In My Mailbox: Week of August 18

Title: Everybody’s Got a Story

Author: Heather Wardell

Received: CLP Blog Tours

Synopsis: Both personally and professionally, Alexa knows all too well the power of words. Two years after her boyfriend Christophe’s vicious attack, she’s still trying to see herself as more than simply ‘his victim’, still trying to figure out her own story.

After his trial, she moves from New York City to Toronto in an attempt to start over, but his words cling to her and even in a new country she can’t see how to move into relationships with the new people in her life while hiding the secret of Christophe’s worst offense.

She can’t hide that secret from her coworker Jake, though, because the news buff has recognized her from the coverage of the assault and trial and knows every word she can’t bring herself to say about her ordeal.

With Jake’s help, can Alexa reclaim her story and her life?

Title: The Girl You Left Behind

Author: Jojo Moyes

Received: Penguin/SheReads

Synopsis: From the New York Times–bestselling author of Me Before You, a spellbinding love story of two women separated by a century but united in their determination to fight for what they love most

Jojo Moyes’s bestseller, Me Before You, catapulted her to wide critical acclaim and has struck a chord with readers everywhere. “Hopelessly and hopefully romantic” (Chicago Tribune), Moyes returns with another irresistible heartbreaker that asks, “Whatever happened to the girl you left behind?”

France, 1916: Artist Edouard Lefevre leaves his young wife, Sophie, to fight at the front. When their small town falls to the Germans in the midst of World War I, Edouard’s portrait of Sophie draws the eye of the new Kommandant. As the officer’s dangerous obsession deepens, Sophie will risk everything—her family, her reputation, and her life—to see her husband again.

Almost a century later, Sophie’s portrait is given to Liv Halston by her young husband shortly before his sudden death. A chance encounter reveals the painting’s true worth, and a battle begins for who its legitimate owner is—putting Liv’s belief in what is right to the ultimate test.

Like Sarah Blake’s The Postmistress and Tatiana de Rosnay’s Sarah’s Key, The Girl You Left Behind is a breathtaking story of love, loss, and sacrifice told with Moyes’s signature ability to capture our hearts with every turn of the page.

Title: Chase

Author: Jill Knapp Zitron

Received: Media Connect

Synopsis: When Amalia Hastings first came to New York to get her master’s degree at NYU, she didn’t think life could get much better – a perfect boyfriend, a great apartment, solid friends, and the pursuit of a successful career in medicine.  One by one, she starts to lose the people and things she cherished most.  Having never imagined life without them, it becomes a struggle for her to get back on track.  But when a break-up, a new love interest, and several unexpected events test her strength, she comes to realize she’s a lot stronger than she would’ve ever imagined.

 

Title: Love and Happiness

Author: Galt Niederhoffer

Received: St. Martins Press

Synopsis: Jean Banks’ life is middling to poor. Her job as a film producer largely involves cold calling investors. Her sex drive for director husband Sam has all but vanished. Her children are a delight, but also a constant reminder that she’s not an unattached, twenty-something artist anymore. Put simply, Jean is in a midlife rut.

…until she clicks a button. Until the cache of unsent emails she’s written to Doug, her college flame, blasts across the World Wide Web. Until she meets handsome stranger Benjamin Kraft on a business trip and falls truly, madly, deeply for him. Now the cornerstone of a love quadrangle, Jean must choose—either the safe, day-to-day equilibrium she’s come to inhabit, or a liberation that will split her life open at its seams.

This is Forty for the Park Slope set, LOVE AND HAPPINESS perfects the balance between the Victorian and the modern that Niederhoffer first achieved in A Taxonomy of Barnacles. Her third novel artfully examines relationships, family, and the film world, with a style that winks at both Madame Bovary and Miranda July.

Title: Maybe I Will

Author: Laurie Gray

Received: Novel Publicity

Synopsis: It’s not about sex.

It’s about how one secret act of violence changes everything–how best friends can desert you when you need them most, how nobody understands. It’s about the drinking and stealing and lying and wondering who you can trust. It’s about parents and teachers, police officers and counselors–all the people who are supposed to help you, but who may not even believe you.

It’s about how suddenly all of your hopes and dreams can vanish, and you can find yourself all alone, with nothing and no one. Your only choice is to end it all or to start over… and all you can think is Maybe I Will.

Author Laurie Gray presents a compelling picture of the realities of sexual assault in Maybe I Will, drawing on her years of experience as a Deputy Prosecuting Attorney, dealing with crimes against children. The twist in the story is that we never know for sure if the victim is a boy or a girl, and we realize that it doesn’t matter, because it’s not about sex.

Title: Bargain Struck

Author: Liz Harris

Received: Choc Lit

Synopsis: Does a good deal make a marriage?
Widower Connor Maguire advertises for a wife to raise his young daughter, Bridget, work the homestead and bear him a son.

Ellen O’Sullivan longs for a home, a husband and a family. On paper, she is everything Connor needs in a wife. However, it soon becomes clear that Ellen has not been entirely truthful.

Will Connor be able to overlook Ellen’s dishonesty and keep to his side of the bargain? Or will Bridget’s resentment, the attentions of the beautiful Miss Quinn, and the arrival of an unwelcome visitor, combine to prevent the couple from starting anew.

As their personal feelings blur the boundaries of their deal, they begin to wonder if a bargain struck makes a marriage worth keeping.