Category: Mailbox Monday

This encompasses the last two weeks. First, three new ones that I purchased (hey … two were ones that I’ve had my eye on for a while and I lucked out and found them in the bargain section!)

And then two review books:

They’re calling it the worst pileup in London history. Driving home, Margaret Holloway has her mind elsewhere – on a troubled student, her daughter’s acting class, the next day’s meeting – when she’s rear-ended and trapped in the wreckage. Just as she begins to panic, a disfigured stranger pulls her from the car just seconds before it’s engulfed in flames. Then he simply disappears.

Though she escapes with minor injuries, Margaret feels that something’s wrong. She’s having trouble concentrating. Her emotions are running wild. More than that, flashbacks to the crash are also dredging up lost associations from her childhood, fragments of events that were wiped from her memory. Whatever happened, she didn’t merely forget – she chose to forget. And somehow, Margaret knows deep down that it’s got something to do with the man who saved her life.

As Margaret uncovers a mystery with chilling implications for her family and her very identity, Everything She Forgot winds through a riveting dual narrative and asks the question: How far would you go to hide the truth – from yourself?

Cecilia made the hardest decision of her life moments before she stepped onto the plane that would bring her world crashing down around her. Her marriage was failing before even getting off the ground, and her desperate need to start over has driven her to abandon her family. Now, as her plane plummets toward the ground, she wishes she had given her son one last kiss good-bye. As tragedy meets mystery, Cecilia and three others in her community, each struggling with their own secrets, become connected on the fateful night when lives are lost in the sky and on the ground.

A slim mailbox this week (which is a good thing). For a blog tour at the end of August:

Dr. Kay Scarpetta is about to head to Miami for a vacation when she notices seven pennies on a wall behind their home. Is this a kids’ game? If so, why are all of the coins dated 1981 and so shiny they could be newly minted? Then she learns there’s been a homicide five minutes away. A high school teacher was shot with uncanny precision as he unloaded groceries from his car. Yet no one heard or saw a thing.

Soon more victims surface. The shots seem impossible to achieve, yet they are so perfect they cause death in an instant. There is no pattern to indicate where the killer will strike next. First it was New Jersey, then Massachusetts, and then the murky depths off the coast. There she comes face to face with shocking news that implicates her niece, Lucy – Scarpetta’s own flesh and blood.

Also, as part of this blog tour, I received a copy of Karin Slaughter’s Blindsighted. However, I read this one back in 2013 and would be happy to send this brand new copy to the first person to request it in the comments (leave your email).

A small Georgia town erupts in panic when a young college professor is found brutally mutilated in the local diner. But it’s only when town pediatrician and coroner Sara Linton does the autopsy that the full extent of the killer’s twisted work becomes clear.

Sara’s ex-husband, police chief Jeffrey Tolliver, leads the investigation – a trail of terror that grows increasingly macabre when another local woman is found crucified a few days later. But he’s got more than a sadistic serial killer on his hands, for the country’s sole female detective, Lena Adams – the first victim’s sister – wants to serve her own justice.

Yet it is Sara who holds the key to finding the killer. A secret from her past could unmask the brilliantly malevolent psychopath … or mean her death.

And for review in September:

After the Iron Curtain’s collapse, Russia appears to be finished as a superpower. But KGB general Vasily Karpov is working behind the scenes to restore Russia’s status by forcing Americans into traitorous acts of espionage and sabotage, with the aid of a new secret weapon. Meanwhile, the biggest target is within Russia, where Karpov is plotting to capture the Kremlin for himself.

Former US soldier and spy Alex Ferris becomes the first to fathom Karpov’s grand plans. Racing from San Francisco to Siberia, Alex must elude ambushes, assassins, and death from exposure as he wages a one-man war against a growing global threat and the resurgence of the Soviets.

So I was having a really bad day and while browsing Target, I came across this one:

Two people are abducted, imprisoned, and left with a gun. As hunger and thirst set in, only one walks away alive.

It’s a game more twisted than any Detective Inspector Helen Grace has ever seen. If she hadn’t spoken with the shattered survivors herself, she almost wouldn’t believe them.

Helen is familiar with the dark sides of human nature, including her own, but this case – with its seemingly random victims – has her baffled. But as more people go missing, nothing will be more terrifying than when it all starts making sense…

Another week down … another batch of books brought in. If only I read them as fast as I buy them…..

Two came from PBS while the other four were purchased at the Goodwill. I’m really digging the selection at my local Goodwill – they seem to keep it well stocked! Good for business …. bad for my shelves 🙂

Till next week…

I have gone kind of crazy lately and brought a sh*t ton of new (and new-to-me) books into this house. It’s out of hand, really. Since there are so many recent acquisitions, I’ve kind of lost track of them all. So I’ll only bore you with the ones that came in last week ….

As a practiced reporter until her newspaper went to that great pressroom in the sky, P.I. Tess Monaghan knows and loves every inch of her native Baltimore, even the parts being slobbered on by the sad-sack greyhound she’s minding for her uncle. It’s a quirky city where baseball reigns, but lately homicide seems to be the second most popular local sport. Business tycoon “Wink” Wynkowski is trying to change all that by bringing pro basketball back to town, and everybody’s rooting for him – until a devastating, muckraking expose of his lurid past appears on the front page of the Baltimore Beacon-Light. It’s a surprise even to the Blight’s editors, who thought they’d killed the piece. Instead, the piece killed Wink – who’s found in his garage with the car running.

Now the Blight wants to nail the unknown computer hacker who planted the lethal story, and the assignment is right up the alley of a former newshound like Tess. But it doesn’t take long for her to discover deeper, darker secrets, and to realize that this situation is really more about whacking than hacking. It’s just murder in Baltimore these days – and Tess Monaghan herself might be next on the list.

One year later, we remember the numbers: 20 children and 6 adults, murdered in a place of nurture and trust. We remember the names: teachers like Victoria Soto, who lost her life protecting her students. A shooter named Adam Lanza. And we remember the questions: outraged conjecture instantly monopolized the worldwide response to the tragedy – while the truth went missing.

One year later, here is the definitive journalistic account of Newtown, an essential examination of the facts – not only of that horrific day but the perfect storm of mental instability and obsession that preceded it and, in the aftermath of unspeakable heartbreak, the controversy that continues to play out on the national stage. Drawn from previously undisclosed emails, police reports, and in-depth interviews, Newtown: An American Tragedy breaks through a miasma of misinformation with its comprehensive and astonishing portrayal.

One ear late,r this is the vital story that must be told – today – if we are to prevent another American tragedy in the days to come.

She’s a savvy investigator with the cool toughness of Sam Spade – and a smile that could melt a block of ice. Once the star of the Anchorage D.A.’s office, she’s gone back to her roots in the far Alaska north. But Kate’s taken her talent for detection along … and trouble knows where to find her.

When a young National Park Ranger disappears during the long Alaskan winter, everyone assumes the cold got him. But when an investigator goes in after him, and never comes out, the weather may not be all that’s killing. Or so thinks Kate Shugak. With her Husky-breed Mutt as an ally, she’s hunting for answers among the pipelines, Aleuts, and hardy eccentrics of the rugged American north. But she’s heading for thin ice between lies and loyalties … between justice served and the cold face of murder.

Lots of new books have come into my house the last couple of weeks. Two review books, but also four new purchases. One day I will stop myself……

First, the purchases:

And now the two review books, the first is a novella, the second is a full length novel.

Four books from Paperbackswap’s Box-of-Books feature this week:

And one review book that I requested from Blogging for Books … because I have absolutely NO SELF-CONTROL when I say I’m not taking on any review books this year (and I’ve already committed to about 5 in the next few months…… ugh!!)

Claudia Morgan-Brown finally has it all. Pregnant with a much-wanted first baby, she has a happy family of two young stepsons and a loving husband. When Claudia hires Zoe to help her around the house in anticipation of the baby’s arrival, it seems like the answer to her prayers. But despite Zoe’s glowing recommendations and instant rapport with the children, there’s something about her that Claudia cannot trust.

Moreover, there has been a series of violent attacks on pregnant women in the area, and Claudia becomes acutely aware of her vulnerability. With her husband out of town for work, who will be there to protect her? And why does she still feel so unsettled about Zoe? Realizing appearances can be deceiving even in a seemingly perfect world, Claudia digs deeper into Zoe’s blurry past and begins to wonder – how far would someone go to have a child of her own?

Just a couple of books from Paperbackswap this week:

A week’s holiday in a luxurious Yorkshire time-share is just what Scotland Yard’s Superintendent Duncan Kincaid needs. But the discovery of a body floating in the whirlpool bath ends Kincaid’s vacation before it’s begun. One of his new acquaintances at Followdale House is dead; another is a killer. Despite a distinct lack of cooperation from the local constabulary, Kincaid’s keen sense of duty won’t allow him to ignore the heinous crime, impelling him to send for his enthusiastic young assistant, Sergeant Gemma James. But the stakes are raised dramatically when a second murder occurs, and Kincaid and James find themselves in a determined hunt for a fiendish felon who enjoys homicide a bit too much.

Once, Nick Kotlar tried to save his father. From the angry questions. From the accusations. From a piece of evidence that only Nick knew about and that he destroyed – for his father. But in the Red Scare of 1950 Walter Kotlar could not be saved. Branded a spy, he fled the country, leaving behind a wife, a young son – and a key witness lying dead below her D.C. hotel room.

Now, twenty years later, Nick will get a second chance. Because a beautiful journalist has brought a message from his long-lost father, and Nick will follow her into Soviet-occupied Prague for a painful reunion. Confronting a father he barely remembers and a secret that could change everything, Nick knows he must return to the place where it all began: to unravel a lie, to penetrate a deadly conspiracy, and to expose the one person who knew the truth – and watched a family be destroyed.

Just one book this week. An e-galley from an author I’ve reviewed in the past. (Why, why, why can I *never* follow through with not accepting review books?! Oh, maybe because a really great one comes through and I can’t resist!)

In Susanna Calkins’s next richly drawn mystery set in 17th century England, Lucy Campion, formerly a ladies’ maid in the local magistrate’s household, has now found gainful employment as a printer’s apprentice. On a freezing winter afternoon in 1667, she accompanies the magistrate’s daughter, Sarah, to the home of a severely injured Quaker man to record his dying words, a common practice of the time. The man, having been trampled by a horse and cart the night before, only has a few hours left to live. Lucy scribbles down the Quaker man’s last utterances, but she’s unprepared for what he reveals to her—that someone deliberately pushed him into the path of the horse, because of a secret he had recently uncovered.

Fearful that Sarah might be traveling in the company of a murderer, Lucy feels compelled to seek the truth, with the help of the magistrate’s son, Adam, and the local constable. But delving into the dead man’s background might prove more dangerous than any of them had imagined.

In The Masque of a Murderer, Susanna Calkins has once again combined finely wrought characters, a richly detailed historical atmosphere, and a tightly-plotted mystery into a compelling read.

I finally took the time to skip to the next town over (only about 10 minutes) to scope out my new local used book store. I was so stoked, because my local used book store in Kentucky had closed last year, and all I was stuck with was a Books-a-Million (ugh). After our move though, I have a Barnes & Noble (yay!) and a used book store.

I have a feeling I will be using this used book store more and more seeing as how my local library is more than a tad bit disappointing (I was spoiled and had a GREAT library system in my old town…) and Paperbackswap is now implementing a yearly fee, which I still have not decided whether or not I want to stick around.

Anyway, on to the books:

The year was 2014. We had cured cancer. We had beaten the common cold. But in doing so we had created something new, something terrible that no one could stop. The infection spread, virus blocks taking over bodies and minds with one, unstoppable command: FEED.

Now, twenty years after the Rising, Georgia and Shaun Mason are on the trail of the biggest story of their lives – the dark conspiracy behind the infected. The truth will out, even if it kills them.

On a frigid New Year’s Eve in Minneapolis, a young woman is found brutally murdered – the ninth so far this year in a string of grisly slayings. Homicide detectives Sam Kovac and Nikki Liska fear that it’s the work of a serial killer they call Doc Holiday, a transient who has brought his gruesome game to a new and more terrifying level. But as Kovac and Liska uncover the truth, they find that the monsters in the ninth girl’s life may live closer to home. And even as another young woman disappears, they have to ask the question: Which is the greater evil – the devil you know or the devil you don’t?

For more than two years, he held Seattle in a terror grip. A cold-blooded killer who abducted young mothers right in front of their sons and murdered them execution style. Then, as suddenly as the killings began, they seemed to stop.

Susan Blanchette is looking forward to a relaxing weekend getaway with her fiancé, Allen, and young son, Matthew. But something about the remote lake house doesn’t feel right. A woman vanished from the area a year ago, and now Susan thinks she’s spotted someone lurking around the property. And when Allen disappears, her fear grows…

A psychopath has returned, ready to strike again. Someone who can’t resist the urge to kill, who derives pleasure from others’ pain, and who is drawing nearer to Susan as each minute of the weekend ticks by. But she’s just one pawn at the heart of a killer’s deadly game. A killer who is unrelenting, unstoppable, and absolutely vicious…

Detective Alex Cross is a family man at heart – nothing matters more to him than his children, his grandmother, and his wife, Bree. His love of his family is his anchor, giving him the strength to confront evil in his work. One man knows this deeply, a genius set on proving that he is the greatest criminal mind of all, and he uses Alex’s strength as a weapon against him.

When the ones Cross loves are in danger, he will do anything to protect him. But if he even tries, they will die.

Cross My Hear is the most devastating and unexpected novel of James Patterson’s career. Is this the end of Alex Cross?