical sacrifice, THE DARK SHORE takes readers on a journey to a question so great, even the gods have trouble answering it: What would you be willing to do, to save humanity from itself?

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How To Be a Star
by M. Doty
Paperback
Poppy
Released 5/21/2013

High school is the time to shine.
Tired of playing sidekick to her superstar-athlete best friend, Kimi Chen has decided it’s time to step into the spotlight and snag her own place at the coveted center table of the cafeteria. When her low-budget music video hits the Web and goes viral, forget about being just popular — Kimi is famous! Boys want to date her, girls want to be her, and she is even asked to perform on her favorite TV show. After years of feeling stranded on the bottom rung of the social ladder, Kimi finds that things are finally looking up.
But when fame gets in the way of her friendships, Kimi’s celebrity begins to lose some of its sparkle. Being a star, it turns out, may be more than she bargained for.
Discover the high price of fame and stardom in this second novel in the Surviving High School series, based on the hit mobile game from Electronic Arts.

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