Day: October 24, 2011

Mailbox Monday is on tour, with October’s location being at Savvy Verse & Wit.

Well after missing last week’s edition because I didn’t have any books come in the mail, my mailbox was bursting this week! Now if only I could get out of my reading slump! Here’s what I got:

From Paperbackswap Box-of-Books:

In the world of high power and big business, Project Peace was anything but cash efficient. That’s why the President was targeted for assassination and his daughter kidnapped. That’s why presidential publicist Matt Boyle was putting his life on the line, playing the most dangerous game in the world – where winner takes all … and losers die.

 

 

 

 A man burdened by his past, former top homicide cop Justin Westwood has retreated to a small-town Long Island police force. Drowning his troubles in mindless traffic duty and lots of scotch, he’s awakened to action when a young woman journalist is brutally murdered. She had recently made some errors in the obituary of a man from a local retirement home, but that’s not the kind of mistake that brings professional hit men to your door – or the FBI to town. Attempting to unravel the puzzle, Justin finds that everyone – the cops, the FBI, and one of the strangest professional killing teams ever seen – seems to be one step ahead of him, disposing of witnesses and setting him up for the fall. But this reality check is just what Justin needs, and he’ll stop at nothing to discover the true meaning of “Aphrodite” – and maybe save himself.

 

 Two young drifters, Nate and Cat, are forced by stress and circumstance to give up their infant daughter Willa for adoption. For seventeen years, Willa has lived in elegant prosperity with Joe and Candace Golding, her adoptive parents, in the Massachusetts Berkshires, where she attends the elite, private Pioneer School. But the Goldings have fled a mysterious past, and when a cleaned-up Nate arrives at Pioneer to teach English, the well-varnished facade of an idyllic small town begins to crack.

 

 

 For Danny Cray, a struggling artist and part-time private investigator, the offer is too good to be true. A wealthy, enigmatic lawyer, Jude Belzer, would like to retain Danny for a little damage control. Belzer’s client, an elusive billionaire, is the target of a vicious campaign by the Italian press that threatens to destroy his reputation. Belzer wants Danny to find out who is responsible – and he will pay handsomely. But the more Danny probes, the more apparent it becomes that nothing is what it seems. From the powerful world of Washington, D.C., to the ancient grandeur of Rome, from the mysteries of Istanbul to the high-stakes drama of Silicon Valley, Danny is suddenly embroiled in a conspiracy that is dark, far-reaching, and unsettling.

 

 

 Journalist Katherine Nikulasson’s father, Gustav, noted historian and archaeologist, has been killed in a plane crash. Some of his papers, now missing, lead Katherine to question the veracity of the accident report and the loyalty of her father’s longtime friend, Sheppard Wilde. A search for the truth takes Katherine to Wilde’s estate in England where she uncovers a conspiracy that shakes her to the core. Unaware she has now become a pawn in that conspiracy, an unwitting Katherine is kidnapped by Enrique Quisette, leader of an art smuggling syndicate, a man who will destroy anyone who stands in the way of what he wants. Wilde knows what Quisette wants. And he knows he must find Katherine before she’s of no further use to Quisette. Using every resource from the lust underworld of smuggling to the grimy back streets of Athens, Wilde begins a race against time. It is not his only challenge. For three powerful people, each risking his life, once signed an extraordinary agreement. Its intent: Protect the heritage of an ancient people, one of the world’s richest remaining treasures. Now Wilde must not only rescue Katherine but uphold the secret he has sworn to protect in…

 New York’s trendy magazines are a source of peril when a killer enacts a bizarre dance of death, using the personal ads to lure his victims. After college, best friends Erin Kelley and Darcy Scott move to the city to pursue exciting careers. Erin is a promising jewelry designer, Darcy finds success as a decorator. On a lark, Darcy persuades Erin to help their TV producer friend research the kinds of people who place personal ads. It seems like innocent fun … until Erin disappears. Erin’s body is found on an abandoned Manhattan pier – on one foot is her own shoe, on the other, a high-heeled dancing slipper. Soon after, startling communiques from the killer reveal that Erin is not the first victim of this “dancing shoe murderer.” And, if the killer has his way, she won’t be his last. Next on his death list is Darcy.

 

 Between December 1968 and October 1969 a hooded serial killer called Zodiac terrorized San Francisco. Claiming responsibility for thirty-seven murders, he manipulated the media with warnings, dares, and bizarre cryptograms that baffled FBI code-breakers. Then as suddenly as the murders began, Zodiac disappeared into the Bay Area fog forever and was never brought to justice. After painstaking investigation, and more than thirty years of research, Robert Graysmith finally exposes Zodiac’s true identity. With overwhelming evidence he reveals the twisted private life that led to the crimes, and provides startling theories as to why they stopped. America’s greatest unsolved mystery has finally been solved.

 

 

 The end of her high-profile broadcasting career came too soon for TV journalist Alison Reynolds – bounced off the air by executives who wanted a “younger face.” With a divorce from her cheating husband of ten years also pending, there is nothing keeping her in LA any longer. Cut loose from her moorings, Ali is summoned back home to Sedona, Arizona, by the death of a childhood friend. Once there she seeks solace in the comforting rhythms of her parents’ diner, the Sugarloaf Cafe, and launches an on-line blog as therapy for others who have been similarly cut loose. But when threatening posts begin appearing, Ali finds out that running a blog is far more up-close and personal than sitting behind a news desk. And far more dangerous. Suddenly something dark and deadly is swirling around her life … and a killer may be hunting her next.

 

 Mary Bergen is a clairvoyant, able to foresee murders that will happen in the near future, but unable to prevent them from taking place. But, now she is up against a power stronger than her own, a power that is taking over her and trying to kill her before she can identify it.

 

 

 

 

 Once the prosecutor was a young law student. Once the dead man was an honest lawyer. Now Stella Marz stares at the body of her former lover, hanging from a doorway in a gruesome tableau. For Stella Marz, the search for Jack Novak’s killer leads into another bizarre homicide case, back through her own past and through the city where she was born and where now – a good Catholic girl turned career woman – she is in exile. Somewhere in this city an unholy alliance of big money, big plans, and dark secrets is fueling a great American revival. And somehow Stella Marz will bring the darkness into the light – no matter what it reveals, no matter who it destroys…

 

 

 In Copenhagen a suspicious bookstore fire propels Commander Gray Pierce on a relentless hunt across four continents – and into a terrifying mystery surrounding horrific experiments once performed in a now-abandoned laboratory buried in a hollowed-out mountain in Poland. In the mountains of Nepal in a remote monastery, Buddhist monks inexplicably turn to cannibalism and torture – while Painter Crowe, director of Sigma Force, begins to show signs of the same baffling, mind-destroying malady … and Lisa Cummings, a dedicated American doctor, becomes the target of a brutal clandestine assassin. now only Gray Pierce and Sigma Force can save a world suddenly in terrible jeopardy. Because a new order is on the rise – an annihilating nightmare growing at the heart of the greatest mystery of all: the origin of life.

 

 On a cold winter night in a small Minnesota town in 1979, someone comes looking for Grace Meade. She is killed and her house is set ablaze. Incredibly, the prime suspect is her own daughter, Jillian. Rescued from the burning house, Jillian Meade is hospitalized, unable – or unwilling – to speak. After an attempt to take her own life, Jillian’s doctor gives her a blank journal to encourage her to write about her mother’s death. Unaware of what has happened, FBI Special Agent Alex Cruz comes to Havenwood, Minnesota, to interview Jillian. Two elderly women were found murdered in their homes in England, and Jillian, it seems, was the last person to see both women alive. When he learns that Jillian’s own mother met a similar fate, he realizes that there is far more going on than anyone ever imagined. When Jillian suddenly disappears, Cruz has only her journal to decipher the story of Grace and Jillian Meade. A story of a wartime heist of Nazi gold, of unforgivable betrayals and ruthless actions. A deadly secret from the past, Cruz learns, has surfaced. And if he doesn’t find Jillian soon, she, too, may be made to pay the ultimate price.