Mailbox Monday/In My Mailbox 1-25-2010

Mailbox Monday is hosted at The Printed Page or In Your Mailbox at The Story Siren on Sunday. Please stop by those posts and take a look at what packages everybody else got this week!

The first seven books are for review.
The Last Song
by Nicholas Sparks

Seventeen-year-old Veronica "Ronnie" Miller's life was turned upside down when her parents divorced and her father moved to Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina. Three years later, she remains alienated from her parents, particularly her father. . .until her mother decides it would be in everyone's best interest if she and her brother spent the summer with him. Resentful and rebellious, Ronnie rejects her father's attempts to reach out to her and threatens to return to New York before the summer's end. But soon Ronnie meets Will, the last person she thought she'd ever be attracted to, and finds herself falling for him, opening herself up to the greatest happiness -- and pain -- that she has ever known.

In the tradition of his beloved novel A Walk to Remember, Nicholas Sparks brings us a deeply moving story of a young girl's first encounter with heartbreak -- and love. (back cover)


Then Came the Evening
by Brian Hart

Bandy Dorner, home from Vietnam, awakes with his car mired in a canal, his home reduced to ashes, and his pregnant wife preparing to leave town with her lover. Within moments, a cop lies bleeding on the road.

Nearly two decades later, Bandy is released from prison. His parents are gone, but on the derelict family ranch, Bandy faces a different reunion. Tracy, his now teenage son, has come to claim the father he's never known, and Iona, Bandy's ex-wife, has come on the heels of her son. All three are damaged, hardened, haunted. But amid the ice and rock of the raw Idaho landscape, they attempt to piece back together a family that never was, and to discover if they belong together at all.

With resolute honesty and restrained beauty, Brian Hart explores the hopes and limitations of his characters as they struggle toward a shared future, imbuing this deeply American story with the power of classic Greek tragedy. Then Came the Evening is the first novel of a remarkably accomplished writer -- a stunning debut.




The Long Way Home
by Andrew Klavan

Sometimes you have to go home to find out who you really are.

Charlie West went to bed one night an ordinary high school student. He woke up a hunted man. Terrorists are trying to kill him. The police want to arrest him for the stabbing death of his best friend. He doesn't know whose side he's on or who he can trust. With his pursuers closing in on every side, Charlie makes his way back to his hometown to find some answers. There, holed up in an abandoned mansion, he's joined by his friends in a desperate attempt to discover the truth about a murder he can't remember -- and the love he can never forget. (back cover)


The Highest Stakes
by Emery Lee

The breathtaking origins of thoroughbred horse racing.

A tale of drama, danger, thwarted love, and retribution set in the high stakes gentleman's world of 18th century horse racing, where fortunes could be won. . . and lost. . .

She's lonely and neglected, but she knows horses. . .

Charlotte Wallace is orphaned and alone until a sympathetic stable boy takes her under his wing and teaches her everything about thoroughbred racing. In the process, the two discover in each other a love destined to be thwarted at every turn.

If only he could, he'd take her away with him forever. . .

Robert Devington has tried everything to persuade Charlotte's uncle to allow them to marry. Then an ill-fated friendship, a scandal in the making and one desperate act of folly rob them of their love and his livelihood.

Dead set on retribution, all Robert's hopes are hanging on one small horse -- his only chance to reclaim his land, his dignity, and his love, against all odds. . . (back cover)




The Bride Collector
by Ted Dekker

FBI special agent Brad Raines is facing his most complex case yet. A Denver serial killer has murdered a string of beautiful young women, leaving a bridal veil at each scene, and he's picking up his pace. Unable to crack the case, Raines appeals for help to a most unusual source; residents of the Center for Well-being and Intelligence, a private psychiatric institution for mentally ill people who are extraordinarily gifted.

It's there that he meets Paradise, a young woman who witnessed her father murder her family and barely escaped his hand. Diagnosed with schizophrenia, Paradise may also have an extrasensory gift: the ability to experience the final moments of a person's life when she touches the dead body.

In a desperate attempt to find the killer, Raines enlists Paradise's help. Gradually he starts to question whether sanity resides outside the hospital walls. . .or inside.

As the serial killer picks up the pace -- and volume -- of his gruesome killings, the case becomes even more personal to Raines when his friend and colleague, a beautiful young forensic psychologist, becomes the Bride Collector's fourth target. And she isn't the last -- by far. (back cover)




Cole, I Love You to the Moon and Back
by Aaron Dean Ruotsala

Aaron Dean Ruotsala, 24-year-old husband, father, business owner, and pilot shares a true story about a heart-wrenching experience he calls the best and worst experience of a lifetime. This story will provoke you to laughter, tears, and cause you to examine yourself and your role as a human on this temporal journey. His prayer is that all who read this amazing story will learn from the experience in which they had no choice, to realize that when life brings you to the darkest, deepest, loneliest point imaginable, you will recognize what really matters in life. So, please laugh, cry, share, examine, and mostly enjoy this book that is certain to make you ask the question: "What if this happened to me?" The reality is that it could. (back cover)





Arcadia Falls
by Carol Goodman

From the bestselling author of The Lake of Dead Languages comes an enthralling work of literary fiction that follows a mother and daughter as they uncover the sinister secrets of an isolated boarding school.

In debt after her husband's unexpected death, Meg Rosenthal secures a job as a teacher at an upstate New York boarding school. Leaving suburban Long Island, Meg and her teenage daughter, Sally, embark on a new life in Arcadia Falls, a beautiful but isolated small town and the inspiration for a number of magically eerie fairy tales. With a hurtful rift growing between her and her daughter, Meg is hopeful that the change of scene will provide them with a fresh start. But it soon becomes clear to Meg that this isolated community hides deeply rooted and deadly secrets. And after a mysterious death, Arcadia Falls begins to reveal a disturbing dark side.

Returning to the rich psychological territory explored in the beloved The Lake of Dead Languages, Carol Goodman's latest fictional foray is exquisite and haunting. (back cover)



The next three books were all from my wish list at Paperback Swap!

Untamed
by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast

Life sucks when your friends are pissed at you.

Just ask Zoey Redbird -- she's become an expert on suckiness. In one week she has gone from having three boyfriends to having none, and from having a close group of friends who trusted and supported her to being an outcast. Speaking of friends, of the two Zoey has left, one is undead and one is unMarked. And Neferet has declared war on humans, which Zoey knows in her heart is wrong. But will anyone listen to her? Zoey's adventures at vampyre finishing school take a wild and dangerous turn as loyalties are tested, shocking true intentions come to light, and an ancient evil is awakened in P.C. and Kristin Cast's spellbinding fourth House of Night novel. (back cover)


Pretties
by Scott Westerfeld

Gorgeous. Popular. Perfect. Perfectly wrong.

Tally has finally become pretty. Now her looks are beyond perfect, her clothes are awesome, her boyfriend is totally hot, and she's completely popular. It's everything she's ever wanted.

But beneath all the fun -- the nonstop parties, the high-tech luxury, the total freedom -- is a nagging sense that something's wrong. Something important. Then a message from Tally's ugly past arrives. Reading it, Tally remembers what's wrong with pretty life, and the fun stops cold.

Now she has to choose between fighting to forget what she knows and fighting for her life -- because the authorities don't intend to let anyone with this information survive. (back cover)



Specials
by Scott Westerfeld

"Special Circumstances": The words have sent chills down Tally's spine since her days as a repellent, rebellious ugly. Back then Specials were a sinister rumor -- frighteningly beautiful, dangerously strong, breathtakingly fast. Ordinary pretties might live their whole lives without meeting a Special. But Tally's never been ordinary.

And now she's been turned into one of them: a superamped fighting machine, engineered to keep the uglies down and the pretties stupid.

The strength, the speed, and the clarity and focus of her thinking feel better than anything Tally can remember. Most of the time. One tiny corner of her heart still remembers something more.

Still, it's easy to tune that out -- until Tally's offered a chance to stamp out the rebels of the New Smoke permanently. It all comes down to one last choice: listen to that tiny, faint heartbeat, or carry out the mission she's programmed to complete. Either way, Tally's world will never be the same. (inside cover)

I won this one awhile back from The Book Vault.

The Vampire's Assistant
by Darren Shan

This is a true story. I don't expect you to believe me -- I wouldn't believe it myself if I hadn't lived it -- but it is. Everything I describe in this book happened, just as I tell it.

Do you love to be scared? Then don't miss the terrifying adventure that begins when Darren and his best friend, Steve, get tickets to the Cirque Du Freak, a wonderfully bizarre and creepy freak show. Brace yourself for thrills and chills as the boys witness a parade of grotesque creatures and face their deepest fears by entering the darkest world of the vampire. In the blood-curdling tradition of Anne Rice and Stephen King, Cirque Du Freak will have you shrieking for the next horror show! (back cover)