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In My Mailbox: Week of August 25
Chick Lit Plus

In My Mailbox: Week of August 25

Title: Hijack in Abstract

Author: Larissa Reinhart

Received: CLP Blog Tours

Synopsis: With a classical series sold and a portrait commissioned, Cherry Tucker’s art career is in Georgia overdrive. But when the sheriff asks Cherry to draw a composite sketch of a hijacker, her life takes a hairpin as the composite leads to a related murder, her local card-sharking buddy Max Avtaikin becomes bear bait and her nemesis labels the classical series “pervert art.”

Cherry’s jamming gears between trailer parks, Atlanta mansions, and trucker bars searching for the hijacker who left a widow and orphan destitute. While she seeks to help the misfortunate and save her local reputation, Cherry’s hammer down attitude has her facing the headlights of an oncoming killer.

The Husband’s Secret by Liane MoriartyTitle: The Husband’s Secret

Author: Liane Moriarty

Received: She Reads

Synopsis: At the heart of The Husband’s Secret is a letter that’s not meant to be read

My darling Cecilia, if you’re reading this, then I’ve died. . .

Imagine that your husband wrote you a letter, to be opened after his death. Imagine, too, that the letter contains his deepest, darkest secret—something with the potential to destroy not just the life you built together, but the lives of others as well. Imagine, then, that you stumble across that letter while your husband is still very much alive. . . .
Cecilia Fitzpatrick has achieved it all—she’s an incredibly successful businesswoman, a pillar of her small community, and a devoted wife and mother. Her life is as orderly and spotless as her home. But that letter is about to change everything, and not just for her: Rachel and Tess barely know Cecilia—or each other—but they too are about to feel the earth-shattering repercussions of her husband’s secret.

Acclaimed author Liane Moriarty has written a gripping, thought-provoking novel about how well it is really possible to know our spouses—and, ultimately, ourselves.

Title: The Theory of Opposites

Author: Allison Winn Scotch

Received: Get Red PR

Synopsis: In her anticipated fifth novel THE THEORY OF OPPOSITES (Publication date: November 12, 2013), New York Times bestselling author Allison Winn Scotch takes readers on one woman’s trek to cast aside her doubts and start owning her choices.

Willa Chandler-Golden and Shawn Golden, aka “Shilla,” are perfectly comfortable. As a couple they do EVERTHING together. They never argue. There aren’t any over-arching marital issues. They’re even trying for a baby. But when Willa spots a credit card receipt to a trendy Manhattan club in Shawn’s wallet, she senses that something is awry with her handsome but nerdy better half.

Soon after her discovery, her neat house of cards collapses at rapid speed. Willa is fired from her job. She learns that her tween nephew is moving in. Her Yogi-to-the-Stars brother is indicted for a Ponzi scheme. Her best friend Vanessa gets the best writing gig on the hottest new reality show Dare You! And a former boyfriend has requested to be friended on Facebook . . . but that’s just the tip of the iceberg: Shawn announces—with a list of rules— that he wants a two month “break” from the marriage.

Is this her destiny or can Willa change the topsy-turvy direction of her life? According to her father—the author of the bestselling Is It Really Your Choice? Why Your Entire Life May Be Out of Your Control—you can’t escape the inevitable. It’s a thesis that Willa doubts, but one that’s controlled her life and has kept her in the safe cocoon of inertia.

Prodded by Vanessa, Willa signs on to help write The Theory of Opposites, a book that contradicts her father’s premise. Willa becomes a guinea pig for the book’s concept when she is dared by Vanessa to step out from behind her father’s shadow to live her life and take chances.

Will Willa be brave enough to get out of her own way and write her own map to a rewarding life?

THE THEORY OF OPPOSITES is Allison Winn Scotch’s heartfelt and funny tale about life’s curveballs and how to catch them … or not.

For the Love of Cupcakes by ANita KushwahaTitle: For the Love of Cupcakes

Author: Anita Kushwaha

Received: Anita Kushwaha

Synopsis: Priya Patel has wanted to become a baker since the first time she saw the light of her Easy Bake Oven. However, working as an assistant baker at Sugarplum Fairy Cakes isn’t the glamorous life she dreamed about. Priya tries to impress her boss, Helen Bouffant, with creative twists on traditional recipes but her culinary skills are completely ignored as she is forced to scrub toilets and clean up everyone else’s mess. After Priya is blamed for a major screw up at Sugarplum Fairy Cakes, she decides to throw in her apron. With the support of her husband, Arj, and a kick in the pants from her best friend, Mae, she decides to start her own cupcakery.

Just when Priya thinks she’s washed her hands of Helen once and for all, they both enter a charity bake off with a grand prize of $10,000. Priya will have to cook the most creative, delicious cupcakes of her life and defend herself against Helen, who will stop at nothing to see Priya and her cupcakery fail. The competition gets heated but there is one thing that will keep Priya going- the love of cupcakes. Does she have what it takes to win the bake-off? Whose talent will prevail?

For the Love of Cupcakes will leave your mouth watering for cupcakes and your cheeks sore from smiling.

The Reluctant Bride by Beverley EikliTitle: The Reluctant Bride

Author: Beverley Eikli

Received: Choc Lit

Synopsis: Can honour and action banish the shadows of old sins?
Emily Micklen has no option after the death of her loving fiancé, Jack, but to marry the scarred, taciturn, soldier who represents her only escape from destitution.

Major Angus McCartney is tormented by the reproachful slate-grey eyes of two strikingly similar women: Jessamine, his dead mistress, and Emily, the unobtainable beauty who is now his reluctant bride.

Emily’s loyalty to Jack’s memory is matched only by Angus’s determination to atone for the past and win his wife with honour and action. As Napoleon cuts a swathe across Europe, Angus is sent to France on a mission of national security, forcing Emily to confront both her allegiance to Jack and her traitorous half-French family.

Angus and Emily may find love, but will the secrets they uncover divide them forever?

You Knew Me When by Emily LiebertTitle: You Knew Me When

Author: Emily Liebert

Received: Sarah Hall Productions

Synopsis: Best friends forever…until life got in the way.

Katherine Hill left her small New England hometown in pursuit of a dream. Now, twelve years later, she’s a high-powered cosmetics executive in Manhattan and a much glossier version of her former self, unrecognizable to her family and old friends. Not that she would know—she hasn’t been home in over a decade.

Laney Marten always swore she’d never get “stuck” in Manchester, Vermont. No, she was destined to live out her glamorous big-city dreams. Instead, she wound up a young wife and mother. That was when her best friend ran out.

When Katherine receives word of an inheritance from former neighbor Luella Hancock, she reluctantly returns home to the people and places she left behind. Hoping for a second chance, she’s met by an unforgiving Laney, her former best friend. And there’s someone else who’s moved on without her—someone she once loved.

Tethered to their shared inheritance of Luella’s sprawling Victorian mansion, Katherine and Laney are forced to address their long-standing grudges. Through this, they come to understand that while life has taken them in different directions, ultimately the bonds of friendship and sisterhood still bind them together. But are some wounds too old and deep to mend?

Kiss Me In Paris by Kimberly KinradeTitle: Kiss Me in Paris

Author: Kimberly Kinrade & Dmytry Karpov

Received: Badass Marketing

Synopsis: When the city of love brings two lost souls together, only their darkest secrets can tear them apart.

Winter Deveaux tried love once. It didn’t end well. Unable to open herself up to another heartbreak, she hides in her romance novels as she struggles to break out as a real author. She thinks Paris holds the answer to a new start, but when her nightmare follows her across the world, she’s forced to face the darkness living like cancer inside her soul. If she doesn’t, she might miss her chance to become the kind of writer she’s always wanted to be. But more than that, she’ll miss out on the greatest love she’s ever known.

Cade Savage is heir to the largest ranching family in Texas. Part cowboy, part architect, Cade has his feet forever in two worlds. When he receives an acceptance letter from the school of his dreams, he must decide between family and destiny. But ghosts from his past still haunt him, and circumstances beyond his control may decide his fate.

When Winter and Cade meet, everything they believe about life, love and what it means to be happy is put to the test.

Will the magic of Paris pull these two lost souls together? Or will their darkest secrets tear them apart?

August 25, 2013
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In My Mailbox: Week of August 18
Chick Lit Plus

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.

August 18, 2013
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In My Mailbox: Week of August 11
Chick Lit Plus

In My Mailbox: Week of August 11

Title: Secrets of a Spiritual Guru Author: Tamara Lee Dorris Received: CLP Blog Tours Synopsis: Meet Melissa Murphy: wine-drinking real estate agent who finds herself…

August 11, 2013
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In My Mailbox: August 4
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In My Mailbox: August 4

Title: What Would Kate Do? Author: Fiona O’Malley Received: Fiona O’Malley Synopsis: What Would Kate Do? follows Cathy Dover who idolizes The Duchess of Cambridge…

August 4, 2013
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In My Mailbox: July 28
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In My Mailbox: July 28

Title: Adela Arthur and the Creator’s Clock

Author: Judyann McCole

Received: Via CLP Blog Tours

Synopsis: To Whom Ever This May Concern;

I wish I could tell you the contents of this book were purely fictional. That I, Adela Arthur, was just a normal sixteen year old from Portland and that dragons, giants, elves and mermaids were just myths. I wish these were legends shared from crazy old grandparents to crazy old grandparents around campfires. After all, that is what I used to believe.

I never would have thought they lived on the other side of our mirrors in a world called Cielieu. But they do…

I never would have thought there were humans, better known as Volsin that lived among them with the ability to create light from a single thought. But there are…

I never would have thought I was one of them… But I am…

I am the last Arthur and I was brought to the human world after a Volsin, filled with greed, began to strip the light from our kind.

The human world was supposed to be a safe haven… but he’s found us and the only way to stop him is to go back to Cielieu and begin training as a student in the Elpida Castle of Light.

Like I said I wish the contents of this book were purely fictional and not my life…

ADELA ARTHUR

Title: Blogger Girl

Author: Meredith Schorr

Received: Meredith Schorr

Synopsis: What happens when your high school nemesis becomes the shining star in a universe you pretty much saved? Book blogger Kimberly Long is about to find out.

A chick lit enthusiast since the first time she read Bridget Jones’s Diary, Kim, with her blog, “Pastel is the New Black,” has worked tirelessly by night to keep the genre alive, and help squash the claim that “chick lit is dead” once and for all. Not bad for a woman who by day ekes out a meager living as a pretty, and pretty-much-nameless, legal secretary in a Manhattan law firm.

While Kim’s day job holds no passion for her, the handsome (and shaving challenged) associate down the hall is another story. Yet another story is that Hannah Marshak, one of her most hated high school classmates, has now popped onto the chick lit scene with a hot new book that’s turning heads–and pages–across the land. And it’s also popped into Kim’s inbox–for review. With their ten-year high school reunion drawing near, Kim’s coming close to combustion over all the hype about Hannah’s book. And as everyone around her seems to be moving on and up, she begins to question whether being a “blogger girl” makes the grade in her off-line life.

Title: Frisky Business

Author: Clodagh Murphy

Received: Clodagh Murphy

Synopsis: Romy Fitzgerald’s life is firmly on track. She runs a successful business, has great friends and knows what she wants. That was until her father died. Suddenly she’s not sure about anything anymore. So when she has a one-night stand at a party with a stranger dressed as Darth Vadar, she tells him things she’s never told anyone before about herself and her father’s death. They’ll never see each other again so her secrets are safe, right? Until Romy realises that she’s pregnant with Darth Vadar’s baby and now she has to face some awkward questions about what really happened the night of Luke’s conception. Romy’s going to have to come clean, but when her ex-boyfriend Kit Masterson returns from New York and seems happy to go along with the charade of playing the part of Luke’s father, it seems like the answer to her prayers. Kit was the love her life, and maybe her secrets, and the true identity of Darth Vadar, can stay hidden forever. But Kit has his own reasons for coming home and buying into the ready-made family. And as masks slip and true identities show, Romy and Kit quickly discover that in real life secrets never stay hidden, especially when it comes to love.

Title: While We Were Watching Dowton Abbey

Author: Wendy Wax

Received: Orion Books

Synopsis: A warm and witty novel about four friends, and a shared passion that will change their lives.

When Edward, the concierge of a historic Atlanta apartment building, invites his fellow residents to join him for weekly screenings of Downton Abbey, four very different people find themselves connecting with the addictive drama, and – even more unexpectedly – with each other . . .

Join Samantha, Claire, Brooke and Edward for a season full of surprises.

Title: Rome For Beginners

Author: Fiona Coughlin

Received: Fiona Coughlin

Synopsis: The girls had read all about living in Rome. The way it worked in all those pink, glossy novels was: woman comes to Rome. Woman buys farmhouse in Tuscany. Woman’s toilet overflows. Woman has a good cry. Woman achieves self-realization.

Living in Italy was no vacation, as Lilian would say. As a fifty-something academic living in Rome, she didn’t feel any closer to self-realization, and she had bigger problems than plumbing. Her professor ex-husband had just started dating her boss (the Chair of the department), and if that weren’t enough she’s just found herself in an Italian Emergency Room, where the people around her seem “to be speaking some dialect of squirrel”. Language problems won’t hold her back, as she’s got her friends Brennan (an athlete constantly risking deportation), and Suzanne (a newly divorced, single mother) to translate.

This story follows these three unlikely friends in different stages of life over the course of a year: broken bones, dates in the Catacombs, multiple boyfriends named Massimo, spelunking into cavernous Roman ruins, killing one’s own turkey in a country that doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving, explaining to a nun how adorable one’s own child is after he is expelled, learning how to get some sleep when you’ve rented a room in a church directly under the church bells.

As things get ever more messy these women will discover if they can get it all sorted, with or without all the “ciao bellas”.

Rome for Beginners is skosh heavier than an average Chick Lit book, yet a smidgen lighter than normal Women’s Fiction. Readers who love quirky reading or summer fare, who like satire, who like a biting sense of humor, and who are curious about Italian life should love this book. Lovers of Rome should also love the book, as the city is a character unto itself.

Title: Two of a Kind

Author: Yona Zeldis McDonough

Received: Penguin Group

Synopsis: Christina Connelly lost her husband to a devastating fire ten years ago but has managed to work through the grief and build a lovely life for her teenage daughter and a small yet successful interior design business in Brooklyn. While attending a wedding, she is introduced to Dr. Andy Stern, a handsome widower with a troubled son. Andy’s egotistic demeanor is irritating to Christina, but she’s willing to work with him when he hires her to decorate his Upper East Side apartment. It comes as a shock to everyone when the two fall in love and decide to marry. Combining their families is certainly not without obstacles. Will they be able to overcome the difficulties and achieve their happily ever after?

July 28, 2013
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In My Mailbox: July 21
Chick Lit Plus

In My Mailbox: July 21

Title: Lowcountry Bombshell Author: Susan Boyer Received: CLP Blog Tours Synopsis: Private Investigator Liz Talbot thinks she’s seen another ghost when she meets Calista McQueen.…

July 22, 2013
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In My Mailbox: Week of July 14
Chick Lit Plus

In My Mailbox: Week of July 14

Title: Lowcountry Bombshell

Author: Susan Boyer

Received: CLP Blog Tours

Synopsis: Private Investigator Liz Talbot thinks she’s seen another ghost when she meets Calista McQueen. She’s the spitting image of Marilyn Monroe. Born precisely fifty years after the ill-fated star, Calista’s life has eerily mirrored the late starlet’s—and she fears the looming anniversary of Marilyn’s death will also be hers.

Before Liz can open a case file, Calista’s life coach is executed. Suspicious characters swarm around Calista like mosquitoes on a sultry lowcountry evening: her certifiable mother, a fake aunt, her control-freak psychoanalyst, a private yoga instructor, her peculiar housekeeper, and an obsessed ex-husband. Liz digs in to find a motive for murder, but she’s besieged with distractions. Her ex has marriage and babies on his mind. Her too-sexy partner engages in a campaign of repeat seduction. Mamma needs help with Daddy’s devotion to bad habits. And a gang of wild hogs is running loose on Stella Maris.

With the heat index approaching triple digits, Liz races to uncover a diabolical murder plot in time to save not only Calista’s life, but also her own.

Moonpennies by Alanna BrownTitle: Moonpennies

Author: Alanna Brown

Received: Alanna Brown

Synopsis: Lina Daniels was eleven years old when her mother divulged that true love doesn’t exist and heartbreak is inevitable. Now a late-twenties struggling writer, Lina is terrified of opening her heart to anyone. She fumbles through life, battling bouts of depression and avoiding real relationships at all costs…until one too many glasses of wine at a New Year’s Eve party undermines her resolve.

She ends up in the arms of an irresistible prospect and decides to give love a chance.

The better judgment of her best friends tells her he’s not the right guy. But finding the courage to fall in love is only the beginning of Lina’s journey. Uncharted risks and bold mistakes open her eyes to a life-changing realization. She may learn her mother was right about the certainty of heartbreak. Yet she may also find that true love does exist, and it makes the heartbreak worthwhile.

Lions, Tigers and Sexy Bears Oh My by Candace HavensTitle: Lions, Tigers and Sexy Bears Oh My

Author: Candace Havens

Received: Entangled Publishing

Synopsis: A Montana town where no one is who they seem….

Everything about runaway heiress Ainsley McLeon screamed trouble—from her luscious midnight locks to her Louboutin-clad toes. Yet sexy, stoic bar owner Luc couldn’t deny the instant connection he felt to the tempting stranger…or the long-dead feelings she evoked. She could work in his pub until her truck was fixed but after that she had to leave town for good. Ainsley traveled with her own emotional baggage and there was no way she’d fall for the bear-tempered Luc…no matter how many passionate nights she spent in his bed or how safe she felt in his muscular arms. Can these two opposites find love in the middle of a blizzard, or will Luc’s darker side and Ainsley’s past catch up with them?

Winter at Death’s Hotel by Kenneth CameronTitle: Winter at Death’s Hotel

Author: Kenneth Cameron

Received: Sourcebooks

Synopsis: In January 1896, Conan Doyle arrives at the Britannic Hotel in New York with Louisa, ready to begin his first American tour. When a woman’s brutally butchered corpse is found in a Bowery alley, Louisa is convinced from the artist’s sketch in the paper that she’d seen the victim at the hotel.

When Louisa sprains her ankle and is forced to remain at the hotel while her husband goes on tour, she cannot resist pursuing her intuitions. And when more bodies start appearing, she’s convinced that she holds the key to solving the killings.

July 14, 2013
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In My Mailbox: Week of July 7
Chick Lit Plus

In My Mailbox: Week of July 7

Title: On Grace Author: Susie Orman Schnall Received: Via CLP Blog Tours Synopsis: Grace May is truly excited about turning 40 in a few months.…

July 7, 2013
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In My Mailbox: Week of June 30
Chick Lit Plus

In My Mailbox: Week of June 30

Title: The Longest Holiday

Author: Paige Toon

Received: From Paige Toon

Synopsis: ‘Don’t wait for the storm to pass; learn to dance in the rain…’ Laura has been married to the man of her dreams for seven months. But a week before the wedding, Matthew made a terrible mistake. Escaping the humiliation that is now her marriage, Laura is whisked off to Florida’s Key West by her best friend Marty. A carefree holiday full of cocktails and fun, surrounded by gorgeous, tanned men, is exactly what the doctor ordered. Distraction comes in the form of sexy Cuban scuba diver Leo. Laura’s instant attraction to him knocks her flying, and she falls hard. As the end of the holiday approaches, Laura doesn’t want to go home. Is it time to face the music? Or is there more to Key West than a holiday romance?

Title: Brooklyn Girls

Author: Gemma Burgess

Received: From Gemma Burgess

Synopsis: Fantastically funny, fresh and utterly relatable, Brooklyn Girls by Gemma Burgess is the first novel in her brand new series about five twenty-something friends—Pia, Angie, Julia, Coco and Madeleine—sharing a brownstone in hip, downtown Brooklyn, and discovering the ups and downs and ins and outs of their “semi-adult” lives. The first story belongs to sophisticated, spoiled, and stylish Pia, who finds herself completely unemployed, unemployable, and broke. So what is a recent grad with an art history degree and an unfortunate history of Facebook topless photos to do? Start a food truck business of course! Pia takes on the surprisingly cutthroat Brooklyn world of hybrid lettuce growers, artisanal yogurt makers and homemade butter producers to start SkinnyWheels—all while dealing with hipster bees, one-night-stands, heartbreak, parental fury, wild parties, revenge, jail, loan sharks, playboys, karaoke, true love, and one adorable pink food truck. And that’s without counting her roommates’ problems, too. Gemma Burgess has captured the confusion, hilarity and excitement of the post-graduate years against a backdrop of the pressures and chaos of New York City life, with heartfelt empathy, fast humor and sharp honesty.

Title: Auf’d

Author: Amy Saunders

Received: From Amy Saunders

Synopsis: Lending a hand to a charity fashion show sounded like such fun. Now if only Belinda’s idea of a good time included a smothered designer and trouble with Bennett.

While Belinda balances opening a business and a house reno,
haute couture Portside-style lands her in one hot mess of runway intrigue and man drama.

It seems not everyone at this show is what they claim to be –
or even who.

Title: Hush Little Baby

Author: Suzanne Redfearn

Received: Grand Central Publishing

Synopsis: Jillian Kane appears to have it all—a thriving career, a gorgeous home, a loving husband, and two wonderful kids. The reality is something else entirely. For nine years she has hidden the bruises and the truths of her abusive marriage in order to protect her children, knowing, if she left, Gordon would destroy her—destroy them. In an act of desperation, she flees and finds herself on the run with two young children, no money, and no plan. Gordon is in hot pursuit and there is only one inescapable certainty: No matter where she goes, he will find her and kill her.

Suspenseful and unforgettably moving, HUSH LITTLE BABY exposes the shame and terror of domestic violence as well as the disturbing role sabotage can play in the high-stakes game of child custody. This compelling family drama will resonate with lovers of Jodi Picoult, Gillian Flynn, Lisa Scottoline, and Anna Quindlen.

Title: Sweet Nothings

Author: Janis Thomas

Received: Penguin Group

Synopsis: Ruby McMillan’s world is turned upside down when her husband announces one morning that he’s dumping her for another woman. Without a goodbye to their two teenaged children, Walter leaves Ruby to cope with her ruined dessert, an unpaid mortgage, and her failing bakery.

With only royal icing holding her together, Ruby still manages to pick herself up and move on, subsidizing her income with an extra job as a baking instructor, getting a “my-husband’s-gone” makeover, and even flirting with her gorgeous mortgage broker, Jacob Salt. Suddenly single again at the age of forty-four, she’s beginning to discover that life is the most delicious when you stop following a recipe and just live.

Title: Everybody Has Everything

Author: Katrina Onstad

Received: Grand Central Publishing

Synopsis: After years of unsuccessful attempts at conceiving a child, Ana and James become parents overnight, when a terrible accident makes them guardians to 2 ¿ year-old Finn. Suddenly, two people who were struggling to come to terms with childlessness are thrust into the opposite situation-responsible for a small toddler whose mother’s survival is in question.

Finn’s crash-landing in their tidy, urban lives throws into high relief some troubling truths about their deepest selves, both separately and as a couple. Several chaotic, poignant, and life-changing weeks as a most unusual family give rise to an often unasked question: Can everyone be a parent?

June 30, 2013
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