In My Mailbox: Week of July 15

In Samantha’s Mailbox:

Title: Blue Aspen

Author: Tenaya Jayne

Received: Via CLP Blog Tours

Synopsis: When seventeen-year-old Dulcee Elders’ mother embarks on a road trip from their home in California, Dulcee knows something odd is about to happen. Her suspicions are confirmed when they arrive at Uncle Jack’s house outside of Durango, Colorado. Without another word, Dulcee’s mother is gone, and Dulcee faces life with her reclusive and wealthy uncle in a looming rural mansion. Dulcee has suffered from insomnia ever since her father died more than ten years ago. But once at home at Uncle Jack’s, inexplicably Dulcee now can sleep; sleep brings not only strange and intricate dreams, but a dream lover. For now, Vincent Sands is only the silhouette of a man, but when Uncle Jack leaves town for business, Dulcee’s dream world and reality collide. Once she is alone, the silhouette is no longer content to remain only in her dreams. When Dulcee is asleep, Vincent can give her anything she wants, even the ability to talk to her dead father. Inevitably, Vincent must leave when Uncle Jack returns. Dulcee experiences the high price of loving Vincent-an addiction rivaling that of any hard-core drug. Desperate to bridge the gap between them, Dulcee faces a crucial decision that carries irreversible consequences.

Title: Picture Perfect

Author: Lucie Simone

Received: Via CLP Blog Tours

Synopsis: For Lauren Tate, a high-powered TV producer, sex, lies, and scandal make for a great movie-of-the-week, but when she becomes the target of a smear campaign, even the most salacious of Hollywood’s tales can’t compare to her real life drama. With her soon-to-be-ex-husband leading the effort to sully her reputation, and her former assistant threatening to snatch her hard-earned position at Timeless Television out of her hands, Lauren’s perfectly planned life quickly begins to unravel at the seams.

Clawing her way back to the top of the TV food chain is no easy task, especially in an industry where backstabbing is a sport and gossip is a full time business. But Lauren learns just how cut-throat showbiz can truly be when the hottest scandal in Tinsel Town turns deadly and the Hollywood hunk who’s stolen her heart is missing in action. Can she salvage her career, her reputation, and her love life? Or will Hollywood be the death of her?

Title: Living in Glass Houses

Author: Zoe McNight

Received: Via CLP Blog Tours

Synopsis: Sometimes even good people make bad decisions when it comes to affairs of the heart.

Blair is an optimistic good girl, turned jaded wife. After ten years of a disappointing marriage, she decides to reclaim her happiness and fill the void left by her wealthy, philandering husband. Just when everything she’s ever dreamed of is finally within her grasp, she’s haunted by her past, forcing her to make a decision which will forever change the path of her life.

Jonathan is a do-gooding college basketball coach in a relationship with a woman whose Park Avenue upbringing is at constant odds with his Main Street way of life. It’s a life he’s conceded to accept until he meets a woman who awakens in him everything he’s been missing and is now uncertain he can live without.

Elle is a NYC editor whose type-A personality has afforded her a fulfilling lifestyle in which she rarely doesn’t get what she wants. That’s until a failed relationship causes her walls to come crashing down around her. The man, who everyone agreed was her perfect other half, leaves her confused, insecure and incapable of moving on, even after she meets someone who’s nothing like her, but who completes her in the strangest of ways.

Living in Glass Houses is a contemporary story of three friends, all at a crossroads after discovering that sometimes even the best laid plans won’t result in the life you want. It’s about navigating the murky waters of relationships and friendships and having the courage to make those hard, life-altering decisions which mark the difference between existing and living.

Title: Memories

Author: Deanna Sletten

Received: Via CLP Blog Tours

Synopsis:
Michael DeCara came home from the Vietnam War a wounded man, both physically and emotionally. He tried putting his life back together, but found civilian life difficult after all he’d experienced in Nam. Raising his young daughter, Vanessa, by himself after his wife left, he found it difficult to commit to one job or one woman for any length of time. Then he met a young woman who made him feel good about himself again and who fell in love with Vanessa as well. But then a life-changing event occurred and he had to choose between his past and the present. He chose to leave without a word to the young woman, believing he was doing what was best for her. Now, years later, she has walked back into his life and he believes they may have a second chance at love-except she hates him and he doesn’t understand why.

Danielle Westerly fell in love when she was only eighteen and her heart was broken when he left her without a word. Her heartache was increased when she made a fateful decision that would alter her future, and she blamed him for her loss. Years later, she is single and has built up a successful career when she accidently runs into the man who was responsible for her past pain. Yet, their chemistry is undeniable. Can Dani give up her anger and let go of the pain of the past and fall in love again with the man she has hated all these years?

Dani and Michael share a journey of heartache, loss and painful memories that threaten to keep them apart. Can they break past these and finally find love again?

Title: The Au Pair

Author: Janey Fraser

Received: Marissa @ Cornerstone PR

Synopsis: Bonjour! Je m’appelle Antoinette Malfille and I am enormously excitable about becoming au pair! I have 19 years of age and have forever desired to visit Angleterre. My hobbies are clubbing and drinking. I tolerate children. I have (almost) forsaken smoking. I am available to work for you until Christmas as I do not pass my Baccalaureate. I await to meet you!

So starts the opening to THE AU PAIR, a romp through the world of foreign bodies and unsuspecting families. Jilly, a harassed mother of three, decides to set up an au pair agency around her kitchen table to help with family finances. Over the Channel, Marie-France signs up for Jilly’s agency in order to search for her English father who’d had a fling with her mother when she’d been an au pair, some twenty years earlier. Then there’s eight year old Lottie who is determined to drive away one au pair after another – until she meets her match.

With a cast of characters drawn straight from real life, The Au Pair takes a hilarious look at what happens when an au pair takes over your family.

In Sara’s Mailbox:

Title: The Darling Girls

Author: Emma Burstall

Received: Emma Burstall

Synopsis: Three women in love with the same man meet for the first time at his funeral. Can they separate the truth from the lies – and learn to trust again? When world famous music conductor Leo Bruck dies suddenly, he leaves behind three grieving women and a mass of unanswered questions. Did the man who juggled these simultaneous relationships while thrilling audiences around the globe, direct The Darling Girls like an orchestra? Victoria, his partner of twenty years and mother of two of his children, regards herself as his rightful widow and keeper of his legacy. However, a series of shocking discoveries – revolving around Leo’s boyhood flight on the Kindertransport from Nazi-occupied Austria – forces her to re-examine the man she thought she knew and query the very foundation of their relationship. Maddy, mother of Leo’s daughter Phoebe, has a high-powered job and seems independent and sorted. But events take a sinister turn when Maddy becomes involved with Victoria’s troubled teenage son, and her safe world starts to go awry.

Finally there’s Cat who, at just 24, is Leo’s youngest lover. Coping with a sick mother and battling demons from her childhood, she is finding it increasingly hard to hold it together. Will grief, anger and bitterness blind her to the possibility of ever finding happiness, career fulfilment – and even, perhaps, new love?

The Darling Girls is a moving story of love, loss, and the prevailing power of female friendship. Can these three very different women, whose lives become inextricably bound, break free from the masterful control Leo exerts – even from the grave – once and for all?

Title: Chasing Fools

Author: Aida Brassington

Received: Aida Brassington

Synopsis: Relationships are complicated even under the best of circumstances. For Varda Dorfman and Tommy Campi, these are the worst of times. Varda, an illegal foods smuggler, has pissed off Anthony Carluccio, the kingpin of the local underground dinner club, and put her plans for the future in serious jeopardy. Her boyfriend Gino won’t quit bugging her to get married, even though his mother hates her. Tommy, Gino’s brother and the ladies man of the family, can’t even introduce the love of his life to anyone: he’s secretly gay and dating the son of Carluccio’s biggest competition. And now Tommy’s getting pressure to go public.

When Carluccio’s hit man turns up dead in Varda’s closet after snacking on poisonous mushrooms, all hell breaks loose. Varda’s running for her life, and since his mother is dating Carluccio, Gino’s convinced the only way to save her life is to finally drag her to the altar. And when people start discovering Tommy’s hush-hush relationship, things really start to get interesting.

Title: Rita Hayworth’s Shoes

Author: Francine LaSala

Received: Francine LaSala

Synopsis: Amy Miller gets dumped on her wedding day and everyone knows it’s for the best, as her relationship with David had eaten away at her for years. Except for Amy… When her best friend, Jane Austen-Rabinowitz, and Jane’s sagacious six-year-old daughter, Zoe, convince Amy to treat herself to an extravagantly priced, super-cute pair of shoes, which purportedly once belonged to a siren of the silver screen, she balks at first, but their allure soon wears her down. Once they are hers, her life turns around. She gets refocused on her career and meets a true kindred spirit, the also-jilted English professor, Decklin Thomas. She’s not attracted to Deck at first. But when circumstances lead to them spending more time together, they bond, and Amy starts to believe she may have found her soul mate. But when Deck’s former wife goes missing, again, the perfect romance may not be what it seems…

Sparkly and witty as a 1940s screwball comedy, and filled with quirky characters and lots of delightful surprises, Rita Hayworth’s Shoes is a story of bouncing back, a heartwarming and potentially heartbreaking romance, and even a mystery rolled into one fun, hilarious page-turner.