Mailbox Monday (Jan 3, 2010)

 Mailbox Monday's host for January is Rose City Reader. Please visit this posts and take a look at what packages everybody else got this week! 

MY KINDLE CAME ON NEW YEAR'S EVE!  I was the lucky winner of a Kindle from Bitten By Books and Louise Marley.  I believe this contest was last August and I had given up on ever winning won, but got the notice about a week before Christmas! 

 And though this did not come in my mailbox - Santa brought me a Nook Color for Christmas!  I have had so much fun playing with these two readers!  Though I must say that the touch screen and the color on the Nook has made it more my favorite. 

So - I can now accept review books on Kindle or Nook and help out my bookshelves!

The Girl Who Became a Beatle

by Greg Taylor

Feiwell and Friends (MacMillan)

She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah!

When Regina Bloomsbury's band, the Caverns, breaks up, she thinks it's all over.  And then she makes a wish --

"I wish I could be as famous as the Beatles."

The Beatles are her music idols.  The next day, she wakes up to find that the Caverns are not just as famous as the Beatles, they have replaced them in history!  Regina is living like a rock star, and loving it. There are talk shows, music videos, and live concerts with thousands of screaming fans.  And Regina is the star of it all.

But fame is getting the better of Regina, and she has a decision to make.  Does she want to replace the Beatles forever?

Here is a rocking novel about the good and the bad of Hollywood, fame, and rock 'n' roll.

Greg Taylor is the author of the novel Killer Pizza.  The Girl Who Became a Beatle has been optioned for film by Raffaella De Laurentiis.

~I received a complimentary copy of this book from Feiwel and Friends through Shelf Awareness.  Watch for my review in February.~

Two Years, No Rain

by Shawn Klomparens

Delta Trade

In a hilarious and moving story of self-reinvention, a down-on-his-luck San Diego meteorologist learns how to live life without a forecast map -- and finds out that love is a lot less predictable than the weather.

Being a weatherman in Southern California seems like the easiest gig in the world -- especially when it hasn't rained in more than five hundred days.  It's the hurricane-force changes in Andy Dunne's personal life that have him ducking for cover: His wife's left him, he's lost his job as the lead forecaster for an obscure satellite radio station, and he's entangled in an intoxicating flirtation with a colleague, the beautiful -- and very married -- Hillary Hsing.  The weekend outlook gets even stranger when Andy finds overnight fame as the magic-carpet-riding host of a smash-hit children's television show.  All of a sudden, Hillary's looking at him in a whole new light, while an endless parade of hot moms are begging for his -- ahem -- autograph.  It's high time this newly minted minor celebrity started making some major life choices -- ones more complicated than calling for nothing but blue skies ahead.

I won this book from Catherine McKenzie at the facebook page: I bet we can make these books bestsellers.

Get Energy! Empower Your Body, Love Your Life

by Denise Austin

Center Street

With busy schedules, demanding careers, and little time, many of us battle just to stay awake.  But energy is something that is in our control, even when time is short.  Now fifty-two years young, fitness guru Denise Austin shows you how to supercharge your life, using her innovative lifestyle plan.  Her approach is simple and easy to implement, and includes:

• Self-evaluating tools to help you target your specific needs
• Quick and easy illustrated mini workouts and stretching routines
• Tips to tweak your lifestyle that will have long-lasting effects
• Simple changes to incorporate in everything from the foods you consume to the way you sit in your chair.

Results will be felt in as little as a week: radiant skin, more restful sleep, and a sharper mind.  In this brand-new guidebook for the stressed out, burned out, and overloaded, Denise Austin provides a path to a positive, energy-filled new way of life.

Denise Austin has been a health and fitness advocate for over twenty-five years, and is a two-term member of the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports.  She has created eighty-two workout videos/DVD's and is a regular columnist for Women's Day magazine.  She lives with her husband and daughters outside Washington, DC.

~I received a complimentary copy of this book from Hachette Books.  Watch for my review this month.~

Love Food and Live Well

by Chantel Hobbs

Waterbrook Multnomah

Go ahead. Get passionate about the food you eat.

You don't have to hide it.  You can love food and lose weight at the same time!  The secret, which you'll learn about in Love Food and Live Well, is to know when to have carrot cake and when it's time for just a carrot.

For most dieters, food is the daunting factor that trips up our best intentions to lose weight and get fit.  Let Chantel Hobbs teach you that food is not the enemy!  It's our attitudes toward it that defeat us.  Losing weight does not require being deprived of the foods you love and being forced to eat boring, tasteless meals, and left feeling hungry most of the time.

Turn food into your ally by following Chantel's 80/20 rule: A full 20 percent of the time, splurge on the foods you love and incorporate them into celebrations and social occasions.  The remaining 80 percent of the time, choose food on the basis of delivering maximum fuel for your body and ultimate health.  Simply by having freedom in what you eat, you can train youself in self-discipline and achieve sustainable weight loss, being free from food anxiety.

Using personal inventories, original recipes, food plans, and new, detailed exercises for strength training and aerobic fitness, Chantel will inspire you to live well in every area of life.  What are you waiting for?  Start the pursuit of a life lived well and healthy: body, mind, and spirit.

~I received a complimentary copy of this book from TBB Media.  Watch for my review before Jan 15.~

Living Inside the Testimony

by Betty Collier

Cross Books

Living Inside the Testimony is a collection of anecdotes compiled by author Betty Collier.  In reading these stories, you will share in her journey and experience the inspiration, faith, hope, humor, romance, and love she experienced.  The stories in Living Inside the Testimony revolve around Betty's experiences with her family, friends, and other individuals who have contributed, often unknowingly, to the path God has chosen for her.  You will hear the story of how Betty fell in love at age fourteen (with her future husband), about her husband's near-death experience with emergency brain surgery at a young age, her experiences in New York a week prior to 9/11, and the frustrating ordeal she and her husband overcame when trying to build their dream home.

Betty attributes her success and her great love to God, and she shares with readers how God has orchestrated her life's path every step of the way.  Betty's prayer is that you will see and feel Proverbs 3: 5-6 come alive and speak to your heart as you take a walk with her, inside her testimony.  She hopes you enjoy the journey and discover that we all live inside testimonies meant to be shared with others.

Betty Collier is a wife, mother, daughter, sister, nurse, author, and child of the King.  Married to William Collier since 1986, they live in Bartlett, Tennessee, with their sons, Jordan William and Brandon William.

~I received a complimentary copy of this book from the author for a First Wild Card Tour on Feb 4.~

Words

by Ginny L. Yttrup

B & H Publishing

"I collect words. I keep them in a box in my mind. I'd like to keep them in a real box, something pretty, maybe a shoe box covered with flowered wrapping paper.  Whenever I wanted, I'd open the box and pick up the papers, reading and feeling the words all at once.  Then I could hide the box.  But the words are safer in my mind.  There, he can't take them."

Ten-year old Kaylee Wren doesn't speak.  Not since her drug-addled mother walked away, leaving her in a remote cabin nestled in the towering redwoods in the care of a man who is as dangerous as he is evil.  With silence her only refuge, Kaylee collects words she might never speak from the only memento her mother left behind: a dictionary.

Sierra Dawn is thirty-four, an artist, and alone.  She has allowed the shame of her past to silence her present hopes and chooses to bury her pain by trying to control her circumstances.  But on the twelfth anniversary of her daughter's death, Sierra's control begins to crumble as the God of her childhood woos her back to Himself.

Brought together by Divine design, Kaylee and Sierra will discover together the healing mercy of the Word -- Jesus Christ.

Ginny L. Yttrup is an accomplished freelance writer, speaker, and life coach who also ministers to women wounded by sexual trauma.  Her blogs include Fiction Creator, My Daily Light and Crossings Life Coaching.  She has two grown sons and lives in California.  Words is her first novel.

 ~I received a complimentary copy of this book from B&H Publishing for a First Wild Card Tour on Feb 2.~

The Matchmaker of Kenmare

by Frank Delaney

Random House

A lush and surprising historical novel, rich as a myth, tense as a thriller, from the New York Times bestselling author of Ireland and Venetia Kelly's Traveling Show, for fans of Frank Delaney's previous novels, and readers of all historical fiction.

In July 1943, as World War II rattles Europe, Ben McCarthy (returning narrator of Venetia Kelly's Traveling Show) meets an enigmatic woman -- Miss Begley, the sharp-witted matchmaker of Kenmare -- and a powerful friendship begins.  Miss Begley helps Ben rebuild himself after the savage loss of his beloved wife, and he stands by her as she nervously makes a match for herself -- with Charles Miller, an impressive U.S. officer. Miller tests Miss Begley's infatuation by sending her on a dangerous errand into enemy terrain.  Exploiting the freedom of movement granted to citizens of neutral Ireland, she and Ben snatch a man the Americans need ahead of D-Day.  The adventure changes many lives, draws Ben and Miss Begley into ever deeper commitments, and hammers home a harsh lesson of war: the neutrality of one's country doesn't secure the neutrality of one's soul.

Frank Delaney was born in Tipperary, Ireland.  Before publishing Ireland, Simple Courage, Tipperary, Shannon, and Venetia Kelly's Traveling Show, he enjoyed a career in broadcasting that earned him fame across the United Kingdom.  A former judge of the Booker Prize, he lectures widely about writing, writes a blog on FrankDelaney.com, and maintains a Twitter feed and a Facebook page.

~I received a complimentary copy of this book from Leah at Meier.  Watch for my February review.~

Anyone Can Die

by James LePore

The Story Plant

LePore returns to the characters of A World I Never Made to present us with three suspenseful and unforgettable stories:

TILL DEATH DO US PART  A young Pat Nolan and his wife are on their honeymoon in New Mexico when they find a bond they did not know they had as they are forced to confront trouble in the form of a surly trio of locals.

GOD'S WARRIORS  Megan Nolan, a cynical American woman on her own in Europe makes a life-changing decision that both reveals and belies her true character.

MAX   Max French, a quirky, deadly and, in his own eyes, oddly lovable FBI agent faces a personal drama that will set the course of his future.

James LePore is an attorney who has practiced law for more than two decades, and an accomplished photographer.  He is the author of two novels, A World I Never Made and Blood of My Brother.  His next novel, Sons and Princes, will come from The Story Plant in the spring of 2011.

 ~I received a complimentary copy of this book from Tracee at Pump Up Your Book Tours for a Feb 11 review.~

At the Crossroads of Terror

by Lenny Emanuelli

E.P. Publishing

An Asian Crime family with the Perfect Setup, an unsolved double homicide, a billion dollar drug business, a wannabe, big time, news reporter, creating the perfect setting, for a suspenseful romantic mystery thriller.

Charlie Johnson, a man suspected of killing a local merchant, reluctantly teams up with a television street reporter, Sherry Mann. Trying to prove he is innocent, which takes them both deep into the world of an organized Asian street gang, who is on the verge of making their biggest stride in their drug business.

Lenny Emanuelli, a song writer since the late 1960's, his credits include over forty songs recorded by various artists and the 1975 musical play "Dreamin' My Life Away"





 ~I received a complimentary copy of this book from Phenix Publicity.  Watch for my review this month.~

 WHAT CAME IN YOUR MAILBOX THIS WEEK?