Jun 2 2010

SUMMER ACE/ROC Giveaway

By Jane • Contests/Giveaways • • Tags: ,

About every quarter, Anne Sowards come to Dear Author to give us a preview of the upcoming books from Ace/Roc. We talk about books, give books away and generally celebrate Anne’s great taste in stories. Without further ado, here is the post. The giveaway instructions are at the end of the post. Contest closes on Friday at 10 PM CST and the winners will be posted on Sunday.

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Welcome to Ace and Roc's forthcoming summer books giveaway.

Thanks again to Dear Author for giving me this opportunity to let you know about some of our terrific upcoming titles. As always, there are too many great books for me to mention all of them, so you can look at our site (http://us.penguingroup.com/static/pages/specialinterests/scifi/index.html) to see everything we publish. Happy reading!

June 2010

Magic Bleeds by Ilona Andrews MAGIC BLEEDS by Ilona Andrews

What can I say, Ilona Andrews just keeps getting better. This is the latest in the Kate Daniels urban fantasy series, set in an alternate Atlanta where magic comes and goes like the tide. Kate works for the Order of Knights of Merciful Aid, officially, as a liaison with the mercenary guild. Unofficially, she cleans up the paranormal problems no one else wants to handle-’especially if they involve Atlanta's shapeshifting community.

Kate has a lot of dangerous secrets that have made it difficult for her to get close to people, and over the last few books she has been slowly opening up. In this book, there is what I refer to as Significant Relationship Developments. Things will be decided one way-’or the other-’between Kate and Curran, the Beast Lord.
Lightborn by Sinclair LIGHTBORN by Alison Sinclair

Last year I mentioned DARKBORN, the first in a wonderful Regency-tinged romantic fantasy trilogy (with appeal to readers of Sharon Shinn and Carol Berg). LIGHTBORN is the follow-up, set in a city divided, where an ancient curse makes darkness anathema to the Lightborn, while the touch of sunlight kills the Darkborn. One of the most interesting things about the series is how the author takes a science based approach to some of the fantastical elements and follows through with it in the writing. The Darkborn are blind, due to their inability to stand the touch of sunlight, and everything described from the point of view of a Darkborn character only references texture and sound. It's the kind of thing that you might not notice on first reading, but the book is richer for it.

Lady Telmaine Hearne is a Darkborn mage who has kept her powers secret, fearful of being ruined in society-until her husband, Balthasar, draw her into a conspiracy. On the other side of sunrise, the assassin Floria White Hand, is one of the Lightborn prince's most trusted guards as well as Balthasar Hearne's oldest friend. When the prince dies in darkness, Floria is suspected, and she must flee for her life to the Darkborn. The murder turns Darkborn against Lightborn, earthborn against mage. A Darkborn lady, a Lighborn assassin, and a dissident Lightborn mage form an unlikely alliance as conspiracies ripen and treason declares itself on both sides of sunrise-

July 2010

Red Hot Fury by Kasey Mackenzie
 RED HOT FURY by Kasey Mackenzie

If you're feeling "been there, done that" about urban fantasy full of vampires and werewolves, have I got a book for you. This is the beginning of a brand new urban fantasy series, about a woman who is a Fury, a member of an Arcane race that has avenged wrongdoing since time immemorial. It's fresh and fun and a unique take on the genre.

In addition to being a Fury, Marissa Holloway is Boston's chief magical investigator, solving supernatural crimes for the city. But it's far from business as usual when the body of a sister Fury washes up in Boston Harbor. When Riss reports that the corpse's identity has been magically altered, she's immediately-’and inexplicably-’suspended from her job. Then a human assassin makes an attempt on her life, and Riss realizes that someone is trying to stir up strife between mortals and Arcanes. When a Fury gets mad, she gets even, and Riss is determined to uncover the truth.
A Devil in the Details A DEVIL IN THE DETAILS by K. A. Stewart

This is a little more peripheral, but it kicks off a fantastic boy contemporary fantasy series (with appeal to readers of Jim Butcher, Simon R. Green, and Rob Thurman) that has a terrific voice and a great sense of humor. I simply had a wonderful time with it, so I wanted to share.

Jesse James Dawson was an ordinary guy (well, an ordinary guy with a black belt in karate), until the day he learned his brother had made a bargain with a demon. Jesse discovered there was only one way to save his brother: Put up his own soul as collateral and fight the demon to the death. Jesse lives to free his brother, and becomes part of a loose organization of champions who put their own souls on the line to help those who get in over their heads with demons.

This doesn't have traditional romantic elements, but there is love and sacrifice-and Jesse's sometimes tense relationship with his wife, who is understandably not keen on him fighting demons for a living!

August 2010

A Wild Light Liu A WILD LIGHT by Marjorie Liu

The next book in Marjorie Liu's action-packed urban fantasy series about a demon hunter whose tattoos come to life. (I dare you not to be intrigued by that!)

For too long Maxine Kiss has felt an inexplicable darkness inside her-’a force she channels into hunting the demons bent on destroying the human race. But when she finds herself covered in blood and crouched beside her grandfather's dead body with no memory of what happened or of the man she loves, Maxine begins to fear that the darkness has finally consumed her-
Total Eclipse TOTAL ECLIPSE by Rachel Caine

This is it, the grand finale, and the book that the Weather Warden series has been building up to: will warden Joanne Baldwin and the Djinn David avert the apocalypse and ride off into the sunset together-or not? All I'll say is that it's dramatic, exciting and very satisfying.

Standing at ground zero for the last attack, Joanne, David, and the Earth herself have been poisoned by a substance that is destroying the magic that keeps the world alive. Joanne and David have already lost their powers, but that's just the beginning. The poison that has seeped into the planet is destabilizing the entire balance of power, bestowing magic on those who have never had it and taking it at critical moments from those who need it. It's just a matter of time before the delicate balance of nature explodes into chaos, destroying mankind-’and every living thing on Earth-’with it.

Anne Sowards is an executive editor at Penguin Group (USA) Inc., where she primarily acquires and edits fantasy and science fiction for the Ace and Roc imprints. Some of the great authors she works with include Jim Butcher, Patricia Briggs, Rachel Caine, Anne Bishop, Ilona Andrews, Karen Chance, Jack Campbell, and Rob Thurman. When she’s not reading, she listens to Chinese rap and spends way too much time playing video games. Follow her at http://twitter.com/AnneSowards.

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GIVEAWAY INSTRUCTIONS!!!!

Anne and Penguin are giving away one book to seventeen random commenters. I usually save a few ARCs to giveaway but I couldn’t find any this time?? so I am throwing in five $5 gift certificates from Amazon. I hope you use it to buy your favorite ACE/ROC book.

Anyway, to enter, leave a comment with the TOP TWO PICKS from the choices below !!!!AND!!! which book you thought had the best cover.

  • MAGIC BLEEDS / Ilona Andrews – 3 ARCs
  • LIGHTBORN / Alison Sinclair – 3 ARCs
  • A DEVIL IN THE DETAILS / K. A. Stewart – 3 ARCs
  • RED HOT FURY / Kasey Mackenzie – 3 finished copies
  • A WILD LIGHT / Marjorie M. Liu – 2 ARCs
  • TOTAL ECLIPSE / Rachel Caine – 3 ARCs
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