MONDAY FROM THE INTERIOR: MAILBOX MONDAY & WHAT ARE YOU READING? — MAY 28

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.

For May, Mailbox Monday is hosted by Martha’s Bookshelf.

Sheila, at Book Journey, brings us What Are You Reading?

MAILBOX MONDAY:

My mailbox just kept overflowing this week!  I received five review books and downloaded 2 Kindle books.

I’m very excited!

1.  Scotsmen Prefer Blondes, by Sara Ramsey (Publicist)

She never wanted marriage…When a friend is forced to consider a marriage of convenience, Lady Amelia Staunton is determined to rescue her.  But her plans trap her in an illicit seduction, and Amelia must marry him herself.  Malcolm’s all-consuming kisses and devilish humor might make up for her lost freedom, but she believes he will force her to abandon the Gothic romances she yearns to write.  Since she can’t escape him, she must distract him from her secret….

2.  Shades of Murder, by Lauren Carr (Author)

Question: What do you get the man with everything? Answer: When that man is the heir of the late mystery writer Robin Spencer, retired homicide detective Mac Faraday, you get him cold case to solve. In Shades of Murder, Mac Faraday is once again the heir to an unbelievable fortune. This time the benefactor is a stolen art collector. But this isn’t just any stolen work-of-art—it’s a masterpiece with a murder attached to it. Ilysa Ramsay was in the midst of taking the art world by storm with her artistic genius. Hours after unveiling her latest masterpiece—she is found dead in her Deep Creek Lake studio—and her painting is nowhere to be found. Almost a decade later, the long lost Ilysa Ramsay masterpiece has found its way into Mac Faraday’s hands and he can’t resist the urge to delve into the case. A world away, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; former JAG lawyer Joshua Thornton agrees to do a favor for the last person he would ever expect to do a favor—a convicted serial killer. The Favor: Solve the one murder wrongly attributed to him. Joshua finds an unexpected ally in Cameron Gates, a spunky detective who has reason to believe the young woman known to the media only as Jane Doe, Victim Number Four, was the victim of a copycat. Together, Joshua and Cameron set out to light a flame under the cold case only to find that someone behind the scenes wants the case to remain cold, and is willing to kill to keep it that way. Little do these detectives know that the paths of their respective cases are on a collision course when they follow the clues to bring them together in a showdown with a killer who’s got a talent for murder!

3.  Terminal Abduction, by Kate McGuinness (Author)

Maggie Mahoney wants justice for women at her law firm. 

                        The firm chairman wants to be Attorney General. 

                                          Only one can win. Sweeny, Owens & Boyle sits at the top of Wall Street law firms. Brilliant and beautiful, Maggie Mahoney became a partner and the trophy wife of its managing attorney. Her husband’s death renders Maggie an outsider with the firm’s male establishment and creates a power vacuum.Obsessed with his dream of becoming the next Attorney General, firm chairman, Andy Anderson, chooses a surprising replacement: Jack Slattery, a reputed sexist. Jack’s background hardly qualifies him for such a prominent position. Maggie suspects Jack has something on Andy, but what is it?

Andy’s ambition drives him to desperate measures. With proof of misconduct in hand, Maggie demands justice, but it comes at a high price. If ambition rules, can justice prevail?

4.  Where We Belong, by Emily Giffin (Amazon Vine)

Marian Caldwell is a thirty-six year old television producer, living her dream in New York City. With a fulfilling career and satisfying relationship, she has convinced everyone, including herself, that her life is just as she wants it to be. But one night, Marian answers a knock on the door . . . only to find Kirby Rose, an eighteen-year-old girl with a key to a past that Marian thought she had sealed off forever. From the moment Kirby appears on her doorstep, Marian’s perfectly constructed world—and her very identity—will be shaken to its core, resurrecting ghosts and memories of a passionate young love affair that threaten everything that has come to define her.

For the precocious and determined Kirby, the encounter will spur a process of discovery that ushers her across the threshold of adulthood, forcing her to re-evaluate her family and future in a wise and bittersweet light. As the two women embark on a journey to find the one thing missing in their lives, each will come to recognize that where we belong is often where we least expect to find ourselves—a place that we may have willed ourselves to forget, but that the heart remembers forever.

5.  The Girl Below, by Bianca Zander (Amazon Vine)

Suki Piper is a stranger in her hometown. . . .

After ten years in New Zealand, Suki returns to London, to a city that won’t let her in. However, a chance visit with Peggy—an old family friend who still lives in the building where she grew up—convinces Suki that there is a way to reconnect with the life she left behind a decade earlier. But the more involved she becomes with Peggy’s dysfunctional family, including Peggy’s wayward sixteen-year-old grandson, the more Suki finds herself mysteriously slipping back in time—to the night of a party her parents threw in their garden more than twenty years ago, when something happened in an old, long-unused air-raid shelter. . . .

A breathtaking whirlwind of mystery, transgression, and self-discovery, Bianca Zander’s The Girl Below is a haunting tale of secrets, human frailty, and dark memory that heralds the arrival of an extraordinary new literary talent.

6.  Dirty Little Secrets, (e-book), by C. J. Omololu

Everyone has a secret. But Lucy’s is bigger and dirtier than most. It’s one she’s been hiding for years-that her mom’s out-of-control hoarding has turned their lives into a world of garbage and shame. She’s managed to keep her home life hidden from her best friend and her crush, knowing they’d be disgusted by the truth. So, when her mom dies suddenly in their home, Lucy hesitates to call 911 because revealing their way of life would make her future unbearable-and she begins her two-day plan to set her life right.

With details that are as fascinating as they are disturbing, C. J. Omololu weaves an hour-by-hour account of Lucy’s desperate attempt at normalcy. Her fear and isolation are palpable as readers are pulled down a path from which there is no return, and the impact of hoarding on one teen’s life will have readers completely hooked.

7.  Real Life and Liars, (e-book), by Kristina Riggle

Sometimes you find happiness where, and when, you least expect it.

For Mirabelle Zielinski’s children, happiness always seems to be just out of reach. Her polished oldest daughter, Katya, clings to a stale marriage with a workaholic husband and three spoiled children. Her son, Ivan, so creative, is a down-in-the-dumps songwriter with the worst taste in women. And the “baby,” impulsive Irina, who lives life on a whim, is now reluctantly pregnant and hitched to a man who is twice her age. On the weekend of their parents’ anniversary party, lies will be revealed, hearts will be broken…but love will also be found. And the biggest shock may come from Mirabelle herself, because she has a secret that will change everything.

***

WHAT ARE YOU READING?

Happy Memorial Day!  Welcome to another week of sharing our thoughts about books, blogging, and life.

I am happy to report a good week, in spite of the abscessed tooth and the accompanying pain.  I’ll be having oral surgery on Wednesday, so hopefully, I can move past this phase!

On the Blogs:

My Friday Potpourri:  Tidbits from the Edge explored some thoughts and ramblings about life here; and in my Sweet Saturday Sample, I excerpted from Interior Designs (one of my WIPs).

Books Read/Reviewed:  (Click titles for reviews)

Review:  The Witness, by Nora Roberts

Review:   Another Piece of My Heart, by Jane Green

Review:     Objects of My Affection, by Jill Smolinski

Review:      11/22/63, by Stephen King

WHAT’S UP NEXT?    (Click titles/covers for more info)

1.  American Legacy:  The Story of John & Caroline Kennedy, by C. David Heymann (From Mt. TBR)

2.  Son of Rosemary, by Ira Levin (Another Mt. TBR graduate!)

3.   Ocean Beach, by Wendy Wax (Review book)

4.  Ninepins (e-book), by Rosy Thornton

So that’s what my week looks like…I expect that I’ll be reading the Kennedy book on and off, just as I did with 11/22/63.

What are the rest of you anticipating?  I hope you have a wonderful holiday weekend…and take some time out to visit!