In My Mailbox: Week of April 14

Title: The Week Before the Wedding

Author: Beth Kendrick

Received: Penguin

Synopsis:
After enduring a chaotic childhood, Emily McKellips yearns for a drama-free life, complete with a white picket fence. Her dreams are about to come true: She has a stellar career, a gorgeous house, and a fiancé any woman would die for. But as friends and family arrive in picturesque Valentine, Vermont, for her wedding, an uninvited guest shows up.

Ryan is Emily’s first husband from a disastrous starter marriage. They wed on a whim, only to discover that combustible chemistry couldn’t ensure a happily ever after. But Ryan is no longer the headstrong boy she left behind. He’s now a successful film producer who just happens to be scouting a resort in Valentine with his adorable retriever in tow.

As the bridesmaids revolt and the mothers of the bride and groom do battle, Emily is surprised to discover new sides of both her ex and her fiancé. She thought she had life and love all figured out, but the next seven days might change her mind—and her heart.

Title: The Way Back to Happiness

Author: Elizabeth Bass

Received: Kensington

Synopsis: No one could blame Bev Putterman for becoming estranged from her sister. No one but Bev, anyway. Growing up, Diana was difficult and selfish yet always their mother’s favorite. And then came the betrayal that took away the future Bev dreamed of.

Yet if Diana caused problems while alive, her death leaves Bev in a maelstrom of remorse. She longs to provide a stable home for Diana’s fourteen-year-old daughter, Alabama. But between her commitment-phobic boyfriend and her precarious teaching position, Bev’s life is already in upheaval without an unruly teenager around.

All Alabama knows about Aunt Bev is what her mother told her–and none of it was good. They clash about money, clothes, boys, and especially about Diana. In desperation, Alabama sets out to find her late father’s family. Instead she learns of the complicated history between her mother and aunt, how guilt can shut down a life–and most important, how love and forgiveness can open a door and make us whole again. . .

Title: Wedding Night

Author: Sophie Kinsella

Received: TransWorld Books

Synopsis: Lottie is tired of long-term boyfriends who don’t want to commit to marriage. When her old boyfriend Ben reappears and reminds her of their pact to get married if they were both still single at thirty, she jumps at the chance…

Title: Family Pictures

Author: Jane Green

Received: St. Martins Press

Synopsis: From the author of Another Piece of My Heart comes Family Pictures, the gripping story of two women who live on opposite coasts but whose lives are connected in ways they never could have imagined. Both women are wives and mothers to children who are about to leave the nest for school. They’re both in their forties and have husbands who travel more than either of them would like. They are both feeling an emptiness neither had expected. But when a shocking secret is exposed, their lives are blown apart. As dark truths from the past reveal themselves, will these two women be able to learn to forgive, for the sake of their children, if not for themselves?

Title: The Apple Orchard

Received: Susan Wiggs

Received: Etch Communications

Synopsis: Tess Delaney makes a living restoring stolen treasures to their rightful owners. People like Annelise Winther, who refuses to sell her long-gone mother’s beloved necklace—despite Tess’s advice. To Annelise, the jewel’s value is in its memories.

But Tess’s own history is filled with gaps: a father she never met, a mother who spent more time traveling than with her daughter. So Tess is shocked when she discovers the grandfather she never knew is in a coma. And that she has been named in his will to inherit half of Bella Vista, a hundred-acre apple orchard in the magical Sonoma town called Archangel.

The rest is willed to Isabel Johansen. A half sister she’s never heard of.

Against the rich landscape of Bella Vista, Tess begins to discover a world filled with the simple pleasures of food and family, of the warm earth beneath her bare feet. A world where family comes first and the roots of history run deep. A place where falling in love is not only possible, but inevitable.

And in a season filled with new experiences, Tess begins to see the truth in something Annelise once told her: if you don’t believe memories are worth more than money, then perhaps you’ve not made the right kind of memories.

Title: Love Me Anyway

Author: Tiffany Hawk

Received: St. Martins Press

Synopsis: When twenty-three-year-old Emily Cavenaugh’s marriage to her abusive high school sweetheart ends, she trades in her dull smalltown life for an all-access pass to see the world as a flight attendant. Hoping for a new start, she moves to San Francisco to bunk with six other new flight attendants. Among them is KC Valentine, a free spirit who encourages Emily to shed her mousy ways and start collecting experiences as exciting as her passport stamps. Emily soon follows KC’s advice a little too well, falling in love with an older, married co-worker named Tien, a father to two young girls. But as Emily and Tien become more deeply entangled, KC grows distraught. Neither her friends nor co-workers know the real reason she became a flight attendant: to find her father who abandoned her as a child. As Emily and KC fly from Vegas to Boston, San Francisco to London, Chicago to Delhi, each searching for love and acceptance, they’re torn between passion and moral conviction, freedom and belonging.

An assured debut from a former flight attendant, Love Me Anyway deftly captures the complexities of love, friendship, and family, the excitement and loneliness that come from living everywhere and nowhere, and the surprising detours life can take when you set out to discover the world.