Hey there! This week I’m participating in Six for Sunday, a meme hosted by Steph at A Little But a Lot. This month, it looks like the focus is on seasons, and we are starting with the coldest season in New England – Winter!
Books with Wintery Colors
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1. Skyseeker’s Princess by Mariam Verbeek
Ellen’s alone. Lying on the banks of an ice-laden river, she’s badly injured and she’s going to die. She doesn’t care. She was trained to be Si’Empra’s leader, but wealthy Skyseekers, the country’s elite, chose her brother—her abuser. And just like that, her future was gone.
But others believe that Ellen is the key to their future. Crystalmakers rescue her and take her to a refuge. She learns about the inter-relationships of Si’Empra’s diverse societies and how their alliances have kept this small, Antarctic island alive. She comes to understand more clearly how her brother’s brutality is destroying the land – threatening its very existence. But Ellen’s unsure about being a leader and her brother’s betrayal has hurt her deeply. There’s duty, though, and her training urges her to help her new friends. Every step she takes, every negotiation she succeeds in, every promise she makes draws her further into an ultimate confrontation with her brother and the elite … and it’s not what she wants. She’s too young. She’s not ready. But there is duty. And her beautiful, cold and windswept island is dying.
LINKS: Goodreads Amazon Book Depository
2. The Winter Duke by Claire Eliza Bertlett
When Ekata’s brother is finally named heir, there will be nothing to keep her at home in Kylma Above with her murderous family. Not her books or science experiments, not her family’s icy castle atop a frozen lake, not even the tantalizingly close Kylma Below, a mesmerizing underwater kingdom that provides her family with magic. But just as escape is within reach, her parents and twelve siblings fall under a strange sleeping sickness.
In the space of a single night, Ekata inherits the title of duke, her brother’s warrior bride, and ever-encroaching challengers from without—and within—her own ministry. Nothing has prepared Ekata for diplomacy, for war, for love…or for a crown she has never wanted. If Kylma Above is to survive, Ekata must seize her family’s power. And if Ekata is to survive, she must quickly decide how she will wield it.
LINKS: Goodreads Amazon Book Depository
3. Frozen Reign by Kathryn Purdie
Fear reigns in Riaznin.
Former emperor Valko has kidnapped the youngest Auraseer and provoked a civil war. Now, he’s hunting his brother, Anton, and leading Shenglin troops across the border. But with her empathic powers gone, Sonya doesn’t know how to protect the people she loves or the nation she helped free. She can’t sense who to trust. She can’t track Valko. She can’t tell if her beloved Anton is safe. She only knows danger is coming. And there’s nothing she can do to stop it.
Until Sonya hears a tale of an Esten Auraseer with a mysterious ability to heal, and suddenly her situation doesn’t feel as impossible as it once did. But without her powers, finding the legendary Auraseer will be dangerous. And if she doesn’t succeed, the peace she sacrificed so much to achieve will be shattered forever.
LINKS: Goodreads Amazon Book Depository
4. Crown of Frost by Isabella August
Wicked fae, shattered memories… and a dream that just won’t die.
Nightmares still plague Elaine, five years after her escape from the darkest realm in faerie. Elaine’s memories are scattered and torn, but one uneasy remnant haunts her dreams: a mysterious man with cold blue eyes. When Elaine’s nightmares return for her, so too does the man from her dreams. Tall, wicked, and cloaked in dark power, Liam claims that he’s come to protect Elaine… but he might be the most dangerous temptation of all.
LINKS: Goodreads Amazon Book Depository
5. Hunted by Meagan Spooner
Beauty knows the Beast’s forest in her bones—and in her blood. Though she grew up with the city’s highest aristocrats, far from her father’s old lodge, she knows that the forest holds secrets and that her father is the only hunter who’s ever come close to discovering them.
So when her father loses his fortune and moves Yeva and her sisters back to the outskirts of town, Yeva is secretly relieved. Out in the wilderness, there’s no pressure to make idle chatter with vapid baronessas…or to submit to marrying a wealthy gentleman. But Yeva’s father’s misfortune may have cost him his mind, and when he goes missing in the woods, Yeva sets her sights on one prey: the creature he’d been obsessively tracking just before his disappearance.
Deaf to her sisters’ protests, Yeva hunts this strange Beast back into his own territory—a cursed valley, a ruined castle, and a world of creatures that Yeva’s only heard about in fairy tales. A world that can bring her ruin or salvation. Who will survive: the Beauty, or the Beast?
LINKS: Goodreads Amazon Book Depository
6. The Bitter Kingdom by Rae Carson
The champion must not waver.
The champion must not fear.
The gate of darkness closes.
Elisa is a fugitive.
Her enemies have stolen the man she loves, and they await her at the gate of darkness. Her country is on the brink of civil war, with her own soldiers ordered to kill her on sight.
Her Royal Majesty, Queen Lucero-Elisa né Riqueza de Vega, bearer of the Godstone, will lead her three loyal companions deep into the enemy’s kingdom, a land of ice and snow and brutal magic, to rescue Hector and win back her throne. Her power grows with every step, and the shocking secrets she will uncover on this, her final journey, could change the course of history.
But that is not all. She has a larger destiny. She must become the champion the world has been waiting for.
Even of those who hate her most.
LINKS: Goodreads Amazon Book Depository
I love all of these covers, but I think The Winter Duke is my favorite. How about you? Which one is your favorite? Comment below!
The Winter Duke is my favorite cover of these, too. Such a cool cover!
So pretty. I also like The Winter Duke the best.
Me too! 🙂