In My Mailbox: Week of September 12th
Title: Sammi Ever After
Author: Soma Helmi
Received: From Soma Helmi
Synopsis: Girl meets boy. They fall in love. Girl moves across the world to be with boy. Boy dumps her at the airport…via email. Sammi’s fixation with Prince Charming has her in trouble again. Now she’s in London, sleeping on a friend’s couch and no ‘Happily ever after’ in sight. From Bali to Greece, Sammi’s journey to find her own fairytale ending may take her to a place she never expected.
Title: Her Fearful Symmetry
Author: Audrey Niffenegger
Received: From Audrey Niffenegger
Synopsis: Fortune’s wheel is a harsh chastiser, and those lucky writers who have found heady success with their first books often come crashing down with the second, never to rise again. What’s the cause? Do they succumb to nerves from external expectations? Do they secretly feel unworthy? Are our expectations as readers unreasonable? Have they merely been sport for the gods?
The Time Traveler’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger’s first book, was Cinderella at the ball — a book that got published without a literary agent behind it, a popular success that was a critical one too. Its distinctive (and, I assume from Niffenegger’s acknowledgments, long-steeped) flavor completely eluded the dumb movie made from it. Describing the novel as blending fantasy, science fiction, romance, mild philosophy, and epistolary traditions is technically accurate, but fails to capture its unusual charm: its balance of inevitability and suspense, the importance of conversations both humorous and tersely poignant, the cultural riffs and bookish background of Chicago in the ’80s and ’90s, the bubble of optimism that buoys it up even in the face of death and decay. It’s a great read. Given the weight of expectations (and money) riding on her second book, the conditions were ripe for Niffenegger to dig her own grave. But it turns out that in her second book, Her Fearful Symmetry, Niffenegger gets her characters to do the grisly digging for themselves while she floats out smelling like a rose.
Title: Cold Dawn
Author: Carla Neggers
Received: From Alana Signor @ Truth Be Told PR
Synopsis: A search-and-rescue dog handler and a California smoke jumper search for a violent arsonist in the snowy mountains of New England, in COLD DAWN (MIRA Books, November 2010, $7.99 U.S./ $9.99 CAN.), the third novel in New York Times bestselling author Carla Neggers’ riveting Black Falls series.
With the network of paid killers that disrupted life in Black Falls exposed, the people of the small, picturesque town in the heart of the Green Mountains are breathing a collective sigh of relief. That is, until search-and-rescue expert Rose Cameron discovers the charred remains of Derek Cutshaw, a ski instructor, with whom she shared a brief, troubled relationship. The fire looks like an accident, but Rose believes it was deliberately set and that Derek was murdered.
But Derek’s not the only former flame to reenter Rose’s life. Nick Martini, a wildfire smoke jumper with whom Rose shared a night of passion in Los Angeles, appears in Black Falls.
Still reeling from having ever gotten involved with Derek and, especially, from the tragic death of her father on Cameron Mountain, Rose ended her relationship with Nick by running back home to Vermont.
Nick has no desire to disrupt Rose’s life again or to earn the ire of her tough mountain-men brothers. But he’s on the trail of a firebug he believes is responsible for setting the fire that killed a California arson investigator.
Nick is convinced the same killer is responsible for the fire that killed Derek Cutshaw. But was his death a murder for hire or was the killer voluntarily disposing of a man who had hurt Rose Cameron and other people in Black Falls? Or had Derek stumbled on the arsonist’s identity?
Only Nick and Charlie Neal, the 16-year-old genius son of the vice president of the United States, believe a string of fires and explosions over the past year are connected. Nick is determined to follow the evidence—even if it takes him straight to Rose Cameron—to root out a ruthless firebug who has wormed his way into her hometown.
Title: Call Me Mrs. Miracle
Author: Debbie Macomber
Received: From Alana Signor @ Truth Be Told PR
Synopsis: This Christmas, Emily Merkle (call her Mrs. Miracle!) is working in the toy department at Finley’s, the last family-owned department store in New York City. And her boss is none other than Jake Finley, the owner’s son. For Jake, holiday memories of brightly wrapped gifts, decorated trees and family were destroyed in a Christmas Eve tragedy years before. Now Christmas means just one thing to him ¿ and to his father. Profit. Because they need a Christmas miracle to keep the business afloat. Holly Larson needs a miracle, too. She wants to give her eight-year-old nephew, Gabe, the holiday he deserves. Holly’s widowed brother is in the army and won’t be home for Christmas, but at least she can get Gabe that toy robot from Finley’s, the one gift he desperately wants. If she can figure out how to afford it. Fortunately, it’s Mrs. Miracle to the rescue. Next to making children happy, she likes nothing better than helping others and that includes doing a bit of matchmaking! This Christmas will be different. For all of them.
Title: A Chesapeake Shores Christmas
Author: Sherryl Woods
Received: From Alana Signor @ Truth Be Told PR
Synopsis: After years apart, Mick and Megan O’Brien are finally ready to make it official…again. Most of their grown children couldn’t be happier about their rekindled love and impending marriage this holiday season. Only Connor is a holdout. Driven to become a divorce attorney after what he views as his mother’s abandonment of their family, Connor’s not about to give his blessing to this reunion romance.
The last thing Megan wants to do is hurt her family again. After all, is she really sure she and Mick can make it this time around? And when an unexpected delivery causes chaos, it seems only a miracle can reunite this family.
Of course, it is Christmas—the season of miracles.
Title: Well Read and Dead
Author: Catherine O’Connell
Received: From Catherine O’Connell
Synopsis: The return of blue-blooded fashionista Pauline Cook, whose search for a missing friend leads her from an iconoclastic book group to the deepest and most unfashionable reaches of the Far East.
Back in Chicago after a disastrous European love affair, socialite Pauline Cook finds her finances nearly depleted, her co-op a shambles, and her best friend mysteriously missing—vanished along with Pauline’s cat. Though Whitney Armstrong’s husband offers a substantial reward for the return of his lost wife, Pauline can’t help suspecting that his grief is merely an act. But it’s a shocking suggestion by a member of Whitney’s book club that really gets Pauline moving—halfway around the world, in fact, to Thailand . . . in spite of a psychic’s warning of terrible danger.
In Asia, a morass of dark motives and deadly corporate intrigues await the intrepid globe-trotter. And all the high society connections in the world aren’t going to ensure that Pauline makes it home alive. . . .
Title: Well Bred and Dead
Author: Catherine O’Connell
Received: From Catherine O’Connell
Synopsis: Newly widowed Pauline Cook was once the toast of the Windy City elite—but now she’s practically broke. At least she’s in better shape than her dear departed friend Ethan Campbell, whose corpse Pauline has had the misfortune to discover. A writer who chronicled the lives, loves, and ensembles of the Gold Coast’s most elegant ladies, Ethan apparently took his own life—while inelegantly clad in old boxers, no less. And since no relatives are coming forward to claim Ethan’s remains, it falls to Pauline to settle his final affairs . . . with her own dwindling funds.
However, there are things about Ethan’s suicide that don’t seem to add up: the ratty undergarments he “chose” to die in, for example . . . and the multiple birth certificates the police turn up in his apartment. Before she can truly lay her friend to rest, plucky Pauline’s determined to get to the bottom of his increasingly suspicious death.
