Category: Mailbox Monday

Two books this week, both from Paperbackswap (when will I learn to stay off that site?!):

In order to develop a secure defense against a hostile alien race’s next attack, government agencies breed child geniuses and train them as soldiers. A brilliant young boy, Andrew “Ender” Wiggin lives with his kind but distant parents, his sadistic brother Peter, and the person he loves more than anyone else, his sister Valentine. Peter and Valentine were candidates for the soldier-training program but didn’t make the cut—young Ender is the Wiggin drafted to the orbiting Battle School for rigorous military training.

Ender’s skills make him a leader in school and respected in the Battle Room, where children play at mock battles in zero gravity. Yet growing up in an artificial community of young soldiers Ender suffers greatly from isolation, rivalry from his peers, pressure from the adult teachers, and an unsettling fear of the alien invaders. His psychological battles include loneliness, fear that he is becoming like the cruel brother he remembers, and fanning the flames of devotion to his beloved sister.

Is Ender the general Earth needs? But Ender is not the only result of the genetic experiments. The war with the Buggers has been raging for a hundred years, and the quest for the perfect general has been underway for almost as long. Ender’s two older siblings are every bit as unusual as he is, but in very different ways. Between the three of them lie the abilities to remake a world. If, that is, the world survives.

When Dirk Pitt intercepts a rogue blimp on a deadly course, authorities find four dead men aboard. None of them ,however, is the wealthy American financier who set out aboard the antique airship on an ocean treasure hunt in the Bermuda Triangle. He and his crew have disappeared, and the dead men are discovered to be Soviet cosmonauts. Meanwhile, the President of the United States is informed that a covert group of U.S. industrialists successfully placed a secret colony on the moon nearly three decades previously. Now, a Soviet mission is poised to land on the moon, and what they find there may lead to nuclear war. Threatened in space, the Russians are about to strike a savage blow in Cuba. From the cold ocean depths to a Cuban torture chamber to the CIA headquarters at Langley, Pitt is racing to defuse an international conspiracy that threatens to shatter the earth.

Two books this week, both from Paperbackswap:

Japan, 1945: Two U.S. bombers take off with atomic bombs. Only one gets through.

The Pacific, 1993: A Japanese cargo ship bound for the United States is instantly, thunderously vaporized, taking with it a Norwegian vessel. Japanese fanatics have developed a chilling plan to devastate and destroy the Western powers. From the ocean depths to the discovery of cache of lost Nazi loot, Dirk Pitt is untangling a savage conspiracy and igniting a daring counterattack. While Washington bureaucrats scramble, a brutal industrialist commands his blackmail scheme from a secret island control center. And Dirk Pitt, the dauntless hero of Sahara and Inca Gold, is taking on death-dealing robots and a human-hunting descendant of samurai warriors. Pitt alone controls the West’s secret ace in the hole: a tidal wave of destruction waiting to be triggered on the ocean floor!

There have been many words used to describe the Kennedy boys … handsome, aggressive, charismatic, charming, volatile, red-blooded, and sexy. This book investigates the latter descriptions, an in-depth probe into the more sensual aspects of the Kennedy mystique.

Here are Jack and Bob and Ted and all the girls you’ve ever heard whispered or gossiped about, a few you never heard of, and, too, those gals who somehow fell onto the front pages … Judy and Marilyn and Lee and Angie and Kim and Rita and Page and Jayne and Janet and Mary and Candy and Mariella and Rhonda and Amanda and Joan and Maria and more girls than anyone would have thought possible…

Well, I made it all of 2 days into the new year before I purchased 2 new books. Oops. Here’s what I bought:

  
September 1861: All is not as it seems. With these cryptic words, a shocking secret passed down from president to president comes to rest in the hands of Abraham Lincoln. And as the first bloody clashes of the Civil War unfold, Lincoln alone must decide how best to use this volatile knowledge: save thousands of American lives, or keep the young nation from being torn apart forever?

The present: In Utah, the fabled remains of Mormon pioneers whose nineteenth-century expedition across the desert met with a murderous end have been uncovered. In Washington, D.C., the official investigation of an international entrepreneur, an elder in the Mormon church, has sparked a political battle between the White House and a powerful United States senator. In Denmark, a Justice Department agent, missing in action, has fallen into the hands of a dangerous zealot—a man driven by divine visions to make a prophet’s words reality. And in a matter of a few short hours, Cotton Malone has gone from quietly selling books at his shop in Denmark to dodging bullets in a high-speed boat chase.

All it takes is a phone call from his former boss in Washington, and suddenly the ex-agent is racing to rescue an informant carrying critical intelligence. It’s just the kind of perilous business that Malone has been trying to leave behind, ever since he retired from the Justice Department. But once he draws enemy blood, Malone is plunged into a deadly conflict—a constitutional war secretly set in motion more than two hundred years ago by America’s Founding Fathers.

From the streets of Copenhagen to the catacombs of Salzburg to the rugged mountains of Utah, the grim specter of the Civil War looms as a dangerous conspiracy gathers power. Malone risks life, liberty, and his greatest love in a race for the truth about Abraham Lincoln—while the fate of the United States of America hangs in the balance.

A schoolgirl found it on a nature hike. A severed human foot wearing pink nail polish. A gruesome but invaluable clue that leads forensic pathologist Birdy Waterman down a much darker trail—to a dangerous psychopath whose powers of persuasion seem to have no end. Only by teaming up with sheriff’s detective Kendall Stark can Birdy hope to even the odds in a deadly game. It’s a fateful decision the killer wants them to make. And it’s the only way Birdy and Kendall can find their way to a murderer who’s ready to kill again…

One book this week, for review:

A mysterious hacker who identifies himself only as “Warlock” brings down the FBI’s website and posts a code in its place. The code hides the GPS coordinates of a Michigan cemetery, where a dead girl is discovered rising from the ground … as if she tried to crawl out of her own grave.

Born into a dynasty of illusionists, Jessica Blackwood is destined to become its next star – until she turns her back on her troubled family, and her legacy, to begin a new life in law enforcement. But FBI consultant Dr. Jeffrey Ailes’s discovery of an old copy of Magician magazine will turn Jessica’s carefully constructed world upside down. Faced with a crime that appears beyond explanation, Ailes has nothing to lose – and everything to gain – by taking a chance on an agent raised in a world devoted to achieving the seemingly impossible.

The body in the cemetery is only the first in the Warlock’s series of dark miracles. Jessica is thrust into the media spotlight, with time ticking away until the next crime – but can she confront her past to embrace her gifts and stop a depraved killer?

If she can’t, she may become his next victim.

Two review books this week.

On June 9, 2008, the butchered body of Travis Alexander was found in his Arizona home with twenty-nine knife wounds, his throat slit, and a gunshot to the head. The prime suspect was Alexander’s ex-girlfriend, Jodi Arias, who claimed she killed Travis in self-defense. Soon, graphic stories about the Mormon couple’s relationship and their lurid sexual encounters emerged, launching a trial filled with sex and deception and raising substantial questions about Arias’s deceit-filled world.

Award-winning broadcast journalist Jane Velez-Mitchell unearths Jodi’s history to illustrate the disturbing pattern of a murderer in the making. With insider accounts from those closest to Travis and Jodi, she separates fact from fiction, reporting on the bizarre and explicit stories that emerged during the riveting trial.

The Founders’ Plot takes you into the sordid and dangerous world of illegal immigration, the shady corridors and back rooms where devious politicians ply their trade, and sheds light on suspicious Supreme Court decisions. It turns hot-button contemporary issues into a compelling narrative that puts a human face on what are, for most, only distant abstractions.

The newly-elected California governor pushes through a stringent immigration law that’s declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. But the decorated Vietnam vet ignores the ruling and continues implementing the law, igniting a clash between federal, state, and judicial power that threatens to jar the country’s political and justice systems.

Two books this week. One review book:

Abbey of Ruac, rural France – A medieval script is discovered hidden behind an antique bookcase. Badly damaged, it is sent to Paris for restoration, and there literary historian Hugo Pineau begins to read the startling fourteenth-century text. Within its pages lies a fanciful tale of a painted cave and the secrets it contains – and a rudimentary map showing its position close to the abbey. Intrigued, Hugo enlists the help of archaeologist Luc Simard and the two men go exploring.

When they discover a vast network of prehistoric caves, buried deep within the cliffs, they realize that they’ve stumbled across something extraordinary. And at the very core of the labyrinth lies the most astonishing chamber of all, just as the manuscript chronicled. Aware of the significance of their discovery, they set up camp with a team of experts, determined to bring their find to the world. But as they begin to unlock the ancient secrets the cavern holds, they find themselves at the centre of a dangerous game. One “accidental” death leads to another. And it seems that someone will stop at nothing to protect the enigma of the tenth chamber.

And one that I purchased new:

One of the most popular novels of our time, A Time to Kill established John Grisham as the master of the legal thriller. Now we return to Ford County as Jake Brigance finds himself embroiled in a fiercely controversial trial that exposes a tortured history of racial tension.

Seth Hubbard is a wealthy man dying of lung cancer. He trusts no one. Before he hangs himself from a sycamore tree, Hubbard leaves a new, handwritten will. It is an act that drags his adult children, his black maid, and Jake into a conflict as riveting and dramatic as the murder trial that made Brigance one of Ford County’s most notorious citizens, just three years earlier. The second will raises many more questions than it answers. Why would Hubbard leave nearly all of his fortune to his maid? Had chemotherapy and painkillers affected his ability to think clearly? And what does it all have to do with a piece of land once known as Sycamore Row?

For a TLC Book Tour in September, I received this eARC:

Ayesha Ryder bears the scars of strife in the Middle East. Now her past is catching up to her as she races to unravel a mystery that spans centuries—and threatens to change the course of history.

As Israeli and Palestinian leaders prepare to make a joint announcement at the Tower of London, an influential scholar is tortured and murdered in his well-appointed home in St. John’s Wood. Academic researcher Ayesha Ryder believes the killing is no coincidence. Sir Evelyn Montagu had unearthed shocking revelations about T. E. Lawrence—the famed Lawrence of Arabia. Could Montagu have been targeted because of his discoveries?

Ryder’s search for answers takes her back to her old life in the Middle East and into a lion’s den of killers and traitors. As she draws the attention of agents from both sides of the conflict, including detectives from Scotland Yard and MI5, Ryder stumbles deeper into Lawrence’s secrets, an astounding case of royal blackmail, even the search for the Bible’s lost Ark of the Covenant.

Every step of the way, the endgame grows more terrifying. But when an attack rocks London, the real players show their hand—and Ayesha Ryder is left holding the final piece of the puzzle.

And then I made the mistake of going to my favorite used book store. I spent entirely too much time there and came home with entirely too many books 🙂

A slimmer mailbox this week (not like that’s a bad thing at this point!)

For review in September:

A father returns home to find that his family has been kidnapped and the only way to save their lives is for him to kill another innocent person…

So begins a journey that will force Special Agent Marcus Williams of the Shepherd Organization to question all that he believes, unearth his family’s dark legacy, and sacrifice everything to save those he loves. In order to stop the serial murderer whom the media has dubbed the Coercion Killer, Marcus must enlist the help of one of the world’s most infamous and wanted men… The serial killer Francis Ackerman Jr.

And also for review, I requested this one from NetGalley:

What if the world’s worst serial killer…was your dad?
Jasper (Jazz) Dent is a likable teenager. A charmer, one might say.
But he’s also the son of the world’s most infamous serial killer, and for Dear Old Dad, Take Your Son to Work Day was year-round. Jazz has witnessed crime scenes the way cops wish they could–from the criminal’s point of view.
And now bodies are piling up in Lobo’s Nod.
In an effort to clear his name, Jazz joins the police in a hunt for a new serial killer. But Jazz has a secret–could he be more like his father than anyone knows?

And then another review book that came as a surprise (I had requested this a long time ago and just assumed I didn’t snag a copy):

In John Verdon’s most sensationally twisty novel yet, ingenious puzzle solver Dave Gurney brings his analytical brilliance to a shocking murder that couldn’t have been committed the way the police say it was.

The daunting task that confronts Gurney, once the NYPD’s top homicide cop: determining the guilt or innocence of a woman already convicted of shooting her charismatic politician husband – who was felled by a rifle bullet to the brain while delivering the eulogy at his own mother’s funeral.

Peeling back the layers, Gurney quickly finds himself waging a dangerous battle of wits with a thoroughly corrupt investigator, a disturbingly cordial mob boss, a gorgeous young temptress, and a bizarre assassin whose child-like appearance has earned him the nickname Peter Pan.

Startling twists and turns occur in rapid-fire sequence, and soon Gurney is locked inside one of the darkest cases of his career – one in which multiple murders are merely the deceptive surface under which rests a scaffolding of pure evil. Beneath the tangle of poisonous lies, Gurney discovers that the truth is more shocking that anyone had imagined.

And the identity of the villain at the mystery’s center turns out to be the biggest shock of all.

Mailbox Monday has returned home to Mailbox Monday’s site this year.

Birthday money burns a hole in my pocket. And 9 times out of 10 I spend it at the book store :):)

Or at the library book sale, which just happens to land during my birthday month 🙂

I also got these from Paperbackswap:

And finally one book from LibraryThing’s Early Reviewer Program:

 In the woods of Whisper, Georgia, two bodies are found: one recently dead, the other decayed from a decade of exposure to the elements. The sheriff is going to need help to track down an experienced predator – one who abducts girls and holds them for months before ending their lives. Enter ex-FBI profiler and private investigator Keye Street.

After a few weeks, Keye is finally used to sharing her downtown Atlanta loft with her boyfriend, A.P.D. Lieutenant Aaron Rauser. Along with their pets (his dog, her cat) they seem almost like a family. But when Rauser plunks a few ice cubes in a tumbler and pours a whiskey, Keye tenses. Her addiction recovery is tenuous at best.

Though reluctant to head out into the country, Keye agrees to assist Sheriff Ken Meltzer. Once in Whisper, where the locals have no love for outsiders, Keye starts to piece together a psychological profile: The killer is someone who stalks and plans and waits. But why does the sociopath hold the victims for so long, and what horrible things must they endure? When a third girl goes missing, Keye races against time to connect the scant bits of evidence. All the while, she cannot shake the chilling feeling: Something dark and disturbing lives in these woods – and it is watching her every move.

Mailbox Monday has returned home to Mailbox Monday’s site this year.

One older book in my mailbox this week, from Paperbackswap:

And then two e-ARCS from NetGalley: