Monthly Archives: September 2010

Three beautiful new books this week!

Outside the Ordinary World by Dori Ostermiller

is for a TLC Books tour in November.  I’m intrigued, but also nervous about agreeing to review this book, since I often have a negative reaction to books about adultery.

Here’s the summary:

Sylvia Sandon is at a crossroads in her life. A wife and mother of two daughters, she and her city-planner husband are grappling with the escalating renovation of their antique farmhouse—a situation that mirrors the disarray in Sylvia’s life. Facing a failing marriage and a stalled career as an art teacher, Sylvia finds herself suddenly powerless to the allure of Tai Rosen, the father of her most challenging art student. As their passion ignites, Sylvia is forced to examine her past, and the seeds of betrayal that were sown decades earlier by her mother’s secret life.

Edge of Sight by Roxanne St. Claire

I’m looking forward to this one for a Hachette tour at the end of October.    Not  only is there a blog tour, but there’s a Twitter Party!

Summary:

The killer she can’t escape . . .
The heartbreak she can’t forget . . .
The one man who can stop them both.

When Samantha Fairchild witnesses a murder in the wine cellar of the restaurant where she works, the Harvard-bound law student becomes the next target of a professional assassin. Desperate for protection the authorities won’t provide, Sam seeks help from Vivi Angelino, an investigative reporter who recruits her brother, Zach, to protect Samantha. A Special Forces vet with the scars to prove he’s equally fearless and flawed, Zach takes the job, despite the fact that he and Sam once shared a lusty interlude that ended when he left for war and disappeared from her life. Now, as they crack a conspiracy that leads to Boston’s darkest corners, Sam and Zach must face their fears, desires, and doubts, before a hired killer gets a second shot…

City of Tranquil Light by Bo Caldwell

My book club read Bo Caldwell’s earlier book, The Distant Land of My Father, with Silicon Valley Reads in 2008.  I’d actually been thinking about The Distant Land of My Father when I read Heart of Lies by M.L. Malcolm earlier in the summer.  I was very excited to be offered a chance to review City of Tranquil Light.  Thank you to Henry Holt and Company Publishers.

Summary:

Will Kiehn is seemingly destined for life as a humble farmer in the Midwest when, having felt a call from God, he travels to the vast North China Plain in the early twentieth-century. There he is surprised by love and weds a strong and determined fellow missionary, Katherine. They soon find themselves witnesses to the crumbling of a more than two-thousand-year-old dynasty that plunges the country into decades of civil war. As the couple works to improve the lives of the people of Kuang P’ing Ch’eng— City of Tranquil Light, a place they come to love—and face incredible hardship, will their faith and relationship be enough to sustain them?

Mailbox Monday is a weekly post where I talk about the books that have arrived in my house over the last week.

Marcia at The Printed Page hosts the Mailbox Monday Blog Tour. This month’s home is Bermudaonion’s Weblog.  Next week, it moves on to She Reads and Reads. Leave a note with what new reads came your way (and any thoughts about mine), then check out some other blogs!

My stacks of books are growing and growing…  I love it, but it’s kind of scary, too!

Russian Winter by Daphne Kalotay

I saw Booking Mama’s review of Russian Winter, and  I immediately entered her giveaway and put it on my books-to-find list.  When I saw it again in Shelf Awareness, I decided this was a book I really wanted to read and review, so I contacted Harper Collins.  Here it is, ready for me to start reading!  Thank you Harper Collins!

When she decides to auction her remarkable jewelry collection, Nina Revskaya, once a great star of the Bolshoi Ballet, believes she has finally drawn a curtain on her past. Instead, the former ballerina 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 ago.

It was in Russia that she discovered the magic of the theater; that she fell in love with the poet Viktor Elsin; that she and her dearest companions—Gersh, a brilliant composer, and the exquisite Vera, Nina’s closest friend—became victims of Stalinist aggression. And it was in Russia that a terrible discovery incited a deadly act of betrayal—and an ingenious escape that led Nina to the West and eventually to Boston.

Nina has kept her secrets for half a lifetime. But two people will not let the past rest: Drew Brooks, an inquisitive young associate at a Boston auction house, and Grigori Solodin, a professor of Russian who believes that a unique set of jewels may hold the key to his own ambiguous past. Together these unlikely partners begin to unravel a mystery surrounding a love letter, a poem, and a necklace of unknown provenance, setting in motion a series of revelations that will have life-altering consequences for them all.

Interweaving past and present, Moscow and New England, the backstage tumult of the dance world and the transformative power of art, Daphne Kalotay’s luminous first novel—a literary page-turner of the highest order—captures the uncertainty and terror of individuals powerless to withstand the forces of history, while affirming that even in times of great strife, the human spirit reaches for beauty and grace, forgiveness and transcendence.

Scholastic and Brilliance Audio seemed to be celebrating Book Blogger Appreciation Week last week!

From Scholastic:

(When I visited Scholastic in May as part of the Book Blogger Convention, I was amazed at how friendly and willing to work with bloggers everyone we talked to was.  Then I got home, and never contacted them.  They didn’t forget about me!)

Allie Finkle’s Rules for Girls #6: Blast From The Past by Meg Cabot

My daughter hasn’t read the earlier books in the series, but she just picked up the Cabot’s Princess Diaries series a month or so ago, so she’s interested in giving this one a try.

StarCrossed by Elizabeth C. Bunce

This one looks intriguing to me!  The description says it combines “the richness of fantasy with the twists and turns of the best spy stories”, and the cover is just gorgeous!

The Miracle Stealer by Neil Connelly

This one sounds like it has the possibility of being a truly “wow” book. I’ll be interested in seeing if it lives up to the promise of the description.

Thank you to Scholastic for sending all three of these books! My daughter and I are both looking forward to reading them, although I have first dibs on the latter two!

My biggest surprise of the week came from Brilliance Audio.

Brilliance Audio is launching a new imprint of children’s books (including YA)– Candlewick on Brilliance Audio.  They sent me a box with copies of 12 books that are set to be released this month as part of that imprint.  I’ve put together a separate post on the launch and on these books!

And just to round things out, Pam from Bookalicious passed me her copy of Beth Kephart’s The Heart is not a Size,  and I have The Extrodinary Secrets of April, May & June by Robin Benway from Debbie at Debbie’s World of Books!  Thanks to those fantastic book bloggers.

Mailbox Monday is a weekly post where I talk about the books that have arrived in my house over the last week.

Marcia at The Printed Page hosts the Mailbox Monday Blog Tour. This month’s home is Bermudaonion’s Weblog.