Welcome to the Monday Morning Book Buzz, a little late due to the holiday. I hope everyone is enjoying the start of a new year; we’re looking forward to many great books to be published in 2012!

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This week’s releases are listed by category: Young Adult Fiction, General Fiction and Nonfiction. On-sale dates are indicated in parentheses.

Notable New Releases for the week of January 2nd:

Young Adult Fiction

• Bloodrose (Nightshade Series #3) by Andrea Cremer (1/3/2012) — The third and final installment of the international bestselling Nightshade trilogy. Calla has always welcomed war. But now that the final battle is upon her, there’s more at stake than fighting.

• Charmfall (Dark Elite Series #3) by Chloe Neill (1/3/2012) — Protecting Chicago from the dark side of life can be an exhausting job, especially when you’re in high school. So when the girls of St. Sophia’s start gearing up for Sneak, their fall formal, Lily decides to take a break from fighting to get ready for the event. But when a Reaper unexpectedly crashes the party prep and Lily’s firespell fails, she realizes that she has a much bigger problem than a full social calendar

• Cinder (The Lunar Chronicles Series #1) by Marissa Meyer (1/3/2012) — Cinder, a gifted mechanic, is a cyborg. She’s a second-class citizen with a mysterious past, reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her stepsister’s illness. But when her life becomes intertwined with the handsome Prince Kai’s, she suddenly finds herself at the center of an intergalactic struggle, and a forbidden attraction.

• Darkness Falls (Immortal Beloved Series #2) by Cate Tiernan (1/2/2012) — Nastasya has lived for hundreds of years, but for some reason, life never seems to get any better. She left her spoiled, rich girl life to find peace at River’s Edge, a safe haven for wayward immortals. But just as she’s getting comfortable, her family’s ties to dark magick force her to leave.

• Dreaming Awake by Gwen Hayes (1/3/2012) — Haden Black changed Theia Alderson’s life when he appeared in her dreams. And to save Haden, Theia sacrificed everything, but the dangerous bargain she made could have lasting repercussions. Now Theia is susceptible to the same deadly hungers that Haden has long struggled with-and their return to Serendipity Falls could test their control.

• Immortal War (Vampirates Series #6) by Justin Somper (1/2/2012) — In this conclusion of the Vampirates series, the stakes are higher than ever. A bloody war is raging across the oceans, with the Pirate Federation and Nocturnals in alliance against the renegade Vampirates.

• Pretty Little Secrets (Pretty Little Liars Series) by Sara Shepard (1/3/2012) — The Pretty Little Liars series continues with this story which takes place between Unbelievable and Wicked, revealing the liars’ never-before-seen misadventures over their junior-year winter break.

• The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight by Jennifer E. Smith (1/2/2012) — Who would have guessed that four minutes could change everything? Today should be one of the worst days of seventeen-year-old Hadley Sullivan’s life. She’s stuck at JFK, late to her father’s second wedding, which is taking place in London and involves a soon to be step-mother that Hadley’s never even met. Then she meets the perfect boy in the airport’s cramped waiting area. Twists of fate and quirks of timing play out in this thoughtful novel about family connections, second chances and first loves.

• Switched (Trylle Trilogy #1) by Amanda Hocking (1/3/2012) — When Wendy Everly was six years old, her mother was convinced she was a monster and tried to kill her. Eleven years later, Wendy discovers her mother might have been right.  She’s not the person she’s always believed herself to be, and her whole life begins to unravel—all because of Finn Holmes, a mysterious guy who always seems to be watching her.

• The Woman in Black: A Ghost Story by Susan Hill (1/3/2012) — A new movie tie-in edition of Hill’s chilling 1983 tale of a menacing specter haunting a remote English village. The movie, which opens February 3rd, stars Daniel Radcliffe in his first major film role since the Harry Potter film series ended.

General Fiction

• Agent 6 by Tom Rob Smith (1/5/2012) — In this spellbinding new novel, Tom Rob Smith probes the tenuous border between love and obsession as Leo Demidov struggles to untangle the threads of a devastating conspiracy that shatters everything he holds dear. Deftly capturing the claustrophobic intensity of the Cold War-era Soviet Union, it’s at once a heart-pounding thriller and a richly atmospheric novel of extraordinary depth

• Breakdown (V. I. Warshawski Series #15) by Sara Paretsky (1/3/2012) — Carmilla, Queen of the Night, is a shape-shifting raven whose fictional exploits thrill girls all over the world. When tweens in Chicago’s Carmilla Club hold an initiation ritual in an abandoned cemetery, they stumble on an actual corpse, a man stabbed through the heart in a vampire-style slaying.

• A Devil Is Waiting (Sean Dillon Series #19) by Jack Higgins (1/3/2012) — The President is coming to London, but not to an entirely warm welcome. A fanatical mullah is offering a blessing to anyone who will assassinate the President, and though most London Muslims think the mullah has crossed the line, a few think otherwise.

• Gun Games (Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus Series #20) by Faye Kellerman (1/3/2012) — Peter Decker of the LAPD and Rina Lazarus, arguably the most popular husband and wife team in contemporary crime fiction, return in Kellerman’s latest novel. A rash of shocking adolescent suicides at an elite Los Angeles private school is at the heart of this gripping thriller that also focuses on the troubled teen Decker and Lazarus have brought into their home.

• Halo: Primordium: Book Two of the Forerunner Saga by Greg Bear (1/3/2012) — In the wake of apparent self-destruction of the Forerunner empire, two humans—Chakas and Riser—are like flotsam washed up on very strange shores indeed. Captured by the Master Builder, misplaced during a furious battle in space, they now find themselves on an inverted world where horizons rise into the sky, and where humans of all kinds are trapped in a perilous cycle of horror and neglect.

• The Hunter by John Lescroart (1/3/2012) — Raised by loving adoptive parents, San Francisco private investigator Wyatt Hunt never had an interest in finding his birth family-until he gets a chilling text message from an unknown number: “How did ur mother die?” The answer is murder, and urged on by curiosity and the mysterious texter, Hunt takes on a case he never knew existed, one that has lain unsolved for decades.

• Love in a Nutshell by Janet Evanovich and Dorien Kelly (1/3/2012) — Number one bestselling author Janet Evanovich teams up with award-winning author Dorien Kelly to deliver a sparkling novel of romantic suspense, small-town antics and secretive sabotage.

• Private: #1 Suspect by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro (1/2/2012) — Since former Marine helicopter pilot Jack Morgan started Private, it has become one of the world’s most powerful investigation firms, sought out by the rich and famous to discretely handle their most sensitive problems. But when a former lover is found murdered in Jack’s bed, he is instantly the number one suspect.

• Scarecrow Returns by Matthew Reilly (1/3/2012) — Deep in the Arctic, a long-forgotten Soviet military base enshrouds a weapon of unimaginably destructive force—a Cold War doomsday device with the power to obliterate the planet. When a mysterious and brutal terrorist group known as the Army of Thieves seizes control of the remote base and unleashes the weapon upon an unsuspecting world, there is only one team close enough to sabotage them: a ragtag band of Marines and civilians led by Captain Shane Schofield, call sign “Scarecrow.”

• Sisterhood of Dune by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson (1/3/2012) — It is eighty-three years after the last of the thinking machines were destroyed in the Battle of Corrin, after Faykan Butler took the name of Corrino and established himself as the first Emperor of a new Imperium. Great changes are brewing that will shape and twist all of humankind.

Nonfiction

• 7 Money Rules for Life: How to Take Control of Your Financial Future by Mary Hunt (1/2/2012) — Bestselling author and finance expert Mary Hunt offers gives readers the keys to get their money under control and get prepared financially for the rest of their lives.

• American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History by Chris Kyle (1/3/2012) — Gripping, eye-opening, and powerful, American Sniper is the astonishing autobiography of SEAL Chief Chris Kyle, who is the record-holding sniper in U.S. military history. Kyle shares the true story of his extraordinary decade-long career, including his multiple combat tours in Iraq (Operation Iraqi Freedom) and elsewhere from 1999-2009.

• Haiti: The Aftershocks of History by Laurent Dubois (1/3/2012) — A passionate and insightful account by a leading historian of Haiti that traces the sources of the country’s devastating present back to its turbulent and traumatic history. Revealing what lies behind the familiar moniker of “the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere,” this indispensable book illuminates the foundations on which a new Haiti might yet emerge.

• Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Libertyby John M. Barry (1/5/2012) — A revelatory look at how Roger Williams shaped the nature of religion, political power, and individual rights in America. This is a story of power, set against Puritan America and the English Civil War. Williams’s interactions with King James, Francis Bacon, Oliver Cromwell, and his mentor Edward Coke set his course, but his fundamental ideas came to fruition in America, as Williams, though a Puritan, collided with John Winthrop’s vision of his “City upon a Hill.”

• Worth Fighting For: Love, Loss, and Moving Forward by Lisa Niemi Swayze (1/3/2012) — For the first time, Lisa Niemi Swayze shares the details of her husband Patrick Swayze’s twenty-one-month battle with Stage IV pancreatic cancer. She writes with heartbreaking honesty about her grief in the aftermath of Patrick’s death, and she openly discusses the challenges that the years without him have posed.