February Book Haul – Part 1 #StackedShelves #BookReviews #BookBlogging #TBR #Bookmail

Welcome to part one of my February 2018 book haul! There are plenty of epic additions to the TBR this month and I am reeling with anticipation when I think about getting to read them all. Thank you to Orbit, Headline, Gollancz, Penguin, Unbound, Quercus and Hodder & Stoughton for these generous pieces of book mail and I can’t wait to share my thoughts about them all with you here. I know some one you will have read these as I have seen reviews dotted around the book community so please feel free to drop your thoughts on them into the comment section so I can work out where I am going to start with this list. Enough talk, to the books!

February Book Haul Part One

Released 04/05/17 via Orbit Books

I have been seeing great reviews of The Boy In The Bridge everywhere so I am glad I have a sure-fire hit on this list. The synopsis give absolutely nothing away so I am just going to have to dive in head first and see where this novel takes me. I have been wanting to read an M. R. Carey novel for a while now so this is a privilege!

Book Synopsis

Once upon a time, in a land blighted by terror, there was a very clever boy.

The people thought the boy could save them, so they opened their gates and sent him out into the world.

To where the monsters lived.

Released 06/02/18 via Headline

When I opened this book I was tempted to start it straight away! It sounds so cool! Does it contain real time travel? or mental time travel? or a metaphorical time travel sort of thing…? I should probably stop saying time travel… I am seriously intrigued by this novel and eager to divulge what story lies within very soon.

Book Synopsis

1997
When ex Navy Seal Patrick Mursult’s family are found murdered, he is the number one suspect. But NCIS Special Agent Shannon Moss isn’t convinced, particularly after Patrick apparently commits suicide.

2014
Years after the brutal killings, while working undercover, Moss stumbles across a witness from the Mursult case who unwittingly tells her far more than she had at the time. Inspired by this retrospective progress, Moss determines to travel through time to a host of potential futures to track down the killer and close this cold case once and for all.

Released 10/04/18 via Titan Books

I am on the blog tour for this book and I am excited to be a part of the hype. I have already read a portion of this book and I reckon it is definitely going to satisfy my curiosity surrounding criminal psychology. I hope this is just a good thriller that doesn’t try to hard and has enough twists to keep me guessing!

Book Synopsis

Sixteen years ago, Kate Wolfe’s young sister Savannah was brutally murdered. Forced to live with the guilt of how her own selfishness put Savannah in harm’s way, Kate was at least comforted by the knowledge that the man responsible was behind bars. But when she meets a retired detective who is certain that Kate’s sister was only one of many victims of a serial killer, Kate must face the possibility that Savannah’s murderer walks free.

Unearthing disturbing family secrets in her search for the truth, Kate becomes sure that she has discovered the depraved mind responsible for so much death. But as she hunts for a killer, a killer is hunting her…

Released 25/01/18 via W&N (Orion)

I am on another Non-Fiction fix already and Heal Me is a subject that is close to my family. I am interested in Julia’s journey through pain and searching the globe for alternative treatments. I appreciate NF that explores topics that I haven’t encountered before as it opens my mind to new possibilities. I hope Heal Me is as good as it looks.

Book Synopsis

Julia Buckley needs a miracle. Like a third of the UK population, she has a chronic pain condition. According to her doctors, it can’t be cured. She doesn’t believe them. She does believe in miracles, though. It’s just a question of tracking one down.

Julia’s search for a cure takes her on a global quest, exploring the boundaries between science, psychology and faith with practitioners on the fringes of conventional, traditional and alternative medicine. From neuroplastic brain rewiring in San Francisco to medical marijuana in Colorado, Haitian vodou rituals to Brazilian ‘spiritual surgery’, she’s willing to try anything. Can miracles happen? And more importantly, what happens next if they do?

Raising vital questions about the modern medical system, this is also a story about identity in a system historically skewed against ‘hysterical’ female patients, and the struggle to retain a sense of self under the medical gaze. Heal Me explains why modern medicine’s current approach to chronic pain is failing patients. It explores the importance of faith, hope and cynicism, and examines our relationships with our doctors, our beliefs and ourselves.

Released 11/01/18 via Faber & Faber

I can’t envisage a novel that is both ‘high-speed’ but also explores as many deep themes that A Long Way From Home proposes to include. It is certainly a great looking novel and I have high hopes that it will grab me and not let go!

Book Synopsis

Irene Bobs loves fast driving. Her husband is the best car salesman in rural south eastern Australia. Together with Willie, their lanky navigator, they embark upon the Redex Trial, a brutal race around the continent, over roads no car will ever quite survive.

A Long Way from Home is Peter Carey’s late style masterpiece; a thrilling high speed story that starts in one way, then takes you to another place altogether. Set in the 1950s in the embers of the British Empire, painting a picture of Queen and subject, black, white and those in-between, this brilliantly vivid novel illustrates how the possession of an ancient culture spirals through history – and the love made and hurt caused along the way.

Released 08/02/18 via Faber & Faber

I think we can all admit that we adore Owl imagery in books and such. Just look at Hedwig in the Harry Potter books! (If you don’t know who Hedwig is then you should probably just go…). This exploration of the myth and nature surrounding one of the more majestic of creatures sounds brilliant and I am reading to learn more about Owls!

Book Synopsis

‘Her softness took my breath away. Deadly beauty. She turned her face towards me. The owl’s massive facial disc produces a funnel for sound that is the most effective in the animal kingdom‘

Owls have captivated the human imagination for millennia. We have fixated on this night hunter as predator, messenger, emblem of wisdom, something pretty to print on a tote bag or portent of doom. Darlington sets out to tell a new story. Her fieldwork begins with wild encounters in the British Isles and takes her to the frosted borders of the Arctic. In her watching and deep listening to the natural world, she cleaves myth from reality and will change the way you think of this magnificent creature.

Released 25/01/18 via Penguin Life

I had this in my list of exciting 2018 releases. Out of nowhere I get an email saying that Claire from Brizzle Lass Books had recommended me for a review copy. I was over the moon! I have been a fan of Ruby Wax for a long time and How To Be Human looks to be another brilliant read!

Book Synopsis

A three way encounter between a Monk, a neuroscientist and Ruby Wax sounds like the set up for a joke. Instead it’s produced one of the most fascinating, intriguing and informative books about minds and bodies and brains and mindfulness I’ve ever encountered. A triangulation on what it means to be human. Utterly readable and surprisingly wise. Neil Gaiman

How to Be Human is, without exaggeration, a lifeline; wise, practical and funny, it is a handbook for those in despair. It is actually for everyone alive, for the curious, or disillusioned or muddled or just plain happy. Ruby, the Monk and the Neuroscientist are today’s Magi. Joanna Lumley

With this marvellous book, Ruby Wax has confirmed her position as one of the most readable, inspirational and engaging writers in the field of human mental health, happiness and fulfilment. Stephen Fry

It took us 4 billion years to evolve to where we are now. No question, anyone reading this has won the evolutionary Hunger Games by the fact you’re on all twos and not some fossil. This should make us all the happiest species alive – most of us aren’t, what’s gone wrong? We’ve started treating ourselves more like machines and less like humans. We’re so used to upgrading things like our iPhones: as soon as the new one comes out, we don’t think twice, we dump it. (Many people I know are now on iWife4 or iHusband8, the motto being, if it’s new, it’s better.)

We can’t stop the future from arriving, no matter what drugs we’re on. But even if nearly every part of us becomes robotic, we’ll still, fingers crossed, have our minds, which, hopefully, we’ll be able use for things like compassion, rather than chasing what’s ‘better’, and if we can do that we’re on the yellow brick road to happiness.

I wrote this book with a little help from a monk, who explains how the mind works, and also gives some mindfulness exercises, and a neuroscientist who explains what makes us ‘us’ in the brain. We answer every question you’ve ever had about: evolution, thoughts, emotions, the body, addictions, relationships, kids, the future and compassion. How to be Human is extremely funny, true and the only manual you’ll need to help you upgrade your mind as much as you’ve upgraded your iPhone.

Released 05/04/18 via Riverrun (Quercus)

The theatrics that came with this book post was the best I have seen so far. A review copy, coffee, a new note book and lots of little extra bits and pieces to set the scene of the novel. I am really looking forward to reading this now. It sounds like a brilliant and suspenseful psychological thriller and I hope it lives up to my now outrageous expectations.

Book Synopsis

TOO SOON TO SEE

Polished. Professional. Perfect. Dead. Respected scientist Dr Eleanor Costello is found hanging in her immaculate home: the scene the very picture of a suicide.

TOO LATE TO HIDE

DCS Frankie Sheehan is handed the case, and almost immediately spots foul play. Sheehan, a trained profiler, is seeking a murderer with a talent for death.

TOO CLOSE TO BREATHE

As Frankie strives to paint a picture of the killer, and their victim, she starts to sense they are part of a larger, darker canvas, on which the lines between the two blur.

Released 16/01/18 via Hodder & Stoughton

I missed out on the whole Red Rising wave so I was incredibly interested in joining in with Iron Gold. A novel that is set in the same world but 10 years later. If this goes well then I can see a full trilogy binge going down very soon after! I have heard great things about Pierce Brown so I hope he lives up to the hype.

Book Synopsis

Darrow was born a slave. He became a weapon.

He ended centuries of Gold rule, broke the chains of an empire, and now he’s the hero of a brave new republic. But at terrible cost.

At the edge of the solar system, the grandson of the emperor he murdered dreams of revenge.

In his hidden fortress in the oceans of Venus, the Ash Lord lies in wait, plotting to crush the newborn democracy.

And, at home, a young Red girl who’s lost everything to the Rising questions whether freedom was just another Gold lie.

In a fearsome new world where Obsidian pirates roam the Belt, famine and genocide ravage Mars, and crime lords terrorise Luna, it’s time for Darrow and a cast of new characters from across the solar system to face down the chaos that revolution has unleashed.

Released 16/01/18 via Unbound

The Outer Circle seems like a relevant read in the current climate. I am on the fence about whether this novel is going to sit well with me but I am interested in giving it a go. It certainly sounds like it is going to be a incendiary and challenging narrative that echos of the modern day tragedies that are plaguing the world.

Book Synopsis

Set in the week following the London Olympics, this novel imagines an attack on London Central Mosque and follows five people caught up in its aftermath.

It is Monday August 13th 2012, the morning after the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games in London. The city is relaxed as rarely before, delighted with itself at how spectacularly – and how securely – it has hosted the uplifting event.

The capital, however, will be rudely and brutally awoken from its self-congratulation by a horrific attack perpetrated by a young man who enters unchallenged the London Central Mosque in Regent’s Park and burns to death with a flamethrower five Muslims in the prayer hall.

How could it happen? Why did it happen? Is the atrocity political, religious or personal?

Released 22/02/18 via Gollancz

I have always wanted to read a Simon Ings novel but have never had the opportunity… Until now! Thanks Gollancz. The Smoke is sounding unique to catch my interest but it is Ings’ writing I am most interested in. I am looking for more boundary breaking novelists to add to my reading list. If Ings plays his cards right then I could be bingeing on his books later on this year!

Book Synopsis

Humanity has been split into three different species. Mutual incomprehension has fractured the globe. As humans race to be the first of their kind to reach the stars, another Great War looms.

For you that means returning to Yorkshire and the town of your birth, where factories churn out the parts for gigantic spaceships. You’re done with the pretentions of the capital and its unfathomable architecture. You’re done with the people of the Bund, their easy superiority and unstoppable spread throughout the city of London and beyond. You’re done with Georgy Chernoy and his questionable defeat of death. You’re done with his daughter, Fel, and losing all the time. You’re done with love.

But soon enough you will find yourself in the Smoke again, drawn back to the life you thought you’d left behind.

You’re done with love. But love’s not done with you.

Thanks for stopping by to check out my first book haul for February 2018. Where is the year going already???? I want to be worried about where the time is going but we are one month closer to the middle of the year when there are some huge releases coming our way. I will sate my thirst for books on this generous list while I wait. If you see anything you like or have read already then please let me know in the comments below. Pop back again for more lists, reviews, top tens an so much more!

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