Mailbox Monday (Oct 17, 2011)

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

The Night Eternal

by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan

It's been two years since the vampiric virus was unleashed in The Strain, and the entire world now lies on the brink of annihilation.  There is only night as nuclear winter blankets the land, the sun filtering through the poisoned atmosphere for two hours each day -- the perfect environment for the propagation of vampires.

There has been a mass extermination of humans, the best and the brightest, the wealthy and the influential, orchestrated by the Master -- an ancient vampire possessed of unparalleled powers -- who selects survivors based on compliance.  Those humans who remain are entirely subjugated, interred in camps, and separated by status: those who breed more humans and those who are bled for the sustenance of the Master's vast army.

The future of humankind lies in the hands of a ragtag band of freedom fighters -- Dr. Eph Goodweather, former head of the Centers for Disease Control's biological threats team; Dr. Nora Martinez, a fellow doctor with a talent for dispatching the undead; Vasiliy Fet, the colorful Russian exterminator; and Mr. Quinlan, the half-breed offspring of the Master who is bent on revenge.  It's their job to rescue Eph's son, Zack, and overturn this devastating new world order.  But good and evil are malleable terms now, and the Master is most skilled at preying on the weaknesses of humans.

Now, at this critical hour, there is evidence of a traitor in their midst. . . And only one man holds the answer to the Master's demise, but is he one who can be trusted with the fate of the world?  And who among them will pay the ultimate sacrifice -- so that others may be saved?

The Comforts of Home

by Jodi Thomas

In Harmony, Texas, twenty-year-old Reagan Truman has found her place, and found her family. But with her uncle taken ill and her friend Noah lost and disheartened with his life, Reagan is afraid of ending up alone again, and she's not the only one. Harmony seems to be full of people yearning to make a connection.  Like funeral director Tyler Wright, who longs to take his relationship with his friend Kate to the next level, but doesn't know how.  And Ronelle Logan, a woman frightened of everyday human interactions, until she meets an angry, lonely man -- someone just like her. 

When a terrible storms threatens the town, the residents of Harmony are forced to really think about what they truly want. Because making the connections they so desperately desire means putting their hearts at risk...

Guardians of the Gate

by Vincent N. Parrillo

It is August of 1895 as Dr. Matt Stafford's ferry nears Ellis Island. His spirits soar as he approaches the island filled with immigrants pursuing their dreams. Seeking a change from the routine of his hospital surgical practice, he decides to take a temporary leave to provide medical care to those who left their homelands in pursuit of the American Dream.

Eager to interact with the newcomers, Dr. Stafford is quickly intrigued by their personal stories of struggles, courage, and determination. Soon though, everything is about to change on the island; major conflicts unfold, immigrants are exploited, and a riot takes place. Becoming entangled in a secret passionate relationship, Dr. Stafford witnesses President McKinley's assassination and a societal backlash against the rising tide of immigration. As he valiantly struggles to find emotional fulfillment, a series of events will lead to dramatic changes-both at Ellis Island and in his own life.

Based on actual events, Guardians of the Gate shares the intriguing tale of the people and provocative occurrences that occurred at Ellis Island during the 1890s and 1900s-through the eyes of a dedicated physician on a compelling quest for fulfillment.

The Crown on Your Head

by Nancy Tillman

We know our children are special, and now the incomparable Nancy Tillman expresses this universal feeling in the most touching of ways: Every child is born with a crown. The crown is everything that gives us unique value. Our crown will always be with us wherever we go, whatever we do.

The follow Books I won!

Haunting Jasmine

by Anjali Banerjee

Divorcee Jasmine Mistry is intent on restarting her life when she gets the chance to do just that.  A call from the past brings her home to Shelter Island, a green dot in the middle of Puget Sound, to run her beloved aunt's bookstore.  The familiarity is heartening -- the rocky beaches, pewter skies, country boutiques, and above all, Auntie's Bookstore, nestled in a quaint Queen Anne Victorian, and believed, not incidentally, to be haunted.

With that knowledge, Jasmine embarks on a mystical journey, urged along by her quirky family, guided by the highly emotional spirits of long-dead authors, and moved to heal her broken heart when she unexpectedly falls in love with an enigmatic young stranger.  He knows about blurring the lines between reality and illusion.  He opens new doors between truth and fantasy.  In redefining the meaning of everlasting love, he urges Jasmine to reinvent herself in a place she calls home.  All she has to do is close her eyes and say yes.

A Perilous Conception

by Larry Karp

1976: Dr. Colin Sanford, a brilliant, ambitious obstetrician practicing in the Pacific Northwest, resolves to become the first to produce a baby by in vitro fertilization.  Never mind all the controversy raging over the ethics of human reproduction.  The super-confident Sanford, no stranger to hubris, will be the man.  He recruits Dr. Giselle Hearn, an experienced laboratory geneticist-embryologist at the University who's frustrated by the ultra-conservative policies of her puffed-up department chairman.  Drs. Sanford and Hearn, working secretly, set out to put their names in history books. Not to mention cash in.

In due course, a Sanford patient, Joyce Kennett, gives birth to a healthy boy.  There is rejoicing all around.  So why then does Joyce's husband erupt in rage, fatally shooting both Hearn and himself?

Emerald Police Detective Bernie Baumgartner doggedly seeks the answer.  Pressure is on from many sides to declare the double death the act of a mentally unstable man and close the book, but Baumgartner is not diverted from his quest.  A double cat-and-mouse game develops between the detective who refuses to be bested and the doctor determined to be the best, even if he's forced to hide the secret of Baby Kennett's conception.

 

 

Push

by Sapphire

Precious Jones, an illiterate sixteen-year-old, has up until now been invisible: invisible to the father who rapes her and the mother who batters her and to the authorities who dismiss her as just one more of Harlem's casualties.  But when Precious, pregnant with a second chid by her father, meets a determined and highly radical teacher, we follow her on a journey of education and enlightenment as Precious learns not only how to write about her life, but how to make it her own for the first time.

I got a ton of Ebooks this week:

Bonjour 40

by Karen A. Chase

If Karen A. Chase absolutely had to turn forty, she decided she could do it gracefully in Paris… for nearly forty days. What began as a blog to communicate with friends and family, became a travel journal filled with over a months’ worth of humorous and insightful glimpses into her Paris adventures, each of which could be read in about forty seconds. Journal entries are interspersed with Chase's own inspiring photography. Additional, longer stories richly fill in details allowing readers to reflect upon her experiences with food, travel, photography, Parisians, writing, and love in the City of Lights. Through her Parisian- and self-exploration, comes a book that brings to life the richness of Paris as seen through the eyes of a romantic travel junkie. Chase shows readers the joys of turning 40, and with her magical view of Paris, they'll be ready to board a plane before they've turned the last page.

Unto These Hills

by Emily Sue Harvey

Unto These Hills is an unforgettable novel of love, scandal, family, and roots by one of the most emotionally authentic authors of our time. Taking us into the deep South's Tucapau Mill Hill, it introduces us to the unforgettable Sunny Acklin. Betrayed, abandoned, and violated, Sunny faces one seemingly insurmountable challenge after another. But she never loses her spirit or the memory of the love that once so richly illuminated her world. As years go by, Sunny does everything she can to make something of her life until at last an opportunity arises, one charged with promise...and undeniable risk.

From its vivid evocation of mill hill life to its pitch perfect rendering of the complexities of family and relationships, Unto These Hills is at once epic and intensely intimate. It is the richest novel yet from a writer who fluently speaks the language of our deepest feelings.

It's Murder, My Son

by Lauren Carr

What started out as the worst day of Mac Faraday’s life would end up being a new beginning. After a messy divorce hearing, the last person that Mac wanted to see was another lawyer. Yet, this lawyer wore the expression of a child bursting to tell his secret, which would reveal Mac as heir to undreamed of fortunes, and lead him to the birthplace of America’s Queen of Mystery and an investigation that will unfold like one of her famous mystery novels.


Soon after she moves to her new lakefront home in Spencer, Maryland, multi-millionaire Katrina Singleton learns that life in an exclusive community is not all good. For some unknown reason, a strange man calling himself “Pay Back” begins stalking her. When Katrina is found strangled all evidence points to her terrorist, who is nowhere to be found.


Three months later the file on her murder is still open with only vague speculations from the local police department when Mac Faraday, sole heir to his unknown birth mother’s home and fortune, moves into the estate next door. Little does he know as he drives up to Spencer Manor that he is driving into a closed gate community that is hiding more suspicious deaths than his DC workload as a homicide detective. With the help of his late mother’s journal, this retired cop puts all his detective skills to work to pick up where the local investigators have left off to follow the clues to Katrina’s killer.

The Dressmaker

by Kate Alcott

Just in time for the centennial anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic comes a vivid, romantic, and relentlessly compelling historical novel about a spirited young woman who survives the disaster only to find herself embroiled in the media frenzy left in the wake of the tragedy.
Tess, an aspiring seamstress, thinks she's had an incredibly lucky break when she is hired by famous designer Lady Lucile Duff Gordon to be a personal maid on the Titanic's doomed voyage. Once on board, Tess catches the eye of two men, one a roughly-hewn but kind sailor and the other an enigmatic Chicago millionaire. But on the fourth night, disaster strikes.


Amidst the chaos and desperate urging of two very different suitors, Tess is one of the last people allowed on a lifeboat. Tess’s sailor also manages to survive unharmed, witness to Lady Duff Gordon’s questionable actions during the tragedy. Others—including the gallant Midwestern tycoon—are not so lucky.


On dry land, rumors about the survivors begin to circulate, and Lady Duff Gordon quickly becomes the subject of media scorn and later, the hearings on the Titanic. Set against a historical tragedy but told from a completely fresh angle, The Dressmaker is an atmospheric delight filled with all the period's glitz and glamour, all the raw feelings of a national tragedy and all the contradictory emotions of young love.

 

A Winter Discovery

by Michael Baron

Returning to the characters of his first novel, When You Went Away, Baron takes us again into the world of Gerry Rubato, a man who has been marked by loss and revived by love, and his son Reese, now five, who celebrates life at a remarkable level but is only now starting to understand that he was robbed of the chance of ever knowing his mother. Reese is old enough now to get caught up in the excitement of the Christmas season and he throws himself into it with abandon. His sense of celebration takes on entirely new levels of meaning, though, when it leads him to an unexpected and most remarkable discovery.

At once buoyant and poignant, and filled with irrepressible spirit, A Winter Discovery is a story of that will take you to new places in your heart.

Hold Me

(Caldwell Sisters Series, book 1)

by Lucianne Rivers

Still reeling from her mother’s death, news anchor Jane Caldwell’s life is upended further when she learns the father she lost twenty years ago is still alive. Her mother’s will unleashes a manhunt—the Caldwell sisters must find their father, or their mother’s estate will not be settled, and their questions about his disappearance will remain unanswered.

Jane’s search leads her to Guatemala to investigate a man who claims to be her father and heir to the family fortune. Needing a translator, she enlists enigmatic Harrison DeNeuve, a sexy ex-patriot with a penchant for wearing dark sunglasses in public.

As Jane struggles to reunite with her would-be father, Harrison fights to suppress his desire for Jane. He has a secret—one he’s sequestered himself in a third-world jungle hideaway to keep safe—and falling for Jane puts more than his heart at risk.

Jane finds two men in Guatemala—a father and a lover—but can she trust either of them?

Thrill Me

(Caldwell Sisters Series, book 2)

by Lucianne Rivers

Santa Fe Police Detective Margo Caldwell needs a vacation, but the wild goose chase her mother’s death triggers isn’t quite what she had in mind. Margo and her sisters must locate their father, or the Caldwell estate will remain unsettled—and they’ll never know why their father didn’t return from the Gulf War.

Pursuing a lead, Margo heads to the Virgin Islands in search of Zach Caldwell. To navigate the waters of the Caribbean, she needs a boat and a captain. Too bad Captain Adrian Prince, with his mesmerizing muscles and wicked grin, may be gunrunner.

Adrian takes Margo on his delivery route to small islands near St. Thomas that hide more than wildlife, booze, and sexy boaters. On a remote, mangrove-ridden patch of sand, they find gun-toting Zach Caldwell. When their mission turns deadly, Margo must save Adrian’s life—and her own—even if she loses her heart in the process.

Entice Me

 (Caldwell Sisters Series, book 3)

by Lucianne Rivers

 

Heartsick over the untimely death of her mother, Allison Caldwell is blindsided again by the secret revealed in her mom’s will. Her supposedly dead father is alive, and she and her two sisters must find him in order to settle the Caldwell estate.

Robert Rivera, private investigator and former Navy SEAL, alerts Allison to new intel identifying her father as a P.O.W. in Afghanistan. With her sisters out of the country pursuing leads, Allison insists on heading to the war-ravaged country to find him. Robert doesn’t want his naïve client to take the risk. He knows what danger lays in that godforsaken land…he’s lived through it. Barely.

But Allison is determined to go, and Robert can’t let her travel alone. Reluctantly appreciative, Allison quickly realizes how much she needs his guidance and protection, and how deeply she longs for his love. Robert struggles to understand her effect on his battle-weary heart.

The path to Allison’s father is blocked by terrorists, traps and treachery—all demons of Robert’s past. Can he survive a second round with the enemy and keep Allison out of harm’s way?

Come Back to Me

by Melissa Foster

Tess Johnson has it all: her handsome photographer husband Beau, a thriving business, and a newly discovered pregnancy. When Beau accepts an overseas photography assignment, Tess decides to wait to reveal her secret—only she’s never given the chance. Beau’s helicopter crashes in the desert.

Tess struggles with the news of Beau’s death and tries to put her life back together. Alone and dealing with a pregnancy that only reminds her of what she has lost, Tess is adrift in a world of failed plans and fallen expectations. When a new client appears offering more than just a new project, Tess must confront the circumstances of her life head on.

Meanwhile, two Iraqi women who are fleeing honor killings find Beau barely alive in the middle of the desert, his body ravaged by the crash. Suha, a doctor, and Samira, a widow and mother of three young children, nurse him back to health in a makeshift tent. Beau bonds with the women and children, and together, with the help of an underground organization, they continue their dangerous escape.

What happens next is a test of loyalties, strength, and love.



What books came home to you this week?