My husband and I stopped at Half Priced Books last night and I ran across some paranormal romance books by Tate Hallaway.  Book covers tend to pull me in and hers grabbed me.  Very cute and stylish.  Falling in love with the undead has been all the rage, and surely overdone, but her books sounded fun and promised a fresh voice and POV.  Her blog states that she's from my hometown so I'm thinking I'll support my hometown gal by picking up "Tall, Dark & Dead" and giving it a go.  Here's an excerpt:

Garnet Lacey vowed never to do magic again. Not after that scene with the Vatican assassins in Minneapolis where she called on the Goddess Lilith, who left a swath of destruction so huge Garnet had to leave town. Eight months later, and several hundred miles away, she’s now the manager of Mercury Crossing, Madison, Wisconsin’s premier occult bookstore and herb emporium where the employees are prime examples of witches without a clue.

One day, just as she’s closing the bookstore, in walks trouble, with a capital T for Tall, Tough, and Tasty. She might have blown him off, except for one thing: his aura. He doesn’t have one.

That would make him dead. And a mystery to unravel. Unfortunately, the assassins Garnet has worked so hard to avoid are after her mystery man, and now she finds herself facing her own brutal past.
 

I don't know what I'd do without books. There's no question that I love them. Crisp, unmarked or dented paperback or jacketed hardcovers, I don't care which. I do hope that when I look behind the jacket, I'll find a smart, elegantly embossed cover with silver or gold writing. Something that will look great in 50 years, like the story inside was worth the effort and expense of a fabulous cover.  Don't you just love the texture and smell of the paper and the fanciful covers that draw you in? Most of all, I love that each book is a mystery, a new experience. You can discover new worlds, fall in love or solve a mystery. Each book is a present I can’t wait to unwrap. E-books are great, but I hope the world never completely replaces the good old fashion book.

Here’s the Barnes & Noble wish list I just started:

1. Paper Garden and Other Stories by Jerome Wilson

2. Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively by Rebecca McClanahan

3. French Pressed by Cleo Coyle

4. Sister Pelagia and the Black Monk by Boris Akunin

5. Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment by James Patterson

6. The Haunted Bookshop (Barnes and Noble Library of Essential Reading) by Christopher Morley

7. The Best of H.P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre by H.P. Lovecraft

8. Of Saints and Shadows by Christopher Golden

Here's a list of the last ten books I purchased:

1.  The Book of Air and Shadows by Michael Gruber
2.  They Like Jesus But Not the Church by Dan Kimball
3.  Season of the Witch by Natasha Mostert
4.  Greywalker by Kat Richardson
5.  Through a Glass, Deadly by Sarah Atwell
6.  Heart of Stone by C.E. Murphy
7.  Poetry for Dummies by The Poetry Center, John Timpane, Ph.D., and Maureen Watts
8.  The Apologetics Study Bible
9.  Peony in Love by Lisa See
10.WordPress for Dummies by Lisa Sabin-Wilson

They all look fantastic and I can't wait to get started on each of them!