Summary from Goodreads:

An inspiring, bittersweet love story about making every day count.

Bryce remembers it like it was yesterday. The scent of chlorine. The blinding crack and flash of pain. Blood in the water.

When she wakes up in the hospital, all Bryce can think of is her disastrous Olympic diving trial. But everything is different now. Bryce still feels seventeen, so how can her little sister be seventeen, too? Life went on without her while Bryce lay in a coma for five years. Her best friend and boyfriend have just graduated from college. Her parents barely speak. And everything she once dreamed of doing—winning a gold medal, traveling the world, falling in love—seems beyond her reach.

But Bryce has changed too, in seemingly impossible ways. She knows things she shouldn’t. Things that happened while she was asleep. Things that haven’t even happened yet. During one luminous summer, as she comes to understand that her dreams have changed forever, Bryce learns to see life for what it truly is: extraordinary.

Details:

Anything But Ordinary by Lara Avery will be released by Hyperion on September 11, 2012.

I’m intrigued by the premise of waking up after five years of being in a coma and having to put your life back together. I’m a bit nervous about the “knowing things she shouldn’t” aspect of the summary. I’m not sure where the premonition plotline will go, but I’m excited to give this book a shot because the rest sounds fantastic.

What are you waiting on this Wednesday?

If you like Daughter of Smoke and Bone, you might like…

Books

Recommended by Jessica @ I Read to Relax:

For the gorgeous Prague locale:

• Blood and Chocolate by Annette Curtis Klause

 If you are looking for more angel reads, check these out:

• A Temptation of Angels by Michelle Zink
• Unearthly by Cynthia Hand
• Eternal by Cynthia Leitich Smith
• Blue Bloods Series by Melissa De La Cruz

 For more of the demon variety:

• Hex Hall Series by Rachel Hawkins
• Maggie Quinn Series by Rosemary Clement-Moore

 For the art aspect:

• Same Difference by Siobhan Vivian

Movies

Recommended by Jessica @ I Read to Relax:

• Blood and Chocolate
• She’s All That

Summary from Goodreads:

Mia’s used to being the perfect teenager: pretty, popular, smart, caring. But that was before she was diagnosed with leukemia. Now, her father has become Captain Cancer Facts and her mother is obsessed with maintaining Mia’s image. Her maybe-more-than-a-friend, Gyver, is judging her decision not to tell the other cheerleaders that she’s sick. Her life’s about to change and she’s terrified by the loss of control.

Mia’s always been superstitious, but as her body starts to feel like it belongs less to her and more to the doctors and their needles, she becomes irrationally dependent on horoscopes, fortune cookies, and good luck charms. As chemotherapy replaces cheerleading and platelets replace parties, Mia just wants normal back. But despite searching for clues in everything from songs on the radio to her Magic 8 Ball, her future is coming up Outlook not so good.

Details:

Send Me a Sign by Tiffany Schmidt will be released by Walker Childrens on October 2, 2012.

Oh look! Another cancer book! But I’m still kind of a sucker for them, especially when they are well done. Most of the books I’ve been reading lately have defied the long-held genre standards, and I hope this one will continue to do so.

What are you waiting on this Wednesday?

Blog posts will be sparse while I’m finishing up packing and then actually out on the road (though I’ll schedule some in advance). We’re leaving on the 15th and planning to take about a week to do the drive. In the meantime, though, I would appreciate your help with the trip planning!

The route I’ll be taking this time around is going to look something like this:

If you have any tips for things to do, places to eat, or road trip music to listen to along the way, your suggestions are welcome!

• Sarah Ockler wrote a thought-provoking post about race in YA Lit.
• Adam of Roof Beam Reader (and others) announced a summer-long readalong of Andrew Smith’s books leading up to the release of Passenger. I’m pretty horrible about reading on a schedule, but I am planning to try because this sounds like a lot of fun.
• SYNC released their schedule of summer audiobook downloads.
• Veronica Roth wrote this great guide to Divergent for people who haven’t read it in a year and can’t remember stuff but want to read Insurgent. People like me. Many of you have probably already read Insurgent, but I am not allowed to get new books right now, so I will be making use of this in a few weeks, I hope.
• Tiffany Schmidt announced her next book, Bright Before Sunrise, which sounds amazing. Also the announcement came with adorable pictures.

Anything else exciting going on around the interwebs that you’d like to share?

Summary from Goodreads:

There’s none so blind as they that won’t see.

Seventeen-year-old Tricia Farni’s body floated to the surface of Alaska’s Birch River six months after the night she disappeared.
The night Roz Hart had a fight with her.
The night Roz can’t remember.
Roz, who struggles with macular degeneration, is used to assembling fragments to make sense of the world around her. But this time it’s her memory that needs piecing together—to clear her name . . . to find a murderer. This unflinchingly emotional novel is written in the powerful first-person voice of a legally blind teen who just wants to be like everyone else.

Debut novelist Laura Ellen’s own experiences with macular degeneration add powerful authenticity to this suspenseful and emotional page-turner for teens.

Details:

Blind Spot by Laura Ellen will be released by Harcourt Children’s Books on October 22, 2012.

The author’s experiences as a legally blind woman who grew up in Alaska may have contributed to her story, but I certainly hope the rest is pure fiction! This murder mystery sounds incredibly compelling.

What are you waiting on this Wednesday?

I originally stumbled into Tiffany Reisz on Twitter because she shares an agent with Miranda Kenneally (author of the fabulous Catching Jordan). I found myself eavesdropping on their conversations regularly because they were basically the funniest thing on the Internet–or at least as funny as some of the latest kitty gifs I’ve seen. I’ve never really been a romance or erotica reader, but Tiffany is awesome and funny, so I figured I’d step outside my comfort zone and try her (free) short story Little Red Riding Crop. I’m now extremely excited to read her Original Sinners series as well as Felt Tips, her anthology of office supply erotica, and I’m happy to have her on the blog today!

Hi Readers!

This week is a big damn week for me. On Tuesday, May 1^st, my novel THE SIREN, the first in The Original Sinners series releases. Since I’ve gone on record before discussing how much I loathe writing blog posts since I always end up rambling incoherently about Daniel Craig and buttsex, I’ll simply post a blurb for THE SIREN and an excerpt. Cool?

Cool.

With a reputation almost as wild as the truth about her, Nora Sutherlin is the most infamous writer in New York.

With black hair, ice blue eyes, and a British accent, Zachary Easton is the sexiest editor in all of publishing…and the stuffiest.

And now they have to work together.

This might not be a good idea…

From THE SIREN, chapter two…

“Nor, Mr. Easton’s here.”

Wesley stepped to the side and Zach blinked in surprise at his first glimpse of the infamous Nora Sutherlin.

From all the rumors he’d heard, he’d expected some sort of Amazonian in red leather wielding a riding crop. Instead he found a pale, petite beauty with wavy black hair barely contained in a loose knot at the nape of her neck. And no red leather in sight at all. She wore men’s style pajamas, blue ones covered in what appeared to be little yellow ducks.

Her legs rested on top of her desk and she had her keyboard balanced across her lap. With quick nimble fingers she typed away, saying nothing and giving them only her beguiling profile.

“Nora?” Wesley prompted.

“I’ve got a crisp new Benjamin for the first person who can give me a good synonym for ‘thrust,’ noun form. Go,” she said, her voice both honeyed and sardonic.

Although irritated by her cavalier attitude and her unfortunate attractiveness, Zach couldn’t help but scroll through his substantial mental thesaurus.

“Push, lunge, shove, attack, force, jab,” he rattled off the words.

“His slow, relentless jabs sent her reeling…” she said. “Sounds like commentary on a boxing match. God dammit, why are there no good synonyms for thrust? Bane of my existence. Although….” She set her keyboard aside and turned to face him for the first time. “I do love a man with a big vocabulary.”

Zach’s spine stiffened as the most unusually beautiful woman he’d seen in years smiled at him. She stood up and walked on bare feet to him.

“Ms. Sutherlin.”  Zach took her proffered hand. “How do you do?”

From her small stature he expected a dainty grip. But she grasped his hand with surprisingly strong fingers.

“Gorgeous accent,” she said. “Not a bit of the old scouser left, is there?”

“You’ve done your homework, I see,” Zach replied, troubled that she seemed to know more about him than he knew about her. He now regretted tossing her bio into the bin. “But not everyone born in Liverpool speaks like a young Paul McCartney.”

“Shame.” Her voice dropped to a whisper as she continued to gaze at him. “What a shame.”

Zach forced himself to really meet her eyes and then wished he hadn’t. At first glance her eyes appeared a deep green, but she blinked and they seemed to change to a black so dark they likely could not remember the green they had just been. He knew that she looked only at his face, but still he felt stripped bare by her penetrating gaze, torn open. She knew him. He knew it, and he sensed she knew it too.

Determined to regain control of the situation, Zach pulled his hand back.

“Ms. Sutherlin-”

“Right. Work.” She returned to her desk. Zach glanced around her office and saw even more books than were in the living room: books and notebooks, stacks of paper, and dark wooden filing cabinets.

“One quick question, Mr. Easton,” she said, dropping into her desk chair. “Are you, by any chance, ashamed of being Jewish?”

“Excuse me?” Zach said, not quite certain he’d heard her correctly.

“Nora, stop it,” Wesley scolded.

“Just curious,” she said with an indifferent wave of her hand. “You go by Zachary but your name is actually Zechariah like the Hebrew prophet. Why did you change it?”

The question was so personal, so entirely none of her concern that Zach couldn’t believe he deigned to answer it.

“I’ve been called Zach or Zachary since the day I was born. Only when filling out formal documents do I even remember Zechariah is actually my name.” Zach kept his tone cool and even. He knew that he could only win here if he stayed calm and didn’t allow her to get the rise out of him she so clearly desired. “And the only thing I am ashamed of currently is this sudden downturn in my career.”

He expected her to flinch or fight. Instead she just laughed.

“I really can’t blame you. Have a seat and tell me all about it.”

Warily Zach sat down in the battered paisley armchair across from her desk. He started to cross his ankle over his knee but froze in mid-movement as his foot tapped an unusually long black duffel bag that sat on the floor. He heard the distinct, unnerving sound of metal clinking against metal.

“I’ve got to get to class,” Wesley said, sounding desperate to leave. “That okay?”

“Oh, I doubt Mr. Easton will bend me over my desk and ravish me the second you leave,” she said, winking at Zach. “Unfortunately.”

The words and the wink forced an image into Zach’s mind of doing that very act. He forced the thought out just as quickly as she put it in.

Wesley shook his head in amused disgust.

“Mr. Easton, good luck,” Wesley said, turning to him. “Just don’t act impressed, and she’ll eventually settle down.”

“Impressed?” Zach repeated. “I doubt that will be a problem.”

Zach waited for his words to register. He saw Wesley’s eyes narrow, but she only looked at him from under her veil of black eyelashes.

“Ohh…” she nearly purred the word. “I like him already.”

Want to read more? Buy THE SIREN in eBook on May 1^st or in paperback on July 31^st (in stores everywhere). My personal recommendation? Buy both. Follow me on Twitter @tiffanyreisz.

Tiffany Reisz lives in Lexington, Kentucky with her boyfriend (a reformed book reviewer) and two cats (one good, one evil). She graduated with a B.A. in English from Centre College in Danville, Kentucky and is making both her parents and her professors proud by writing BDSM erotica under her real name. She has five piercings, one tattoo, and has been arrested twice.

When not under arrest, Tiffany enjoys Latin Dance, Latin Men, and Latin Verbs. She dropped out of a conservative southern seminary in order to pursue her dream of becoming a smut peddler. Johnny Depp’s aunt was her fourth grade teacher. Her first full-length novel THE SIREN was inspired by a desire to tie up actor Jason Isaacs (on paper). She hopes someday life will imitate art (in bed).

If she couldn’t write, she would die.

If you like Trafficked, you might like…

Books

Recommended by Jen @ YA Romantics:

• Wither and Fever by Lauren DeStefano: Women are rounded up and forced into sexual slavery.

Recommended by Stephanie @ The Fedorable Librarian:

• Stolen by Lucy Christopher: Guy kidnaps girl from airport and takes her to his home in middle of nowhere Australia. Very creepy.

Recommended by Jennifer @ YA Book Nerd:

• Sold by Patricia McCormick: A novel in verse about a girl sold into prostitution at the tender age of 13 due to a monsoon.

Recommended by Kari @ A Good Addiction:

• Bread Givers by Anzia Yezierska: Polish immigrants to New York in the early 1900s… it’s definitely a very interesting story, and worth the read.
• The Chaos Walking Series by Patrick Ness: There is a big slavery component in this series, portrayed stunningly.
• Eve by Anna Carey: In a world wiped out by a plague, girls are forced into multiple pregnancies in an effort to repopulate. Yeah.
• Chained by Lynne Kelly: Its a different kind of slavery, but a ten year old boy starts working for a cruel circus director to pay back a debt on his mother’s behalf after his sister falls ill.

Movies

Recommended by Capillya @ That Cover Girl:

• Taken: I have to admit I hadn’t seen a lot of Liam Neeson before this film, all I knew was that he was tall and I liked his Irish accent. (Please don’t judge me for not having seen Schindler’s List!) But when my dad told me that I needed to watch the film, and left it at that, I did.  Which promptly placed Liam Neeson at the #1 position of My Most Favorite Badasses in the History of Cinema. What this film perfectly captures is the lengths that any person will go to protect his or her family. I normally don’t cheer for the death and beating up of other people, but I was absolutely cheering in this film because Liam Neeson is like “Oh hey Bad Guy, you’re in the way of me getting to rescue my daughter?! It’s killin’ time!” and I was like “LIAM I LOVE YOU.” Secrets! Lies! Payback! Redemption! The horrors of human trafficking! The fact that this movie made me want to punch everyone in the face! And there’s going to be a Taken 2 later this year and I’ve got my fingers crossed that it doesn’t suck as bad as Unknown did. (Battleship, there’s a little more hope for you, but mostly because Taylor Kitsch is in it.)

Recommended by Jennifer @ YA Book Nerd: