Library Loot (69 & 70) & review copies

Two weeks' worth here - due to illness I couldn't do a post last weekend - but I got most of these this week as the library's had a new influx of brilliant books.


Library

Gabrielle Lord - Conspiracy 365: September (handy as I've nearly finished August)
Eden Maguire - Beautiful Dead: Phoenix (must read Summer asap)
Amy Meredith - Dark Touch: The Hunt (looking forward to this a lot as loved Shadows)
Tamsyn Murray - My So Called Haunting (love her tweets so looking forward to reading both of her YA books)
Charlie Price - Hear the Dead Cry (crime novel involving ghosts!)
Joss Stirling - Finding Sky (don't know much about this one)
Mark Walden - Zero Hour (I also have Rogue to read but I enjoyed the one before that, Dreadnought)

Review

Simon Scarrow - Gladiator: Fight for Freedom (Feb. 2011, Puffin)
Rome, 61 BC RECRUITED as a gladiator, young Marcus Cornelius Primus faces a new life of brutal training, governed by strict rules, as he learns the skills of an elite warrior. But Marcus cannot simply forget his past. His father lies murdered by soldiers and his mother has been kidnapped and forced into slavery. Marcus is determined to find his father’s old commander, Pompeius the Great, to seek justice for his family and set his mother free. Yet, unbeknown to him, Marcus is hiding a life-threatening secret. And if the Romans discover it, there will be no escape . . .

Cate Tiernan - Immortal Beloved (Jan. 2011, Hodder & Stoughton) & pretty envelope!
Nastasya has spent the last century living as a spoiled, drugged-out party girl. She feels nothing and cares for no one. But when she witnesses her best friend, a Dark Immortal, torture a human, she realizes something's got to change. She seeks refuge at a rehab for wayward immortals, where she meets the gorgeous, undeniably sexy Reyn, who seems inexplicably linked to her past.

Nastasya finally begins to deal with life, and even feels safe--until the night she learns that someone wants her dead.

Cate Tiernan, author of the popular Sweep series, returns with an engaging story of a timeless struggle and inescapable romance, the first book in a stunning new fantasy trilogy.

Ruta Sepetys - Between Shades of Gray (April 2011, Puffin)
One night fifteen-year-old Lina, her mother and young brother are hauled from their home by Soviet guards, thrown into cattle cars and sent away. They are being deported to Siberia. An unimaginable and harrowing journey has begun. Lina doesn’t know if she’ll ever see her father or her friends again. But she refuses to give up hope. Lina hopes for her family. For her country. For her future. For love - first love, with the boy she barely knows but knows she does not want to lose . . . Will hope keep Lina alive? Set in 1941, Between Shades of Gray is an extraordinary and haunting story based on first-hand family accounts and memories from survivors.