Mailbox Monday (Oct 8, 2012)

Welcome to Mailbox Monday, the weekly meme created by Marcia from A girl and her books.  This is where I share the titles I have received for review or purchased during the past week.  Mailbox Monday will be hosted in October by Marcia!



For Review: 

Proof of Guilt
by Charles Todd

An unidentified body appears to have been run down by a motorcar and Ian Rutledge is leading the investigation to uncover what happened. While signs point to murder, vital questions remain. Who is the victim? And where, exactly, was he killed? 

One small clue leads the Inspector to a firm built by two families, famous for producing and selling the world's best Madeira wine. Lewis French, the current head of the English enterprise is missing. But is he the dead man? And do either his fiancée or his jilted former lover have anything to do with his disappearance-or possible death? What about his sister? Or the London office clerk? Is Matthew Traynor, French's cousin and partner who heads the Madeira office, somehow involved?
The experienced Rutledge knows that suspicion and circumstantial evidence are not proof of guilt, and he's going to keep digging for answers. But that perseverance will pit him against his supervisor, the new Acting Chief Superintendent. When Rutledge discovers a link to an incident in the family's past, the superintendent dismisses it, claiming the information isn't vital. He's determined to place blame on one of French's women despite Rutledge's objections. Alone in a no man's land rife with mystery and danger, Rutledge must tread very carefully, for someone has decided that he, too, must die so that cruel justice can take its course.

With or Without You
by Domenica Ruta

Domenica Ruta grew up in a working-class, unforgiving Italian town north of Boston where in the seventeenth century women were hanged as witches.  Her mother, Kathi, a notorious figure in this hardscrabble place, was a drug addict and sometime dealer whose life swung between welfare and riches, whose highbrow taste was at odds with her base appetites.  And yest she managed, despite the chaos she created to instill in her daughter the idea that art -- via a classic film or a classical education -- could transcend this life of undying grudges, self-inflicted misfortune, and the crooked moral code that Kathi and her cohorts lived by.  With or Without You is the story of Domenica's unconventional coming of age -- a darkly hilarious chronicle of a misfit '90s childhood and the necessary and painful act of breaking away, and of overcoming her own addictions and demons in the process.  In a brilliant stylistic feat, Domenica Ruta has written a powerful, inspiring, compulsively readable, and finally redemptive story about loving and leaving.  

Your House Is on Fire, Your Children All Gone
by Stefan Kiesbye

The village of Hemmersmoor is a place untouched by time and shrouded in superstition: There is the grand manor house whose occupants despise the villagers, the small pub whose regulars talk of revenants, the old mill no one dares to mention. This is where four young friends come of age—in an atmosphere thick with fear and suspicion. Their innocent games soon bring them face-toface with the village's darkest secrets in this eerily dispassionate, astonishingly assured novel, evocative of Stephen King's classic short story "Children of the Corn" and infused with the spirit of the Brothers Grimm.


Digital Books for Review:

No
Picture 
Available


Into the Dark
by Stacy Green

IT’S THE MOMENTS FROM OUR PAST THAT BIND US. 

Branch Manager Emilie Davis is enduring a day like any other–until two masked men storm into WestOne Bank demanding cash. Her hopes of a quick end to her terror are dashed when she realizes one of the men has no interest in the bank’s money. Emilie is his prize, and he’s come to claim her.

When hostage negotiator Nathan Madigan and Las Vegas SWAT enter the bank on a rescue mission, Emilie’s captor makes a shocking escape into the abyss that lies beneath the city: the Las Vegas storm drains, a refuge for the downtrodden and the desperate. 

HOW WILL IT END?

Who is the man the media has dubbed ‘the Taker?’ Why is he after Emilie, and what is the connection he’s convinced they share?

Emilie can’t run from the Taker, and she can’t escape her own past. As her life closes in on her, she has nowhere to turn but to Nathan. The lines of professionalism blur as Nathan becomes determined to save Emilie. Together they venture into the depths beneath Las Vegas and discover a shocking piece of the puzzle. 

But the Taker remains one step ahead. Desperate and sick of waiting for the Taker to emerge from the shadows, Emilie makes a bold move to reclaim her life that may cost her everything.

Redemption on the River
by Loren DeShon

Silas Jacobson pulled a trigger, killed his father, and ended up months later face down in Memphis mud, trying to forget the girl who betrayed him.

Silas buries his father on the farm, his guilt in himself and leaves home seeking to forget past mistakes. He travels on Mississippi steamboats and meets his best friend in a brawl, his worst enemy in a cathouse, and a mentor and lover at a New Orleans faro table. Fighting, fornicating, and cheating at cards are a grand time, but there's another woman, a girl on a mission of her own, who saves his life and offers the opportunity to redeem himself.

Silas staggers out of the mud to go to her, but he finds that she's deceived him from the start. He'll risk his neck for her—he owes her that much—but love is no longer possible. His shot at redemption comes down to his conscience, the two women, a poker game, and the turn of a card.

Redemption on the River is historical fiction set along the Mississippi River in 1848.



Books Won:

Dead Ends

by Sandra Balzo

Reporter AnnaLise Griggs has returned to her picturesque hometown of Sutherton in North Carolina's western mountains to take care of her ailing mother, Daisy.  But her one-month leave of absence becomes far more complicated with the arrival of an unlikely trio of visitors:  District Attorney Benjamin Rosewood, his wife Tanja, and their daughter Suzanne.

AnnaLise and Ben have recent history between them -- history that she can't forgive herself for and he, seemingly, can't forget.  When Tanja's yellow Porsche is found at the bottom of a mountain gorge, AnnaLise is forced to confront some difficult questions that need answers -- and fast. 

Digital Books Won:

The Zombie Always Knocks Twice (Hollyweird, #1)
by E. Van Lowe

Hollywood, California, is known for swimming pools,
movie stars…and now the risen dead.

Hollywood can be a difficult place to grow up, especially if you’re Kristine Golden, a fifteen-year-old necromancer with a sworn duty to lay the risen dead back to rest and no desire to be in the movie business.

When handsome deadie Alex Romero swaggers into her life, Kris must keep her promise, despite her growing feelings for him. If that’s not enough to give a girl a headache, a murderous zombie comes knocking at Kris’s door, rocking her world and threatening her family.

Can Kris solve the mystery of the rampaging zombie before someone else winds up dead? Or will the walking dead take over Hollywood and turn it into…Hollyweird

Night of the Purple Moon (The Toucan Trilogy #1)
by Scott Cramer

The epidemic strikes only those who have passed through puberty.

Abby Leigh is looking forward to watching the moon turn purple. For months, astronomers have been predicting that Earth will pass through the tail of a comet. They say that people will see colorful sunsets and, best of all, a purple moon.

But nobody has predicted the lightning-fast epidemic that sweeps across the planet on the night of the purple moon. The comet brings space dust with it that contains germs that attack human hormones. Older teens and adults die within hours of exposure.

On a small island off the coast of Maine, Abby must help her brother and baby sister survive in this new world, but all the while she has a ticking time bomb inside of her -- adolescence.


What Books came home to you this week?