Weekly Round-Up 4/26

Weekly Round-Up is my wrap-up of last week's activities and includes what I'm reading this week and anything of interest plus From the Library, my weekly listing of what I've checked out from the library.

This week I'm reading The Secret in the Old Attic (Keene), Beautiful Malice (James), The Demon's Lexicon (Brennan), and Blue Noon (Westerfeld).  I'm still listening to The Year of the Flood (Atwood) and Wicked (Maguire).

Since last week I've read 13 to Life (Delany), The Mystery of the Moss-Covered Mansion, The Quest of the Missing Map, The Clue in the Jewel Box (Keene), and Leviathan (Westerfeld).  I've finished Graceling (Cashore) on audio.

Other reviews posted:
Nook
Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries (TV)



From the Library is my weekly listing of what I checked out from the library recently.





Boneshaker (The Clockwork Century #1) - Cherie Priest

(after Leviathan, this seemed like a good one to check out.  Also zombies.)

In the early days of the Civil War, rumors of gold in the frozen Klondike brought hordes of newcomers to the Pacific Northwest. Anxious to compete, Russian prospectors commissioned inventor Leviticus Blue to create a great machine that could mine through Alaska’s ice. Thus was Dr. Blue’s Incredible Bone-Shaking Drill Engine born.

But on its first test run the Boneshaker went terribly awry, destroying several blocks of downtown Seattle and unearthing a subterranean vein of blight gas that turned anyone who breathed it into the living dead.

Now it is sixteen years later, and a wall has been built to enclose the devastated and toxic city. Just beyond it lives Blue’s widow, Briar Wilkes. Life is hard with a ruined reputation and a teenaged boy to support, but she and Ezekiel are managing. Until Ezekiel undertakes a secret crusade to rewrite history.

His quest will take him under the wall and into a city teeming with ravenous undead, air pirates, criminal overlords, and heavily armed refugees. And only Briar can bring him out alive.

The Demon's Lexicon (Demon's #1) - Sarah Rees Brennan

(for the YA Book Bloggers Battle)

Nick and his brother, Alan, have spent their lives on the run from magic. Their father was murdered, and their mother was driven mad by magicians and the demons who give them power. The magicians are hunting the Ryves family for a charm that Nick's mother stole -- a charm that keeps her alive -- and they want it badly enough to kill again.

Danger draws even closer when a brother and sister come to the Ryves family for help. The boy wears a demon's mark, a sign of death that almost nothing can erase...and when Alan also gets marked by a demon, Nick is des-perate to save him. The only way to do that is to kill one of the magicians they have been hiding from for so long.

Ensnared in a deadly game of cat and mouse, Nick starts to suspect that his brother is telling him lie after lie about their past. As the magicians' Circle closes in on their family, Nick uncovers the secret that could destroy them all.