Category: Meme

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:

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

I always tend to go a little book crazy around my birthday (hey, what book lover doesn’t?!). So I got four books from Paperbackswap, four from my grandmother and four at the bookstore!

From Paperbackswap:

From my grandmother:

Bought new (couldn’t resist the buy 2 get 3rd free sale!):

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

It’s been a crazy couple of weeks at my house. We went to the Dominican Republic for 4 days to see one of my very closest friends get married (she had a gorgeous ceremony!). When we got home we were immediately informed that my 77-year-old grandmother had been in the hospital with pneumonia since the day we left for the DR. So it’s been insane going back and forth between home and where she’s at (about an hour away). They cleared up the pneumonia but she’s too weak to take care of herself at home. So we had to put her in a nursing home rehab facility so she can get the help she needs in order to get her back to where she can live at home again. Needless to say, I’ve been slightly stressed out about everything going on. So my husband surprised me one day with a spontaneous trip to my absolute favorite used book store 2 hours away! And a little clothes shopping too 🙂 But here’s the five books I picked up (for $5.78 … see why it’s my favorite place!?!)

And then I got one book for review, from Blogging for Books:

Noa P. Singleton never spoke a word in her own defense throughout a brief trial that ended with a jury finding her guilty of first-degree murder. Ten years later, she sits on death row in a maximum-security penitentiary, just six months away from her execution date.

Meanwhile, Marlene Dixon, a high-powered Philadelphia attorney who is also the mother of the woman Noa was imprisoned for killing, shows up for a visit. She claims to have changed her mind about the death penalty and will do everything in her considerable power to convince the governor to commute Noa’s sentence in return for the one thing Noa can trade: her story. Marlene wants to understand the events that led to her daughter’s death – events that only Noa knows of and has never shared. Inextricably linked by murder but with very different goals, Noa and Marlene wrestle with the sentences life itself can impose while they confront the best and worst of what makes us human.

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

Two books in my mailbox this past week. One for review, one a wishlist book from Paperbackswap.

For review:

Though the message on the kitchen whiteboard is in fourteen-year-old Marley’s handwriting, her mother, Rachel, knows there has to be some other explanation. Marley would never run away.

Marley’s quiet. Innocent. Sheltered. Growing up in Northern California with all the privilege Rachel never had, what does Marley know about taking care of herself? About being okay?

Rachel might not know her daughter at all. But she does know that she needs to find Marley before someone else does. Someone dangerous.

The police have limited resources devoted to runaways. If Rachel and her husband, Paul, want their daughter back, they’ll have to find her themselves. Paul turns to Facebook and Twitter and launches FindMarley.com.

But Marley isn’t the only one with something to hide. Paul’s social media campaign generates national attention, and the public scrutiny could expose Rachel’s darkest secrets. When she blows a television interview, the dirty speculation begins.

The blogosphere is convinced Rachel is hiding something. It’s not what they think; Rachel would never hurt Marley. Not intentionally, anyway. But when it’s discovered that Rachel lied to the police, the devoted mother becomes the prime suspect in Marley’s disappearance.

Is Marley out there, somewhere, watching it all happen … or is the truth something far worse?

And from Paperbackswap:

When he resigned in June 2010, Justice John Paul Stevens was the third-longest-serving Supreme Court justice in American history. As a lawyer and on the Court, he worked with five chief justices – Fred Vinson, Earl Warren, Warren Burger, William Rehnquist, and John Roberts. Five Chiefs is his account of the workings of the Court from his personal experiences with these chief justices: as a law clerk during Vinson’s tenure, a practicing lawyer when Warren was chief, a circuit judge and junior justice during Burger’s term, a contemporary colleague of Rehnquist’s, and a colleague of the current chief justice, John Roberts.

The chief justice of the United States has often been described as the “first among equals.” Known and deeply respected for his candor, Stevens discusses his views of these men and his own career, from his law school days until the moment he left the bench. He includes fascinating information about the Court and about many of the most complex and controversial decisions he was involved with – including cases dealing with freedom of speech, affirmative action, capital punishment, and sovereign immunity. And he explores the human side of life at the Court, along the way revealing, among other things, why having a good backhand might get someone a clerkship and the legal impact of moving a conference room table.

Written with humility and grace, Five Chiefs is an unprecedented and historically significant look at the highest court in the United States.

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

Only one book this week, one that I have received as part of a TLC Book tour in July.

Despite Maud’s growing anxiety about Elizabeth’s welfare, no one takes her concerns seriously – not her frustrated daughter, not her caretakers, not the police, and especially not Elizabeth’s mercurial son – because Maud suffers from dementia. But even as her memory disintegrates and she becomes increasingly dependent on the trail of handwritten notes she leaves for herself in her pockets and around her house, Maud cannot forget her best friend. Armed with only an overwhelming feeling that Elizabeth needs her help, Maud resolves to discover the truth – no matter what it takes.

As this singular obsession forms a cornerstone of Maud’s rapidly dissolving present, the clues she uncovers lead her deeper into her past, to another unsolved disappearance: that of her sister, Sukey, who vanished shortly after World War II. As vivid memories of a tragedy that occurred more than fifty years ago come flooding back, Maud’s search for Elizabeth develops a frantic momentum. Whom can she trust? Can she trust herself?

A page-turning novel of suspense, Elizabeth is Missing also hauntingly reminds us that we are all at the mercy of our memory. Always compelling, often poignant, and at times even blackly witty, this is an absolutely unforgettable novel.

I also purchased a book at Wal-Mart.

A family is wiped out after a burglary gone wrong. An executive accused of embezzling kills himself and his loved ones. A house fire claims the lives of all its inhabitants. Separate incidents with two common threads – a first wife who took her own life, and a secret the victims took to their graves…

Stephanie Coburn has barely recovered from her sister’s mysterious suicide before her brother-in-law and his new wife are murdered, her face disfigured beyond recognition. Stephanie never met the bride, has never even seen a clear photograph. But she knew her sister, and she knows something is desperately wrong…

The police won’t listen. Her only ally is another victim’s son. Step by step, they’re uncovering a trail of brutal vengeance and a killer who will never relent – and whose forgiveness can only be earned in death…

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

Happy Memorial Day for those of you in the United States! I hope you have a good holiday. Today we are going to St. Louis for the Cardinals vs. Yankees game.

Anyway, this past week I got three books in the mail. One for review, the other two I found on the Bargain Section at booksamillion.com (2 books for $5.95, with free shipping since I’m a member, sure!)

For review:

When Better Gardiner dies, leaving behind an unkempt country home, her grandson and his young wife take a break from city life to prepare the house for sale. Nowell Gardiner leaves first to begin work on his second mystery novel. By the time his wife Vivian joins him, a real mystery has begun: a local girl has been found dead in the woods behind the house. Even after the death is ruled an accident, Vivian can’t forget the girl, can’t ignore the strange behavior of her neighbors, or her husband. As Vivian attempts to put the house in order, all around her things begin to fall apart.

The Qualities of Wood is a novel about secrets. Family secrets. Community secrets. And secrets between lovers, past and present. And all of these secrets have their price.

And the two from Books-a-Million:

Meet Isabel “Izzy” Spellman, PI. This 28-year-old may have a checkered past littered with romantic mistakes, excessive drinking, and creative vandalism; she may be addicted to Get Smart reruns and prefer entering homes through windows rather than doors – but the upshot is she’s good at her job as a licensed PI with her family’s firm, Spellman Investigations. In fact, it comes all too naturally. To be a Spellman is to snoop on a Spellman; tail a Spellman; dig up dirt on, blackmail, and wiretap a Spellman. And when Izzy’s parents hire her little sister, Rae, to follow her, Izzy snaps and decides that the only way she will ever be normal is if she gets out of the family business. But there’s a hitch: she must take one last job before they’ll let her go. She accepts, only to be dealt a mystery far closer to home.

Enter a world upended by the repercussions of a single impulsive action.

At an exclusive New England boarding school, a sex scandal unleashes a storm of shame and recrimination. The men, women, and teenagers affected – among them the headmaster, struggling to contain the scandal before it destroys the school; a well-liked scholarship student and star basketball player, grappling with the consequences of his mistakes; his mother confronting her own forbidden temptations; and a troubled teenage girl eager to put the past behind her – speak out to relate the events of one fateful nigh and its aftermath.

Writing with a pace and intensity surpassing even her greatest work, Anita Shreve explores the impulses that drive ordinary people into intolerable dilemmas.

Also I purchased one book at Kroger (on sale for $5.99)

Harvard professor of symbology Robert Langdon awakens in an Italian hospital, disoriented and with no recollection of the past thirty-six hours, including the origin of the macabre object hidden in his belongings. With a relentless female assassin trailing them through Florence, he and his resourceful doctor, Sienna Brooks, are forced to flee. Embarking on a harrowing journey, they must unravel a series of codes, which are the work of a brilliant scientist whose obsession with the end of the world is matched only by his passion for one of the most influential masterpieces ever written, Dante Alighieri’s The Inferno.

Dan Brown has raised the bar yet again, combining classical Italian art, history, and literature with cutting-edge science in this captivating thriller.