Mailbox Monday

Mailbox Monday

Mailbox Monday is hosted by Marcia at The Printed Page.

We share what books that we found in our mailboxes last week. (the past two weeks)

Here's what I got ~


Deadly Fear by Cynthia Eden (ARC, for review) ~ TWO BRILLIANT AGENTS
FBI Special Agent Monica Davenport has made a career out of profiling serial killers. But getting inside the twisted minds of the cruel and the sadistic has taken its toll: She's walled herself off from the world. Yet Monica can't ignore fellow agent Luk.  Release date: July 27, 2010e Dante, the only man who ever broke through her defenses.ONE DREAM TEAMLuke has the unique ability to put victims at ease...professionally, he and Monica made a perfect team. Now they're reunited to catch a murderer who uses his victims' deepest, darkest fears for sport - but their investigative skills aren't enough. Luke and Monica will have to face the secrets from their past, the ones that terrify them the most, if they are to have a future together.But can they catch a killer whose weapon is...DEADLY FEAR. Release date: July 27th 

Last to Die  by Kate Brady (ARC, for review) ~ A ruthless killer hides in plain sight, someone no one believes is capable of murder. Within a week, six women will be murdered, all punished for their dark pasts. Detective Dani Cole is determined to track down this serial killer whose victims include a young woman she pulled out of a life of crime. Her investigation leads her to a photography foundation and the renowned photographer Mitch Sheridan, a man she she fell in love with years ago but has tried to forget. Dani and Mitch are instantly attracted to each other again, though their troubled pasts keep them from getting too close. Together, through the course of the investigation, they unearth a dark chain of deception that leads to a killer who is closer than they think. Release date: August 31st.

Cross Fire (Alex Cross) by James Patterson (ARC, for review) ~ Wedding bells ring. Detective Alex Cross and Bree's wedding plans are put on hold when Alex is called to the scene of the perfectly executed assassination of two of Washington D.C.'s most corrupt: a dirty congressmen and an underhanded lobbyist. Next, the elusive gunman begins picking off other crooked politiciaIMAGEns, sparking a blaze of theories--is the marksman a hero or a vigilante?A murderer returnsThe case explodes, and the FBI assigns agent Max Siegel to the investigation. As Alex and Siegel battle over jurisdiction, the murders continue. It becomes clear that they are the work of a professional who has detailed knowledge of his victims' movements--information that only a Washington insider could possess.Caught in a lethal cross fire As Alex contends with the sniper, Siegel, and the wedding, he receives a call from his deadliest adversary, Kyle Craig. The Mastermind is in D.C. and will not relent until he has eliminated Cross and his family for good. With a supercharged blend of action, deception, and suspense, Cross Fire is James Patterson's most visceral and exciting Alex Cross novel ever.  Release date: November 15th.

Don't Blink by James Patterson & Howard Roughan (ARC, for review) ~ The good. New York's Lombardo's Steak House is famous for three reasons--the menu, the clientele, and now, the gruesome murder of an infamous mob lawyer. Effortlessly, the assassin slips through the police's fingers, and his absence sparks a blaze of accusations about who ordered the hit. The bad. Seated at a nearby table, reporter Nick Daniels is conducting a once-in-a-lifetime interview with a legendary baseball bad-boy. In the chaos, he accidentally captures a key piece of evidence that lands him in the middle of an all-out war between Italian and Russian mafia forces. NYPD captains, district attorneys, mayoral candidates, media kingpins, and one shockingly beautiful magazine editor are all pushing their own agendas--on both sides of the law. And the dead Back off--or die--is the clear message Nick receives as he investigates for a story of his own.Heedless, and perhaps in love with his beautiful editor, Nick endures humiliation, threats, violence, and worse in a thriller that overturns every expectation and finishes with the kind of flourish only James Patterson knows. Release date: September 27th

The Good Sister by Drusilla Campbell (ARC, for review) ~ Roxanne Callahan has always been her younger sister's caretaker. Now married, her happiness is threatened when beautiful and emotionally unstable Simone, suffering from crippling postpartum depression, commits an unforgivable crime for which Roxanne comes to believe she is partially responsible. In the glare of national media attention brought on her sister, Roxanne fights to hold her marriage together as she is drawn back into the pain of her troubled past and relives the fraught relationship she and Simone shared with their narcissistic mother. At the same time, only she can help Simone's nine year old daughter, Merell, make sense of the family's tragedy. Cathartic, lyrical, and unflinchingly honest, THE GOOD SISTER is a novel of four generations of women struggling to overcome a legacy of violence, lies and secrecy, ultimately finding strength and courage in their love for each other.Release date: October 1st.

Live to Tell: A Detective D. D. Warren Novel by Lisa Gardner (ARC, for review) ~ Boston police detective D. D. Warren returns in another gripping thriller. A family is murdered, apparently by the father (who, it seems, barely failed to take his own life after killing his wife and young children). But soon there are questions, the most pressing of which is, Why would this man, apparently out of the blue, slaughter his own family? Is it possible that someone else was the killer, perhaps another member of the family? In addition to telling a compelling story, Gardner also explores an issue that is rarely discussed in fiction: children who are psychotic. In first-person chapters narrated by other characters (Victoria, a mother at her wits’ end; Danielle, survivor of a family slaughter), she eases the reader into unfamiliar territory, telling us about children—like Evan, Victoria’s eight-year-old son—who are capable of astonishing violence, including plotting to murder their own parents. Gardner has never shied away from creepy, psychologically twisted stories, but this may be her most unsettling. The notion of murderous children may be off-putting enough to make some readers avoid the book. That would be a mistake: Gardner never sensationalizes her story, and the book ends with a resolution that is creatively and emotionally appropriate. An excellent novel. Release date: July 13th.

Velocity by Alan Jacobson (ARC, for review) ~ FBI profiler Karen Vail returns in Velocity, national bestselling author Alan Jacobson’s most explosive thriller to date. Vail’s boyfriend, Detective Robby Hernandez, has seemingly disappeared into the dense air of a Napa Valley evening. There are no clues to his whereabouts, other than a blood stain—and potential connections to a serial killer operating in the wine country.Despite using all means at her disposal to find out what happened to Robby, Vail is thwarted—until her colleague, Detective Paul Bledsoe, hooks her up with Hector DeSantos, a covert Defense Department operative who has a knack for finding difficult to locate information. But DeSantos is an unwilling partner, and other than o1ering superficial cooperation to pay back the debt he owes Bledsoe, he is reluctant to work his valuable informants for what he views as Vail’s personal crusade to find her lover.That is, until Vail pries loose long-buried secrets, lies, and deceptions on the part of her own task force members. It’s information that even DeSantos can’t ignore, a discovery of great magnitude that reveals larger forces at play—forces that propel Vail and DeSantos into a frantic search that takes them from the wineries of Napa Valley to the monuments of Washington, D.C., the wealthy beach enclaves of San Diego, and the bright excesses of Las Vegas.  Release date: October 5th.

Russian Winter: A Novel by Daphne Kalotay (ARC, review, Tour) ~ When she decides to auction her remarkable jewellery collection, Nina Revskaya, once a great star of the Bolshoi ballet, believes she has drawn a curtain on her past. Instead, the aged dancer finds herself overwhelmed by memories of her homeland and of the events -- both glorious and heartbreaking -- that changed the course of her life half a century before.It was in Russia that Nina first learned to dance, that she fell in love with a dashing poet, that she and her dearest companions became victims of Stalinist aggression and that a terrible discovery led to a deadly act of betrayal -- and to a daring and ingenious escape that eventually brought her to the city of Boston.Nina has never shared the dark secrets of her heart. But two people -- an associate director at the auction house and a Russian professor looking for the key to his own ambiguous history -- will not let the past. Release date: September 7th.

Getting Old Is Tres Dangereux: A Mystery  by Rita Lakin ~ Read as Gladdy Gold finds out that she has a competitor wanting to steal Jack langford away from her. She's a gorgeous younger redhead from France.Not only that, but there is a killer wanting to murder the Frenchwoman and Jack is the only one who can save her.

The Echo of Violence  by Jordan Dane (ARC, for review) ~ A man she would trust with her heart could sabotage everything, in this new ripped-from-the-headlines thriller in Jordan Dane's gritty "Sweet Justice" series. Release date: September 1st.




 Poison: A Novel of the Renaissance by Sarah Poole (ARC, for review) ~

In the simmering hot summer of 1492, a monstrous evil is stirring within the Eternal City of Rome. The brutal murder of an alchemist sets off a desperate race to uncover the plot that threatens to extinguish the light of the Renaissance and plunge Europe back into medieval darkness.Determined to avenge the killing of her father, Francesca Giordano defies all convention to claim for herself the position of poisoner serving Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, head of the most notorious and dangerous family in Italy. She becomes the confidante of Lucrezia Borgia and the lover of Cesare Borgia. At the same time, she is drawn to the young renegade monk who yearns to save her life and her soul.Navigating a web of treachery and deceit, Francesca pursues her father’s killer from the depths of Rome’s Jewish ghetto to the heights of the Vatican itself. In so doing, she sets the stage for the ultimate confrontation with ancient forces that will seek to use her darkest desires to achieve their own catastrophic ends. Release date:  August 3rd.

Following Polly  by Karen Bergreen (for review) ~ It's like Comedy Central picked up Law & Order for an episode in standup comic and ex-lawyer Bergreen's breezy debut about a rootless, jobless, and loveless snoop in search of her lifelong dream. Fired from a crappy job with a selfish, nasty casting director, Alice Teakle begins obsessively stalking Harvard frenemy Polly—and winds up the top suspect in her murder. But that's where the fun begins: slipping out of police custody, Alice begins stalking Charlie, her college-days romantic fantasy who she hopes can save her from prison. Charlie takes her in, forging a deal that he'll help get her off the murder hook if she helps out with a problem his father's having. But Charlie and Alice sweetly discover a far deeper need of each other. Bergreen makes good use of her comedic skills and varied professional background to create a sharp whodunit that combines edgy thrills with a wicked sense of humor and an endearing heart of gold.

The Scarlet Contessa: A Novel of the Italian Renaissance  by Jeanne Kalogridis (ARC, for review) ~ Daughter of the Duke of Milan and wife of the conniving Count Girolamo Riario, Caterina Sforza was the bravest warrior Renaissance Italy ever knew. She ruled her own lands, fought her own battles, and openly took lovers whenever she pleased.Her remarkable tale is told by her lady-in-waiting, Dea, a woman knowledgeable in reading the “triumph cards,” the predecessor of modern-day Tarot. As Dea tries to unravel the truth about her husband’s murder, Caterina single-handedly holds off invaders who would steal her title and lands. However, Dea’s reading of the cards reveals that Caterina cannot withstand a third and final invader—none other than Cesare Borgia, son of the corrupt Pope Alexander VI, who has an old score to settle with Caterina. Trapped inside the Fortress at Ravaldino as Borgia’s cannons pound the walls, Dea reviews Caterina’s scandalous past and struggles to understand their joint destiny, while Caterina valiantly tries to fight off Borgia’s unconquerable army. Release date: July 6th

The Tenth Song by Naomi Ragen (ARC, for review) ~ Abigail Warner has no reason to feel anything but joy on the morning her life falls apart.  The epitome of the successful Jewish American woman, she is married to a well-known and respected accountant and in the midst of planning her daughter Cayla’s wedding.  Cayla, too, wakes up that morning with the world in the palm of her hand.  Having lived the charmed life of a well-loved child from a happy family, she is bright, pretty, and never really questioned the path she found herself on.

Until the front page of a newspaper screams out that Abigail’s husband and Cayla’s father has committed fraud.  Cayla quarrels with her fiancé over the situation, and decides impulsively to take a time-out in Israel, where she once spent a wonderful summer.  But when Cayla decides to follow a charismatic mysti to his desert commune, Abigail rushes to save her and both mother and daughter must make decisions that affect the rest of their lives.  Release date: October 12th

One Season of Sunshine by Julia London (for review) ~ Adopted as an infant, Jane Aaron longs to know the identity of her birth mother and why she gave her up. Her only clue is the name of the small Texas town where she was born, so she’s come to Cedar Springs for answers.Handsome ad executive Asher Price lost his wife, the beautiful, mysterious Susanna, in a terrible car crash eighteen months ago. When he hires Jane as the nanny for his two children, sparks fly. Jane finds herself falling in love with both Asher and his children, but begins to suspect that Susanna was not the perfect mother and wife the family portrays her to have been.As Jane gets closer and closer to finding out the truth about both her own and Susanna’s past, devastating secrets begin to emerge that may be more than anyone can bear. Will the truth bring Jane and Asher closer together or tear them apart forever?