Stacking the Shelves (July 22, 2012)

Tynga of Tynga's Reviews has a meme to spotlight the books we receive each week. Visit her site to check out the linky and see what everyone gets. I guarantee that your TBR pile will grow. You will also discover lots of great blogs and lots of books that you won't be able to live without.

I thought I was going to have a quiet week this week. None of my pre-orders were scheduled to arrive. However, I ended up with five new books for my Kindle.

I discovered these while participating in Teaser Tuesday this week. Sterling (A Mageri Series Novel) by Dannika Dark was an adult urban fantasy romance that sounded good. And at only $.99 I couldn't pass up the bargain. 

Damon (The Protectors Series) by Teresa Gabelman was also a $.99 special. This is also an urban fantasy romance which has the added benefit of having vampires.

This week I was also contacted by two publicists and an author asking me to read their latest thrillers. Since I had some spots on my August calendar and the books sounded good, I accepted all three.

Dead Ringer by Allen Wyler is a story about bodysnatching and selling cadavers. Written by a neurosurgeon and filled with authentic medical detail, it sounded like an interesting story. It was released on June 26. Here is the description.

While speaking at a Hong Kong medical conference, neurosurgeon Dr. Lucas McCrae slips the cloth off a cadaver’s head during a routine medical demonstration, and is overwhelmed with the shock by what’s staring back at him: His best friend, Andy Baer.

Stunned, McCrae races back to Seattle to discover that Andy is in fact missing and may have been murdered by a gang of body snatchers who operate a legit funeral business and make a fortune by selling recovered body parts to medical researchers.

McCrae teams up with an unlikely pair—a beautiful but hardnosed female cop and a gang member whose family was victimized by the body parts ring—to try and expose a macabre web of corruption that involves law enforcement, politicians, funeral home curators and murdered prostitutes.

Internationally renowned neurosurgeon Allen Wyler takes us deep into a nightmarish scenario, shockingly ripped from recent headlines, and delivers a horrifically plausible, page-turning thriller.

Off the Grid by P. J. Tracy is the latest in the Monkeywrench series which I haven't read and which will be released on August 2. As a Minnesotan, I was interested in this story by Minnesota authors and with a Minnesota setting. Here is the description.

On a sailboat ten miles off the Florida coast, Grace MacBride, partner in Monkeewrench Software, thwarts an assassination attempt on retired FBI agent John Smith. A few hours later, in Minneapolis, a fifteen-year-old girl is discovered in a vacant lot, her throat slashed. Later that day, two young men are found in their home a few blocks away, killed execution-style. The next morning, the dead bodies of three more men turn up, savagely murdered in the same neighborhood.

As Minneapolis homicide detectives Leo Magozzi and Gino Rolseth struggle to link the three crimes, they learn that there have been similar murders in other cities around the United States. Piece by piece, evidence accumulates, pointing to a suspect that shocks them to the core, uncovering a motive that puts the entire Midwest on high alert and Monkeewrench in the direct line of fire. Before it's all over, Grace and her partners, Annie, Roadrunner, and Harley Davidson, find themselves in the middle of a shocking collision of violence on a remote northern Minnesota reservation, fighting for their lives. 

Last this week, I got First Do No Evil by Carey Baldwin which was released on June 26. Here is the description.

One killer is in her blood. The other is in her house.

There's a killer lurking in Dr. Skylar Novak's family tree: the gene for breast cancer. That's why her brilliant brother invented the Bella vaccine. But even if the miracle drug protects her from the cancer that took her mother's life, it can't save Sky from the flesh and bone evil stalking her in secret. 

When the killer strikes, detective Daniel Benson finds himself in the wrong place at the right time. The bold detective manages to save Sky's life...just in time for her to return the favor. Survival leads to seduction, and Danny risks everything--his career, even his life, to keep Sky safe. But will the buried sins they uncover cost him her heart? 

Danny's strong arms may hold her close, but only Sky can stop the terror that's coming next...

Warning: Contents include: One heart-melting hero--good luck getting this delicious detective out of your head. One reluctant heroine--wielding a Glock was never on her to-do list. One crazed villain--an entire flock of baa baa black sheep won't be enough to put you to sleep. And a lifesaving vaccine with one deadly side effect--murder.

That is what I collected this week. What did you get in your mailbox?