NBS recommends enticing reads

THE OVERNIGHT SOCIALITE

By Bridie Clark

P 315

MANILA, Philippines –  In this retelling of the classic Pygmalion, we meet Lucy Ellis, a Manhattan transplant who dreams of making it as a fashion designer but instead toils away on a garment district assembly line. Poor Lucy is starting to think the unthinkable: maybe it’s time to pack and move home to Minnesota. Then, during a torrential downpour, at her most bedraggled and disheartened, Lucy meets Wyatt Hayes IV, a man-about-town and bored Ph.D. Anthropologist. Wyatt has been publicly dissed by New York’s reigning socialite, and boasts to his best friend that he can transform any woman, even a trailer-born nobody like Lucy, into this year’s “It” girl. Set against the gold-plated world of Manhattan’s social elite, The Overnight Socialite, a media sensation in its own right, puts a witty 21st-century spin on a timeless story of transformation and unlikely love.  

THE GATHERING STORM: BOOK TWELVE OF THE WHEEL OF TIME

By Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson

P 335

The Gathering Storm is the first of three novels that will make up A Memory of Light. This short sequence will complete the struggle against the Shadow, bringing to a close a journey begun almost 20 years ago and marking the conclusion of the Wheel of Time, the preeminent fantasy epic of our era. In this epic novel, Robert Jordan’s international bestselling series begins its dramatic conclusion. Rand al’Thor, the Dragon Reborn, struggles to unite a fractured network of kingdoms and alliances in preparation for the Last Battle. As he attempts to halt the Seanchan encroachment northward, wishing he could form at least a temporary truce with the invaders, his allies watch in terror the shadow that seems to be growing within the heart of the Dragon Reborn himself. Egwene al’Vere, the Amyrlin Seat of the rebel Aes Sedai, is a captive of the White Tower and subject to the whims of their tyrannical leader. As days tick toward the Seanchan attack that she knows is imminent, Egwene works to hold together the disparate factions of Aes Sedai while providing leadership in the face of increasing uncertainty and despair. Her fight will prove the mettle of the Aes Sedai, and her conflict will decide the future of the White Tower and possibly the world itself.

BEAUTIFUL DARKNESS

By Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

P 399

Ethan Wate used to think of Gatlin, the small Southern town he had always called home, as a place where nothing ever changed. Then he met mysterious newcomer Lena Duchannes, who revealed a secret world that had been hidden in plain sight all along. A Gatlin that harbored ancient secrets beneath its moss-covered oaks and cracked sidewalks. A Gatlin where a curse has marked Lena’s family of powerful supernaturals for generations. A Gatlin where impossible, magical, life-altering events happen. Together they can face anything Gatlin throws at them, but after suffering a tragic loss, Lena starts to pull away, keeping secrets that test their relationship. And now that Ethan’s eyes have been opened to the darker side of Gatlin, there’s no going back. Haunted by strange visions only he can see, Ethan is pulled deeper into his town’s tangled history and finds himself caught up in the dangerous network of underground passageways endlessly crisscrossing the South, where nothing is as it seems.

TORMENT: A FALLEN NOVEL

By Lauren Kate

P 495

Hell on earth. That’s what it’s like for Luce to be apart from her fallen angel boyfriend, Daniel. It took them an eternity to find one another, but now he has told her he must go away. Just long enough to hunt down the Outcasts-immortals who want to kill Luce. Daniel hides Luce at Shoreline, a school on rocky California coast with unusually gifted students: Nephilim, the offspring of fallen angels and humans. At Shoreline, Luce learns what the Shadows are, and how she can use them as windows to her previous lives. Yet the more Luce learns, the more she suspects that Daniel hasn’t told her everything. He’s hiding something dangerous. What if Daniel’s version of the past isn’t actually true? What if Luce is really meant to be with someone else? The second novel in the addictive Fallen series where love never dies.

RECKLESS

By Cornelia Funke

P 815

Beyond the mirror, the darkest fairy tales come alive. For years, Jacob Reckless has enjoyed the Mirrorworld’s secrets and treasures. Not anymore. His younger brother has followed him. Now dark magic will turn the boy to beast, break the heart of the girl he loves, and destroy everything Jacob holds most dear… unless he can find a way to stop it. If you’re looking for happily ever after, you’ve come to the wrong place.