In My Mailbox: Week of August 11

Title: Lucky Catch
Author: Deborah Coonts
Received: Author’s Assistant Agency
Synopsis: Trouble always comes in threes.

At least that’s what Lucky O’Toole, the VP of Customer Relations for Las Vegas’ primo Strip casino/hotel, the Babylon, has heard for years from her mother. So, tonight, when Teddie, her former lover shows up at her office unannounced and very unexpected, her father offers Teddie a job at the Babylon, she is called to deal with a pig in residence at one of the hotels most exclusive and opulent suites, and Lucky’s current lover, Jean-Charles Bouclet stops answering his phone leaving Lucky to handle his five-year-old son, Lucky figures she has tonight’s compliment of chaos covered.

As usual, she is a tad optimistic.

With a cadre of celebrity chefs with the maturity of teenagers in Vegas for a televised cook-off, a prized Alba truffle in the Babylon’s care, and her mother’s pregnancy racing toward the inevitable, what could go wrong?

When the truffle is stolen from the walk-in in Jean-Charles’ gourmet burger joint at the Babylon and a young chef apparently killed with a smoking gun is found in Jean-Charles’ food truck on the back lot, trouble takes a sinister turn.

And Jean-Charles still isn’t answering his phone.

Another body is discovered. This one stuffed in an oven at Jean-Charles’ eponymous restaurant and set to broil.

Desperate to put a lid on the body count and more than frantic over her AWOL lover, Lucky uses her Vegas contacts to search in places and in ways the police wouldn’t or couldn’t. Teddie insists on riding shotgun. Lucky hasn’t the time nor the resolve to say no. She’s never been able to resist Teddie … not really. With danger dogging their heels, Lucky finds herself falling once again under his spell as they traverse Vegas, being drawn deeper and deeper into the highly competitive world of high-end eateries and the battle for the very rare, most highly prized gourmet foodstuffs.
Would somebody really kill for a truffle?

In a heartbeat.

Title: Biking Uphill
Author: Arleen Williams
Received: CLP Blog Tours
Synopsis: Biking home from the Los Arboles Sunday Market, a sun flower yellow teapot snug in her backpack, lonely college student Carolyn Bauer sees a young teenager huddling under a eucalyptus tree. Carolyn shares her food and water with Antonia as they struggle to communicate in a mix of languages. Realizing Antonia lives on the streets, Carolyn invites her home. They share a summer of friendship until the day the yellow teapot shatters and Antonia mysteriously disappears. Fifteen years later, only Antonia recognizes her old friend when she and Carolyn meet again in an ESL classroom, but she conceals her secret. Carolyn arranges a class project for Antonia—to job-shadow her friend and housemate, Gemi Kemmal. Gemi learns Antonia’s dangerous circumstances when Antonia arrives for work with bruises barely concealed by thick makeup and offers her sanctuary just as Carolyn had years earlier. Together the three women confront Antonia’s abuser and build a family of enduring friendship. Biking Uphill, the second book in the Alki Trilogy, invites the reader into a world of undocumented immigration, where parents are deported, and a young girl is abandoned to face life on her own.

Title: Camp Utopia & The Forgiveness Diet
Author: Jenny Ruden
Received: Jenny Ruden
Synopsis: Sixteen-year-old Baltimore teen Bethany Stern knows the only way out of spending her summer at Camp Utopia, a fat camp in Northern California, is weight-loss. Desperate, she tries The Forgiveness Diet, the latest fad whose infomercial promises that all she has to do is forgive her deadbeat dad, her scandalous sister, and the teenage magician next door and (unrequited) love of her life. But when the diet fails and her camp nemesis delivers the ultimate blow, Bee bids sayonara to Camp-not-Utopian-at-all to begin what she believes will be her “real” summer adventure, only to learn that running away isn’t as easy—or as healing—as it seems.

Her wry and honest voice bring humor and poignancy for anyone, fat or thin, tired of hearing “you’d be so pretty if…[insert unwelcome judgment about your appearance from loved one or perfect stranger].”

Title: Adventures in Dating
Author: Sara Rishforth
Received: Sara Rishforth
Synopsis: Kari Covington left it all to settle in Alaska. Charleston had been home: friends, school, family, and her past. But a fresh start to her personal and love life is what she needs. The Final Frontier is nothing like the “Good Ol’ South,” which suits Kari just fine. She can create a new life, start a career, find love, and seek the adventure she craves.

Eager to embark on her new journey and with so many rugged eligible men, Kari sets out to meet “The One.” A string of bad dates tests Kari’s optimism as winter closes in. With no one to keep her warm, Kari relies on cooking, baking and her new best friends. Weekly calls from Mama call her back to the life her family planned.

No one said looking for love was easy…

Title: Dragonfly
Author: Carrie Sparks McClain
Received: Carrie Sparks McClain
Synopsis: She swore she would never return…

…but ten years later, after the tragic death of her beloved aunt, Aubrey Todd finds herself the new owner of her aunt’s lake house that holds her summertime childhood memories, both good and bad. There she discovers that in order to move on with her life, she will have to go back to the sleepy southern town of Walker and the boy that forced her to leave. She quickly learns that not everything is quite what it seems. The lake holds a deep, dark secret to her aunt’s story and someone is determined to keep the past in the past.

Title: A Pinch of Ooh La La
Author: Renee Swindle
Received: Penguin
Synopsis: To get to happily ever after, sometimes you need to start from scratch….

Abbey Ross, who runs her own bakery in Oakland, California, is known for her visually stunning wedding cakes. But lately, Abbey’s own love life has become stale. According to her best friend, Bendrix, Abbey’s not the spontaneous young woman she was when they were teenagers listening to the Cure and creating attention-grabbing graffiti. Of course, her failed relationship with a womanizing art forger might have something to do with that. Nevertheless, it’s time for Abbey to step out of the kitchen—and her comfort zone—and Bendrix has even handpicked a man for her to date.

Samuel Howard is everything Abbey’s dreamed of: handsome, successful, and looking to raise a family. But a creamy icing might be needed to hide a problem or two. When Samuel complains about disrespect for the institution of marriage, Abbey’s reminded of her nontraditional family, with thirteen children from various mothers. And when Samuel rails about kids having kids, Abbey thinks of her twenty-year-old sister who’s recently revealed her pregnancy.

Soon Abbey is facing one disaster after another and struggling to make sense of it all. Her search for love has led her down a bitter path, but with the help of her unique family and unwavering friends, she just might find the ooh la la that makes life sweet.