This sounds great! Alternate realities + steam punk + magic == awesomeness! Plus look at the cover:

Pretty! Here’s the description from Amazon:

In this epic new work, the award-winning Kenyon creates an alternate 19th century with two warring continents on an alternate earth: the scientific Anglica (England) and magical Bharata (India). Emboldened by her grandfather’s final whispered secret of a magical lotus, Tori Harding, a young Victorian woman and aspiring botanist, must journey to Bharata, with its magics, intrigues and ghosts, to claim her fate. There she will face a choice between two suitors and two irreconcilable realms.

In a magic-infused world of silver tigers, demon birds and enduring gods, as a great native mutiny sweeps up the continent, Tori will find the thing she most desires, less perfect than she had hoped and stranger than she could have dreamed.

A Thousand Perfect Things by Kay Kenyon is available for £10.43 on Amazon.co.uk.

It was initially the cover of this booked that grabbed my eye, but then I read the premise: Cinderella as an assassin! This sounds like it could be a fun read:

Here’s the description from Amazon:

Meet Celaena Sardothien.

Beautiful. Deadly. Destined for greatness.

In the dark, filthy salt mines of Endovier, an eighteen-year-old girl is serving a life sentence. She is a trained assassin, the best of her kind, but she made a fatal mistake. She got caught.

Young Captain Westfall offers her a deal: her freedom in return for one huge sacrifice. Celaena must represent the prince in a to-the-death tournament – fighting the most gifted thieves and assassins in the land. Live or die, Celaena will be free. Win or lose, she is about to discover her true destiny. But will her assassin’s heart be melted?

Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas is available for £3.85 on Amazon.co.uk and $8.99 on Amazon.com.

Watch this first:

I think that might be the most intriguing trailer I’ve seen for a book! Plus they’ve even got a site setup for Symbogen. I was going to read this regardless, cause I loved Mira Grant’s previous series, but this just makes me want to read it more!

Here’s the description from Amazon:

A decade in the future, humanity thrives in the absence of sickness and disease.

We owe our good health to a humble parasite – a genetically engineered tapeworm developed by the pioneering SymboGen Corporation. When implanted, the tapeworm protects us from illness, boosts our immune system – even secretes designer drugs. It’s been successful beyond the scientists’ wildest dreams. Now, years on, almost every human being has a SymboGen tapeworm living within them.

But these parasites are getting restless. They want their own lives . . . and will do anything to get them.

Parasite will be released next week on the 29th of October and is £4.82 on Amazon.co.uk (paperback) and $12 on Amazon.com (hardcover).

I’m so looking forward to getting this book! It’s the seventh book in the October Daye series and with each one the story gets better. I wish they came out more often than just one a year, but then if that was the case we wouldn’t get the other cool series from Seanan McGuire (/Mira Grant).

Here’s the description from Amazon:

Things are starting to look up for October “Toby” Daye. She’s training her squire, doing her job, and has finally allowed herself to grow closer to the local King of Cats. It seems like her life may finally be settling down…at least until dead changelings start appearing in the alleys of San Francisco, killed by an overdose of goblin fruit.

Toby’s efforts to take the problem to the Queen of the Mists are met with harsh reprisals, leaving her under sentence of exile from her home and everyone she loves. Now Toby must find a way to reverse the Queens decree, get the goblin fruit off the streets–and, oh, yes, save her own life, since more than a few of her problems have once again followed her home. And then there’s the question of the Queen herself, who seems increasingly unlikely to have a valid claim to the throne….

To find the answers, October and her friends will have to travel from the legendary Library of Stars into the hidden depths of the Kingdom of the Mists–and they’ll have to do it fast, because time is running out. In faerie, some fates are worse than death.

October Daye is about to find out what they are.

If you’re interested in this series, I do recommend starting at the beginning with Rosemary & Rue.

Giveaway time! I’ve just finished reading the first book in this series and I can’t wait to see what happens next. Here’s the description of the first book:

On the night Malcolm and Maud Angel are murdered, their daughter, Tandy, knows just three things: 1. She was one of the last people to see her parents alive. 2. She and her brothers are the only suspects. 3. She can’t trust anyone – maybe not even herself. Having grown up under their parents’ intense perfectionist demands, none of the Angel children have come away undamaged.

Tandy decides that she will have to solve the crime on her own, but digging deeper into her powerful parents’ affairs is a dangerous game. As she uncovers haunting secrets and slowly begins to remember flashes of disturbing past events buried in her memory, Tandy is forced to ask: What is the Angel family truly capable of?

Thanks to Little, Brown I’ve got a special Hide Your Confessions goodie pack to giveaway to one you lucky readers. The winner will receive a pair of designer sunglasses, a custom t-shirt and copies of Confessions of a Murder Suspect and Confessions: The Private School Murders!

To enter the competition, leave a comment behind with your worse kept secret… You’ll also get a second entry if you’re following me on Twitter and tweet about this giveaway with the hashtags #missgeeky #ConfessionsBook. The competition ends on October 1st after which I’ll randomly draw a winner and it is open to everyone.

I love zombies. And I love superheroes. So combining the two: yay!

I came across this book series last week while browsing at the Forbidden Planet and Nathan Fillion’s quote on the second cover jumped out at me. I still love being able to browse stores and come across books you normally might not come across. It’s another reason why I just don’t want to switch over to something like a Kindle.

Here’s the description from Amazon:

The Mighty Dragon. Stealth. Gorgon. Regenerator. Cerberus. Zzzap.

They were superheroes fighting to make Los Angeles a better place. Then the plague of living death spread. Billions died, civilization fell, and the City of Angels was left a desolate zombie wasteland. But the ex-humans aren’t the only threats the heroes face. Another group is amassing power . . . led by an enemy with the most terrifying ability of all.

I already started reading it and so far it’s great! The book jumps between Now and Then chapters. “Now” is two years after the zombie apocalypse and a group of survivors have converted the old Hollywood studios into their home. “Then” is first-person perspectives from the superheroes before and during the first outbreaks. I can’t wait to see this goes on; I’m so tempted to get its sequels (Ex-Patriots and Ex-Communication) to bring with me on holiday!

Ex-Heroes is available from Amazon.co.uk for £3.85.

I always like movies set in the near future with stories that feel really likely, but for some reason I rarely read books like that. That needs to change… Intrusion sounds like an interesting thriller/scifi: what if you could take a pill that when pregnant cures any genetic abnormalities of your child?

Here’s the description from Amazon:

Imagine a near-future city, say London, where medical science has advanced beyond our own and a single-dose pill has been developed that, taken when pregnant, eradicates many common genetic defects from an unborn child.

Hope Morrison, mother of a hyperactive four-year-old, is expecting her second child. She refuses to take The Fix, as the pill is known. This divides her family and friends and puts her and her husband in danger of imprisonment or worse. Is her decision a private matter of individual choice, or is it tantamount to willful neglect of her unborn child?

Intrusion by Ken MacLeod is £6.29 on Amazon.co.uk.

I’m totally loving the cover art of Fade To Black; it’s a gorgeous piece of work. I actually first came across this book on the Orbit blog where they did a post with the illustrator who did the cover art and it’s quite interesting to see the different stages the design went through.

Next to the awesome cover though, it looks like a cool book:

From the depths of a valley rises the city of Mahala. It’s a city built upwards not across–where streets are built upon streets, buildings upon buildings, A city that the Ministry rules from the sunlit summit and where the forsaken lurk in the darkness of Under.

Rojan Dizon doesn’t mind staying in the shadows, because he’s got things to hide. Things like being a pain-mage, with the forbidden power to draw magic from pain. But he can’t hide for ever.

Because when Rojan stumbles upon the secrets lurking in the depths of the Pit, the fate of Mahala will depend on him using his magic. And unlucky for Rojan – this is going to hurt.

Fade To Black is available on Amazon.co.uk for £5.59 and on Amazon.com for $10.19.

I can’t quite believe how fast the past two months have flown by! I had planned to write up a review after every book I finished, but again I haven’t found the time to do that. I’m doing okayish with my book resolutions/challenges. I’ve managed not to buy a single book yet this year, although I’ve been sorely tempted by a few. I’ve been struggling more with my 52 books in 52 weeks though; I’m only on 6 books, while by now I should have finished 8 already. Hopefully I’ll catch up, but it’s trickier that I thought!

Be Still My Vampire Heart by Kerrelyn Sparks

This is the third book in Kerrelyn Spark’s Love at Stake series and again it’s a lot of fun. I’ve only just discovered her books and with thirteen books in the series I’ve got some serious catching up to do! So far it reminds me a lot of Lynsay Sands’ books: they’re funny, entertaining reads with a cool vampire world that doesn’t take itself too seriously. This one is about the general of the vampire army falling in love with a vampire slayer.

Lord of The Changing Winds by Rachel Neumeier

I struggled a lot with this book and it was almost a DNF (did not finish) for me. I already had bought the following two books though, so I thought I should at least give it a shot. The concept sounds interesting: a teenage girl, Kes, finds out she has the ability to heal griffins. I really wanted to like this book, but nothing about it stood out to me. The characters aren’t that likable, the story is pretty predictable and the world didn’t feel fleshed out.

The Night Angel Trilogy by Brent Weeks

I’m in two minds about this series. The first book starts off with a pretty harsh world, which only gets worse as the story progresses. Rape, incest, cannibalism… those aren’t really the things I look for in a book. Plus there was a certain lack of storytelling and world and character building; I constantly felt as if there was more to these characters and their backstories, but I just wasn’t seeing it. Maybe I’ve just been spoiled lately by books like The Name of The Wind, but I was missing the beauty in the way a story can be told.

And yet, despite all those things the story itself was pretty compelling; I managed to finish book one and two in 3 days, picking it up whenever I could find the time. It actually managed to surprise me; the first book alone has at least 4 twists towards the end (one of which I saw coming, the others were proper “OMG!” moments). It’s not the most brilliant series out there, but it’s definitely a good read. Interested? Why not enter my giveaway for the first book in the series?

My Lady Mage by Alexis Morgan

This is the first book in Alexis Morgan’s new Warriors of the Mist series. It’s a fantasy romance: it’s got your typical romance tropes, but it’s set in an interesting fantasy world. The “warriors” from the series title were damned by the gods to fight evil; they lie dormant under the mists of the river until they are called upon by those in need. In this book they are awakened by Merewen to save her people from her uncle’s cruelty. And obviously she falls in love with one of the damned warriors. The book manages to properly balance the fantasy and romance elements, turning it into a fun read. Each warrior is linked to an animal avatar and it’s fun discovering their backstories. I’m very curious to see how this story continues!

Birthdays are awesome! I celebrated mine yesterday and it was just so much fun catching up with friends and family. I thought I’d share the fun with you all and hold another giveaway here! I know I still haven’t announced the winners of the previous giveaway, but don’t worry I’ll be contacting them today.

So what’s the giveaway for? One lucky reader will receive a copy of The Way of Shadows by Brent Weeks. I just read the entire series and it’s great.

To enter the giveaway, leave a comment behind with your favourite birthday memory. You’ll also get a second entry if you’re following me on Twitter and tweet about this giveaway with the hashtag #missgeeky. The competition is open to everyone and it will end on March 3rd after which I’ll randomly draw a winner.