FEATURE & FOLLOW (#3): BOOK COVERS IN MY FAVORITE COLOR

"Red is the first color of spring. It's the real color of rebirth. Of beginning." 

Ally Condie, Matched

*Feature & Follow is a blog hop hosted by Alison Can Read and Parajunkee. The goal is to increase blog followers, make friends and have something to post. So, check it out and participate!!!

1. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone & Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Harry Potter #1, #4) by J.K. Rowling

"It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live."

Summary (#1):

Harry Potter thinks he is an ordinary boy. He lives with his Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia and cousin Dudley, who are mean to him and make him sleep in a cupboard under the stairs. (Dudley, however, has two bedrooms, one to sleep in and one for all his toys and games.) 

Then Harry starts receiving mysterious letters and his life is changed forever. He is whisked away by a beetle-eyed giant of a man and enrolled at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The reason: Harry Potter is a wizard! 

The first book in the "Harry Potter" series makes the perfect introduction to the world of Hogwarts.

Summary (#4):

(SPOILERS if you haven't read the previous ones)

Harry Potter is midway through both his training as a wizard and his coming of age. 

Harry wants to get away from the pernicious Dursleys and go to the International Quidditch Cup with Hermione, Ron, and the Weasleys. He wants to dream about Cho Chang, his crush (and maybe do more than dream). He wants to find out about the mysterious event that supposed to take place at Hogwarts this year, an event involving two other rival schools of magic, and a competition that hasn't happened for hundreds of years. 

He wants to be a normal, fourteen-year-old wizard. But unfortunately for Harry Potter, he's not normal - even by wizarding standards.

And in his case, different can be deadly.

2. Crown of Midnight (Throne of Glass #2) by Sarah J. Maas

 

"To escape death, she'd become death."

Summary:

(SPOILERS if you haven't read the previous one)

From the throne of glass rules a king with a fist of iron and a soul as black as pitch. Assassin Celaena Sardothien won a brutal contest to become his Champion. Yet Celaena is far from loyal to the crown. She hides her secret vigilantly; she knows that the man she serves is bent on evil.

Keeping up the deadly charade becomes increasingly difficult when Celaena realizes she is not the only one seeking justice. As she tries to untangle the mysteries buried deep within the glass castle, her closest relationships suffer. It seems no one is above questioning her allegiances—not the Crown Prince Dorian; not Chaol, the Captain of the Guard; not even her best friend, Nehemia, a foreign princess with a rebel heart.

Then one terrible night, the secrets they have all been keeping lead to an unspeakable tragedy. As Celaena's world shatters, she will be forced to give up the very thing most precious to her and decide once and for all where her true loyalties lie... and whom she is ultimately willing to fight for.

3. Anna Dressed in Blood & Girl of Nightmares (Anna #1, #2) by Kendare Blake

"I hit him with a board; of course he’s got a concussion. Don’t be an idiot."

Summary (#1):

Cas Lowood has inherited an unusual vocation: He kills the dead.

So did his father before him, until he was gruesomely murdered by a ghost he sought to kill. Now, armed with his father's mysterious and deadly athame, Cas travels the country with his kitchen-witch mother and their spirit-sniffing cat. They follow legends and local lore, destroy the murderous dead, and keep pesky things like the future and friends at bay.

Searching for a ghost the locals call Anna Dressed in Blood, Cas expects the usual: track, hunt, kill. What he finds instead is a girl entangled in curses and rage, a ghost like he's never faced before. She still wears the dress she wore on the day of her brutal murder in 1958: once white, now stained red and dripping with blood. Since her death, Anna has killed any and every person who has dared to step into the deserted Victorian she used to call home.

Yet she spares Cas's life.

Summary (#2):

(SPOILERS if you haven't read the previous one)

It's been months since the ghost of Anna Korlov opened a door to Hell in her basement and disappeared into it, but ghost-hunter Cas Lowood can't move on.

His friends remind him that Anna sacrificed herself so that Cas could live—not walk around half dead. He knows they're right, but in Cas's eyes, no living girl he meets can compare to the dead girl he fell in love with.

Now he's seeing Anna everywhere: sometimes when he's asleep and sometimes in waking nightmares. But something is very wrong...these aren't just daydreams. Anna seems tortured, torn apart in new and ever more gruesome ways every time she appears.

Cas doesn't know what happened to Anna when she disappeared into Hell, but he knows she doesn't deserve whatever is happening to her now. Anna saved Cas more than once, and it's time for him to return the favor.

4. Every Other Day by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

"All's fair in love and war--and black ops."

Summary:

Every other day, Kali D'Angelo is a normal sixteen-year-old girl. She goes to high school. She argues with her father.

She's human.

But every other day... she's not.

Though she's not quite sure what she is on those days, Kali knows what she does – she hunts, traps, and kills demons, hellhounds, and other supernatural creatures that threaten her world. On those days, she is practically indestructible.

But when Kali notices a mark on a popular girl at school, she knows instantly that the girl is marked for death by one of these unworldly beings. And she knows she only has twenty-four hours to save her.

There's only one problem – it's the wrong twenty-four hours.

5. The Strain (The Strain Trilogy #1) by Guillermo del Toro, Chuck Hogan

"Neeva looked at the puddle of Christ's tears on the floor. When the power of Jesus fails you, then you know you truly are shit out of luck."

Summary:

A Boeing 777 arrives at JFK and is on its way across the tarmac, when it suddenly stops dead. All window shades are pulled down. All lights are out. All communication channels have gone quiet. Crews on the ground are lost for answers, but an alert goes out to the CDC. Dr. Ephraim "Eph" Goodweather, head of their Canary project, a rapid-response team that investigates biological threats, gets the call and boards the plane. What he finds makes his blood run cold.

In a pawnshop in Spanish Harlem, a former professor and survivor of the Holocaust named Abraham Setrakian knows something is happening. And he knows the time has come, that a war is brewing.

So begins a battle of mammoth proportions as the vampiric virus that has infected New York begins to spill out into the streets. Eph, who is joined by Setrakian and a motley crew of fighters, must now find a way to stop the contagion and save his city - a city that includes his wife and son - before it is too late.

6. Caperucita en Manhattan by Carmen Martín Gaite

"Dreams can only be cultivated in the dark and in secret."

Summary:

Little Red Riding Hood is a literature classic on the initiation to adult life, about the dangers we have to face and the requirement to do so in freedom and solitude.

Carmen Martín Gaite masterfully recreates this story and adapts it to the society in which we live, with a Little Red Riding Hood, who's a child of today and that's moving in a very different forest (Manhattan), although you also will find the characters in the famous story, completely different here: miss Lunatic, mister Wolf, etc.

Reading Caperucita en Manhattan, one of the great successes of the spanish young adult literature, has provided us with an opportunity to reflect on our own world, on the way in which we try to be different every day and on how to be ourselves in the society in which we have to live.

7. Scarlet (The Lunar Chronicles #2) by Marissa Meyer

"But you're the only one, Scarlet. You'll always be the only one."

Summary:

(SPOILERS if you haven't read the previous ones)

Cinder, the cyborg mechanic, returns in the second thrilling installment of the bestselling Lunar Chronicles. She’s trying to break out of prison—even though if she succeeds, she’ll be the Commonwealth’s most wanted fugitive.

Halfway around the world, Scarlet Benoit’s grandmother is missing. It turns out there are many things Scarlet doesn’t know about her grandmother or the grave danger she has lived in her whole life. When Scarlet encounters Wolf, a street fighter who may have information as to her grandmother’s whereabouts, she is loath to trust this stranger, but is inexplicably drawn to him, and he to her. 

As Scarlet and Wolf unravel one mystery, they encounter another when they meet Cinder. Now, all of them must stay one step ahead of the vicious Lunar Queen Levana, who will do anything for the handsome Prince Kai to become her husband, her king, her prisoner.

8. A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon

"And it occurred to him that there were two parts to being a better person. One part was thinking about other people. The other part was not giving a toss what other people thought."

Summary:

George Hall is an unobtrusive man. A little distant, perhaps, a little cautious, not at quite at ease with the emotional demands of fatherhood, or manly bonhomie. He does not understand the modern obsession with talking about everything. “The secret of contentment, George felt, lay in ignoring many things completely.” Some things in life, however, cannot be ignored.

At 61, George is settling down to a comfortable retirement, building a shed in his garden, reading historical novels and listening to a bit of light jazz. Then his tempestuous daughter, Katie, announces that she is getting re-married, to the deeply inappropriate Ray. Her family is not pleased – as her brother Jamie observes, Ray has “strangler’s hands.” Katie can’t decide if she loves Ray, or loves the wonderful way he has with her son Jacob, and her mother Jean is a bit put out by all the planning and arguing the wedding has occasioned, which get in the way of her quite fulfilling late-life affair with one of her husband’s ex-colleagues. And the tidy and pleasant life Jamie has created crumbles when he fails to invite his lover, Tony, to the dreaded nuptials.

Unnoticed in the uproar, George discovers a sinister lesion on his hip, and quietly begins to lose his mind.

9. Immortal by Christopher Golden, Nancy Holder

"In its way, Sunnydale was the heart of darkness. And if you want to destroy a thing, you aim for the heart."

Summary:

"Instant Replay" During a routine slaying, Buffy encounters a vampire named Veronique who knows the slayer's name and can anticipate her attack. One who doesn't have the proper respect for Mr. Pointy. One who cannot die. If slain, she will reincarnate in a new body.

An invincible demon is the last thing Buffy needs right now. Joyce Summers is about to undergo a serious operation, calling up all of her daughter's fears about her own mortality. Angel wants to comfort Buffy, but her mother's crisis underscores the differences between them: he will live forever, while she will grow old...or die young.

Torn between her duties as the Chosen One, Buffy needs the support of her friends to help her solve a rash of grave robberies, head off an influx of new vampires, and take Veronique down once and for all. For Veronique is on a mission -- to bring about the unification of her masters, the Triumvirate, into one all-powerful demon that will drink the blood of the last man on earth...

10. A Feast For Crows (A Song of Ice and Fire #4) by George R.R. Martin

"Most have been forgotten. Most deserve to be forgotten. The heroes will always be remembered. The best. The best and the worst. And a few who were a bit of both."

Summary:

(SPOILERS if you haven't read the previous ones)

With A Feast for Crows, Martin delivers the long-awaited fourth volume of the landmark series that has redefined imaginative fiction and stands as a modern masterpiece in the making.

After centuries of bitter strife, the seven powers dividing the land have beaten one another into an uneasy truce. But it's not long before the survivors, outlaws, renegades, and carrion eaters of the Seven Kingdoms gather. 

Now, as the human crows assemble over a banquet of ashes, daring new plots and dangerous new alliances are formed while surprising faces—some familiar, others only just appearing—emerge from an ominous twilight of past struggles and chaos to take up the challenges of the terrible times ahead. Nobles and commoners, soldiers and sorcerers, assassins and sages, are coming together to stake their fortunes...and their lives. 

For at a feast for crows, many are the guests—but only a few are the survivors.