Suvudu Universe

If it's Monday, then it must be time for Mailbox Monda y, a weekly meme that provides a virtual gathering place for bloggers (and readers) to share the books that came their way over the past week. Originally hosted by Marcia, of To Be Continued..., it has since become something of a book tour, with a new host each month. This month's host is Gina @ Book Dragon’s Lair!

Here are the books that found a home on my shelves over the last week:

Innocent Blood by James Rollins & Rebecca Cantrell
William Morrow (December 10, 2013)
Received via Edelweiss

A vicious attack at a ranch in California thrusts archaeologist Erin Granger back into the folds of the Sanguines, an immortal order founded on the blood of Christ and tasked with protecting the world from the beasts haunting its shadows and waiting to break free into the sunlight.  Following the prophetic words found in the Blood Gospel--a tome written by Christ and lost for centuries--Erin must join forces with Army Sergeant Jordan Stone and the dark mystery that is Father Rhun Korza to discover and protect a boy believed to be an angel given flesh.

But an enigmatic enemy of immense power and terrifying ambition seeks the same child--not to save the world, but to hasten its destruction.  For any hope of victory, Erin must discover the truth behind Christ's early years and understand His first true miracle, an event wrapped in sin and destruction, an act that yet remains unfulfilled and holds the only hope for the world.

The search for the truth will take Erin and the others across centuries and around the world, from the dusty plains of the Holy Land to the icy waters of the Arctic Ocean, from the catacombs of Rome to an iron fortress in the Mediterranean Sea, and at last to the very gates of Hell itself, where their destiny--and the fate of mankind--awaits.

Mars, Inc.: The Billionaire's Club by Ben Bova
Baen (December 3, 2013)
Received via NetGalley

How do you get to the Red Planet?  Not via a benighted government program trapped in red tape and bound by budget constrictions, that’s for sure.  No, what it will take is a helping of adventure, science, corporate powerplays, a generous dollop of seduction—both in and out of the boardroom—and money, money, money!

Art Thrasher knows this.  He is a man with a driving vision: send humans to Mars.  The government has utterly failed, but Thrasher has got the plan to accomplish such a feat: form a “club” or billionaires to chip in one billion a year until the dream is accomplished.  But these are men and women who are tough cookies, addicted to a profitable bottom-line, and disdainful of pie-in-the-sky dreamers who want to use their cash to make somebody else’s dreams come true.

But Thrasher is different from the other dreamers in an important regard: he’s a billionaire himself, and the president of a successful company. But it’s going to take all his wiles as a captain of industry and master manipulator of business and capital to overcome setbacks and sabotage—and get a rocket full of scientist, engineers, visionaries, and dreamers on their way to the Red Planet.

The man for the job has arrived.  Art Thrasher is prepared to do whatever it takes to humans on Mars—or die trying!

Mister October, Volume I & Volume II edited by Christopher Golden
JournalStone (November 8, 2013)
Received via LibraryThing

On March 21st, 2013, I received a phone call from Holly Newstein telling me that her husband, Rick Hautala, had suffered a massive heart attack. That piece of information shocked me into a surreal sort of panic, so much so that at first I could not make the leap to the next thing she said…that he had died. It seemed impossible. Rick had been such a good friend, such a consistent and stable force in my life, that the idea of him being so suddenly removed from this world…I just couldn’t make sense of it.

I have no doubt that readers will treasure this two-volume set. It is my hope that as you read, you will ruminate a little bit about the man for whom we all have come together within these pages. And I hope you’ll urge others to pick up their own copies of MISTER OCTOBER as well.

The Forever Engine by Frank Chadwick
Baen; Original edition (January 7, 2014)
Received via NetGalley

London 1888. His Majesty’s airships troll the sky powered by antigrav liftwood as a cabal of Iron Lords tightens its hold on a Britain choked by the fumes of industry. Mars has been colonized, and clockwork assassins stalk the European corridors of power. And somewhere far to the east, the Old Man of the Mountains plots the end of the world with his Forever Engine.

Enter Jack Fargo. Scholar. Former special forces operator in Afghanistan. A man from our own near future thrust back in time—or to wherever it is that this Brave Victorian World actually exists. Aided only by an elderly Scottish physicist, a young British officer of questionable courage, and a beautiful but mysterious spy for the French Commune, Fargo is a man on a mission: save the future from irrevocable destruction when the Forever Engine is brought to full power and blows this universe, and our own, to smithereens.

White Fire by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child
Grand Central Publishing (November 12, 2013)
Received via NetGalley

Special Agent Pendergast arrives at an exclusive Colorado ski resort to rescue his protégée, Corrie Swanson, from serious trouble with the law. His sudden appearance coincides with the first attack of a murderous arsonist who--with brutal precision--begins burning down multimillion-dollar mansions with the families locked inside. After springing Corrie from jail, Pendergast learns she made a discovery while examining the bones of several miners who were killed 150 years earlier by a rogue grizzly bear. Her finding is so astonishing that it, even more than the arsonist, threatens the resort's very existence.

Drawn deeper into the investigation, Pendergast uncovers a mysterious connection between the dead miners and a fabled, long-lost Sherlock Holmes story--one that might just offer the key to the modern day killings as well.

Now, with the ski resort snowed in and under savage attack--and Corrie's life suddenly in grave danger--Pendergast must solve the enigma of the past before the town of the present goes up in flames.

Gauntlet: A Novel Of International Intrigue by Richard Aaron
Temple Publications International, Inc. (July 31, 2013)
Received via Publisher

A terrorist attack against the U.S., so great that it would dwarf any that preceded it is looming. The government knows it is coming. Six hundred and sixty tons of Semtex is detonated in a massive explosion in Libya, the last of a deadly stockpile. The operation seems to have gone smoothly, but within minutes of the explosion, Richard Lawrence discovers that one of the shipments of the explosive was hijacked en route to the explosion site. Days later, a glory seeking “Emir” broadcasts to the world that he is planning a massive attack against a major US landmark. He boldly gives a time line–one month. Hamilton Turbee, an autistic mathematician, at the secretive and newly created agency, called the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, or “TTIC”, discovers various methods to follow the route of the terrorists as they get ever closer to their destination. His flawed genius gives the nation its only chance at stopping the attack.

However, there is tension within TTIC, which is peopled primarily by individuals with a military background. Most have difficulty communicating with, or working with the highly eccentric Turbee. Now a desperate chase covers four continents, as the men bent on attacking the U.S. use every weapon at their disposal to evade the American authorities. Time and again the terrorists use every weapon at their disposal to evade the American authorities. Time and again they prove willing to destroy any thing, or any one, standing in their way. As the enemy approaches their destination, and the Emir gets ever more precise in his boasts as to where the attack will be, it is up to TTIC, without an effective leader, and flawed by personality differences, to find the target. As the world watches in horror, the President asks TTIC two questions: Where will the attack be? And can it be stopped?


As for what we're reading, the team has reviews coming up over the next 2 weeks for:

What's topping your shelves this week?