Mailbox Monday: June 27, 2011

Mailbox Monday, created by Marcia at The Printed Page, is being hosted this month by Brooke at The Bluestocking Guide. If you'd like to join in, stop by Brooke's and leave a link - or just browse through the comments to see what new books have been showing up.

In July, Mailbox Monday will be hosted by me! Right here at A Sea of Books! Hope to see you then!

What's in your mailbox?

IN THE SEA THERE ARE CROCODILES
by Fabio Geda

from Random House

THE THINGS WE CHERISHED
by Pam Jenoff

from Random House

JOY FOR BEGINNERS
by Erica Bauermeister

from G.P. Putnam

THE MORAL LIVES OF ANIMALS
by Dale Peterson

a win from Book Club Classics

DEAR TEACHER
by Amy Husband

from Sourcebooks, Inc.

FRIENDSHIP BREAD
by Darien Gee

a win from Always With a Book

Thank you to all the authors, publishers, publicists, and bloggers who keep my mailbox so well fed!

Spotlight and Book Giveaway: FLASHBACK by Dan Simmons

CLOSED.

Thanks to the future-minded folks at
Hachette Book Group,

I have been authorized to
 give away two (2) copies of

FLASHBACK
by Dan Simmons.

Rules for entering this giveaway
are at the bottom of this post.

FLASHBACK

by Dan Simmons

Pub. Date: July 2011

Publisher: Little, Brown & Company

Format: Hardcover , 560pp

ISBN-13: 9780316006965

ISBN: 0316006963

Description (from the publisher):
The United States is near total collapse. But 87% of the population doesn't care: they're addicted to flashback, a drug that allows its users to re-experience the best moments of their lives. After ex-detective Nick Bottom's wife died in a car accident, he went under the flash to be with her; he's lost his job, his teenage son, and his livelihood as a result.

Nick may be a lost soul but he's still a good cop, so he is hired to investigate the murder of a top governmental advisor's son. This flashback-addict becomes the one man who may be able to change the course of an entire nation turning away from the future to live in the past.

A provocative novel set in a future that seems scarily possible, FLASHBACK proves why Dan Simmons is one of our most exciting and versatile writers.

Click here to listen to an adio excerpt.

Click here to visit the author's website.

About the author (from the publisher):
Dan Simmons is the award-winning author of several novels, including the New York Times bestsellers Olympos and The Terror. He lives in Colorado.

RULES FOR ENTERING THE GIVEAWAY:

• Leave an original comment on this post telling me you would like to win. Include an email address with your comment so that I can contact you if you do win. Use a spam-thwarting format such as geebee.reads AT gmail DOT com or geebee.reads [at] gmail [dot] com

• You must leave an email address in order to qualify. If I can't contact you, you can't win!

• You can earn an extra entry by being or becoming a Follower or Subscriber of this blog and telling me about it in a separate comment.

• Blog about this contest and provide me with the link to the post in a separate comment, and I'll give you yet another entry.

• Tweeting about this contest and providing me the link in a separate comment will get you one more entry. I've added a Retweet button at the bottom of every post.

• Stumble this blog, Digg it, or Technorati Fave it, whatever, and leave a separate comment for another entry.

• Winners must provide a U.S. or Canadian street address. Hachette is unable to deliver to P.O. Boxes.

• PLEASE NOTE: One win per household. If you win this title in another contest hosted at another blog, Hachette will only send one copy per household address.

• Deadline for entry is 11:59 p.m. EST on Friday, July 8, 2011.

• Winners will have 48 hours to respond to my email announcing that they have won; if I don't hear from a winner, I will draw another name.

• Winners are determined using the sequence generator at Random.org.

Thank you to Anna
at Hachette Book Group

for making this giveaway possible.

GOOD LUCK EVERYONE!

THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED.

Guest Post from Wendy Wax, author of TEN BEACH ROAD

Today I have a special treat for you -- a wonderful guest post from Wendy Wax, author of TEN BEACH ROAD.   I'm so honored to have Wendy here on the shores of A Sea of Books to  rhapsodize about her favorite beach. 

The Beach I grew up on…

Wendy Wax

I was one of those lucky people who grew up on a beach. In my case it was St. Petersburg Beach, that comma of land that curves into the Gulf of Mexico on the west central coast of Florida. It was beautiful all year round, but the summers were especially wonderful. We spent most days on Pass-a-Grille at the southernmost end of St. Pete Beach, at the Rellim Hotel, which was owned by family friends, where the moms played cards and the children, well, romped. 

Some of my earliest memories include holding my breath. Family lore has it that I learned to swim before I could walk. I’m not sure if that’s actually true, but I do remember standing on the edge of the deep end where I would wait until people were watching (I guess I’ve always loved an audience) and then throw myself into the swimming pool and swim underwater to the other end where I’d come up for air to adult gasps of relief.  I could and did spend hours in the pool doing handstands and trying to talk underwater clearly enough to be understood. Then there were the summersaults — how many you could complete without having to come up for air was a matter of pride. I’m happy to report that it looks like not breathing while ingesting large quantities of chlorine has had no long term effect.

Those long, hot summer days were spent eating ice cream sandwiches and racing across the sand between the hotel’s freshwater pool and the salty gulf with occasional stops to build sand castles or dig for coquinas. Other days we’d cartwheel down the hard packed sand near the waters’ edge for what seemed like miles.

During the school year, I went to the aptly named, Sunshine Elementary, where we had a fish broil every fall and art class and P.E. sometimes took place on the beach. You can see documentation of all of this at the Gulf Beaches Historical Museum on Pass-a-Grille, where Pass-a-Grille’s 100th anniversary is being celebrated.

My mother used to say that people who lived there had ‘sand in their shoes.’ I thought she meant this literally; after all there was sand everywhere—and not just in our shoes!

It took me a long time to realize that she was referring to the pace at which everyone and everything moved—or didn’t. I grew up assuming that everyone lived across the street from the beach under the shade of palm trees and spent hours perfecting their underwater summersaults. And by the time I’d finished high school, I couldn’t wait to leave for somewhere more exciting. It took going away to fully appreciate how lucky I’d been to grow up in such an incredible place. I’ve searched out sandy spots around the globe, and never found a beach I liked more. 

Which may explain why when I began writing Ten Beach Road, the story of three women who lose their life savings to a Ponzi scheme and are left with only co-ownership of a derelict beachfront mansion, I spent a long time envisioning the house and about two seconds deciding on which beach it would sit.

The locations in Ten Beach Road, on sale May 3rd, are a mixture of real Pass-a-Grille spots that I’ve loved all my life and fictional streets that may confound some of the locals. Bella Flora, the once-fabulous Mediterranean Revival style mansion at the heart of the story sits on the non-existent ‘Beach Road’ (actually 1st Avenue) at the southwestern tip of Pass-a-Grille. (This wasn’t easy as I had to mentally move a condominium building so that Bella Flora could command its spectacular view of the pass and Shell Island.)

Most nights my characters Madeline Singer, Avery Lawford and Nicole Grant drag their weary bodies out back to toast the sunset and search for at least one good thing to say about their day. In the process, they bond and become friends, working to reclaim their own lives even as they rebuild Bella Flora.

Like me, Madeline, Avery and Nicole know exactly why St. Petersburg Beach has been named ‘the sunset capital of Florida.’

Thank you, Wendy, for sharing your reminisces with us. I've never been to St. Pete's, but I hope to visit some day. (Though I did really like St. Augustine on the opposite coast!)

I hope you'll all check back here tomorrow for my review of Wendy's lovely book, TEN BEACH ROAD.  You can click here if you'd like to read an excerpt.

Click here to visit the author's website.

Waiting on Wednesday: THE ANGEL OF BLYTHE HALL by Darci Hannah

"WAITING ON WEDNESDAY"

is hosted by Jill from

Breaking the Spine.

Join in and tell us . . .

What are you waiting for?

My pick for this week is . . .

THE ANGEL OF BLYTHE HALL

by Darci Hannah

Pub. Date: July 2011

Publisher: Random House Publishing Group

Format: Paperback , 512pp

ISBN-13: 9780345520562

ISBN: 0345520564

Description (from the publisher):
In a tumultuous battle, a beautiful and determined noblewoman claims her birthright while awakening great danger, exquisite passion, and the mystical realm in this enchanting novel of suspense and adventure.

Prepared to lay claim to her family’s magnificent ancestral fortress in the Scottish border country, Lady Isabeau Blythe is determined to restore her noble family’s good name and reclaim these stunning, strife-torn lands. But even the headstrong Isabeau’s firm sense of reality is shaken by the inexplicable allure of Blythe Hall, an entrancing castle haunted by dark secrets—and otherworldly creatures of light and desire.

Isabeau’s arrival sets in motion an epic power struggle: a ferocious fight for Scotland, her family, and her heart. Taunted and tempted by a sinister rogue knight, Sir George, who covets her land and her love, and trapped in the madness of her charismatic brother, Julius, who seeks power of unearthly origin, Isabeau can only surrender to the wild visions of the remarkable man she inexplicably longs for. With a bloodthirsty army amassing outside her gates, Isabeau summons help from Gabriel, the elusive man of her dreams. But does this alluring man possess the secrets of the castle and her destiny?

Click here to read an excerpt.

Click here to visit the author's website.

Teaser Tuesdays: MISS TIMMINS' SCHOOL FOR GIRLS by Nayana Currimbhoy

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme hosted by Miz B. of Should Be Reading.

"Daughters were raised on malai and rosewater, loved and nurtured and trained to be sweet and soft and pliant. They were to be led tenderly to the great crossing before they turned twenty. On the other side, as daughters-in-law, they must eat dirt for the first ten years. They must be prepared for a life of criticism and scrutiny and acts of random cruelty."

-- page 305

MISS TIMMINS' SCHOOL FOR GIRLS
by Nayana Currimbhoy

Pub. Date: June 2011
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Format: Paperback , 512pp
ISBN-13: 9780061997747

ISBN: 0061997749

Click here to read an excerpt.

Mailbox Monday: June 13, 2011

Mailbox Monday, created by Marcia at The Printed Page, is being hosted this month by Brooke at The Bluestocking Guide. If you'd like to join in, stop by Julie's and leave a link - or just browse through the comments to see what new books have been showing up.

What's in your mailbox?

 

Audio CD's from Paperback Swap

CRISS CROSS by Lynne Rae Perkins

THE LAST APPRENTICE #1: Revenge of the Witch by Joseph Delaney

From Harper Collins:
MISS TIMMINS' SCHOOL FOR GIRLS by Nayana Currimbhoy
ELLIS ISLAND by Kate Kerrigan

 From Penguin Group

JOY FOR BEGINNERS
by Erica Bauermeister

FATHER'S DAY ROUNDUP GIVEAWAY FROM HACHETTE BOOK GROUP: Great Books for Great Dads

CLOSED.

WOW! This is one amazing giveaway!

And you don't have to be a dad to win!

Thanks to the generous folks at
Hachette Book Group,

I have been authorized to
 give away 2 sets of 5 amazing books!

Rules for entering this giveaway
are at the bottom of this post.

Remember, two (2) readers will each win a set of five (5) books.  Here's the lineup:

(Book descriptions are all courtesy of the publisher.)

THE RIDGE by Michael Koryta

On an isolated ridge in the Kentucky woods stands a homemade lighthouse, hundreds of miles from any substantial body of water. Local reporter Roy Darmus has always found it an amusing oddity- until he is selected as the recipient of a suicide note from its builder. Roy enters the bizarre structure to find the walls covered in maps bearing the names of the dead--including his own parents, who were killed in a car accident when he was a boy. Roy soon has a storytelling assignment more daunting than anything he's seen before: convincing people that an age-old legend has in fact come to life. With haunting atmosphere and tension-coiled plot, The Ridge is a terrifying journey into the heart of darkness.

THE FIFTH WITNESS

by Michael Connelly

Mickey Haller has fallen on tough times. He expands his business into foreclosure defense, only to see one of his clients accused of killing the banker she blames for trying to take away her home.

Mickey puts his team into high gear to exonerate Lisa Trammel, even though the evidence and his own suspicions tell him his client is guilty. Soon after he learns that the victim had black market dealings of his own, Haller is assaulted, too--and he's certain he's on the right trail.

Despite the danger and uncertainty, Haller mounts the best defense of his career in a trial where the last surprise comes after the verdict is in. Connelly proves again why he "may very well be the best novelist working in the United States today" (San Francisco Chronicle).

THE HOUSE THAT RUTH BUILT
by Robert Weintraub

The untold story of Babe Ruth's Yankees, John McGraw's Giants, and the extraordinary baseball season of 1923

Before the 27 World Series titles--before Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, and Derek Jeter-the Yankees were New York's shadow franchise. They hadn't won a championship, and they didn't even have their own field, renting the Polo Grounds from their cross-town rivals the New York Giants. In 1921 and 1922, they lost to the Giants when it mattered most: in October.

But in 1923, the Yankees played their first season on their own field, the newly-built, state of the art baseball palace in the Bronx called "the Yankee Stadium." The stadium was a gamble, erected in relative outerborough obscurity, and Babe Ruth was coming off the most disappointing season of his career, a season that saw his struggles on and off the field threaten his standing as a bona fide superstar.

It only took Ruth two at-bats to signal a new era. He stepped up to the plate in the 1923 season opener and cracked a home run to deep right field, the first homer in his park, and a sign of what lay ahead. It was the initial blow in a season that saw the new stadium christened "The House That Ruth Built," signaled the triumph of the power game, and established the Yankees as New York's-and the sport's-team to beat.

From that first home run of 1923 to the storybook World Series matchup that pitted the Yankees against their nemesis from across the Harlem River-one so acrimonious that John McGraw forced his Giants to get to the Bronx in uniform rather than suit up at the Stadium-Robert Weintraub vividly illuminates the singular year that built a classic stadium, catalyzed a franchise, cemented Ruth's legend, and forever changed the sport of baseball.

LIFE
by Keith Richards 

The long-awaited autobiography of the guitarist, songwriter, singer, and founding member of the Rolling Stones. Ladies and gentlemen: Keith Richards.

With The Rolling Stones, Keith Richards created the songs that roused the world, and he lived the original rock and roll life.

Now, at last, the man himself tells his story of life in the crossfire hurricane. Listening obsessively to Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters records, learning guitar and forming a band with Mick Jagger and Brian Jones. The Rolling Stones's first fame and the notorious drug busts that led to his enduring image as an outlaw folk hero. Creating immortal riffs like the ones in "Jumping Jack Flash" and "Honky Tonk Women." His relationship with Anita Pallenberg and the death of Brian Jones. Tax exile in France, wildfire tours of the U.S., isolation and addiction. Falling in love with Patti Hansen. Estrangement from Jagger and subsequent reconciliation. Marriage, family, solo albums and Xpensive Winos, and the road that goes on forever.

With his trademark disarming honesty, Keith Richard brings us the story of a life we have all longed to know more of, unfettered, fearless, and true.

THE PALE KING
by David Foster Wallace

The agents at the IRS Regional Examination Center in Peoria, Illinois, appear ordinary enough to newly arrived trainee David Foster Wallace. But as he immerses himself in a routine so tedious and repetitive that new employees receive boredom-survival training, he learns of the extraordinary variety of personalities drawn to this strange calling. And he has arrived at a moment when forces within the IRS are plotting to eliminate even what little humanity and dignity the work still has.The Pale King remained unfinished at the time of David Foster Wallace's death, but it is a deeply compelling and satisfying novel, hilarious and fearless and as original as anything Wallace ever undertook. It grapples directly with ultimate questions--questions of life's meaning and of the value of work and society--through characters imagined with the interior force and generosity that were Wallace's unique gifts. Along the way it suggests a new idea of heroism and commands infinite respect for one of the most daring writers of our time.

RULES FOR ENTERING THE GIVEAWAY:

• MANDATORY ENTRY: In honor of Fathers' Day, tell us something nice about your dad or the father-figure in your life. Include an email address with your comment so that I can contact you if you do win. Use a spam-thwarting format such as geebee.reads AT gmail DOT com or geebee.reads [at] gmail [dot] com

• You must leave an email address in order to qualify. If I can't contact you, you can't win!

• You can earn an extra entry by being or becoming a Follower or Subscriber of this blog and telling me about it in a separate comment.

• Blog about this contest and provide me with the link to the post in a separate comment, and I'll give you yet another entry.

• Tweeting about this contest and providing me the link in a separate comment will get you one more entry. I've added a Retweet button at the bottom of every post.

• Stumble this blog, Digg it, or Technorati Fave it, whatever, and leave a separate comment for another entry.

• Winners must provide a U.S. or Canadian street address. Hachette is unable to deliver to P.O. Boxes.

• PLEASE NOTE: One win per household. If you win this set if books in another contest hosted at another blog, Hachette will only send one set per household address.

• Deadline for entry is 11:59 p.m. EST on Friday, June 24, 2011.

• Winners will have 48 hours to respond to my email announcing that they have won; if I don't hear from a winner, I will draw another name.

• Winners are determined using the sequence generator at Random.org.

Thank you to Anna

at Hachette Book Group

for making this giveaway possible.

GOOD LUCK EVERYONE!
THIS CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED.

Ditto Doubles: Lashes of Consequence

I've read the Crombie book and really liked it. (It's from one of my favorite detective series.) The Perkins book is on my Wish List and I hope to read it this summer. But what I REALLY want are those eyelashes! What's her secret?!

NECESSARY AS BLOOD
By Deborah Crombie

The latest entry in Deborah Crombie’s New York Times Notable, Edgar®, Agatha, and Macavity Awards-nominated mystery series featuring Scotland Yard detectives Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James.

 SECRET KEEPER

by Mitali Perkins

A novel about sisters, secrets, and the power of sacrificial love set in 1970s India.

Waiting on Wednesday: THE GIRL IN THE BLUE BERET by Bobbie Ann Mason

"WAITING ON WEDNESDAY"

is hosted by Jill from

Breaking the Spine.

Join in and tell us . . .

What are you waiting for?

My pick for this week is . . .

THE GIRL IN THE BLUE BERET

by Bobbie Ann Mason

Pub. Date: June 28, 2011

Publisher: Random House Publishing Group

Format: Hardcover , 368pp

ISBN-13: 9781400067183

ISBN: 1400067189

Description (from the publisher):
Inspired by the wartime experiences of her late father-in-law, award-winning author Bobbie Ann Mason has written an unforgettable novel about an American World War II pilot shot down in Occupied Europe.

When Marshall Stone returns to his crash site decades later, he finds himself drawn back in time to the brave people who helped him escape from the Nazis. He especially recalls one intrepid girl guide who risked her life to help him—the girl in the blue beret.

At twenty-three, Marshall Stone was a U.S. flyboy stationed in England. Headstrong and cocksure, he had nine exhilarating bombing raids under his belt when enemy fighters forced his B-17 to crash-land in a Belgian field near the border of France. The memories of what happened next—the frantic moments right after the fiery crash, the guilt of leaving his wounded crewmates and fleeing into the woods to escape German troops, the terror of being alone in a foreign country—all come rushing back when Marshall sets foot on that Belgian field again.

Marshall was saved only by the kindness of ordinary citizens who, as part of the Resistance, moved downed Allied airmen through clandestine, often outrageous routes (over the Pyrenees to Spain) to get them back to their bases in England. Even though Marshall shared a close bond with several of the Resistance members who risked their lives for him, after the war he did not look back. But now he wants to find them again—to thank them and renew their ties. Most of all, Marshall wants to find the courageous woman who guided him through Paris. She was a mere teenager at the time, one link in the underground line to freedom.

Marshall’s search becomes a wrenching odyssey of discovery that threatens to break his heart—and also sets him on a new course for the rest of his life. In his journey, he finds astonishing revelations about the people he knew during the war—none more electrifying and inspiring than the story of the girl in the blue beret.

Intimate and haunting, The Girl in the Blue Beret is a beautiful and affecting story of love and courage, war and redemption, and the startling promise of second chances.

Click here to read an excerpt.

Click here to visit the author's website.

About the author (from the publisher):
Bobbie Ann Mason is the author of In Country, Clear Springs, Shiloh & Other Stories, and An Atomic Romance. She is the winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the American Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, and the Pulitzer Prize. She is writer-in-residence at the University of Kentucky, and lives with her husband, Roger Rawlings.

Teaser Tuesdays: WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKTHROUGH by Ruth Pennebaker

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme hosted by Miz B. of Should Be Reading.

“Even Caroline herself occasionally suspected she might be ordinary. Ordinary! Like everybody else! It was a horrifying thought.”

-- Page 214

WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKTHROUGH
by Ruth Pennebaker

Pub. Date: January 2011

Publisher: Penguin Group (USA)

Format: Paperback , 320pp

ISBN-13: 9780425238561

ISBN: 0425238563

Click here to view the Reading Group Guide.
Click here to visit the author's website.