My Book Haul / Showcase Sundays

This is Books, Biscuits and Tea's Showcase Sunday where I share my lovely book hauls each week. Have a look back at Vicki's link up to see what everyone is up too!

This week I thoroughly enjoyed Etiquette and Espionage by Gail Carriger - so much fun! I also enjoyed another visit to Denver in Kitty Rocks The House by Carrie Vaughn and raced around the Pacific discovering ancient mysteries in Deep Fathom by James Rollins before retreating to the mountains again with a visit to Mythos Academy in Midnight Frost by Jennifer Estep

This week I had to trot down to my local post office sorting depot as over the last couple of weeks I've missed a lot of parcels as I'm usually at work when the postman calls! Imagine my surprise and delight as unknown competition wins and a pile of unexpected review books turned up. It was a very good week!

For Review

Winter Damage - Nastaha Carthew

Publisher: Bloomsbury (Published 1st August 2013)

On a frozen Cornish moor, a fifteen-year-old girl lives in a trailer with her dad and little brother. Ennor's mother left years ago, when things started to go wrong - and gradually their world has fallen apart. Now her father's gravely ill, school has closed, and Ennor knows they're going to take her brother away if things don't pick up soon. So three days before Christmas, when the wind is cold and her dad's health takes a turn for the worse, Ennor packs a blanket, a map, a saucepan and a gun into her rucksack, and sets off to find her mum and bring her home. Ennor thinks she knows where she's going. But this journey will change her life for ever - it becomes a battle for survival, a heartbreaking story of love and friendship, and a fable about not finding what you were looking for, but finding something more important instead ...

This arrived in a wonderful reading kit complete with wispa chocolate bar, hot chocolate, tissues and fingerless gloves. This was such a lovely surprise and the book like it might be an intriguing tear-jerker.

The Beating Of His Wings (Left Hand of God #3) - Paul Hoffman

Publisher: Penguin

Thomas Cale has been running from the truth.

Since discovering that his brutal military training has been for one purpose - to destroy God's greatest mistake, mankind itself - Cale has been hunted by the very man who made him into the Angel of Death: Pope Redeemer Bosco.

Cale is a paradox: arrogant and innocent, generous and pitiless. Feared and revered by those created him, he has already used his breathtaking talent for destruction to bring down the most powerful civilisation in the world.

But Thomas Cale is weak. His soul is dying. As his body is wracked with convulsions he knows that the final judgment will not wait for a sick boy. As the day of reckoning draws close, Cale's sense of vengeance leads him back to the Sanctuary - and to confront the person he hates most in the world. Finally Cale must recognise that he is the incarnation of God's rage and decide if he will stand against the Sanctuary of the Redeemers and use his unique skill of laying waste to all things.

The fate of mankind rests on Cale's decision.

I read the first two books in this trilogy from Penguin and while they were interesting reads, I have to admit I'd not really keen on picking up this huge tome straight away.

Crown of Midnight (Throne of Glass #2) - Sarah J Maas
Publisher: Bloomsbury

Eighteen-year-old Celaena Sardothien is bold, daring and beautiful – the perfect seductress and the greatest assassin her world has ever known. But though she won the King’s contest and became his champion, Celaena has been granted neither her liberty nor the freedom to follow her heart. The slavery of the suffocating salt mines of Endovier that scarred her past is nothing compared to a life bound to her darkest enemy, a king whose rule is so dark and evil it is near impossible to defy. Celaena faces a choice that is tearing her heart to pieces: kill in cold blood for a man she hates, or risk sentencing those she loves to death. Celaena must decide what she will fight for: survival, love or the future of a kingdom. Because an assassin cannot have it all . . . And trying to may just destroy her.

I already have this from Netgalley but I was so happy when Bloomsbury sent me through a finished copy to review as well!

All Our Yesterdays - Cristin Terrill
Publisher: Bloomsbury

Em is locked in a bare, cold cell with no comforts. Finn is in the cell next door. The Doctor is keeping them there until they tell him what he wants to know. Trouble is, what he wants to know hasn't happened yet.  Em and Finn have a shared past, but no future unless they can find a way out. The present is torture - being kept apart, overhearing each other's anguish as the Doctor relentlessly seeks answers. There's no way back from here, to what they used to be, the world they used to know. Then Em finds a note in her cell which changes everything. It's from her future self and contains some simple but very clear instructions. Em must travel back in time to avert a tragedy that's about to unfold. Worse, she has to pursue and kill the boy she loves to change the future

This is my one request from Netgalley this week as I just can't resist time travel stories! :-)

Wins

Blood Song (Raven's Shadow #1) - Anthony  Ryan

Publisher: Orbit

Vaelin Al Sorna, Brother of the Sixth Order, has been trained from childhood to fight and kill in service to the Faith. He has earned many names and almost as many scars, acquiring an ugly dog and a bad-tempered horse in the process. Ensnared in an unjust war by a king possessed of either madness or genius, Vaelin seeks to answer the question that will decide the fate of the Realm: …who is the one who waits?

I won this in Orbits monthly newsletter...and its been a week for epic fantasy books arriving!

My Lynch's Holiday - Catherine O'Flynn
Publisher: Viking

Welcome to Lomaverde - a new Spanish utopia for those seeking their place in the sun. Now a ghost town where feral cats outnumber the handful of anxious residents. A place of empty pools, long afternoons and unrelenting sunshine. 
Here, widowed Midlands bus driver Dermot Lynch turns up one bright morning. He's come to visit his son Eammon and his girlfriend, Laura. Except Eammon never opened Dermot's letter announcing his trip. Just like he can't quite get out of bed, or fix anything, or admit Laura has left him. Though neither father nor son knows quite what to make of the other, Lomaverde's Brits - Roger and Cheryl, Becca and Iain - see in Dermot a shot of fresh blood. Someone to enliven their goat-hunting trips, their paranoid speculations, the endless barbecuing and bickering.As Dermot and Eammon gradually reveal to one another the truth about why each left home, both get drawn further into the bizarre rituals of ex-pat life, where they uncover a shocking secret at the community's heart.

I won this in a Goodreads Giveaway as it sounded like an interesting story!

Bought

The Glass God (Magical Anonymous #2) - Kate Griffin

Publisher: Orbit

Sharon Li: apprentice shaman and community support officer for the magically inclined. It wasn't the career Sharon had in mind, but she's getting used to running Magicals Anonymous and learning how to Be One With The City.
When the Midnight Mayor goes missing, leaving only a suspiciously innocent-looking umbrella behind him, Sharon finds herself promoted. Her first task: find the Midnight Mayor. The only clues she has are a city dryad's cryptic message of doom and several pairs of abandoned shoes...
Suddenly, Sharon's job feels a whole lot harder...

Kate Griffin writes wonderful UF set in London. Matthew Swift is a great character and while this is a spinoff series from that I still had to reorder it it!

So what did you pick up this week? Anything I should be adding to my wishlist...?