Secret Book Santa

So, I did this book blogger Secret Santa event for this Christmas just gone (even though I have doubts that I can call myself book blogger? No other book bloggers blogs the randomness I do!) and after the madness of Christmas and the Post (mainly the latter!), I discovered that the present I sent to my Secret Santa-ee was received (and talked about on their blog yet I can't find it!) and, due to Royal Mail, I got my Secret Santa present this Saturday just gone.

My Secret Santa was from Emma from Asamum Booktopia – one of my fave blogs out there and who's lovely to chat to on Twitter! So it was a lovely surprise that I got my Secret Santa from her! So, with a few odds and ends I'm not telling you (because I'm mean like that!), am going to show you the books I received and which have been added to my already HUGE To Be Read pile...





BLACK SWAN RISING by Lee Carroll
Jeweller Garet James isn't the same as everyone else. She just doesn't know it yet.
With her fair share of problems – money (lack of), an elderly father, a struggling business – Garet should be just like any other young, feisty, single New Yorker. If only it was that simple...
It begins with the old silver box that had been soldered shut. All Garet has to do is open it. A favour for the frail owner of the antiques shop. Who wouldn’t help?
Only it’s then that things start to change. Garet doesn't notice at first, the shifts barely perceptible. But the city in which she grew up is beginning to reveal a long-hidden side – darker, and altogether more dangerous: parallel world of chaos, smoke and blood.
And now it’s out of the box...and it has no intention of going back in.

FINDING SKY by Joss Stirling
You have half our gifts, I have the other . . . When English girl Sky, catches a glimpse of bad boy Zed in her new American high school, she can't get him out of her head. He talks to her with his thoughts. He reads her mind. He is the boy she will love for ever. Dark shadows stalk her past but a new evil threatens her future. Sky must face the dark even if it means losing her heart.


TITHE by Holly Black
Sixteen-year-old Kaye finds a white-haired young man of exotic appearance bleeding to death in a rain-drenched wood and saves his life. From that moment nothing in her life will ever be the same. Soon she is plunged into an inhuman world of conflict and betrayal, with a sacrifice -- hers -- and a kingdom as the prize. Cleverly combining romance with the resonance of myth, Holly Black masterfully evokes the dark heart of her conjured realm where Kaye must fight for her lover and her survival -- a place of wonder, to be sure, but also of trickery, decadence, brutality and blood.

HALF BROTHER by Kenneth Oppel
Ben Tomlin has been an only child for thirteen years. So when his research-scientist parents bring home a baby chimp to raise as a human child, Ben's life is turned upside-down. Teaching a baby chimp how to understand language is not his idea of fun, especially when he's trying to settle in at his new school.
But it isn't long before Zan's infectious personality endears him to everyone and he becomes a real member of the family. But just what will happen when he grows up and the experiment comes to an end? Ben must take dramatic steps, and the repercussions ricochet through home and community with devastating results.
This phenomenal novel is a thought-provoking story of relationships and family, first love and growing up, ethics and dilemmas.

Now, these books are really wow! The book that has got me the most excited is Black Swan Rising. It looks so interesting and dark and set in New York (am a bit of a sucker of dark fantasy based in New York).

So, thank you, Emma! And thank you for the Hunger Games tattoos and the AWESOME Maggie Steivfater bookmark! I ADORE that the most! :)