White Cat by Holly Black

This new world of "curse workers" is a winner...

Holly Black is known to leagues of teenlit fans for her books of fae worlds...with White Cat (Curse Workers, Book 1) she draws us into the world of the "curse workers".

From the product description: curse workers -- people who have the power to change your emotions, your memories, your luck, by the slightest touch of their hands. And since curse work is illegal, they're all mobsters, or con artists.

...and when I say she draws you in I truly mean it - the excitement, action and characters draw you in immediately and if this is just the beginning I can't wait for more...Lila, Cassel and his family offer characters that we can relate to and involve ourselves in...thanks Holly Black for yet another new world!

BTW - I have a white cat with one blue eye and one green eye...what do you think?

Product Description from Amazon

Cassel comes from a family of curse workers -- people who have the power to change your emotions, your memories, your luck, by the slightest touch of their hands. And since curse work is illegal, they're all mobsters, or con artists. Except for Cassel. He hasn't got the magic touch, so he's an outsider, the straight kid in a crooked family. You just have to ignore one small detail -- he killed his best friend, Lila, three years ago.

Ever since, Cassel has carefully built up a façade of normalcy, blending into the crowd. But his façade starts crumbling when he starts sleepwalking, propelled into the night by terrifying dreams about a white cat that wants to tell him something. He's noticing other disturbing things, too, including the strange behavior of his two brothers. They are keeping secrets from him, caught up in a mysterious plot. As Cassel begins to suspect he's part of a huge con game, he also wonders what really happened to Lila. Could she still be alive? To find that out, Cassel will have to out-con the conmen.

Holly Black has created a gripping tale of mobsters and dark magic where a single touch can bring love -- or death -- and your dreams might be more real than your memories.

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BOOK GIVEAWAY!!! Child of Fire Winners Announced!

The Child of Fire

by Harry Connolly

Book Giveaway Winners!

..you can find info about the giveaway here!

...and the winners are!!!!

Wrighty

Becky LeJuene

Cindi

Dana E.

Misty (it pays to enter 3 times it was your Twitter add that won!!!)

...congratulations to all the winners!!!

if you didn't leave an email address I hope you read this note!

Find me on Twitter as @ReadingItAll

...or email your info to robynahawk at yahoo

Child of Fire by Harry Connolly

Child of Fire: A Twenty Palaces Novel

Spontaneously combusting children, a really creepy town, a successful company that makes utterly ridiculous products, the unsettling police department made up of three brothers, a sorceress charged with hunting down and killing rogue magicians...and her driver, a convicted felon who has recently been released...confused yet?

Good! Now we can all start from the same place!

What really works in this much anticipated first effort from Harry Connolly is that the lead character starts this ride as much in the blue as the reader. He knows nothing about the mission or his role in completing it.

In Child of Fire: A Twenty Palaces Novel, Connolly creates a world that, while at times completely implausible, grips you from the opening pages.

Ray Lilly's thoughts play out in front of you in much the same way the noir detectives did...gritty, hard boiled with a heart. It is the heart that continually gets Ray into bad situations.

All the comparisons to Jim Butcher's protagonist in Storm Front (The Dresden Files, Book 1) are warranted - in fact Butcher wrote a glowing review of Connolly's style of writing, calling it "a truly dark and sinister world, delicious tension and suspense, violence so gritty you'll get something in your eye just reading it"

I am really eager to see more from Harry Connolly and would love a little more about Ray Lilly and the Twenty Palace Society.

Product Description from Amazon
Ray Lilly is living on borrowed time. He’s the driver for Annalise Powliss, a high-ranking member of the Twenty Palace Society, a group of sorcerers devoted to hunting down and executing rogue magicians. But because Ray betrayed her once, Annalise is looking for an excuse to kill him–or let someone else do the job.

Unfortunately for both of them, Annalise’s next mission goes wrong, leaving her critically injured. With the little magic he controls, Ray must complete her assignment alone. Not only does he have to stop a sorcerer who’s sacrificing dozens of innocent lives in exchange for supernatural power, he must find–and destroy–the source of that inhuman magic.