Sunday Post #1 - Christmas is coming!

So, I have had quite a few blogs in my Newsblur account and keep seeing this post come up over at The Caffeinated Book Reviewer.  After all, I have been blogging about books for over 7 years now, so why not participate in things like this - right?

It might take me a little bit to find my groove, so for this week let me just update what is new in the book department.

I received the following books this week:

AMERICAN HORROR STORY 

Its violent, sordid past is what draws bestselling author David Masters to the infamous Victorian mansion called Baudey House. Its shrouded history of madness and murder is just the inspiration he needs to write his ultimate masterpiece of horror. But what waits for David and his sixteen-year-old daughter, Amber, at Baudey House, is more terrifying than any legend. 

First comes the sultry hint of jasmine... followed by the foul stench of decay. It is the dead seducing the living in an age-old ritual of perverted desire and unholy blood lust. For David and Amber, an unspeakable possession has begun. 

"...a tapestry of chills and scares that will be remembered long after the lights have gone out." --Douglas Clegg 

"Combines eerie eroticism with page-turning terror." --Pasadena Weekly 

"Don't read it if you have something else to do... it just might have to wait." --After Hours

They met in cooking school—and became fast friends with a common dream. Now, Cathy Scarlet and Tom Feather hope to take Dublin by storm with their newly formed catering company, aptly dubbed “Scarlet Feather.” Not everyone, however, shares their optimism. Cathy’s mother-in-law disapproves of both Cathy and her new “hobby,” while Cathy’s husband Neil pays no mind to anything—except his work as a civil rights lawyer. And then there’s Tom’s family, who expect him to follow in his father’s footsteps, and an ambitious girlfriend who’s struggling with career dreams of her own. Between friends and families, ups and downs, heartaches and joys, Cathy Scarlet and Tom Feather are about to embark on the most maddening—and exhilarating—year of their lives…. 

True love can last an eternity . . . but immortality comes at a price. . . . 

On the midnight shift at a hospital in rural Maine, Dr. Luke Findley is expecting another quiet evening of frostbite and the occasional domestic dispute. But the minute Lanore McIlvrae - Lanny - walks into his ER, she changes his life forever. A mysterious woman with a past and plenty of dark secrets, Lanny is unlike anyone Luke has ever met. He is inexplicably drawn to her... despite the fact that she is a murder suspect with a police escort. And as she begins to tell her story, a story of enduring love and consummate betrayal that transcends time and mortality, Luke finds himself utterly captivated. 

Her impassioned account begins at the turn of the nineteenth century in the same small town of St. Andrew, Maine, back when it was a Puritan settlement. Consumed as a child by her love for the son of the town's founder, Lanny will do anything to be with him forever. But the price she pays is steep: an immortal bond that chains her to a terrible fate for all eternity. And now, two centuries later, the key to her healing and her salvation lies with Dr. Luke Findley.

Part historical novel, part supernatural page-turner, The Taker is an unforgettable tale about the power of unrequited love not only to elevate and sustain, but also to blind and ultimately destroy, and how each of us is responsible for finding our own path to redemption.

When a boy tries to save his parents’ marriage, he uncovers a legacy of family secrets in a coming-of-age ghost story by the author of the internationally bestselling phenomenon, The Art of Racing in the Rain.

In the summer of 1990, fourteen-year-old Trevor Riddell gets his first glimpse of Riddell House. Built from the spoils of a massive timber fortune, the legendary family mansion is constructed of giant, whole trees, and is set on a huge estate overlooking Puget Sound. Trevor’s bankrupt parents have begun a trial separation, and his father, Jones Riddell, has brought Trevor to Riddell House with a goal: to join forces with his sister, Serena, dispatch Grandpa Samuel—who is flickering in and out of dementia—to a graduated living facility, sell off the house and property for development into “tract housing for millionaires,” divide up the profits, and live happily ever after.

But Trevor soon discovers there’s someone else living in Riddell House: a ghost with an agenda of his own. For while the land holds tremendous value, it is also burdened by the final wishes of the family patriarch, Elijah, who mandated it be allowed to return to untamed forestland as a penance for the millions of trees harvested over the decades by the Riddell Timber company. The ghost will not rest until Elijah’s wish is fulfilled, and Trevor’s willingness to face the past holds the key to his family’s future.

A Sudden Light is a rich, atmospheric work that is at once a multigenerational family saga, a historical novel, a ghost story, and the story of a contemporary family’s struggle to connect with each other. A tribute to the natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest, it reflects Garth Stein’s outsized capacity for empathy and keen understanding of human motivation, and his rare ability to see the unseen: the universal threads that connect us all.

Barcelona, 1945: A city slowly heals in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, and Daniel, an antiquarian book dealer’s son who mourns the loss of his mother, finds solace in a mysterious book entitled The Shadow of the Wind, by one Julián Carax. But when he sets out to find the author’s other works, he makes a shocking discovery: someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book Carax has written. In fact, Daniel may have the last of Carax’s books in existence. Soon Daniel’s seemingly innocent quest opens a door into one of Barcelona’s darkest secrets--an epic story of murder, madness, and doomed love.