"Mailbox Monday" is the brainchild of Marcia at The Printed Page. Martha has set up Mailbox Monday on it's own blog here: http://mailboxmonday.wordpress.com/
June's host is Bellezza at Dolce Bellezza! Hop on over, link up, and join the fun!
Every week we'll post about which books we have received that week (via mailbox/store bought). Everyone that agrees to participate will try to visit each other's list and leave comments! Everyone is welcome to join! You can join at anytime and you DO NOT have to participate every week.
I guarantee that you will add to your reading list by visiting the participating blogs!
This is going up very late. Gotta love Blogger - I try to write this one through the week as books come in and are read and/or reviewed. I was doing a little bit of updating this morning prior to posting .. and then ... poof! The whole post disappeared. So I had to do it again ... after a break. :)
Right now, I'm in book-reading heaven - I don't know which to get to first! I even downloaded a couple from Edelweiss that looked WAY too fabulous to pass up. (I've been extremely discriminating with Net Galley and Edelweiss because far too often, the galleys seem to expire before I have the chance to read them).
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Love All by Callie Wright - For review from publisher - (Amazon / The Book Depository) - Release date: July 9, 2013
Goodreads description:
An addictive and moving debut about love, fidelity, sports, and growing up when you least expect it, told through the irresistible voices of three generations
It’s the spring of 1994 in Cooperstown, New York, and Joanie Cole, the beloved matriarch of the Obermeyer family, has unexpectedly died in her sleep. Now, for the first time, three generations are living together under one roof and are quickly encroaching on one another’s fragile orbits. Eighty-six-year-old Bob Cole is adrift in his daughter’s house without his wife. Anne Obermeyer is increasingly suspicious of her husband, Hugh’s, late nights and missed dinners, and Hugh, principal of the town’s preschool, is terrified that a scandal at school will erupt and devastate his life. Fifteen-year-old tennis-team hopeful Julia is caught in a love triangle with Sam and Carl, her would-be teammates and two best friends, while her brother, Teddy, the star pitcher of Cooperstown High, will soon catch sight of something that will change his family forever.
At the heart of the Obermeyers’ present-day tremors is the scandal of The Sex Cure, a thinly veiled roman à clef from the 1960s, which shook the small village of Cooperstown to the core. When Anne discovers a battered copy underneath her parents’ old mattress, the Obermeyers cannot escape the family secrets that come rushing to the surface. With its heartbreaking insight into the messy imperfections of family, love, and growing up, Love All is an irresistible comic story of coming-of-age—at any age.
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The Kings and Queens of Roam by Daniel Wallace - For review from the publisher - (The Book Depository / Amazon) - Release date May 7, 2013
Goodreads description:
From the celebrated author of Big Fish, an imaginative, moving novel about two sisters and the dark legacy and magical town that entwine them.
Helen and Rachel McCallister, who live in a town called Roam, are as different as sisters can be: Helen older, bitter, and conniving; Rachel beautiful, naïve – and blind. When their parents die an untimely death, Rachel has to rely on Helen for everything, but Helen embraces her role in all the wrong ways, convincing Rachel that the world is a dark and dangerous place she couldn't possibly survive on her own … or so Helen believes, until Rachel makes a surprising choice that turns both their worlds upside down.
In this new novel, Southern literary master Daniel Wallace returns to the tradition of tall-tales and folklore made memorable in his bestselling Big Fish. The Kings and Queens of Roam is a wildly inventive, beautifully written, and big-hearted tale of family and the ties that bind.
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The Never List by Koethi Zan - For review from the publisher - (The Book Depository / Amazon) - Release date July 16, 2013
I must put in my own two cents on this one. I live blocks away (literally, two blocks over and two blocks down) from a house where three young women were held captive for over a decade. After the initial elation that they'd been found, my next thoughts were, "Oh, my gosh ... what will their lives be like NOW? How do you get over something like that?"
This timely release addresses a similar fictional story. If the comparison to S. J. Watson (Before I Go to Sleep) and Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl) (links to my reviews), didn't hook me, the premise would have.
There WILL be a giveaway of this one when the review goes live.
Goodreads description:
The most relentless, deeply disturbing thriller writer since Jeffery Deaver and Gillian Flynn.
For years, best friends Sarah and Jennifer kept what they called the “Never List”: a list of actions to be avoided, for safety’s sake, at all costs. But one night, against their best instincts, they accept a cab ride with grave, everlasting consequences. For the next three years, they are held captive with two other girls in a dungeon-like cellar by a connoisseur of sadism.
Ten years later, at thirty-one, Sarah is still struggling to resume a normal life, living as a virtual recluse under a new name, unable to come to grips with the fact that Jennifer didn’t make it out of that cellar. Now, her abductor is up for parole and Sarah can no longer ignore the twisted letters he sends from jail.
Finally, Sarah decides to confront her phobias and the other survivors—who hold their own deep grudges against her. When she goes on a cross-country chase that takes her into the perverse world of BDSM, secret cults, and the arcane study of torture, she begins unraveling a mystery more horrifying than even she could have imagined.
A shocking, blazingly fast read, Koethi Zan’s debut is a must for fans of Karin Slaughter, Laura Lippman, and S. J. Watson.
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The Returned by Jason Mott - ARC for review from publisher - (The Book Depository / Amazon) - Release date August 7, 2013
Billed as "the talk of BEA" - how could I not resist downloading this one from Net Galley - and then ... I received a physical ARC in the mail - What to do? What to do? I think a giveaway sounds just about right.
Goodreads description:
Jacob was time out of sync, time more perfect than it had been. He was life the way it was supposed to be all those years ago. That's what all the Returned were.
Harold and Lucille Hargrave's lives have been both joyful and sorrowful in the decades since their only son, Jacob, died tragically at his eighth birthday party in 1966. In their old age they've settled comfortably into life without him, their wounds tempered through the grace of time. Until one day Jacob mysteriously appears on their doorstep: flesh and blood, their sweet, precocious child, still eight years old.
All over the world people's loved ones are returning from beyond. No one knows how or why this is happening, whether it's a miracle or a sign of the end. Not even Harold and Lucille can agree on whether the boy is real or a wondrous imitation, but one thing they know for sure: he's their son. As chaos erupts around the globe, the newly reunited Hargrave family finds itself at the center of a community on the brink of collapse, forced to navigate a mysterious new reality and a conflict that threatens to unravel the very meaning of what it is to be human.
With spare, elegant prose and searing emotional depth, award-winning poet Jason Mott explores timeless questions of faith and morality, love and responsibility. A spellbinding and stunning debut, The Returned is an unforgettable story that marks the arrival of an important new voice in contemporary fiction.
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Goat Mountain by David Vann - eGalley for review from the publisher through Edelweiss - (The Book Depository / Amazon) - Release date September 10, 2013
I really enjoyed Caribou Island (link to my review), so this was a definite must-read for me.
Goodreads description:
In David Vann’s searing novel Goat Mountain, an 11-year-old boy at his family’s annual deer hunt is eager to make his first kill. His father discovers a poacher on the land, a 640-acre ranch in Northern California, and shows him to the boy through the scope of his rifle. With this simple gesture, tragedy erupts, shattering lives irrevocably.
In prose devastating and beautiful in its precision, David Vann creates a haunting and provocative novel that explores our most primal urges and beliefs, the bonds of blood and religion that define and secure us, and the consequences of our actions—what we owe for what we’ve done.
David Vann is the award-winning author of Legend of a Suicide, Caribou Island, A Mile Down, and Last Day on Earth.
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Shovel Ready by Adam Sternbergh - eGalley for review from publisher through Edelweiss - (The Book Depository / Amazon) - Release date January 14, 2014
Goodreads description:
An addictive genre-blend of a thriller: the immersive sci-fi of Ernest Cline; the hard-boiled rhythms of Don Winslow; the fearless bravado of Chuck Palahniuk; and the classic noir of James M. Cain
Spademan used to be a garbage man. That was before the dirty bomb hit Times Square, before his wife was killed, and before the city became a bombed-out shell of its former self. Now he's a hitman.
In a New York City split between those who are wealthy enough to "tap into" a sophisticated virtual reality for months at a time and those left to fend for themselves in the ravaged streets, Spademan chose the streets. His clients like that he doesn't ask questions, that he works quickly, and that he's handy with a box cutter. He finds that killing people for money is not that different from collecting trash, and the pay is better. His latest client hires him to kill the daughter of a powerful evangelist. Finding her is easy, but the job quickly gets complicated: his mark has a shocking secret and his client has an agenda far beyond a simple kill. Now Spademan must navigate the dual levels of his world-the gritty reality and the slick fantasy-to finish the job, to keep his conscience clean, and to stay alive.
Adam Sternbergh has written a dynamite debut: gritty, violent, funny, riveting, tender, and brilliant.
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"What Are You Reading?" is a weekly bookish meme hosted by Sheila at Book Journey. Click over to see what other readers are into this week and add to your TBR pile!
READ
(click cover for Goodreads page):
This looks like a LOT, but really wasn't. A couple of these were quick YA reads, and The Lemon Orchard was a quick read as well. I'd been reading The Diabolist on my PC for a little while (never transferred it to my Nook), and The Kings and Queens of Roam ... well, let's just say this: it was so good that it felt like it was over before I took a blink.
Review/Giveaway
Upcoming
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Review/Giveaway
Upcoming
Review
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Review Upcoming
REVIEWED:
(click the cover to go to the review):
3.75 of 5 stars
4 of 5 stars
CURRENTLY READING:
Hard copy
eGalley
BLOG EVENTS/HAPPENINGS:
Don't forget your chance to win a copy of What Maisie Knew (movie tie-in) :
This giveaway is open to US until 7/5/2013
GEM OF THE WEEK:
Reading like modern folklore, The Kings and Queens of Roam will have you flipping pages as quickly as you can!
How was YOUR reading week? Please leave a link to YOUR "What Are You Reading/In My Mailbox/Mailbox Monday" post(s) in the comments (I'd love to come visit) or simply comment with what your reading week was like!