Mailbox Monday and In My Mailbox - November 15, 2010

"Mailbox Monday" is the brainchild of Marcia at The Printed Page

Mailbox Monday is now on a blog tour.  Click here to see the tour schedule!  

This month's host is ME!   Visit every week this month to see links to the latest and greatest books arriving in mailboxes!  Be aware, though, visiting can lead to book envy and toppling TBR piles! 

December's host will be Lady Q at Let Them Read Books!  So be certain to stop by her blog and show her some love! 


I will also be offering a different giveaway every week throughout November to encourage participation!  

Last week's winner:

WTG, Elysium!  Look for my email!

This week's giveaway: 

Your choice of one of the following audiobooks:

          

How to enter?  Simply link up YOUR Mailbox Monday post and then add a comment stating that you'd like to enter (let me know which audiobook you'd like too)!  If you don't have a blog, leave a comment letting me know what you got in your mailbox and that you'd like to enter!   You have until the following Monday to link up and enter!

"In My Mailbox" is hosted by The Story Siren.

Every week we'll post about what books we have that week (via your mailbox/library/store bought)! Everyone that agrees to participate will try to visit each other's list and leave comments!  Everyone is welcome to join! You can join at anytime and you DO NOT have to participate every week.


So, on to my mailbox! 

Monday:
 

Somewhere Along the Way by Jodi Thomas - Won from Mary at Book Fan!  Thank you, Mary!  - In the two years since she claimed Harmony, Texas, as her home, eighteen-year-old Reagan Truman has found herself drawn to others who have made their way there, too. Gabe Leary, for instance, whose plan to hide out in Harmony is dashed when he becomes the town hero. Then there's Liz Matheson: Vulnerable and fresh out of law school, Liz has never been needed by anyone—until an unsettling encounter with Gabe changes everything. And there's Liz's brother, volunteer fire chief Hank Matheson, who's starting to wonder where the town's sheriff, Alex McAllen, will ever set the date to marry him.

As for Reagan, who's been shaped by the loneliness she's know most of her life, she's finally found a place she belongs—and doesn't want anything to get in her way. But when her life is put in jeopardy and the whole town comes together to save her, she'll discover that trusting the love that's come into our hearts is the greatest gift of all…

The Reckoning by Howard Owen - Bound Galley for Review through Library Thing Early Reviewers program - George James and Freeman Hawk were unlikely friends. George was part of soft-spoken, old-money Richmond; Freeman came from a hardscrabble country family mired in poverty and marked by violence. Fate threw them together long ago as freshman roommates at New Hope College. It was the late 60s, and George was the standard-bearer for a society living on borrowed time while Freeman was leading the charge into what came next. Before they left New Hope, though, Freeman would convert George, convince him that there was a better world to be made, persuade him temporarily to forsake the seamless life that already was mapped out for him as the Ham Prince of Richmond. Canada. The option to war-bloodied America, beckoned. The moment of truth came in a small town on the Vermont border, where George James lost his faith in Freeman Hawk or perhaps in himself and hesitated. Fast-forward to the early twenty-first century, in a world whose axis has been tilted by 9/11. George and his son Jake, are existing in a shaky approximation of normalcy, nursing the wounds of their own, personal loss as George negotiates the sale of the family business and Jake, plunged into despair and rage by his mother s death, is consigned to a private school for troubled teens. Things get dicier when Freeman Hawk reappears. Nothing about him is as it seems, not even his name. Freeman is on the run, but from what? In Howard Owen s ninth novel, old scabs are torn off and new wounds inflicted. In the end there will be a reckoning for all of them, and sixteen-year-old Jake James will find himself at a border as daunting as the one from which his father turned back so long ago.

The Emerald Atlas by John Stephens - ARC for Review from the publisher through Shelf Awareness - That is NOT the real cover; since it doesn't release until April of next year, I can't find the real cover AND my darn camera isn't working, so I can't even take a pic of the ARC's cover - this has been described as "Tolkien for 10-year-olds".  Bebe Boy James was reading "Lord of the Rings" when he was 5!  SO I think he'll really enjoy this! - Kate, Michael, and Emma have been in one orphanage after another for the last ten years, passed along like lost baggage.Yet these unwanted children are more remarkable than they could possibly imagine. Ripped from their parents as babies, they are being protected from a horrible evil of devastating power, an evil they know nothing about.Until now.Before long, Kate, Michael, and Emma are on a journey to dangerous and secret corners of the world...a journey of allies and enemies, of magic and mayhem.  And—if an ancient prophesy is correct—what they do can change history, and it is up to them to set things right.The Emerald Atlas brims with humor and action as it charts Kate, Michael, and Emma's extraordinary adventures through an unforgettable, enchanted world


Saturday:

Stranger Here Below by Joyce Hinnefeld - For Review through Library Thing's Early Reviewer program - In 1961, when Amazing Grace Jansen, a firecracker from Appalachia, meets Mary Elizabeth Cox, the daughter of a Black southern preacher, at Kentucky s Berea College, they already carry the scars and traces of their mothers troubles. Poor and single, Maze s mother has had to raise her daughter alone and fight to keep a roof over their heads. Mary Elizabeth s mother has carried a shattering grief throughout her life, a loss so great that it has disabled her and isolated her stern husband and her brilliant, talented daughter. The caution this has scored into Mary Elizabeth has made her defensive and too private and limited her ambitions, despite her gifts as a musician. But Maze s earthy fearlessness might be enough to carry them both forward toward lives lived bravely in an angry world that changes by the day. Both of them are drawn to the enigmatic Georginea Ward, an aging idealist who taught at Berea sixty years ago, fell in love with a black man, and suddenly found herself renamed as a sister in a tiny Shaker community. Sister Georgia believes in discipline and simplicity, yes. But, more important, her faith is rooted in fairness and the long reach of unconditional love. This is a novel about three generations of women and the love that makes families where none can be expected.

Hoodoo Sea by Rolf Hitzer - For Review through Pump Up Your Book - The government of the United States of America is on the verge of startling the world. Billions of dollars had been invested in its space program . And now, the moment of truth had arrived… Scott Reed is the man for the historic mission. He is the Wing Commander chosen by the elite brass at NASA. The assignment to test flight the first speed of light craft, held top secret, was about to shock the world. The risk? Utter and complete failure. The reward? Being a part of the greatest human accomplishment ever known to mankind. Major James Harrow, second in command of the four person crew, despised his Wing Commander. Harrow was a proud and patriotic American. What was NASA thinking when they selected a Canadian to pilot the voyage? There was no comparison as to who was the better skilled aviator. This was his time, his moment. Major James Harrow was about to prove to everybody they were wrong to bypass him as Commander. The weather conditions were perfect and lift-off for the test flight was text book. The triumphant cheers from Mission Control in Houston were echoed all the way to Cape Canaveral. The silent fear of the first hurdle of the flight had been succumbed. All systems were go! That is, until the crew and SOLT-X1 entered the Bermuda Triangle…


What did YOU get this week!

Link up YOUR mailbox!