Black Sunshine (Dark Eyes, #1)

Karina Halle

All Lenore Warwick wants for her 21st birthday is to hang out with her friends, finish her second year at Berkeley with flying colors, and maybe catch the eye of a hot musician playing a show at a club that she can now (legally) get into. Unfortunately, fate has other plans for her. A week before her birthday, she’s kidnapped by the brooding and dangerous stranger with cold eyes and a lethal touch, who has been stalking her on San Francisco’s fog-shrouded streets. Absolon "Solon" Stavig isn’t your average criminal though. He’s a centuries-old vampire who’s caught between wanting to kill Lenore and wanting to save her. You see Lenore, too, is a vampire. She just doesn’t know it yet. Taken by a pair of vampire slayers when she was just an infant, Lenore was raised never knowing her true nature. All Lenore knows is that she has (normal) parents who love her, that she’s exceptionally smart, and she’s squeamish around blood. But once she turns twenty-one, she’ll fully turn into a vampire, and Solon hopes he’ll be there to guide her, opening her eyes to her deepest hunger...both sexual and otherwise. But this turning can’t be kept a secret. Soon both slayers and vampires are hunting Lenore, with only Solon and his unpredictable motley crew of vampires to save her. If they don’t kill her first. Black Sunshine is a dark adult romance with a paranormal twist, about sex, love, secrets, and revenge, set in contemporary San Francisco.

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A Composition of Scars (Cadence of the Fallen, #1.5)

Hazel S. Wilkes

Before Draven was the feared captain over one of Bathara’s revered aggregates, he was simply a teenager learning how to better his magic, better his combat, and better himself. With his brothers by his side, Draven, Finlay, and Kiran battle against a world that has carved out their identities with ruthless blades—despite the wrath Tynan Dalmar brings down on Draven each time he rebels. But after a particularly cruel interaction where the thin chords holding his family together officially snap, his mother, Lealla Dalmar, whisks Draven away in the middle of the night to put distance between them and his savage father. So, it is in the unsuspecting city of Príth—where colors dance and streets thrum with a living heartbeat—that Draven’s world expands far broader than he could ever imagine. And as he watches his mother’s smile return while confronting his deepest fears, Draven believes he has finally found his place in the world. Has discovered the true warmth of a family at last. Until his father shatters that illusion into a million, serrated pieces. A Composition of Scars is a novella in the Cadence of the Fallen series that tells the tale of how Draven received his deepest scars. The ones that always remain, alive and bleeding beneath his skin. It should be read after A Requiem for Fallen Stars.

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A Requiem for Fallen Stars

Hazel S. Wilkes

Lyra Izacalli does not clutch onto the jagged remnants of her past—she buries them deep beneath her skin. To feel is to give power to the past—to let grief and memory carve through her like a blade. But Lyra refuses to let them win. She will not let the sharpened words of men who call themselves nobles and kings cut deeper than they deserve. If they cannot wound her, they cannot control her. And if they cannot control her, then freedom is hers to claim—despite her feeling anything but free. But when an unexpected opportunity arises, Lyra is thrust into the deadly entrance exams of an elite academy, where only nobility thrive. But first, she must strike a blood wager with a capricious king—one that could win Lyra her freedom or cost her life… if the exams don’t kill her first. A world that rejects her. A forgotten journal that will redefine her. A band of dangerous wielders that hunt her. And then there is him—the one who found her, who should have been nothing more than a mentor—the person to unravel her. But Lyra is not here for love. She is here to win. And as the walls she has spent years fortifying begin to fracture as truth after daunting truth break free— The world will come to understand… A girl who refuses to lose does not break. She erupts.

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Klara and the Sun

Kazuo Ishiguro

From her place in the store, Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside. She remains hopeful that a customer will soon choose her, but when the possibility emerges that her circumstances may change forever, Klara is warned not to invest too much in the promises of humans. In Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro looks at our rapidly changing modern world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator to explore a fundamental question: what does it mean to love?

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The Levee

Michael McDowell

Book II in the Blackwater series. Perdido, Alabama, has scarcely recovered from the floods that devasted the community. Now a scheme to build a levee is dogged by a series of mysterious events: unpredictable currents in the river, worrying disappearances. Meanwhile in the Caskey family, Marie-Love, the matriarch, continues her machinations against Elinor, her strange daughter in law. Plots, unholy alliances, sacrifices - in the struggle between them, nothing is off limits. In Perdido, the changes will be profound; the consequences irreversible.

set status

Klara and the Sun

Kazuo Ishiguro

From her place in the store, Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside. She remains hopeful that a customer will soon choose her, but when the possibility emerges that her circumstances may change forever, Klara is warned not to invest too much in the promises of humans. In Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro looks at our rapidly changing modern world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator to explore a fundamental question: what does it mean to love?

set status

A Requiem for Fallen Stars

Hazel S. Wilkes

Lyra Izacalli does not clutch onto the jagged remnants of her past—she buries them deep beneath her skin. To feel is to give power to the past—to let grief and memory carve through her like a blade. But Lyra refuses to let them win. She will not let the sharpened words of men who call themselves nobles and kings cut deeper than they deserve. If they cannot wound her, they cannot control her. And if they cannot control her, then freedom is hers to claim—despite her feeling anything but free. But when an unexpected opportunity arises, Lyra is thrust into the deadly entrance exams of an elite academy, where only nobility thrive. But first, she must strike a blood wager with a capricious king—one that could win Lyra her freedom or cost her life… if the exams don’t kill her first. A world that rejects her. A forgotten journal that will redefine her. A band of dangerous wielders that hunt her. And then there is him—the one who found her, who should have been nothing more than a mentor—the person to unravel her. But Lyra is not here for love. She is here to win. And as the walls she has spent years fortifying begin to fracture as truth after daunting truth break free— The world will come to understand… A girl who refuses to lose does not break. She erupts.

set status

The Levee

Michael McDowell

Book II in the Blackwater series. Perdido, Alabama, has scarcely recovered from the floods that devasted the community. Now a scheme to build a levee is dogged by a series of mysterious events: unpredictable currents in the river, worrying disappearances. Meanwhile in the Caskey family, Marie-Love, the matriarch, continues her machinations against Elinor, her strange daughter in law. Plots, unholy alliances, sacrifices - in the struggle between them, nothing is off limits. In Perdido, the changes will be profound; the consequences irreversible.

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Green City Wars

Adrian Tchaikovsky

Philip Marlowe meets Redwall in this superior adult noir tale, where all the characters are animals, fighting for survival in the city underneath the humans. In the solar cities of the future, the humans relax in the sun and the animals work in the shadows. Genetically engineered Little Helpers, serving humanity—unseen, unheard. Meet Skotch. Racoon, P.I.—Yours for a few buttons as long as the job isn't too illegal, whatever that means. A mouse has gone missing. Normally this wouldn't raise any hackles, nor any alarms, but this mouse has something that everyone seems to want, though nobody appears particularly eager to say what that something is. The fee is good—perhaps too good. Certainly not something Skotch can easily turn down. If only Skotch can work out where the mouse is hiding, what he's hiding, and why his secrets are upsetting a lot of animals caught up in the Green City wars.

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Time Becomes Relevant: The Unnamed Archives: Shazzwick of Land, Vol. 1

Ka-Yee Essoe

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Black Sunshine (Dark Eyes, #1)

Karina Halle

All Lenore Warwick wants for her 21st birthday is to hang out with her friends, finish her second year at Berkeley with flying colors, and maybe catch the eye of a hot musician playing a show at a club that she can now (legally) get into. Unfortunately, fate has other plans for her. A week before her birthday, she’s kidnapped by the brooding and dangerous stranger with cold eyes and a lethal touch, who has been stalking her on San Francisco’s fog-shrouded streets. Absolon "Solon" Stavig isn’t your average criminal though. He’s a centuries-old vampire who’s caught between wanting to kill Lenore and wanting to save her. You see Lenore, too, is a vampire. She just doesn’t know it yet. Taken by a pair of vampire slayers when she was just an infant, Lenore was raised never knowing her true nature. All Lenore knows is that she has (normal) parents who love her, that she’s exceptionally smart, and she’s squeamish around blood. But once she turns twenty-one, she’ll fully turn into a vampire, and Solon hopes he’ll be there to guide her, opening her eyes to her deepest hunger...both sexual and otherwise. But this turning can’t be kept a secret. Soon both slayers and vampires are hunting Lenore, with only Solon and his unpredictable motley crew of vampires to save her. If they don’t kill her first. Black Sunshine is a dark adult romance with a paranormal twist, about sex, love, secrets, and revenge, set in contemporary San Francisco.

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The Curse of Chalion (World of the Five Gods, #1)

Lois McMaster Bujold

A man broken in body and spirit, Cazaril, has returned to the noble household he once served as page, and is named, to his great surprise, as the secretary-tutor to the beautiful, strong-willed sister of the impetuous boy who is next in line to rule. It is an assignment Cazaril dreads, for it will ultimately lead him to the place he fears most, the royal court of Cardegoss, where the powerful enemies, who once placed him in chains, now occupy lofty positions. In addition to the traitorous intrigues of villains, Cazaril and the Royesse Iselle, are faced with a sinister curse that hangs like a sword over the entire blighted House of Chalion and all who stand in their circle. Only by employing the darkest, most forbidden of magics, can Cazaril hope to protect his royal charge—an act that will mark the loyal, damaged servant as a tool of the miraculous, and trap him, flesh and soul, in a maze of demonic paradox, damnation, and death.

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