In My Mailbox - July 4, 2011

In My Mailbox is hosted by The Story Siren. To see this weeks list of participants go here.

I get a number of books that come in that I don't get to right away but deserve to be recognized on the blog so that is what I plan on doing.

I received some great books this week.  Tell me which one you are most interested in for a chance to win one of these books! (US/Canada only, ends 7/11/2011, book may be shipped later so I can read it)  The ARC tour books are not part of the giveaway, sorry.

For Review:

American Dervish by Ayad Akhtar

Little Brown, Publish Date: 1/9/2012

Hayat Shah was captivated by Mina long before he met her: his mother's beautiful, brilliant, and soulfully devout friend is a family legend. When he learns that Mina is leaving Pakistan to live with the Shahs in America, Hayat is thrilled.

Hayat's father is less enthusiastic. He left the fundamentalist world behind with reason. What no one expects is that when Mina shows Hayat the beauty and power of the Quran, it will utterly transform the boy.

Mina's real magic may be that the Shah household, always contentious and sad, becomes a happy one. But when Mina finds her own path to happiness, the ember of jealousy in Hayat's heart is enflamed by the community's anti-Semitism-and he acts with catastrophic consequences for those he loves most.

The Full Moon Bride by Shobhan Bantwal

Kensington, Publishing Date: August 1, 2011

What makes a marriage-love or compatibility? Passion or pragmatism? Shobhan Bantwal's compelling new novel explores the fascinating subject of arranged marriage, as a young Indian-American woman navigates the gulf between desire and tradition…

To Soorya Giri, arranged marriages have always seemed absurd. But while her career as an environmental lawyer has flourished, Soorya is still a virgin, living with her parents in suburban New Jersey. She wants to be married. And she is finally ready to do the unthinkable…

Soorya's first bridal viewings are as awkward as she anticipated. But then she's introduced to Roger Vadepalli. Self-possessed, intelligent, and charming, Roger is clearly interested in marriage and seems eager to clinch the deal. Attracted to him in spite of her mistrust, Soorya is also drawn into a flirtation with Lou, a widowed colleague who is far from her family's idea of an acceptable husband.

In choosing between two very different men, Soorya must reconcile her burgeoning independence and her conservative background. And she must decide what matters most to her-not just in a husband, but in a family, a culture, and a life…

Wishing For Snow by Minrose Gwin

Harper Perennial, Publishing Date: June 21, 2011

A daughter's brave and beautiful tribute to a remarkable damaged soul . . .   For novelist Minrose Gwin, growing up was a time of chaos and uncertainty, the result of? being raised by a parent with a serious mental illness. Life with poet Erin Taylor was unpredictable at best and painful at the worst times, as she spiraled ever deeper into psychosis until her eventual death from cancer. But reading her mother's childhood diary as an adult, Minrose encountered a very different Erin Taylor Clayton Pitner. Her late mother's words, written in the 1930s, revealed a cheerful, perceptive young girl growing up in rural Mississippi who wished for snow that "usually didn't come"—a girl with a bright view of the future as she progressed from college student to young mother to published poet, only to have an unbearable darkness close in around her, cruelly suffocating her hopes and dreams.   In her poignant and extraordinary memoir Wishing for Snow, Minrose Gwin sets out to rediscover her mother in the poems, letters, newspaper clippings, and quixotic lists that Erin left behind after her death. The result is an unforgettable true story of a Southern family and the tragic figure at its center—and a loving daughter's determination to find the mother she never knew.

Adrenaline by Jeff Abbott

Grand Central Publishing, Publishing: 7/1/2011

Sam Capra is living the life of his dreams.

He's a brilliant young CIA agent, stationed in London. His wife Lucy is seven months pregnant with their first child. They have a wonderful home, and are deeply in love.

They have everything they could hope for...until they lose it all in one horrifying moment.

On a bright, sunny day, Sam receives a call from Lucy while he's at work. She tells him to leave the building immediately. He does...just before it explodes, killing everyone inside. Lucy vanishes, and Sam wakes up in a prison cell. As the lone survivor of the attack, he is branded by the CIA as a murderer and a traitor.

Escaping from the agency, Sam launches into a desperate hunt to save his kidnapped wife and child, and to reveal the unknown enemy who has set him up and stolen his family. But the destruction of Sam's life was only step on in an extraordinary plot-and now Sam must become a new kind of hero.

The Lost Angel by Jaview Sierra 
Atria Books, Publishing Date: 10/4/2011 (sorry I could only find a foreign cover)

Javier Sierra, New York Times bestselling author of The Secret Supper, makes his long-awaited return with a heart-pounding apocalyptic thriller.

In approximately seventy-two hours, a little known Middle Eastern terrorist group plans to bring about the end of the world. Convinced that they are the descendents of angels, they believe they are on the verge of at last being returned to heaven. Central to their plan is the kidnapping of an undercover American scientist whose research has led him to an extraordinary secret: He is the keeper of a pair of mysterious stones whose origins are as old as time, artifacts said to grant their owner the power to communicate directly with God himself.

The scientist’s only hope for survival is his young wife—a woman born with a rare psychic gift that can unleash the power of the sacred stones. But she must find the courage to accept her visions and save her husband, all while running from religious extremists and secret U.S. government agencies who want the stones for their own purposes.

Like The Secret Supper, The Lost Angel bears all the hallmarks of Sierra’s erudite yet fast-paced brand of storytelling, combining historical fact and fiction with dazzling narrative feats.

Borneo Tom
In Story and Sketch: Love, Travel and Jungle Family in Tropical Asia by Tom McLaughlin
For Pump Up Your Book Tour

Join award winning science teacher Tom McLaughlin tracking orangutans, dancing naked in an earthquake, inadvertently swimming with jelly fish and MORE DANGEROUSLY falling in love.This humorous collection of essays follows Tom as he travels throughout Southeast Asia and parts of China and Vietnam.

Researching both Alfred Wallace and Charles Darwin, he arrives at his own ideas about how they came up with their theories that will bring controversy to the scientific history crowd. In four remarkable stories he explores both lives and deduces one was probably drunk and the other crazy.

Love plays an important part of his story. He reconciles with his daughter after a nasty divorce. Her younger sister shares many of his adventures with him and he chronicles a teenagers reactions to the many wonderful sights and sounds of Southeast Asia.

Without warning Tom falls madly in love with a kampung girl, marries, and then, after a vasectomy, finds she is with child.Follow the courtship and marriage ceremonies all sensitively portrayed with respect to local custom.

Wildlife plays an important part in Tom's essays. He relates humorous encounters with orangutans, the raflesia flower and pandas.Part of the earnings from the book will supplement the trip cameras he has already purchased for a wildlife center in Malaysian Borneo.

The book is illustrated in caricature by famous Kuching waterfront artist Niki whose paintings of the Malaysian national bird The Horn Bill hang in homes around the world.

Tom lives in Kuching, Malaysian Borneo with his expectant wife Suriani. Check out his blog at www.borneotom.com. And, since you read this far, you will receive a free sling bag, see the blog description mailed via sea mail from Borneo. Just e-mail Tom at Tom02@aol.com

ARC Tours

Calli by Jessica Lee Anderson
Milkweed Editions, Publish Date: September 13, 2011

Fifteen-year-old Calli has just about everything she could want in life—two loving moms, a good-looking boyfriend, and a best friend who has always been there for support. An only child, Calli is excited when her parents announce that they want to be foster parents. Unfortunately, being a foster sister to Cherish is not at all what Calli expected. First Cherish steals Calli’s boyfriend, then begins to pit Calli’s moms against one another, and she even steals Calli’s iPod. Tired of being pushed around and determined to get even, Calli steals one of Cherish’s necklaces. But this plan for revenge goes horribly awry, and Cherish ends up in juvenile detention.

Isolating herself from her moms, her boyfriend, and even her best friend, Calli wrestles with her guilt and tries to figure out a way to undo the damage she’s caused. When her moms are asked to take on another foster child, Calli sees an opportunity to make amends for her past mistakes.

Funny, moving, and emotionally rich, Calli is a portrait of an endearing young woman caught between adolescence and adulthood, striving to do the right thing even when all of her options seem wrong.

Wins

Left Neglected by Lesa Genova

Gallery Books, Publish Date: January 4, 2011

Won from Tea Time with Marce

Sarah Nickerson is like any other career-driven supermom in Welmont, the affluent Boston suburb where she leads a hectic but charmed life with her husband Bob, faithful nanny, and three children—Lucy, Charlie, and nine-month-old Linus.

Between recruiting the best and brightest minds as the vice president of human resources at Berkley Consulting; shuttling the kids to soccer, day care, and piano lessons; convincing her son’s teacher that he may not, in fact, have ADD; and making it home in time for dinner, it’s a wonder this over-scheduled, over-achieving Harvard graduate has time to breathe.

 A self-confessed balloon about to burst, Sarah miraculously manages every minute of her life like an air traffic controller. Until one fateful day, while driving to work and trying to make a phone call, she looks away from the road for one second too long. In the blink of an eye, all the rapidly moving parts of her jam-packed life come to a screeching halt.  

A traumatic brain injury completely erases the left side of her world, and for once, Sarah relinquishes control to those around her, including her formerly absent mother. Without the ability to even floss her own teeth, she struggles to find answers about her past and her uncertain future.

Now, as she wills herself to regain her independence and heal, Sarah must learn that her real destiny—her new, true life—may in fact lie far from the world of conference calls and spreadsheets. And that a happiness and peace greater than all the success in the world is close within reach, if only she slows down long enough to notice.