Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. This week the theme is all about books on my spring TBR.
Once again, a last-minute TTT post. Nonetheless, the books presented here are some I want to read (or have already read) and hopefully can do so during spring 2022. But I won´t promise anything. I post them, as always, in random order. The list contains new releases as well as books I already have on my TBR and shows audiobooks, and printed editions.
Half-Fae, half-human Bryce Quinlan loves her life. By day, she works for an antiquities dealer, selling barely legal magical artifacts, and by night, she parties with her friends, savoring every pleasure Lunathion - otherwise known as Crescent City – has to offer. But it all comes crumbling down when a ruthless murder shakes the very foundations of the city – and Bryce´s world. Two years later, her job has become a dead end, and she now seeks only blissful oblivion in the city´s most notorious nightclubs. But when the murderer attacks again, Bryce finds herself dragged into the investigation and paired with an infamous Fallen angel whose own brutal past haunts his every step. Hunt Athalar, personal assassin for the Archangels, wants nothing to do with Bryce Quinlan, despite being ordered to protect her. She stands for everything he once rebelled against and seems more interested in partying than solving the murder, no matter how close to home it might hit. But Hunt soon realizes there´s far more to Bryce than meets the eye – and that he´s going to have to find a way to work with her if they want to solve this case. As Bryce and Hunt race to untangle the mystery, they have no way of knowing the threads they tug ripple through the underbelly of the city, across warring continents, and down to the darkest levels of Hel, where things that have been sleeping for millennia are beginning to stir …
If it weren't for her grandparents' little cottage, Drue Campbell wouldn't be able to take the new job at her father's law firm. In general, she feels a bit lost in her life right now. The little beach house with its old-world charm and the many beautiful memories gives her support. Then Drue discovers financial irregularities in a case the firm has been handling and sets out to find out the truth. Despite all the excitement, she doesn't have much time for love. But even if you don't search, you will find.
Quinn is cool, smart, and popular. Matilda comes from the hated family next door, has a penchant for fantasy novels, and is definitely not his type. But when Quinn is pursued by creepy creatures one night and badly injured, he sees things that can't be of this world. But who can you confide in when statues suddenly speak in bad rhymes and skeletal skulls grin confidentially? Preferably the girl across the street who you don't give a damn about. However, Quinn had not planned that he and Matilda would be catapulted into a magical adventure full of dangers. And even less to fall madly in love...
Elizabeth, Veronica, Rachel, and Emily met at Camp Birchwood as girls in 1985, where over four summers they were the Clover Girls – inseparable for those magical few weeks of freedom – until the last summer that pulled them apart. Now approaching middle age, the women are facing challenges they never imagined as teens, struggles with their marriage, their children, their careers, and wondering who it is they see when they look in the mirror. Then Liz, V, and Rachel each receive a letter from Emily with devastating news. She implores the girls who were once her best friends to reunite at Camp Birchwood one last time, to spend a week together revisiting the dreams they´d put aside and repair the relationship they´d allowed to sour. But the women are not the same idealistic, confident girls who once ruled Camp Birchwood, and perhaps some friendships aren´t meant to last forever …
Galaxy “Alex” Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale’s freshman class. Raised in the Los Angeles hinterlands by a hippie mom, Alex dropped out of school early and into a world of shady drug dealer boyfriends, dead-end jobs, and much, much worse. By age twenty, in fact, she is the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved multiple homicide. Some might say she’s thrown her life away. But at her hospital bed, Alex is offered a second chance: to attend one of the world’s most elite universities on a full ride. What’s the catch, and why her? Still searching for answers to this herself, Alex arrives in New Haven tasked by her mysterious benefactors with monitoring the activities of Yale’s secret societies. These eight windowless “tombs” are well-known to be haunts of the future rich and powerful, from high-ranking politicos to Wall Street and Hollywood’s biggest players. But their occult activities are revealed to be more sinister and more extraordinary than any paranoid imagination might conceive.
An ordinary life. Leigh Coulton has worked hard to build what looks like a normal life. She has a good job as a defense attorney, a daughter doing well in school, and even her divorce is relatively civilized - her life is just as unremarkable as she'd always hoped it would be. Hides a devastating past. But Leigh's ordinary life masks a childhood that was far from average... a childhood tarnished by secrets, broken by betrayal, and finally torn apart by a devastating act of violence. But now the past is catching up. Then a case lands on her desk - defending a wealthy man accused of rape. It's the highest-profile case she's ever been given - a case that could transform her career if she wins. But when she meets the accused, she realizes that it's no coincidence that he's chosen her as his attorney. She knows him. And he knows her. More to the point, he knows what happened twenty years ago, and why Leigh has spent two decades running. And time is running out. If she can't get him acquitted, she'll lose much more than the case. The only person who can help her is her younger, estranged sister Calli, the last person Leigh would ever want to ask for help. But suddenly she has no choice...
The world of magick and the world of man have long been estranged from one another. But some can walk between the two - including Breen Siobhan Kelly. She has just returned to Talamh, with her friend, Marco, who's dazzled and disoriented by this realm - a place filled with dragons and faeries and mermaids (but no WiFi, to his chagrin). In Talamh, Breen is not the ordinary young schoolteacher he knew her as. Here she is learning to embrace the powers of her true identity. Marco is welcomed kindly by her people - and by Keegan, leader of the Fey. Keegan has trained Breen as a warrior, and his yearning for her has grown along with his admiration of her strength and skills. But one member of Breen's bloodline is not there to embrace her. Her grandfather, the outcast god Odran, plots to destroy Talamh - and now all must unite to defeat his dark forces. There will be losses and sorrows, betrayal, and bloodshed. But through it, Breen Siobhan Kelly will take the next step on the journey to becoming all that she was born to be.
Three years after his marriage ended in dramatic fashion, Noah Coleman has one goal - to steer clear of romantic entanglements. In fact, he steers clear of most human interaction, studiously avoiding his large, meddling extended family, working until he’s exhausted, and then repeating the pattern day after day. His strategy has worked well for him for years, keeping him sealed off from anything that can cause him pain or angst. Or it was working for him... before his company was hired to rebuild the Admiral Butler Inn after a fire reduced it to rubble, and he was forced to co-exist with the exasperatingly difficult, gorgeous architect the inn’s owner, Mrs. Hendricks, hired to oversee the project. While nursing a badly broken heart, Brianna Esposito is determined to complete the Butler Inn construction under budget and on time - and to make partner in the Boston firm where she’s been working fourteen hours a day for five years. Nothing is going to stop her from achieving her goal, especially a cranky contractor with the people skills of a rabid cougar. Noah Coleman is the most exasperating human being she’s ever had the misfortune to tangle with. She’s never had screaming fights with anyone the way she does him, and the fact that he’s also the sexiest man she’s ever met makes it that much more difficult to hold her ground. When Mrs. Hendricks intervenes and orders the two of them to resolve their differences, Brianna is stuck having dinner with the man she wants to stab one minute and kiss the next. And will he ever tell her why he’s so bitter and angry? Brianna suspects the answer to that question could also be the key to his well-protected heart.
It has been twenty-seven long years since the last sunrise. For nearly three decades, vampires have waged war against humanity; building their eternal empire even as they tear down our own. Now, only a few tiny sparks of light endure in a sea of darkness. Gabriel de León is a silversaint: a member of a holy brotherhood dedicated to defending realm and church from the creatures of the night. But even the Silver Order couldn’t stem the tide once daylight failed us, and now, only Gabriel remains. Imprisoned by the very monsters he vowed to destroy, the last silversaint is forced to tell his story. A story of legendary battles and forbidden love, of faith, lost and friendships won, of the Wars of the Blood and the Forever King and the quest for humanity’s last remaining hope: The Holy Grail.
Nesta Archeron has always been prickly-proud, swift to anger, and slow to forgive. And ever since being forced into the Cauldron and becoming High Fae against her will, she has struggled to find a place for herself within the strange, deadly world she inhabits. Worse, she cannot seem to move past the horrors of the war with Hybern and all she lost in it. The one person who ignites her temper more than any other is Cassian, the battle-scarred warrior whose position in Rhysand and Feyre's Night Court keeps him constantly in Nesta's orbit. But her temper is not the only thing Cassian ignites. The fire between them is undeniable and only burns hotter as they are forced into close quarters with each other. Meanwhile, the treacherous human queens who returned to the Continent during the last war have forged a dangerous new alliance, threatening the fragile peace that has settled over the realms. And the key to halting them might very well rely on Cassian and Nesta facing their haunting pasts. Against the sweeping backdrop of a world seared by war and plagued with uncertainty, Nesta and Cassian battle monsters from within and without as they search for acceptance and healing in each other's arms.
Happy reading
