Mailbox Monday 02.25.13

Hosted this month by Suko's Notebook.

Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came into their house last week (checked out library books don’t count, eBooks & audio books do). Warning: Mailbox Monday can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles and humongous wish lists.

A gripping adventure, a seaborne romance, and a twist on the tale of Scheherazade—with the best food ever served aboard a pirate’s ship

The year is 1819, and the renowned chef Owen Wedgwood has been kidnapped by the ruthless pirate Mad Hannah Mabbot. He will be spared, she tells him, as long as he puts exquisite food in front of her every Sunday without fail.

To appease the red-haired captain, Wedgwood gets cracking with the meager supplies on board. His first triumph at sea is actual bread, made from a sourdough starter that he leavens in a tin under his shirt throughout a roaring battle, as men are cutlassed all around him. Soon he’s making tea-smoked eel and brewing pineapple-banana cider.

But Mabbot—who exerts a curious draw on the chef—is under siege. Hunted by a deadly privateer and plagued by a saboteur hidden on her ship, she pushes her crew past exhaustion in her search for the notorious Brass Fox. As Wedgwood begins to sense a method to Mabbot’s madness, he must rely on the bizarre crewmembers he once feared: Mr. Apples, the fearsome giant who loves to knit; Feng and Bai, martial arts masters sworn to defend their captain; and Joshua, the deaf cabin boy who becomes the son Wedgwood never had.

Cinnamon and Gunpowder is a swashbuckling epicure’s adventure simmered over a surprisingly touching love story—with a dash of the strangest, most delightful cookbook never written. Eli Brown has crafted a uniquely entertaining novel full of adventure: the Scheherazade story turned on its head, at sea, with food.

From Farrar, Straus and Giroux via NetGalley. Release date: June 4th.

Mailbox Monday 12.31.12

Hosted this month by Suko's Notebook.

Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came into their house last week (checked out library books don’t count, eBooks & audio books do). Warning: Mailbox Monday can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles and humongous wish lists.

Paris, 1923

The daughter of a scandalous mother, Delilah Drummond is already notorious, even amongst Paris society. But her latest scandal is big enough to make even her oft-married mother blanch. Delilah is exiled to Kenya and her favorite stepfather's savannah manor house until gossip subsides.

Fairlight is the crumbling, sun-bleached skeleton of a faded African dream, a world where dissolute expats are bolstered by gin and jazz records, cigarettes and safaris. As mistress of this wasted estate, Delilah falls into the decadent pleasures of society.

Against the frivolity of her peers, Ryder White stands in sharp contrast. As foreign to Delilah as Africa, Ryder becomes her guide to the complex beauty of this unknown world. Giraffes, buffalo, lions and elephants roam the shores of Lake Wanyama amid swirls of red dust. Here, life is lush and teeming-yet fleeting and often cheap.

Amidst the wonders-and dangers-of Africa, Delilah awakes to a land out of all proportion: extremes of heat, darkness, beauty and joy that cut to her very heart. Only when this sacred place is profaned by bloodshed does Delilah discover what is truly worth fighting for-and what she can no longer live without.

From Harlequin via NetGalley. Release date: April 23rd.

Top Ten Tuesday 12.18.12

Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted over at The Broke and the Bookish. This week's Top Ten is Top Ten Books I Read In 2012.

1. The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton
2. Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente - I could never write a review for this, no matter how much I adored it. There was no way I could explain. It was filled with quotable passage after another. So beautiful.
3. Passion by Jude Morgan
4. Every Secret Thing by Susanna Kearsley
5. The Janus Affair by Pip Ballantine & Tee Morris
6. City of Women by David R. Gillham
7. The Emperor's Edge by Lindsay Buroker - Completely outside of the stuff I usually read, but I loved it. First in a series and available for free on Kindle.
8. The Shoemaker's Wife by Adriana Trigiani
9. The Silent Duchess by Dacia Maraini
10. Splendors and Glooms by Laura Amy Schlitz

What was exciting, was that except for the authors of the books at #1 and #3, all these authors were new to me.

Mailbox Monday 12.10.12

Hosted this month by Suko's Notebook.

Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came into their house last week (checked out library books don’t count, eBooks & audio books do). Warning: Mailbox Monday can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles and humongous wish lists.


Miss Sarah Tolerance ran away with her brother’s fencing master when she was sixteen. Now he’s dead and she’s back in England, and a Fallen Woman. But she refuses to follow the Fallen Women who have gone before her and become a courtesan. Sarah is a straight shooter, with her pistol as well as her wit, and her mind is as sharp as the blade of her sword. She’s clever and discreet—she has reinvented herself as a private investigator.

Miss Tolerance is an Agent of Inquiry, the sole one of her kind in London in this year of 1810, with mad King George III on the throne and Queen Charlotte acting as Regent. Sarah’s position in society allows her to float between social layers, unearth secrets, find things that were lost, and lose things too dangerous to be kept.

An agent of the Earl of Versellion has asked her to find a fan that the Earl’s father gifted to a lady with brown eyes. When Sarah discovers the secret of the fan, both she and the Earl are targeted by ruthless killers. They realize the fan has a second secret, one that will affect the fate of England itself, and they must decipher it.

Sarah’s life is getting more and more complicated-and she’s growing closer and closer to the Earl. To save England and herself, she must decide whether to be guided by her heart… or her conscience.

Early Christmas gift from a friend.

Paris. 1878. Following their father’s sudden death, the van Goethem sisters find their lives upended. Without his wages, and with the small amount their laundress mother earns disappearing into the absinthe bottle, eviction from their lodgings seems imminent. With few options for work, Marie is dispatched to the Paris Opéra, where for a scant seventy francs a month, she will be trained to enter the famous ballet. Her older sister, Antoinette, finds work—and the love of a dangerous
young man—as an extra in a stage adaptation of Émile Zola’s naturalist masterpiece L’Assommoir.

Marie throws herself into dance and is soon modelling in the studio of Edgar Degas, where her image will forever be immortalized as Little Dancer Aged Fourteen. Antoinette, meanwhile, descends
lower and lower in society, and must make the choice between a life of honest labor and the more profitable avenues open to a young woman of the Parisian demimonde—that is, unless her love affair derails her completely.

Set at a moment of profound artistic, cultural, and societal change, The Painted Girls is a tale of two remarkable sisters rendered uniquely vulnerable to the darker impulses of “civilized society.”

From Penguin via Edelweiss. Release date: January 10th.

Mailbox Monday 12.03.12

Hosted this month by Suko's Notebook.

Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came into their house last week (checked out library books don’t count, eBooks & audio books do). Warning: Mailbox Monday can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles and humongous wish lists.


The book is one of drama on a grand scale, a Renaissance epic, as Christendom emerged from the shadows of the calamitous 14th century. The sweeping tale involves inspired and corrupt monarchs, the finest thinkers, the most brilliant artists, and the greatest beauties in Christendom.

Here is the story of eight of its most remarkable women, who are all joined by birth, marriage and friendship and who ruled for a time in place of their men-folk: Lucrezia Turnabuoni (Queen Mother of Florence, the power behind the Medici throne), Clarice Orsini (Roman princess, feudal wife), Beatrice d'Este (Golden Girl of the Renaissance), Caterina Sforza (Lioness of the Romagna), Isabella d'Este (the Acquisitive Marchesa), Giulia Farnese ('la bella', the family asset), Isabella d'Aragona (the Weeping Duchess) and Lucrezia Borgia (the Virtuous Fury). The men play a secondary role in this grand saga; whenever possible the action will be seen through the eyes our eight heroines.

These eight women experienced great riches, power and the warm smile of fortune, but they also knew banishment, poverty, the death of a husband or the loss of one or more of their children. As each of the chosen heroines comes to the fore in her turn, she is handed the baton by her 'sister' and Leonie Frieda recounts the role each woman played in the hundred-year drama that is THE DEADLY SISTERHOOD.

From HarperCollins via Edelweiss. Release date: April 2nd.

Mailbox Monday 11.12.12

Hosted this month by Bermudaonion's Weblog.

Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came into their house last week (checked out library books don’t count, eBooks & audio books do). Warning: Mailbox Monday can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles and humongous wish lists.

On November 14, 1889, Nellie Bly, the crusading young female reporter for Joseph Pulitzer’s World newspaper, left New York City by steamship on a quest to break the record for the fastest trip around the world. Also departing from New York that day—and heading in the opposite direction by train—was a young journalist from The Cosmopolitan magazine, Elizabeth Bisland. Each woman was determined to outdo Jules Verne’s fictional hero Phileas Fogg and circle the globe in less than eighty days. The dramatic race that ensued would span twenty-eight thousand miles, captivate the nation, and change both competitors’ lives forever.

The two women were a study in contrasts. Nellie Bly was a scrappy, hard-driving, ambitious reporter from Pennsylvania coal country who sought out the most sensational news stories, often going undercover to expose social injustice. Genteel and elegant, Elizabeth Bisland had been born into an aristocratic Southern family, preferred novels and poetry to newspapers, and was widely referred to as the most beautiful woman in metropolitan journalism. Both women, though, were talented writers who had carved out successful careers in the hypercompetitive, male-dominated world of big-city newspapers. Eighty Days brings these trailblazing women to life as they race against time and each other, unaided and alone, ever aware that the slightest delay could mean the difference between victory and defeat.

A vivid real-life re-creation of the race and its aftermath, from its frenzied start to the nail-biting dash at its finish, Eighty Days is history with the heart of a great adventure novel. Here’s the journey that takes us behind the walls of Jules Verne’s Amiens estate, into the back alleys of Hong Kong, onto the grounds of a Ceylon tea plantation, through storm-tossed ocean crossings and mountains blocked by snowdrifts twenty feet deep, and to many more unexpected and exotic locales from London to Yokohama. Along the way, we are treated to fascinating glimpses of everyday life in the late nineteenth century—an era of unprecedented technological advances, newly remade in the image of the steamship, the railroad, and the telegraph. For Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland—two women ahead of their time in every sense of the word—were not only racing around the world. They were also racing through the very heart of the Victorian age.

From Ballantine Books via NetGalley. Release date: Februrary 26th.

Decades ago, as Nazi planes dominated the British sky, eighteen-year-old Lily Verner made a terrible mistake. She’s tried for decades to forget, but now an unexpected event pulls her back to the 1940s British countryside. She finds herself remembering the brilliant, lustrous colors of the silk she helped to weave at her family’s mill, the relentless pressure of the worsening war, and the kind of heartbreaking loss that stops time.

In this evocative novel of love and consequences, Lily finally confronts the disastrous decision that has haunted her all these years.

From Sourcebooks via NetGalley. Release date: April 1st.

Top Ten Tuesday 10.30.12

Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted over at The Broke and the Bookish. This week's Top Ten is Top Ten Favorite Kick-Ass Heroines.

Now, this is a topic I can get into!

1. Luna Lovegood - I must resist from making this list all Harry Potter characters, so I'm going to just mention my favorite female character. I love Luna, she's so comfortable with herself that she doesn't give a crap what other people think of her. She's also fearless, and often underestimated by her peers.
2. Eliza Braun - From the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences series. My favorite kick-ass woman in this series is actually the villain, but this is about heroines, so I'll write about Eliza. She can be a bit daft sometimes, but she can kick ass, literally. What's really great about her though, is that she's a real person - she also has a heart, and plenty of flaws.
3. Amaranthe Lokdon - From the The Emperor's Edge series. I've only read the first book in this series, but I already like Amaranthe. Not only is she physically able to take care of herself, but she uses her intelligence and instincts to get herself and her friends out of scrapes.
4. Celia Bowen - From The Night Circus. Celia is an incredibly powerful, creative, independent soul who refuses to be used as a puppet. She eventually takes charge over her own life.
5. Catriona O’Hanlon - From The Huntress. The Huntress is a part of a series, and each book has a different heroine, but Catriona was my favorite. She's incredibly skilled in weaponry, and has a cunning intelligence that keeps herself one step ahead of her adversaries.
6. Marya Morevna - From Deathless. I'm sure a lot of stuff in this book went over my head, except what an awesome character Marya was. Her character growth is amazing. She starts out as a young girl just wanting to see the world, and she ends up being an independent minded woman who accepts each change in her life with grace.
7. Lune - From Midnight Never Come. I actually just finished this book, and it's the first in a series that I plan on continuing. Lune's a great example of how a kick-ass heroine doesn't have to be physically strong. She doesn't fight, but she has a cunning intelligence that keeps herself alive. She is seriously put through the ringer, but somehow finds the strength to get up and try to make her life better.
8. Hero Jarvis - From the Sebastian St. Cyr series. In a series set in the early 19th century, Hero is ahead of her time. She's against marriage, and is for women being able to make a life for themselves. And while her intelligence is her main strength, she's not afraid to physically protect herself.
9. Eleanor Glanville - From Lady of the Butterflies. Now, Eleanor was a real person, but I'm still including her. She was a free spirit who fought against the restraints of 'ladylike' behavior, which, in the 17th century, were stifling. Interested in nature, she becomes a scientist, which leads to her downfall. However, she's resilient, and this is where she is truly kick ass.
10. Fiona Finnegan - From The Tea Rose series. Fiona in incredibly fearless, even when she doesn't think she is. At first, she is literally running for her life, while trying to also protect her little brother. She makes a life for both of them using her brains and wits. And this is just the first book.

Yay! I actually thought of 10!

Mailbox Monday 10.29.12

Hosted this month by Mailbox Monday.

Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came into their house last week (checked out library books don’t count, eBooks & audio books do). Warning: Mailbox Monday can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles and humongous wish lists.

In the spring of 1895 the life of Constance Wilde changed irrevocably. Up until the conviction of her husband, Oscar, for homosexual crimes, she had held a privileged position in society. Part of a gilded couple, she was a popular children’s author, a fashion icon, and a leading campaigner for women’s rights. A founding member of the magical society The Golden Dawn, her pioneering and questioning spirit encouraged her to sample some of the more controversial aspects of her time. Mrs. Oscar Wilde was a phenomenon in her own right.

But that spring Constance’s entire life was eclipsed by scandal. Forced to flee to the Continent with her two sons, her glittering literary and political career ended abruptly. She lived in exile until her death.

Franny Moyle now tells Constance’s story with a fresh eye. Drawing on numerous unpublished letters, she brings to life the story of a woman at the heart of fin-de-siècle London and the Aesthetic movement. In a compelling and moving tale of an unlikely couple caught up in a world unsure of its moral footing, Moyle unveils the story of a woman who was the victim of one of the greatest betrayals of all time.

From Open Road via NetGalley.

Mailbox Monday 10.22.12

Hosted this month by Mailbox Monday.

Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came into their house last week (checked out library books don’t count, eBooks & audio books do). Warning: Mailbox Monday can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles and humongous wish lists.


After delivering a B-17 Flying Fortress to Britain, an American volunteers to copilot a plane carrying special agents to their drop spot over Normandy. Her personal mission: to find her brother, who is missing in action. Their plane is shot down, and only she and five agents survive. Now they are on the run for their lives.

As they head to Paris, the beautiful aviatrix Velva Jean Hart becomes Clementine Roux, a daring woman on an epic adventure with her team to capture an operative known only as "Swan." Once settled on Rue de la Néva, Clementine works as a spy with the Resistance and finds herself falling in love with her fellow agent, Émile, a handsome and mysterious Frenchman with secrets of his own. When Clementine ends up in the most brutal prison in Paris, trying to help Émile and the team rescue Swan, she discovers the depths of human cruelty, the triumph of her own spirit, and the bravery of her team, who will stop at nothing to carry out their mission.

Won.

Top Ten Tuesday 10.16.12

Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted over at The Broke and the Bookish. This week's Top Ten is Top Ten Favorite Authors In X Genre. And I'm picking my top ten favorite historical fiction authors!

1. Kate Morton - I'm not sure if she's considered a historical fiction author, but all four of her novels have had a part of the story set in the past. She is an auto-read author for me. All I need to know is if she's coming out with a new book, I don't even know what it's about.
2. Jennifer Donnelly - Both her Tea Rose trilogy and her young adult historical fiction books are favs. She's another auto-read for me. Fantastic story-teller.
3. Susanna Kearsley - Her books Marianna, The Winter Sea and The Rose Garden are three of my favorite books ever. They're all time-slip books, and they are told oh so well. The time-slips are almost believable.
4. Deanna Raybourn - Her Lady Julia historical mystery series is probably my favorite currently written historical mystery series. I just love both Lady Julia and Brisbane, and it's very rare for me to love both the female and male characters in a mystery series, because usually one of them gets on my nerves. Not the case here!
5. Lauren Willig - The Pink Carnation mystery series is so unique and well-written. There have been nine books in the series, so far, with book ten coming out next year. The series has yet to lose momentum, and I have never not wanted to read the next book coming out in the series.
6. C.S. Harris - Oye, another historical mystery writer. In this case, we're talking about the Sebastian St. Cyr mysteries, which is one intelligently written series. Ever since book three, the stories have been getting grittier and more complex. The character development is also some of the best I've read.
7. Elizabeth Chadwick - I admit, medieval times is not amongst my favorite time periods, but Elizabeth Chadwick manages to write medieval historical fiction that not only keeps my attention, but makes the times completely understandable for me.
8. Jude Morgan - So far, I've read three of his books: Indiscretion,  Charlotte and Emily, and Passion, and I just can't stop talking about any of them. And they're all so different from each other; one is a humorous Regency; one is an melodrama about the Bronte family; and the other is a tome about the Romantic Poets. All are well done.

And while this is my favorite genre, I can't think of two more authors that I would consider favorites. I have to read more than one book by an author to be able to call them that.

Mailbox Monday 10.15.12

Hosted this month by Mailbox Monday.

Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came into their house last week (checked out library books don’t count, eBooks & audio books do). Warning: Mailbox Monday can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles and humongous wish lists.

For much of her life, Anne Morrow, the shy daughter of the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, has stood in the shadows of those around her, including her millionaire father and vibrant older sister, who often steals the spotlight. Then Anne, a college senior with hidden literary aspirations, travels to Mexico City to spend Christmas with her family. There she meets Colonel Charles Lindbergh, fresh off his celebrated 1927 solo flight across the Atlantic. Enthralled by Charles’s assurance and fame, Anne is certain the celebrated aviator has scarcely noticed her. But she is wrong.

Charles sees in Anne a kindred spirit, a fellow adventurer, and her world will be changed forever. The two marry in a headline-making wedding. Hounded by adoring crowds and hunted by an insatiable press, Charles shields himself and his new bride from prying eyes, leaving Anne to feel her life falling back into the shadows. In the years that follow, despite her own major achievements—she becomes the first licensed female glider pilot in the United States—Anne is viewed merely as the aviator’s wife. The fairy-tale life she once longed for will bring heartbreak and hardships, ultimately pushing her to reconcile her need for love and her desire for independence, and to embrace, at last, life’s infinite possibilities for change and happiness.

From Delacorte Press via NetGalley. Release date: February 12th.

Georgette Heyer remains an enduring international bestseller, read and loved by generations of readers and extolled by bestselling authors. Despite her enormous popularity she never gave an interview or appeared in public.

Jennifer Kloester, Heyer's official biographer, spent ten years researching Georgette Heyer, during which time she had unlimited access to Heyer's notebooks, private papers and family records. Engaging and authoritative, this comprehensive, official biography offers new insights into the life and writing of a remarkable and ferociously private woman.

From Sourcebooks via NetGalley. Release date: January 1st.

Mailbox Monday 09.24.12

Hosted this month by BookNAround.

Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came into their house last week (checked out library books don’t count, eBooks & audio books do). Warning: Mailbox Monday can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles and humongous wish lists.

Jane Eliot wears an iron mask.

It’s the only way to contain the fey curse that scars her cheek. The Great War is five years gone, but its scattered victims remain—the ironskin.

When a carefully worded listing appears for a governess to assist with a "delicate situation"—a child born during the Great War—Jane is certain the child is fey-cursed, and that she can help.

Teaching the unruly Dorie to suppress her curse is hard enough; she certainly didn’t expect to fall for the girl’s father, the enigmatic artist Edward Rochart. But her blossoming crush is stifled by her own scars, and by his parade of women. Ugly women, who enter his closed studio...and come out as beautiful as the fey.

Jane knows Rochart cannot love her, just as she knows that she must wear iron for the rest of her life. But what if neither of these things is true? Step by step Jane unlocks the secrets of her new life—and discovers just how far she will go to become whole again.

From Tor Books via NetGalley. Release date: October 2nd.

Illuminations chronicles the life of Hildegard von Bingen (1098–1179), who was tithed to the church at the age of eight and expected to live out her days in silent submission as the handmaiden of a renowned but disturbed young nun, Jutta von Sponheim. Instead, Hildegard rejected Jutta’s masochistic piety and found comfort and grace in studying books, growing herbs, and rejoicing in her own secret visions of the divine. When Jutta died some three decades later, Hildegard broke out of her prison with the heavenly calling to speak and write about her visions and to liberate her sisters and herself from the soul-destroying anchorage.

Like Anita Diamant’s portrayal of Dinah in The Red Tent, Mary Sharratt interweaves historical research with psychological insight and vivid imagination to write an engaging and triumphant portrait of a courageous and remarkably resilient woman and the life she might have lived. Deeply affecting, Illuminations is a testament to the power of faith, love, and self-creation.

From Houghton Mifflin Harcourt via NetGalley. Release date: October 9th.

Mailbox Monday 09.10.12

Hosted this month by BookNAround.

Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came into their house last week (checked out library books don’t count, eBooks & audio books do). Warning: Mailbox Monday can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles and humongous wish lists.

Suspense and secrets are woven together in this engrossing fiction debut by Kim Fay. The Map of Lost Memories takes readers on a daring expedition to a remote land, where the search for an elusive treasure becomes a journey into the darkest recesses of the mind and heart.

In 1925, the international treasure-hunting scene is a man’s world, and no woman knows this better than Irene Blum, who is passed over for the coveted curator position at Seattle’s renowned Brooke Museum. But she is not ready to accept defeat. Skilled at acquiring priceless, often illicitly trafficked artifacts, Irene is given a rare map believed to lead to a set of copper scrolls that chronicle the lost history of Cambodia’s ancient Khmer civilization. Such a find would not only restore her reputation, it would be the greatest archaeological discovery of the century.

As Irene travels from Seattle to Shanghai to the Cambodian jungles, she will encounter several equally determined companions, including a communist temple robber and a dashing nightclub owner with a complicated past. As she and her fellow adventurers sweep across borders and make startling discoveries, their quest becomes increasingly dangerous. Everyone who comes to this part of the world “has something to hide,” Irene is told—and she learns just how true this is. What she and her accomplices bring to light will do more than change history. It will ultimately solve the mysteries of their own lives.

From Ballantine Books via NetGalley.

Like her art, Marilyn Monroe was rooted in paradox: She was a powerful star and a childlike waif; a joyful, irreverent party girl with a deeply spiritual side; a superb friend and a narcissist; a dumb blonde and an intellectual. No previous biographer has recognized—much less attempted to analyze—most of these aspects of her personality. Lois Banner has.

Since Marilyn’s death in August of 1962, the appetite for information about her has been insatiable. Biographies of Marilyn abound, and whether these books are sensational or flawed, Marilyn’s fans have always come out in bestselling numbers. This time, with Lois Banner’s Revelations, the fans won’t be disappointed. This is no retread of recycled material. As one of the founders of the field of women’s history, Banner will reveal Marilyn Monroe in the way that only a top-notch historian and biographer could.

In researching Revelations, Banner’s credentials opened doors. She gained access to Marilyn intimates who hadn’t spoken to other biographers, and to private material unseen, ignored, or misinterpreted by her predecessors. With new details about Marilyn’s childhood foster homes, her sexual abuse, her multiple marriages, her affairs, and her untimely death at the age of thirty-six, Revelations is, at last, the nuanced biography Marilyn fans have been waiting for.

Won.

Mailbox Monday 08.27.12

Hosted this month by 5 Minutes For Books.

Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came into their house last week (checked out library books don’t count, eBooks & audio books do). Warning: Mailbox Monday can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles and humongous wish lists.

1959 England. Laurel Nicolson is sixteen years old, dreaming alone in her childhood tree house during a family celebration at their home, Green Acres Farm. She spies a stranger coming up the long road to the farm and then observes her mother, Dorothy, speaking to him. And then she witnesses a crime.

Fifty years later, Laurel is a successful and well-regarded actress, living in London. She returns to Green Acres for Dorothy’s ninetieth birthday and finds herself overwhelmed by memories and questions she has not thought about for decades. She decides to find out the truth about the events of that summer day and lay to rest her own feelings of guilt. One photograph, of her mother and a woman Laurel has never met, called Vivian, is her first clue.

The Secret Keeper explores longings and dreams, the lengths some people go to fulfill them, and the strange consequences they sometimes have. It is a story of lovers, friends, dreamers and schemers, play-acting and deception told against a backdrop of events that changed the world.

From Atria via NetGalley. Release date: October 9th.

And I've already finished it. It was fabulous. Review will be posted the week of release.

Mailbox Monday 08.20.12

Hosted this month by 5 Minutes For Books.

Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came into their house last week (checked out library books don’t count, eBooks & audio books do). Warning: Mailbox Monday can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles and humongous wish lists.

Genevieve is a precocious girl with the remarkable power to read the future in a water glass. Left for dead by her family, she is taken in by La Voisin, who rules a secret society of witches that manipulate the rich—from tradesmen all the way up to the king himself.

Genevieve transforms herself into the mysterious Madame de Morville, rumored to be 150 years old. Driven by the spirit of revenge, Genevieve is on the verge of discovering true love when the police sniff out the secret network of poisoners and sorcerers. Genevieve races to escape the stake, unaware who will live and who will die in the wake of the King's terrible vengeance.

From Sourcebooks via NetGalley. Release date: November 1st.

In this charming follow-up to Miss Buncle's Book, readers will follow Barbara Buncle's journey into married life in a new town filled with fascinating neighbors...who may become the subjects of Barbara's next novel! Miss Buncle may have settled down, but she's already discovered that married life has done nothing to prevent her from getting into humorous mix-ups and hilarious hijinx. Readers will continue to fall in love with Barbara as she hilariously navigates an exciting new beginning.

From Sourcebooks via NetGalley. Release date: November 1st.

Mailbox Monday 08.06.12

Hosted this month by 5 Minutes For Books.

Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came into their house last week (checked out library books don’t count, eBooks & audio books do). Warning: Mailbox Monday can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles and humongous wish lists.

Young Jane Silverlake lives with her father at a crumbling family estate on the edge of Hampstead Heath. Jane has a secret—an unexplainable gift that allows her to see the souls of manmade objects—and this talent isolates her from the outside world. Her greatest joy is wandering the wild heath with her neighbors, Madeline and Nathan. But as the friends come of age, their idyll is shattered by the feelings both girls develop for Nathan, and by Nathan’s interest in a cult led by Ariston Day, a charismatic mystic popular with London's elite. Day encourages his followers to explore dream manipulation, with the goal of discovering a new virtual reality, a place he calls the Empyrean.    

A year later, Nathan has vanished, and the famed Inspector Vidocq arrives in London to untangle the events that led up to Nathan’s disappearance. As a sinister truth emerges, Jane realizes she must discover the origins of her talent and use it to find Nathan herself, before it’s too late.  

Adam McOmber, whose short story collection This New and Poisonous Air earned glowing praise for its evocative prose, here reveals a gift for fantastical twists and dark turns that literary fans will relish.

From Simon & Schuster via NetGalley. Release date: September 11th.