Mailbox Madness (July 26 - Aug 1)

In My Mailbox is hosted Sundays at The Story Siren.  Mailbox Monday's host for August is Chick Loves Lit. Please visit these posts and take a look at what packages everybody else got this week!

The Human Bobby

By Gabe Rotter

The gripping story of the unraveling of one man's seemingly perfect life, and his struggle to get everything back.

A new baby, a loving wife, a solid career, a dream house in Beverly Hills: Dr. Bobby Flopkowski has it all. Until a complicated series of events snowball into a disaster that changes the course of his life forever.

Now, with a tent on the beach as his only home and an addiction that has cut him off from everyone he once loved, Bobby has a revelation that could put him back on track: he believes he has solved the puzzling crime that led to his downfall. But as the reality he's always known slips farther away, will he be able to convince someone -- anyone -- that his suspicions aren't merely the pleas of a desperate man?

The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks, and Giants of the Ocean

by Susan Casey

For centuries, mariners have spun tales of gargantuan rogue waves, one hundred feet high or taller.  Until recently, scientists dismissed these stories -- waves that high would seem to violate the laws of physics.  But in the past few decades, as a startling number of ships vanished and new evidence emerged, oceanographers realized something scary really is brewing in the planet's waters. They found their proof in February 2000, when a British research vessel was trapped in a vortex of impossibly mammoth waves in the North Sea -- including several that approached a hundred feet.

As scientists scramble to understand this phenomenon, others view the giant waves as the ultimate challenge. These are extreme surfers who fly around the world in search of the ocean's most destructive monsters.  The pioneer of extreme surfing is the legendary Laird Hamilton, who, with a group of friends in Hawaii, figured out how to ride terrifyingly large waves of seventy and eighty feet -- and higher.  Casey follows this unique tribe of men as they seek to conquer the holy grail of their sport, the hundred-foot wave.

In this mesmerizing account, the exploits of Hamilton and his fellow surfers are juxtaposed against scientists' urgent efforts to understand the annihilating power of waves -- from the tsunami that wiped out 250,000 people in the Pacific in 2004 to the 1,740 foot wave that recently leveled part of the alaskan coast to the bigger and bolder waves of the future that climate change seems destined to bring.

The Recessionistas

by Alexandra Lebenthal

It's the day after Labor Day, 2008, and the elite universe of New York's Upper East Side is about to unravel along with the economy.  Socialite Grigsby Somerset is barely aware of her changing world and has no idea her investment banker husband, Blake, is about to enter into a devil's bargain with hedge fund owner John Cutter. As autumn unfolds, Grigsby's fairytale life starts to unwind.  Street-smart Renee Parker has been hired as John's executive assistant and is convinced that something is amiss with her new boss.  Renee enlists her friend Sasha Silver, CEO of Silver Partners, to help her decipher what is happening. They soon discover that John is nearly ruined, except for the assets he is hiding in the Cayman Islands from his wife, Mimi, and has concocted with Blake a scheme to redeem himself.  This tale of expulsion from a modern-day Garden of Eden captures what happens when economic decline spells ruin for Manhattan's pampered elite.

Our Kind of Traitor

by John le Carre

For nearly half a century, John le Carre's limitless imagination has enthralled millions of readers and moviegoers around the globe.  From the cold war to the bitter fruits of colonialism to unrest in the Middle East, he has reinvented the spy novel again and again.  Now, le Carre makes his Viking debut with a stunning tour de force that only a craftsman of his caliber could pen.  As menacing and flawlessly paced as The Little Drummer Girl and as morally complex as The Constant Gardener, Our Kind of Traitor is signature le Carre.

Perry and Gail are idealistic and very much in love when they splurge on a tennis vacation at a posh beach resort in Antigua.  But the charm begins to pull when a big-time Russian money launderer enlists their help to defect.  In exchange for amnesty, Dima is ready to rat out his vory (Russian criminal brotherhood) compatriots and expose corruption throughout the so-called legitimate financial and political worlds.  Soon, the guileless couple find themselves pawns in a deadly endgame whose outcome will be determined by the victor of the British Secret Service's ruthless internecine battles.

Medical Error (Prescription for Trouble series)

by Richard L. Mabry, M.D.

Dr. Anna McIntyre's life was going just fine until someone else started living it.

Her patient dies because of an identity mix-up; her medical career is in jeopardy because of forged prescriptions; and her credit is in ruins.  She thought things couldn't get worse, but that was before she opened the envelope and saw a positive HIV test with her name on it.

Strangers at the Feast
by Jennifer Vanderbes

On Thanksgiving Day 2007, as the country teeters on the brink of a recession, three generations of the Olson family gather.  Eleanor and Gavin worry about their daughter, a single academic and her newly adopted Indian child, and about their son, who ha been caught in the imploding real-estate bubble.  While the Olsons navigate the tensions and secrets that mark their relationships, seventeen-year-old Kijo Jackson and his best friend Spider set out from the nearby housing projects on a mysterious job.  A series of tragic events brings these two worlds ever closer, exposing the dangerously thin line between suburban privilege and urban poverty, and culminating in a crime that will change everyone's life.

In her gripping new book, Jennifer Vanderbes masterfully lays bare the fraught lives of this complex cast of characters and the lengths to which they will go to protect their families. Strangers at the Feast is at once a heartbreaking portrait of a family struggling to find happiness and an exploration of the hidden costs of the American dream.

What goodies did you get last week?