September 2010 Releases

Done with August 2010 Releases? Here are the September 2010 Releases. To see further into the publishing future, check Reading Wishlist.

Kristin Cast, Alyson Noël, Kelley Armstrong, Richelle Mead & Francesca Lia Block
Kisses from Hell (Anthology)
HarperCollins (AU: 1st September 2010; UK: 30th September 2010)
Buy (US) Buy (UK) Buy (CA) Buy (Worldwide)
Teen vampire romances. Richelle Mead offers her many fans the legendary love story of Eric and Rhea Dragomir, parents of Vampire Academy main character Lissa Dragomir. In Kelley Armstrong’s “Hunting Kat”, reluctant vampire Katiana finds love while escaping from a group bent on her destruction. In “Lilith”, Francesca Lia Block introduces a sexy, powerful social outcast, who turns out to be more than she seems.

Tara Moss
Siren (Makedde Vanderwall, Book 5)
HarperCollins (AU: 1st September 2010)
Buy (UK) Buy (CA) Buy (Worldwide)
Mak Vanderwall – beautiful, street-wise daughter of a cop, graduate in forensic psychology, and now PI – is hired by a widowed mother to track down her missing nineteen-year-old son. Has he come to harm? Or has he run off with a bizarre troupe of shady French cabaret artists sweeping through Australia? And what of the rumours of violence and tragedy that have plagued the troupe for the past decade? Is their horrifying past fact or fiction? Meanwhile, Mak is increasingly obsessed with the powerful Cavanagh family, one of Australia’s richest and most ruthless families, whom she believes has got away with murder. And it seems their security advisor Mr. White, and his hit man, Luther Hand, may not have forgotten about Mak either…

Yolanda Sfetsos
Damaged
Damnation (US: 1st September 2010)
Someone – or something – is living inside Lane’s basement…Between the problems in her marriage, her writer’s block, and the heat situation inside the basement, Lane Blume is sure she’s going insane. When Bill Sorreni goes to Lane’s house for a routine plumbing check, the last thing he expected was to be instantly attracted to her. But her problem isn’t something he can initially help her with, so he suggests she call a priest to take a look. Can the compassion and understanding from Bill, a man whose faith might be just what she needs to help her out of the hell that her life has become, be strong enough to save Lane?

Jeri Smith-Ready
Shade (Shade, Book 1)
Simon & Schuster (UK & AU: 2nd September 2010)
Buy (US) Buy (UK) Buy (CA) Buy (Worldwide)
Like everyone born after the Shift, sixteen-year-old Aura can see and talk to ghosts. She’s always found this mysterious ability pretty annoying, wishing only that she could reverse it and have some peace. But when her boyfriend, Logan, dies unexpectedly, Aura is forced to reconsider her connections to the dead…Devastated by Logan’s sudden death, Aura realises that her ability to see ghosts might actually be a blessing. Surely a violet-hued spirit Logan is better than no Logan at all? But just when Aura is coming to terms with having a ghost as a boyfriend, she starts developing feelings for her new friend Zachary, who is understanding, supportive and, most of all, alive. Each boy holds a piece of her heart – as well as vital cues to the secret of the Shift – and it’s time for Aura to choose between loving the living, or embracing the dead…

Jessica Verday
The Haunted (The Hollow, Book 2)
Simon & Schuster Children’s (UK: 2nd September 2010)
Buy (US) Buy (UK) Buy (CA) Buy (Worldwide)
After a summer spent reclaiming her sanity and trying to forget the boy she fell in love with by the bridge where her best friend drowned – the boy who must not exist, cannot exist, because she knows that he is dead – Abbey returns to Sleepy Hollow, determined to leave the ghosts of her past behind. She throws herself into schoolwork, perfume-making and her friendship with Ben, her cute and funny lab partner, who just might be able to help her get over Caspian once and for all. But Abbey is never going to truly be able to move on from Caspian, and Caspian has no choice but to return to her side: for Caspian is a Shade and Abbey is his destiny. The two are tied not only to each other, but also to the town of Sleepy Hollow, and the famous legend that binds their fates – a legend whose true ending and dark truths they are only just beginning to guess…

Cassandra Clare
Clockwork Angel (Infernal Devices, Book 1)
Walker (UK: 6th September 2010)
Buy (US) Buy (UK) Buy (CA) Buy (Worldwide)
When sixteen-year-old Tessa Gray crosses the ocean to find her brother, her destination is England, the time is the reign of Queen Victoria, and something terrifying is waiting for her in London’s Downworld, where vampires, warlocks and other supernatural folk stalk the gas-lit streets. Only the Shadowhunters, warriors dedicated to ridding the world of demons, keep order amidst the chaos. Kidnapped by the mysterious Dark Sisters, members of a secret organisation called The Pandemonium Club, Tessa soon learns that she herself is a Downworlder with a rare ability: the power to transform, at will, into another person. What’s more, the Magister, the shadowy figure who runs the Club, will stop at nothing to claim Tessa’s power for his own. Friendless and hunted, Tessa takes refuge with the Shadowhunters of the London Institute, who swear to find her brother if she will use her power to help them. She soon finds herself fascinated by – and torn between – two best friends: James, whose fragile beauty hides a deadly secret, and blue-eyed Will, whose caustic wit and volatile moods keep everyone in his life at arm’s length…everyone, that is, but Tessa. As their search draws them deep into the heart of an arcane plot that threatens to destroy the Shadowhunters, Tessa realises that she may need to choose between saving her brother and helping her new friends save the world…and that love may be the most dangerous magic of all.

Gemma Malley
The Legacy (The Declaration, Book 3)
Bloomsbury Children’s (UK: 6th September 2010)
Buy (US) Buy (UK) Buy (CA) Buy (Worldwide)
When a Pincent Pharma lorry is ambushed by the Underground, its contents come as a huge surprise – not drugs, but corpses in a horrible state. It appears Longevity isn’t working and the drugs promising eternal youth are failing to live up to their promises. A virus is sweeping the country, killing in its wake, and Longevity is powerless to fight it. When Richard Pincent of Pincent Pharma suggests that the Underground has released the virus, something has to be done to put the story straight and once and for all alert everyone to the truth.

Anya Bast
Cruel Enchantment (Dark Magick, Book 2)
Penguin Berkley (US & CA: 7th September 2010)
Buy (US) Buy (UK) Buy (CA) Buy (Worldwide)
Emmaline Gallagher is a master of wielding personal glamour. As a free fae who lives among humans, she must hide her true self at all times as she works undercover within the powerful Phaendir – for if certain factions within the Phaendir gain control, the fae will be wiped from existence. Now, an object of fae power lies within a locked ancient box. And there is only one fae who can forge the key. Known as “the Blacksmith” Aeric O’Malley can create or destroy almost anything with his forging skills. Emmaline has come to him in need, but he and Emmaline have a past – and he has spent centuries wanting to take revenge on her for her transgressions. But now that he has her within his grasp, something about her keeps him from exacting his vengeance – or is it merely her glamour blinding him? Trapped by fate, Emmaline must hope that she can reach Aeric’s furious heart before it’s too late…

Gail Giles
Dark Song
Hachette Little, Brown (US: 7th September 2010)
Buy (US) Buy (UK) Buy (CA)
Ames is not the person she was a few months ago. Her father lost his job, and her family is crumbling apart. Now, all she has is Marc. Marc, who loves her more than anything. Marc, who owns a gun collection. And he’ll stop at nothing – even using his guns – to get what he wants. Ames feels her parents have betrayed her with their lies and self-absorption, but is she prepared to make the ultimate betrayal against them?

Megan Hart
Amidst a Crowd of Stars
Samhain (US: 7th September 2010)
Marrin Levy needs a man. Not to have children. Her husband gave her three before he died – along with a failing homestead and crushing debt. What she needs is a strong back to help her wrest a living from the harsh, desert planet of Lujawed. She’s sent away for a field-husband to take over the hard labour, nothing more. She never expected the devastatingly handsome, forever-young Seveeran, Keane Delacore, would fit so easily into her family’s life. Keane’s heart is as strong as his back, bringing Marrin more than just help in the fields. He offers her love she never thought she’d feel again…if she has the courage to reach out and take it.

Nicole Kimberling
Happy Snak
Samhain (US: 7th September 2010)
Buy (US) Buy (UK) Buy (CA) Buy (Worldwide)
Gaia Jones is on A-Ki space station for one reason, and it’s not to ogle the hermaphroditic aliens. She’s out to make a name for herself and her line of intoxicating human snacks. Not easy in A-Ki’s tightly controlled society. Her task gets even more delicate when she rushes to the aid of a dying alien – and finds herself the unwilling guardian of a shunned alien ghost named Kenjan. And the new owner of his slave. The danger mounts when Kenjan’s grieving lover, the powerful leader of the Kishocha, offers her a dream and a nightmare rolled into one: a new store all her own with a strange double – half snack bar, half shrine. The catch? She must spend the rest of her life there, tending Kenjan the Heretic’s ghost. Or the entire station will be destroyed. There’s only one way to gain both her freedom and justice for Kenjan – teach both the powerful government elite and the Kishocha theocracy a lesson in uncivil disobedience…

Jory Strong
Healer’s Choice (Ghostland, Book 3)
Penguin Berkley (US & CA: 7th September 2010)
Buy (US) Buy (UK) Buy (CA) Buy (Worldwide)
In a post-Apocalyptic world where supernaturals have emerged from hiding, ancient, unseen enemies play a game that began at the dawn of human civilisation. War is coming and neutrality isn’t an option. For Were shapeshifters, a healer’s gift holds the key to their survival…Born into a world of violence and paid-for-sex, Rebekka longs for a family of her own and dreams of freeing those trapped in the shapeshifter brothels of the red zone. A witch’s prophecy claims she’ll one day use her gift to heal the Weres made outcast by their mixed human-animal forms. But Rebekka knows all too well that everything comes at a cost. Made a pawn in a game she can barely glimpse, by beings whose motives she can only guess, she must navigate a dangerous course that might well cost her life. With her gift changed in terrifying ways, a plea to save five children sends her into the arms of Aryck, a Jaguar enforcer – and into territory controlled by pure Weres. It’s a place where humans and outcasts aren’t welcomed. Where dead ancestors watch from the shadowlands and have the power to judge and punish the living. It’s a place where plague threatens and the fate of the Weres hangs in the balance. And where the choices Rebekka and Aryck make are paid for with their hearts…if not their souls.

Joan Frances Turner
Dust
Penguin Ace (US: 7th September 2010)
Buy (US) Buy (UK) Buy (CA) Buy (Worldwide)
Nine years ago, Jessie had a family. Now, she has a gang. Nine years ago, Jessie was a vegetarian. Now, she eats very fresh meat. Nine years ago, Jessie was in a car crash and died. Nine years ago, Jessie was human. Now, she’s not. After she was buried, Jessie awoke and tore through the earth to arise, reborn, as a zombie. Jessie’s gang is the Fly-by-Nights. She loves the ancient, skeletal Florian and his memories of time gone by. She’s in love with Joe, a maggot-infested corpse. They fight, hunt, dance together as one – something humans can never understand. There are dark places humans have learned to avoid, lest they run into the zombie gangs. But now, Jessie and the Fly-by-Nights have seen new creatures in the woods – things not human and not zombie. A strange new illness has flamed up out of nowhere, causing the undeads to become more alive and the living to exist on the brink of death. As bits and pieces of the truth fall around Jessie, like the flesh off her bones, she’ll have to choose between looking away or staring down the madness – and hanging onto everything she has come to know as life…

Merrie Destefano
Afterlife (Resurrection Chronicles, Book 1)
HarperCollins Eos (CA: 10th September 2010; US: 28th September 2010)
Review
Buy (US) Buy (UK) Buy (CA) Buy (Worldwide)
Chaz Domingue works as a professional Babysitter in New Orleans. His job is to integrate and protect the recently deceased into their new and improved lives – a position he reluctantly accepted after his father was murdered. Though Fresh Start has always been the only game in town, resurrection isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. Nine lives are all a person can get – and a powerful group of desperate, high-level Nine-Timers will stop at nothing to possess the keys to true immortality. Unfortunately, this places Chaz at the lethal centre of a maelstrom. Now the only hope for Chaz and his family – and the ultimate fate of the human race – is secretly locked away in the mind of Angelique, the beautiful, mysterious Newbie who’s been entrusted to Chaz’s care…

Robin Wasserman
Wired (Skinned, Book 3)
Simon & Schuster Pulse (US & CA: 14th September 2010)
Buy (US) Buy (UK) Buy (CA) Buy (Worldwide)
It’s been two months, and Lia is right back where she started: home, pretending to be the perfect daughter. But nothing’s the way it used to be. Lia has become the public face of the mechs, BioMax’s poster girl for the up-and-coming technology, devoting her life to convincing the world that she – and the others like her – deserve to exist. Then Jude resurfaces, and brings some scandalous information with him. Is BioMax really an ally to the mechs? Or are they using the technology for a great evil…and if so, can Auden really be a part of the plan? Meanwhile, Lia also learns a shocking truth about the accident that resulted in her download…a truth that forces her to make a decision she can never reverse.

Brenna Yovanoff
The Replacement
Penguin (US & CA: 21st September 2010)
Buy (US) Buy (UK) Buy (CA) Buy (Worldwide)
Mackie Doyle is not one of us. Though he lives in the small town of Gentry, he comes from a world of tunnels and black murky water, a world of living dead girls ruled by a little tattooed princess. He is a Replacement – left in the crib of a human baby sixteen years ago. Now, because of fatal allergies to iron, blood, and consecrated ground, Mackie is fighting to survive in the human world. Mackie would give anything to live among us, to practice on his bass or spend time with his crush, Tate. But when Tate’s baby sister goes missing, Mackie is drawn irrevocably into the underworld of Gentry, known as Mayhem. He must face the dark creatures of the Slag Heaps and find his rightful place, in our world, or theirs.

John Ajvide Lindqvist (translated from the Swedish original by Marlaine Delargy)
Harbour (originally published in Swedish as Människohamn)
Penguin Text (AU: 27th September 2010); Quercus (UK: 30th September 2010)
Buy (UK) Buy (CA) Buy (Worldwide)
It was a beautiful winter’s day. Anders, his wife and their feisty six-year-old, Maja, set out across the ice of the Swedish archipelago to visit the lighthouse on Gåvasten. There was no one around, so they let her go on ahead. And she disappeared, seemingly into thin air, and was never found. Two years later, Anders is a broken alcoholic, his life ruined. He returns to the archipelago, the home of his childhood and his family. But all he finds are Maja’s toys and through the haze of memory, loss and alcohol, he realises that someone – or something – is trying to communicate with him. Soon enough, his return sets in motion a series of horrifying events which exposes a mysterious and troubling relationship between the inhabitants of the remote island and the sea.

Marta Acosta
Haunted Honeymoon (Casa Dracula, Book 3)
Simon & Schuster Gallery (US & CA: 28th September 2010)
Buy (US) Buy (UK) Buy (CA) Buy (Worldwide)
As the only human to survive vampire infection, Milagro de Los Santos has become quite a celebrity among the blood-drinking elite. Too bad the perks of her condition – increased strength, super-fast healing – don’t pay her condo fees. There are other complications too. She’s feeling guilty about her fling with enigmatic Vampire Council member Ian Ducharme, and pining for her ex-fiancé, Dr. Oswald Grant…the fabulous man whose kiss changed her life. It’s when Milagro – irked by Ian’s attentions to his neighbour – travels to London and enjoys a sexy flirtation of her own, that the blood really hits the fan. Suddenly, those around her are dying gruesome deaths and Milagro’s being interrogated. Who would kill to set her up as a murder suspect? Milagro just wants to turn back the clock and have another chance to make things right, but no sooner has she escaped to Oswald’s ranch than an accident obliterates her memory. Will the murderer come after her now? And will amnesia spark a romantic do-over with Oswald – or will she make all the same mistakes before she ever gets to say “I do”?

Rachel Caine
The Morganville Vampires, Volume 2 [includes Midnight Alley & Feast of Fools] (Morganville Vampires, Books 3 & 4)
Penguin NAL (US: 28th September 2010)
Buy (US) Buy (CA) Buy (Worldwide)
Claire Danvers has pledged herself to Amelie, the most powerful vampire in town. But her protection doesn’t offer much comfort when people start turning up dead and an ancient bloodsucker extends a chilling invitation for private lessons in his secluded home, giving a terrifying new meaning to “night school”…The tenuous good-neighbour policy between the vampires and humans of Morganville is turned on its head with the arrival of bad-to-the-bone Mr. Bishop. What the ancient old-school vampire wants from the town is unthinkably sinister. It’s only at a formal ball that Claire realises the elaborately evil trap Bishop has set for the warm-blooded souls of Morganville.

Lexxie Couper
Savage Transformation (Savage Australia, Book 2)
Samhain (US: 28th September 2010)
Sydney Detective Jacqueline Huddart is on the run. She’s spent her entire adult life doing everything she can to ignore the lure of who she really is, what she really is, but when a funeral demands she return to her home state at the bottom of Australia, what she really is can no longer be denied. Especially when her best friend goes missing and a mysterious, sexy-as-sin Texan appears, telling Jackie he can help her find Delanie…if she will only trust him. Marshall Rourke has gone rogue – sort of. An elite agent with the US based Paranormal Anti-Crime Unit, Marshall has gone off the grid to track down his ex-partner: a ruthless man hunting paranormal beings and butchering them for the joy of the kill. What better way to draw him out of hiding then to dangle a target so unique under his nose he can’t resist: the last shape-shifting Tasmanian tiger in existence. Trouble is, Marshall didn’t plan on Jackie Huddart being quite so feisty…or desirable, and the dire wolf he truly is wants her. Badly. On every level imaginable. So how’s a secret agent meant to catch his prey when using Jackie as bait is quickly becoming the last way he wants to use her? And how is she going to let him live when she finds out what he doesn’t want her to know?

Carolyn Crane
Double Cross (Disillusionists, Book 2)
Random House Spectra (US & CA: 28th September 2010)
Buy (US) Buy (UK) Buy (CA) Buy (Worldwide)
Justine Jones lived her life as a fearful hypochondriac until she was lured into the web of a mysterious mastermind named Packard, who gifts her with extraordinary mental powers – dooming her to fight Midcity’s shadowy war on paranormal crime in order to find the peace she so desperately craves. But now serial killers with unheard-of skills are terrorising the most powerful beings in Midcity; including mastermind Packard and his oldest friend and worst enemy, Midcity’s new mayor, who has the ability to bend matter itself to his will. As the body count grows, Justine faces a crisis of conscience as she tests the limits of her new powers and faces an impossible choice between two flawed but brilliant men – one on a journey of redemption, the other descending into a pit of moral depravity.

Erica Hayes
Poison Kissed (Shadowfae Chronicles, Book 3)
Macmillan St. Martin’s (US: 28th September 2010)
Buy (US) Buy (UK) Buy (CA) Buy (Worldwide)
Mina is a banshee whose greatest power lies in her siren song. She’s beholden to her boss Joey, a snake-shifter who once saved her life and now employs her as a gang enforcer. She refuses to upset the fragile balance between them by admitting that she longs for him, that his embrace is the only thing she craves more than revenge for her mother’s death…When Mina learns that Joey may have been involved in her mother’s murder, fury threatens to spill out of her note by vicious note. She and Joey have always trusted each other to stay alive, but now she’s not sure what to believe. The evidence stacked against him – or the one man who haunts her dreams and burns her blood…

A. J. Menden
Sorceress, Interrupted (Elite Hands of Justice, Book 3)
Dorchester Love Spell (US: 28th September 2010)
Buy (US) Buy (UK) Buy (CA) Buy (Worldwide)
Though Megalopolis has many superheroes, none of them is quite like Fantazia. That’s no surprise, given her parentage. But immortality is hard, even for a sorceress. Watching loved ones age and die…? It’s better to live in a pocket universe tending bar. It’s safer to remain cold and aloof, to not get attached to anything or anyone. So, helping the Elite Hands of Justice defeat the Dragon was a mistake. Her father’s band of shiny, happy do-gooders with social lives right out of a soap opera gave Fantazia a taste of camaraderie – and of something else. Hanging around their mysterious ally has birthed a new threat, something worse than the evil plot of the city’s newest super-villain. The true peril is Cyrus…for he threatens Fantazia’s heart.

Maggie Shayne
Kiss Me, Kill Me (Secrets of Shadow Falls, Book 3)
Mills & Boon Mira (AU: September 2010)
Buy (US) Buy (CA) Buy (Worldwide)
A long-ago act of kindness to a desperate woman changed Dr. Carrie Overton’s life forever. Before disappearing, the grateful stranger gave Carrie her newborn son. When the woman is murdered, the secret becomes Carrie’s alone. She has kept both it and her son, Sam, safe for sixteen years. But now a friend of Sam’s has gone missing. The police believe he’s a runaway, until he’s found dead, another teen disappears – and talk turns to that long-ago murder. Newcomer Gabriel Cain is asking too many questions, befriending Sam, getting too close. Carrie distrusts him even as she finds herself falling for him. But Gabriel has secrets, too…Will his arrival mark the day the lie finally ends and real life begins?