MONDAY FROM THE INTERIOR: MAILBOX MONDAY & WHAT ARE YOU READING? — JAN. 16

Monday from the Interior

 

Welcome to another Monday from the Interior, in which we share about the books we received in the mail (or bought), and talk about our bookish week, past and future.

Mailbox Monday is hosted through January by Alyce, At Home With Books; and What Are You Reading? is led by Sheila, at Book Journey.

MAILBOX MONDAY:

 

This week’s mailbox has been a digital one, with all books arriving on Sparky, my Kindle.

1.  The Lion, the Lamb, the Hunted (e-book), by Andrew E. Kaufman (from Patty, at Books, Thoughts and a Few Adventures)

SHE ONLY STEPPED OUTSIDE FOR A MINUTE…

But a minute was all it took to turn Jean Kingsley’s world upside down—a minute she’d regret for the rest of her life. 
 

 


STEPPING INTO HER WORST NIGHTMARE…
 


Because when she returned, she found an open bedroom window and her three-year-old son, Nathan, gone. The boy would never be seen again. 
 




A NIGHTMARE THAT ONLY BECAME WORSE.

A tip leads detectives to the killer, a repeat sex offender, and inside his apartment, a gruesome discovery. A slam-dunk trial sends him off to death row, then several years later, to the electric chair. 
 





CASE CLOSED. JUSTICE SERVED…OR WAS IT?

Now, more than thirty years later, Patrick Bannister unwittingly stumbles across evidence among his dead mother’s belongings—it paints her as the killer and her brother, a wealthy and powerful senator, as the one pulling the strings.


WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TO NATHAN KINGSLEY?
 


2.  Henry’s Sisters (e-book), by Cathy Lamb (My Purchase)

When the Bommarito sisters, Isabelle and Janie, hear that their domineering mother is going in for open heart surgery, they must forget the trauma of their childhood and return to their riverside Oregon hometown, Trillium River. Taking care of their mother and their demented grandmother (who believes she’s Amelia Earhart) and watching after their mentally handicapped brother, Henry (possessed of an almost saintly, unconditional love for people), the independent sisters try to find a place in the world they’ve left behind. Lamb (The Last Time I Was Me) delivers grace, humor and forgiveness along with a litany of family trauma, which might seem heavy-handed in lesser hands. Fortunately, this finely pitched family melodrama is balanced with enough gallows humor and idiosyncratic characters to make it positively irresistible.

3.  One for the Money (e-book), by Janet Evanovich (My Purchase)

Stephanie Plum is so smart, so honest, and so funny that her narrative charm could drive a documentary on termites. But this tough gal from New Jersey, an unemployed discount lingerie buyer, has a much more interesting story to tell: She has to say that her Miata has been repossessed and that she’s so poor at the moment that she just drank her last bottle of beer for breakfast. She has to say that her only chance out of her present rut is her repugnant cousin Vinnie and his bail-bond business. She has to say that she blackmailed Vinnie into giving her a bail-bond recovery job worth $10,000 (for a murder suspect), even though she doesn’t own a gun and has never apprehended a person in her life. And she has to say that the guy she has to get, Joe Morelli, is the same creep who charmed away her teenage virginity behind the pastry case in the Trenton bakery where she worked after school.

If that hard-luck story doesn’t sound compelling enough, Stephanie’s several unsuccessful attempts at pulling in Joe make a downright hilarious and suspenseful tale of murder and deceit. Along the way, several more outlandish (but unrelentingly real) characters join the story, including Benito Ramirez, a champion boxer who seems to be following Stephanie Plum wherever she goes….

And that’s my digital mailbox this week!

***

WHAT ARE YOU READING?

 

 

It’s been a great week of reading and blogging.

Here are some of my favorite blog posts this week:

MONDAY POTPOURRI:  READING THOUGHTS

TUESDAY POTPOURRI:  BOOKS INTO MOVIES

AUTHOR INTERVIEW OF L. J. GARDNER

THURSDAY POTPOURRI:  ATTITUDE

FAVORITE MEMORIES: EXCERPT FROM INTERIOR DESIGNS

SATURDAY MEANDERINGS

Review:     So Pretty It Hurts – Kate White

Review:    I’ve Got Your Number, by Sophie Kinsella

Review to be Posted on 2/2/12 – Blog Tour:  Hot Chocolate (e-book), by Dawn Greenfield Ireland (at Chocolate & Mimosas)

Review:    One for the Money (e-book), by Janet Evanovich

(I very seldom read a book the same week I receive it; this one is the exception, and I loved it!)

 

What’s Up Next?

1.  Unraveling Anne, by Laurel Saville (Amazon Vine)

Author Laurel Saville explores her mother’s life and death.  In searching for answers to the heartbreaking trajectory of her mother’s life, writer Laurel Saville plumbed the depths of Anne’s troubled past and her own eccentric childhood to untangle the truth of an exceptional, yet tragic, existence. What she discovered was a woman who was beautiful, well-educated, and talented—yet tormented by internal demons and no match for the hedonistic culture of Southern California in the 1960s and 70s.

 

2.  Almost a Crime, by Penny Vincenzi (Will meet the Mt. TBR and Chunkster Challenge) – I might be reading this one awhile!

Meet Tom and Octavia Fleming. Attractive, rich and madly successful, the pair appeared to have the perfect power marriage until an affair leaves their lives in fatal danger. For this is no ordinary affair, but one that leads to life-threatening terror from which nothing and no one in the Flemings’ charmed circle can escape: not their children, not their friends, not even the one thing that seemed beyond reach – their own professional success.

Described by Dominick Dunne as a writer “with verve and heart, immersing the reader in a world of engrossing and unforgettable glamour and passion,” and praised by Barbara Taylor Bradford as “marvelously engrossing,” Vincenzi’s newest novel is a surefire winner with critics and readers alike.

3.  Henry’s Sisters (e-book), by Cathy Lamb

(Described above in the mailbox section).  Yes, another unexpected read of a book I just downloaded.

***

I’m excited about the week ahead.  My books include some that I’ve been eagerly awaiting…and one from my TBR stacks that I really wanted to read sooner, but its heftiness kept me from picking it up.  Which is why I have several chunksters still on my stacks.

This will be the year of the chunksters!

What are you tackling this week?  Come on by and share….