Mailbox Monday, July 13, 2009

Mailbox Monday

Before I begin – I must say that this week was a wonderful week for my mailbox after nothing in it last week 🙂

Monday, July 6

The Lost Hours by Karen White

Surviving the tragic accident that killed her parents has always made Piper Mills feel invincible. That is, until fate strikes again and a near-fatal fall from a horse destroys her dreams of becoming an Olympic equestrian. Feeling more fragile than ever, Piper returns to Savannah, and to the home she inherited from her grandparents to retreat, recover, and reflect on all that she has lost. It’s during her recuperation that Piper discovers a secret room and torn pages from an old scrapbook that allude to a tragedy in her grandmother’s past. Determined to untangle the mystery, Piper tracks down her grandmother’s childhood friend, a woman named Lily, who clearly knows the truth – and the dark secrets hidden in the house. But Lily has secrets of her own – secrets she believes are better left forgotten. And for Piper to unearth the truth, she will have to be willing to open her heart to new relationships, heal the heartaches of the past, and find the courage to embrace the future.

I received this one from a fellow member of the Yahoo group ReadNSwap. I think it sounds like a good read. Plus I have been really kind of interested in reading more of what I would consider to be women’s literature rather than just straight mystery/thrillers/suspense (although that will always be my favorite!)

Friday, July 10

Venom by Jeffrey Ames

To those hunting him, he is the Fiddleback – an inhuman predator with a taste for human prey and an appetite for torture. To his victims, he is a nightmare come to life at the moment of death. His motive is his madness. His madness has no method. His methods hold no mercy. The one person who can stop him: Dallas cop Courtney Bedell, the only person who has seen the killer and survived. Now, to save herself ad those she loves, Courtney must match wits with a madman unlike any ever known – and lure the Fiddleback into a web of her own desgn ….

I also received this one from a fellow member of ReadNSwap (different member). I don’t really know what it was about this title, but it really drew me to requesting this book. I’m definitely looking forward to it!

Killing Orders by Sara Paretsky

V.I. Warshawski’s latest case had alreadyopned up old wounds. But when a silk voice on the phone threatened to throw acid into her eyes, V.I. knew this one could finish her off with some brand-new ones. The sour-faced old aunt she had agreed to help was accused of stealing millions in stock certificates from a pious order of Dominican brothers. V.I. knew the woman was a witch, not a thief, and she soon smelled something rotten in the sanctum sanctorum of Chicago’s most powerful movers and shakers – the Church and the Mob. Now someone wanted to see V.I. burn in hell. But this tough cookie of a private eye had her back up, a brand-new Smith & Wesson, and a daring plan to make the bad guys go to the devil first.

This one I received as a birthday book from a fellow member at the Yahoo group MysteryBookSwap. I had had my eye on this one over at PBS for quite some time, but I was just unsure about spending a credit on it and I never could find a Boxer that would swap for it. So I was very glad to see Kathy had this one on her list.

Denial by Keith Ablow

Frank Clevenger is a forensic psychiatrist who hates authority, fears intimacy, uses sex as an anesthetic, is tortured by his professional mistakes, and can’t free himself from the shadows of a brutal, alcoholic father and an absent, unfeeling mother. But it is precisely this injured psyche that allows him to understand the deranged behavior of the mental and emotional outcasts who cross his professional path. When a young woman is discovered brutally murdered, her body mutilated, Clevenger is shocked to discover that he knows the woman, she is a close friend of his girlfriend, and that the police department’s main suspect, a schizophrenic homeless man, cannot have committed the crime. As evidence of more shocking murders begins to mount over the next seventy-two hours, Clevenger must race to stop the senseless, horrific murders in the fight of his life against a brutal killer with a horrific trademark and his own howling demons of sexual compulsion, self-destruction, and …. DENIAL

I received this one as part of a three-book swap on PBS. I have seen this one pop up randomly in places and have been mildly interested in it and figured it would be something worth trying, so I’m looking forward to it!

The Dying Game by Beverly Barton

It’s the ultimate game – the adrenaline surge of the hunt, the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat. For in this game, the rules are simple: To wn, you only have to kill. To lose, you will have to die…. The victims are former beauty queens found with a single rose beside their bodies. Lindsay McAllister has seen this signature before, when she was a rookie detective with the Chattanooga PD investigating the death of Judd Walker’s wife, a murder that sent the handsome lawyer off the deep end. Now, Lindsay has the brutal task of telling Judd that his wife’s killer has struck again, and she’s going to need his help to outplay their opponent – because the killer is getting bolder, faster, and more ruthless. The game is escalating, and no one is safe. Now as the body count rises, the rules are changing. A killer will do anything to win. And the only way for Lindsay to stop a madman’s twisted game is to play it herself…

This is the second book of the three book swap from PBS. I have only read one Beverly Barton book but I absolutely adored it! So I was pleased to see this one available and am definitely looking forward to reading it! I hope it’s as good as it sounds!!!

Silent Partner by Jonathan Kellerman

At a party for a controversial Los Angeles sex therapist, Alex Delaware encounters a face from his own past – Sharon Ransom, an exquisite, alluring lover who left him abruptly more than a decade earlier. Sharon now hints that she desperately needs help, but Alex evades her. The next day she is dead, an apparent suicide. Driven by guilt and sadness, Alex plunges into the maze of Sharon’s life – a journey that will take him through the pleasure palaces of California’s ultrarich, into the alleyways of the mind, where childhood terrors still hold sway.

This was the last book in the three book swap from PBS. I am trying to gather all the books in the Alex Delaware series so that I can read them and was glad to see this one available. I hope to start reading When the Bough Breaks soon so that I can really get into this series from the start!