New Shelf Goodies & The Weekly Nutshell {58}

For New Shelf Goodies, I'll be showing you what lovely books I acquired this week, whether from publishers, or the library, or from whatever half-crazed book-buying binge I happened to go on. :D (Inspired by Tynga's Stacking the Shelves) The Weekly Nutshell will be just that...my week here at Stories & Sweeties, in a nutshell. (inspired by Ginger @ GReads and her recaps at the end of the TGIF posts)

SO excited for everything that landed on my doorstep this week. I may have gotten a bit swoony over a couple of these!

For review:

Bellman & Black: A Ghost Story by Diane Setterfield

Anyone read The Thirteenth Tale?  I LOVED that book, and I've been waiting years for the author to write again!

Rebel Belle by Rachel Hawkins

It's Rachel Hawkins--that's really all I need to know.

Tsarina by J. Nelle Patrick

It's Jackson Pearce---again, all I needed to know.

Fragile Spirits by Mary Lindsay

Ditto again.  I've never been disappointed with this author's work. 

Minder by Michele Jaffe

This story looks cool and the cover? Love it, and it gives you a perfect idea of what the story's about. 

Gifted:

The Burning Sky by Sherry Thomas

My friend thought this might not be her cup of tea---so I gladly took it off her hands! :D 

 Huge thanks to Atria Books and Penguin for the lovely goodies!

The Weekly Nutshell:

  {Monday} Book Trailers: Burning Sky, Between the Devil, & Unbreakable

{Tuesday} Becky's View: Of Beast & Beauty by Stacey Jay
 {Wednesday} Waiting on Wednesday: Ask Me by Kimberly Pauley

{Thursday}  Amy's View: Forevermore by Cindy Miles
 {Friday} Chat with Teri Brown  + Giveaway!

So, this week, I had a real bummer happen.  I missed a book signing with the fabulous Stacey Jay, whose new book Of Beast & Beauty is my new favorite book of this year.  It was an hour and 20 minute drive away already, and then we got stuck in STOPPED traffic about a quarter of the way there. We checked reports and found there was nearly solid traffic almost all the way there. We would have been so late that we decided to just turn around.  I was so bummed because I was hoping to get my copy signed and get another copy signed to give away. But it just wasn't meant to be, I guess. 

On the bright side---we were stuck in Napa for awhile, as there was traffic both ways, so we decided to seek out Sift Cupcakes and cheer ourselves up with these lovelies:

These were so YUMMY.  The cakes were just a little more dense than I like, but the frostings (my favorite part, anyhow), OH, the frostings were AMAZING.  I can see why they serve tiny frosting shots of just the frostings alone!  There is an almond cupcake with blueberry tequila filling (and wooo, you can definitely taste that tequila!), a raspberry cupcake with champagne frosting, a pina colada cupcake with the BEST strawberry buttercream I have every experienced, and a beer cupcake with a brown sugar buttercream that I am now completely obsessed with.  If you're ever in the Napa Valley area---Sift Cupcakes.  GO.  And another plus: there is the cutest little indie bookstore right across the way from it.  Ironically, it's another branch of Copperfield's Books, the store we didn't make it to *sigh*.

Have a great week, everyone!