Mailbox Mondays 2-23-2009

Uglies by Scott Westerfeld I received through Paperback Swap this week.

Tally is about to turn sixteen, and she can't wait. Not for her license-for turning pretty. In Tally's world, your sixteenth birthday brings an operation that turns you from a repellent ugly into a stunningly attractive pretty and catapults you into a high-tech paradise where your only job is to have a really great time. In just a few weeks Tally will be there.

But Tally's new friend Shay isn't sure she wants to be pretty. She'd rather risk life on the outside. When Shay runs away, Tally learns about a whole new side of the pretty world - and it isn't very pretty. The authorities offer Tally the worst choice she can imagine: find her friend and turn her in, or never turn pretty at all. The choice Tally makes changes her world forever.

The Four Corners of the Sky by Michael Malone I received from Danielle at Sourcebooks. (Thanks Danielle!)

On her 7th birthday, Annie's con artist father Jack told her two things: he was giving her an airplane, and he was leaving her behind. Then he raced out of her life.

Years later, Annie, now a top Navy jet pilot, returns home on her twenty-sixth birthday to visit with her aunt and uncle, who raised her as their own. But she arrives to the most unexpected: a call from her father to say he is dying and needs her to fly to St. Louis to bring him the airplane he gave her the day he left.

Is Jack really dying, or is it another one of his elaborate cons? Why would she help the man who abandoned her? And is he telling the truth that if she brings him the plane, he will give her the one thing she always wanted: the name of her mother? The answers will set Annie on a quest filled with hilarious characters, strange encounters, and the most unexpected of all: the myster of falling in love.





Diamonds in the Shadow by Caroline B. Cooney was received for an upcoming First Wild Card Tour.

Jared's mother and father had volunteered his bedroom for a bunch of African refugees, and they didn't even bother to ask him. "I'm supposed to share my bedroom with some stranger?" he demanded. "The church signed a contract, Jared," he is told. "We are responsible for this family."

"I didn't sign any documents. I don't have a responsibility."

The day the Finches drive to the airport to pick up the Amabo family of four - father, mother, and teenage son and daughter - they don't realize a fifth refugee has landed too, one who does not believe in good. This lawless rebel managed to enter America undetected, and the Amabo family has something of his that he wants back.

When Jared realizes that the good guys are not always innocent, he is faced with a decision that could change the lives of both the Finches and the Amabos forever.





Scream by Mike Dellosso was also received for a First Wild Card Tour.

While talking to his friend on the phone, Mark Stone is startled by a cacophony of otherworldly screams. Seconds later, a tragic accident claims his friend's life. When this happens several more times - screams followed by an untimely death - he is compelled to act.

Battling his failure as a husband and struggling with his own damaged faith, Mark embarks on a mission to find the meaning behind the screams and hopefully stop death from calling on its next victim. When his estranged wife is kidnapped and he again hears the screams as she calls from her cell phone, his search becomes much more personal and much more urgent.





Serial Killers: Up Close and Personal: Inside the World of Torturers, Psychopaths and Mass Murderers by Christopher Berry-Dee was received from Mini Book Expo.

The headline-grabbing crime. The grizzly facts in the coroner's report. The shocking revelations from the trial. Serial Killers: Up Close and Personal provides all these details plus one more: the murderer's first-person perspective — Revealing quotes from convicted killers add an even more frightening element to these chilling accounts. A world-renowned investigative criminologist, author Christopher Berry-Dee goes deep into the bowels of the world's toughest prisons to face these monsters and hear their stories. Serial Killers: Up Close and Personal presents a disturbing and unflinching look into the homicidal mind.





Big Sid's Vincati by Matthew Biberman was received from Hudson Street Press (Penguin) through Shelf Awareness.

When his father had a near-fatal heart attack and gave up the will to live, Matthew Biberman panicked. Impulsively, Matthew promised his father, an expert motorcycle mechanic, that they would build a Vincati motorcycle together. The Loch Ness monster of American motorcycles, a Vincati - half Vincent, half Ducati - had never been completed in North America. Building a Vincati was considered, at best, a fool's errand; at worst, an expensive waste of motorcycle parts.

But for nearly sixty years, "Big Sid" Biberman had been the mechanic to see to refurbish and repair motorcycles, especially British-made Vincents. If anyone could build a Vincati, it was Big Sid. Despite sharing his father's passion for motorcycles, his son Matthew lacked Big Sid's mechanical gift. He gave up on tools and became a Shakespearean scholar. As adults, father and son barely spoke. But after his father's brush with death, Matthew vowed to learn the techniques that made Big Sid a legen among bikers.

Big Sid's Vincati is an irresistible combination of step-by-step motorcycle construction mixed with a powerful story of fathers and sons. Moving and heartwarming, this rugged memoir shows not only how the Bibermans built their Vincati, but also how two men reconstructed their relationship, one motorcycle part at a time.

The Survivor's Club: The Secrets and Science that Could Save Your Life by Ben Sherwood was received from Hachette Book Group. (Thanks Hachette!)

I requested this book after I read an article about it in Newsweek.

From the cover: Each second of the day, someone in America faces a crisis, whether it's a car accident, violent crime, serious illness, or financial trouble. Given the inevitability of adversity, we all wonder: Who beats the odds and who surrenders? Why do some people bounce back and others give up? How can I become the kind of person who survives and thrives?

The fascinating, hopeful answers to these questions are found in THE SURVIVORS CLUB. In the tradition of Freakonomics and The Tipping Point, this book reveals the hiddenside of survival by combining astonishing true stories, gripping scientific research, and the author's adventures inside the U.S. military's elite survival schools and the government's airplane crash evacuation course.

With THE SURVIVORS CLUB, you can also discover your own Survivor IQ through a powerful Internet-based test called the Survivor Profiler. Developed exclusively for this book, the test analyzes your personality and generates a customized report on your top survivor strengths.

There is no escaping life's inevitable struggles. But THE SURVIVORS CLUB can give you an edge when adversity strikes.

Visit Mailbox Mondays over at The Printed Page and see what everyone else received!