Book Giveaway EXTRAVAGANZA!

 I have picked zee winners out of my magical randomizing hat! And they are:

1. Jennifer of Serendipity's Library!
2. Angela Cook!
3. Stacey!
4. Lisa Ann!

I will divide the book into neat mathematical portions and send them your way. Rah!
Check in next time for another chance to win.

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Yo, Book Sluts! I'm back. And, in honor of Cyborg Monday, I'm going to give away a big ol' pile of books. I have ARCs, new titles, and even a CD set.

These books keep creeping around my desk with their pages ruffling mournfully, begging to be read. (The CD set just lies there like a lump.)

"Fie on you, books!" I say. "Can you not see that I am working hard here at gazing listlessly into space and pushing this paperclip back and forth, back and forth, while dreaming of revenge against my enemies? I have not time to read all of you. I can read only one of you today!"

They fling themselves at me in anger, slapping me with their inky pages, but I will not be deterred.

"However!" I shout. "I will find you loving homes. I will do so today."

The books are mollifed....for now. Enter this giveaway post haste so I can speed them on their way into your eager arms! (The books are really very tame. Pay no mind to my hyperbole.)

The rules are simple for this giveaway:
1. Leave me a comment with a way to contact you should you win (if certain titles appeal to you, say so!)
2. Follow my blog
3. Tweet at least once about this giveaway, and please tag me @feralpony so I see it (if you don't tweet then just send me some good karma/prayer/what have you. Something like "Gee whiz, I sure hope that nice Party Pony blogger gets a pile of money in her mailbox today!")
4. If you write a blog post about this giveaway you get super ginormous points
5. Thank something, anything, for your life. Right now. You are golden.

I will pick winners soonish...in a couple of days. Good luck!

A red dog named "Clifford"? Hmmm.

Anyone seen this movie yet? It sounds amazing.

ARC, ARC, The Clockwork Dark!

That cobra gonna bite cha!

I like authors named "Jennifer."

Ooh, I read Life as We Knew It and it was so understated, yet so believable and compelling in the end.

I think she is going for the "hot librarian" look.

Another author named Jennifer! Is this a trend?

Stephen King endorses it!

Dat be blood dripping from that microphone!

The CD set. Suzanne Collins endorses it!

MG fun.

Please tell me the "J" stands for Jennifer!

I am running out of steam to write captions. How many books are left?

Is that fish carnivorous?

Plucky kids, I'll wager!

Recognize that look? Hot librarian!

The Great 50-Book Giveaway

UPDATE: Winners have been chosen. Thanks to everyone for participating! I'll host another giveaway in August, so please come back and try again.

As predicted, I did not have a box large enough to hold all these books so I have chosen three big winners:
Mindy McGinnis
Denise Krebs
The Oros Family
And a special consolation prize of a surprise book goes to...Mary Frame

I'll be Tweeting to let the winners know. Please DM me @feralpony with your mailing addresses, and the books could go out as early as today. Hurrah!
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I am going to give away 50 books. Yes, I am. They include many ARCs, some published titles, and even a bonus 7-CD audio edition of Everlasting. These books are all YA/MG titles. Imagine a great big stack of them teetering on your coffee table, toppling over and crushing your breakfast croissants! But you won't care about your flattened pastries, because you'll be up to your eyeballs in dark underworlds, angsty teens with acne, princesses, mutant wolves, and sword fighting.

These books could be yours. Or at least some of them. I might have to choose more than one winner if I can't find a big enough box to house these books. It's going to take a BIG box. Look at 'em:

All you have to do to be eligible is:

1. Follow my blog.

2. Leave me a comment.

3. Tweet at least once about the giveaway (make sure to tag me @feralpony so I can see it). If you don't use Twitter, you must go out to your rooftop and call me on the wind. "Party Pony!" you will cry. "I want those damned books!" I shall surely hear you. 

That's it! I will pick a winner or winners sometime soon...perhaps on Thursday of this week. Questions? Send them my way in comments. Thanks for joining in!

ARC of Ally Condie's CROSSED, Plus 5 More to Give Away!

I have fresh ARCs! I have acquired them through stealth and at great peril to life and limb. Despite the fact that I carried them over snowy mountain passes, past slavering wolfhounds, etc., I am giving them all away. Why? Because I did a bad, bad thing in a former life (when I was but a lowly beetle) and I am still trying to fix my karma. Your reading pleasure may prevent me from returning to my next life once again in the form of a beetle. My name is still bandied about in the beetle kingdom with much bad talk, and I am not keen to return.

Post a comment here if you want these titles (and feel free to mention a title that you particularly want). Make sure to include your Twitter handle or another way to contact you. I will randomly select one or two winners, and will send the books out. It's that easy!

You've got to be a follower of The Party Pony blog to qualify. Those who Tweet and share the word will get Super Bonus Points, and their names will be put in the random drawing more than once; other bribes are not accepted (even dirty martinis sent by parcel post). Make sure to alert me @feralpony so you can claim your bonus points, you greedy, greedy thing.

If you amuse me in the comments, your name may be placed in the Random Name Kitty 3x, or even 4x! Your odds will be better to win this book derby than that horsie with the wings!

Winners will be selected sometime on Wednesday morning (6/22) after the sun rises. Good luck! Fare thee well, my friends!

(P.S. If you win, it's nice to blog about the books you read and share the love!)

Crossed
By Ally Condie (Nov 2011)

Audition
By Stasia Ward Kehoe (Oct 2011)

Fox & Phoenix
By Beth Bernobich (Oct 2011)

The Space Between
By Brenna Yovanoff (Nov 2011)

The Future of Us
By Jay Asher & Carolyn Mackler (Nov 2011)

Legend
By Marie Lu (Nov 2011)

I Have ARCs. I'm Giving Them Away.

I have in my possession a vasty pile of ARCs that have come my way through various secret channels. Individuals have threatened me suggested that I should share the ARCs through a bloggy giveaway. And so I shall!

Here are the details.

You must answer a question related to one of the books I am giving away. For this giveaway, that question shall be: "If you were in the circus, what would your role be?" Post your silly, lyrical, or offensive reply in the comments. If there is an ARC title (listed below) that you desperately want, feel free to let me know.

I will package up all your replies and send them in a sack by eagle to Prague, where a wizened watchmaker I know from my days as an international spy/assasin will choose the winners and send them back to my via fast mail ship, sewn into the belly of a salted haddock. (Damn, that wasn't written right; ships don't fit inside haddocks! I meant to say "send them back, sewn into the belly of a salted haddock, via fast mail ship.")

One or more winners may be chosen. The exact number of winners is completely arbitrary and depend on how much postage I have at my disposal. If you win, I will contact you and you will send me your mailing address. Yes, you will! (Make sure I know how to contact you via your blog or an email address.)

If you spread the word via Tweets and such, you will get SUPER BONUS POINTS. Make sure to let me know so you can greedily claim your points.

You've gotta be a follower of "The Party Pony" blog to qualify. Otherwise, how are you going to know about future giveaways like this? There may be many such giveaways, because I have a black market flow of ARCs from my friends in the underworld. Just imagine your bookshelves: brimming, overflowing with treasures, toppling over and crushing your pet cats.

All of today's ARCs are YA/Middle Grade. Here is the list:

Circus Galacticus, By Deva Fagan (Pub date: November 14, 2011)

Wereworld: Rise of the Wolf, By Curtis Jobling (Pub date: September 20, 2011)

The Inquisitor's Apprentice, By Chris Moriarty (Pub date: 10/2011)

Skary Childrin and the Carousel of Sorrow, By Katy Towell (Pub date: August 23, 2011)

Wisdom's Kiss, By Catherine Gilbert Murdock (Pub date: 9/2011)

The Undrowned Child, By Michelle Lovric (Pub date: 8/2011)

My Big Fatass BEA Bookbags

Visited BEA 2011 yesterday for work purposes and found the place was lousy with literary agents. I passed one who has my full manuscript, another who holds a partial, another with a query. But could I speak to them? Nay! I did not want to be the wanna-be author going stalky-stalky in the fluorescence of the (horrible) Javits Center, leaping like a sweaty wildcat upon the unwary agent, two huge bags of ARCS and schwag swinging like fatass saddlebags from my shoulders:

"Um, um, um you read my BOOK yet? You got my book! You read it? HAVE YOU READ IT FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE? D'ya like it?! Can I use that table, over there, for my author signing?"

No, that would not be me, but the whole thing was tough. Everyone has nametags! And the agents' tags have a RED strip at the bottom of their badge, so you can spot them and get that little salivary stalking instinct. Also, the place is even lousier with authors than it is with agents, and they are published. People wait in line to get their signatures. This breeds jealousy, and jealousy hurts.

However, I am gulping down my jealousy to link to some new titles I received ARCs for and of which I heard much buzz/praise. I didn't get copies of everything I saw, because I couldn't carry any more with me. I found myself longing for an eReader, because the fatass bookbags I have mentioned knocked over some old and infirm people as I trudged to the subway after the event.

When She Woke, By Hillary Jordan (Algonquin Books)

(Note: This is the only book I have actually started reading of my new batch, and therefore it's at the top of my list.) I read Mudbound and loved it. So when I heard this new book was out, I darted right over to the Algonquin booth and pleaded for a copy. From page one, this book is intense and terrifying. A cross between The Hunger Games, The Handmaid's Tale, and The Scarlet Letter, When She Woke opens with protagonist Hannah Payne awakening to find her skin, from head to toe, dyed a vivid red through a process called "chroming." She is a felon, convicted of murdering her unborn child, in a futuristic world where church and state are dangerously blurred. For thirty days, her imprisonment will be televised. Then she'll be released into the world, where an even more painful imprisonment will begin. I'll probably be up all night tonight reading this.

Bedbugs, By Ben H. Winters (Quirk Books 9/6/11)
From the author of Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. Everyone is terrified of bedbugs, so writing an "understated horror" novel about this topic is a stroke of brilliance. When I brought out the book and showed it to a few friends, they shuddered. One almost screamed, and said she stays up at night searching for bedbugs. In the book, a "perfect couple" in search of a dream brownstone in Brooklyn Heights find something more sinister: The bedbug problem from hell! My skin crawls at the prospect, although bedbugs are not one of my major phobias. They soon will be.

Why We Broke Up, By Daniel Handler (Little, Brown 1/12)

Follows the story of how Min and Ed "met at a party, saw a movie, followed an old woman, shared a hotel room, and broke each other's hearts." The book came with a postcard on which readers can write in "We broke up because..." and mail it in to the publisher. At the show, there were many such postcards tacked on a board with amusing and heartbreaking reasons for the end of romance. My favorite: "Because he was an ass."

And here are several more than sounded incredibly good but I don't have time to write about in detail. Someone has written about them on Amazon already. You can read it all there. And even order the books should you so desire. Enjoy!

The Language of Flowers, By Vanessa Diffenbaugh (8/23/11)

Victoria has spent her childhood in the foster care system; her only connection to the world is through the world of flowers and their meanings.

Wildwood, by Colin Meloy (8/30/11)

Someone called this "The American Chronicles of Narnia." An adventure into the Impassable Wilderness, a tangled and magical forest in the middle of Portland.

Daughter of Smoke and Bone, by Laini Taylor (9/27/11)
A YA "Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" with a mysterious and unique blue-haired MC.

Carrier of the Mark, by Leigh Fallon (10/11)
Megan moves to Ireland, meets hot boy, discovers she has power over one of the four elements.

Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick, by Joe Schreiber (10/11)
Average high school guy spends a wild prom night with geeky Lithuanian exchange student—who is really an international assassin!


The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer, by Michelle Hodkin (9/11)
Mara wakes up in a hospital with no memory of how she got there. Then she starts to see things, and people start dying. Editor cites an incredible "big surprise twist" ending.

Down the Mysterly River, by Bill Willingham (9/13/11)
A boy and three animals in a very bad forest.

RRRR.I.P.!

This just in. Reason Number 346 that we are relieved to have left New Rochelle.

Perhaps another tartly-worded letter to New Ro Superintendent "Dick" Organisick (sic) is in order from yours truly?