Mailbox Monday - June 22nd

Mailbox Monday is hosted by Marcia at The Printed Page. To see this weeks list of participants go here.

ARCs of:

Labor Day by Joyce Maynard - pub date: August 2009: - From the Editor's letter at the beginning of the book:


...which is set during a long weekend in 1987 and tells the simple yet profound story of a thirteen-year-old boy, his mother, and a stranger who suddenly enters their lives--and who is taken from them as unexpectedly as he appeared.






0 to 60 by Susan Slater - Pub Date: July 15, 2009

Shelly Sinclair's life is perfect - one most women would envy - a 35-year marriage to a successful doc, two grown boys, a beautiful home and the security of predictability. Without warning, this world collapses. Her husband of a lifetime announces that he's asked someone to marry him - someone thirty-nine years his junior. And, oh yes, the mother of his four-year-old child. Alone. At sixty. To start over. But maybe, just maybe this can be the best time ever.


The Amen Heresy by W.H. Muhlenfeld - Pub date: October 2009 - From the back:
Ex-priest and dyslexic expert of ancient languages, Jack Fisher, agrees to assist a friend and Israeli professor of religious history; and is drawn into an unsolved mystery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. His discovery of the true meaning of the copper Scroll threatens to expose the three religions of Abraham as the monotheistic legacy of an ancient, sun-worshiping pharaoh, Amen-hotep IV.

Jack joins forces with a beautiful agent of the Israeli Antiquities Autthority and a Palestinian boy of the streets as they battle a secret cabal of Jerusalem's high clerics and a murderous Egyptian madman for possession of the scroll and its revelations. Fisher wrestles with the demons of his own past as their search leads through the Old City of Jerusalem, onto the Judean Desert, to the tomb of an Egyptian noble and the holy site of the Burning Bush at Mount Sinai. Here the final struggle for possession of the scroll reveals a startling truth, sealing the fate of Jack Fisher, and of three billion Jews, Christians and Muslims.

Surviving a House Full of Whispers by Sharon Wallace - out now

Sharon suffered continual physical and sexual abuse from her stepfather for seven years. Unfortunately, no one would listen to her or believe her story. At age 16, she finally finds the courage to flee from her tormenters. Social Services find her the first of a string of temporary jobs between which she criss-crosses England trying to find a safe haven.

However, she cannot escape her "night devil" completely until she comes to terms with her past. Sharon's growth and recovery from abuse and learning to accept love would be a long road to travel, taking nearly forty years to achieve. She had to learn to trust and love herself before she could another.

Faced with society's judgments against her, Sharon stood alone against the people who abused her for seven years. The truth is, we don't start to heal when taken from an abusive situation; we only start to digest and relive its emotional content. Many go on to live their lives with tortured souls and an inability to trust and love their own children.

Equally, many of us find the inner child that God intended; we pull that child past the empty adult left by years of mutilation of our childhood souls. I was a no-hoper, unjustly cast out into a world of desolation and loneliness that pulled at my heart like a lead weight. I self-harmed and mutilated parts of my mind and body to try and erase memories.

Eventually, I learned that healing was within me and could never be found under that largest or smallest boulder. I have walked the road of hope and desire and looked into the pool of my future. I did not want to be the mother they had raised, or the wife they had created. Slowly, I started to rebuild my life and my wish is that this book offers the same hope to you.

From Booksfree I received:

Nobody Does It Better by Cecily Von Ziegesar (Gossip Girl #7)
Wake by Lisa McMann - I've finished this one and it's good!
both books I cannot wait to read

And from Paperbackswap I received:

Sunset Bay by Susan Mallery
Lip Service by Susan Mallery
Two sewing books

Another really good week - now I just have to get busy reading.