Recent Book Mail 9.13.17
Recent Book Mail Round-up
Hi friends! I typically only update my blog as I post reviews, but I wanted to take a few minutes to highlight a few of the gorgeous books I've received this week while they patiently sit for me to have time to read them! All of the books below were either won in giveaways or sent by their publishers/PR.
13 Minutes by Sara Pinborough
Goodreads Synopsis: I was dead for 13 minutes.
I don't remember how I ended up in the icy water but I do know this - it wasn't an accident and I wasn't suicidal.
They say you should keep your friends close and your enemies closer, but when you're a teenage girl, it's hard to tell them apart. My friends love me, I'm sure of it. But that doesn't mean they didn't try to kill me. Does it?
Release date: October 3, 2017 (though previously published)
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Notes: I received advanced reader's copy (ARC). I am so excited to read this one. It sounds like such a fun (and dark) young adult read! I received this book from a Goodreads Giveaway from the publisher (Flatiron Books).
A Conspiracy in Belgravia by Sherry Thomas
Goodreads Synopsis: The game is afoot as Charlotte Holmes returns in the atmospheric second novel in New York Times bestseller Sherry Thomas's Victorian-set Lady Sherlock series.
Being shunned by Society gives Charlotte Holmes the time and freedom to put her extraordinary powers of deduction to good use. As “Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective,” aided by the capable Mrs. Watson, she’s had great success helping with all manner of inquiries, but she’s not prepared for the new client who arrives at her Upper Baker Street office.
Lady Ingram, wife of Charlotte’s dear friend and benefactor, wants Sherlock Holmes to find her first love, who failed to show up at their annual rendezvous. Matters of loyalty and discretion aside, the case becomes even more personal for Charlotte as the missing man is none other than Myron Finch, her illegitimate half brother.
In the meanwhile, Charlotte wrestles with a surprising proposal of marriage, a mysterious stranger woos her sister Livia, and an unidentified body that surfaces where least expected. Charlotte’s investigative prowess is challenged as never before: Can she find her brother in time—or will he, too, end up as a nameless corpse somewhere in the belly of London?
Release Date: September 5, 2017
Publisher: Berkley Books (Penguin Random House)
Notes: I am currently listening to the audiobook of A Study in Scarlett Women by the same author which is the first book in this series. I'm really enjoying the first book and have heard that the second is even better. Can't wait to read it. This will be on my October TBR and I plan to read it while I'm visiting England next month!
Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo
Goodreads Synopsis: Yejide and Akin have been married since they met and fell in love at university. Though many expected Akin to take several wives, he and Yejide have always agreed: polygamy is not for them. But four years into their marriage--after consulting fertility doctors and healers, trying strange teas and unlikely cures--Yejide is still not pregnant. She assumes she still has time--until her family arrives on her doorstep with a young woman they introduce as Akin's second wife. Furious, shocked, and livid with jealousy, Yejide knows the only way to save her marriage is to get pregnant, which, finally, she does, but at a cost far greater than she could have dared to imagine. An electrifying novel of enormous emotional power, Stay With Me asks how much we can sacrifice for the sake of family.
Release Date: August 22, 2017
Publisher: Knopf Publishing group
Notes: I have spent over 10 weeks from the past few years in Africa and so its easy for me to say that I am very excited about this book. While I have only gotten a glimpse into the African culture (and only in a very small geographic area), I am fascinated with this look into life in Nigeria.
Seven Days of Us by Francesca Hornak
Goodreads Synopsis: A warm, wry, sharply observed debut novel about what happens when a family is forced to spend a week together in quarantine over the holidays...
It’s Christmas, and for the first time in years the entire Birch family will be under one roof. Even Emma and Andrew’s elder daughter—who is usually off saving the world—will be joining them at Weyfield Hall, their aging country estate. But Olivia, a doctor, is only coming home because she has to. Having just returned from treating an epidemic abroad, she’s been told she must stay in quarantine for a week…and so too should her family.
For the next seven days, the Birches are locked down, cut off from the rest of humanity—and even decent Wi-Fi—and forced into each other’s orbits. Younger, unabashedly frivolous daughter Phoebe is fixated on her upcoming wedding, while Olivia deals with the culture shock of being immersed in first-world problems.
As Andrew sequesters himself in his study writing scathing restaurant reviews and remembering his glory days as a war correspondent, Emma hides a secret that will turn the whole family upside down.
In close proximity, not much can stay hidden for long, and as revelations and long-held tensions come to light, nothing is more shocking than the unexpected guest who’s about to arrive…
Release Date: October 17, 2017
Publisher: Berkley Books (Penguin Random House)
Notes: I also won this as an advanced reader's copy (ARC) through a Goodreads Giveaway. Since this is holiday themed, I will likely read this in November.
Book of Judas by Linda Stasi
Goodreads Synopsis: From hard-hitting New York Daily News columnist Linda Stasi comes Book of Judas, a riveting religious thriller featuring beloved protagonist Alessandra Russo.
When her infant son is placed in mortal danger, New York City reporter Alessandra Russo is forced to save him by tracking down the missing pages of the Gospel of Judas, a heretical manuscript that was unearthed in Al-Minya, Egypt in the 1970's. The manuscript declares that Judas was not the betrayer, but the beloved, of Jesus. The Gospel disappeared, only to turn up decades later, rotted beyond repair in a Long Island bank deposit box. Rumors ran rampant that the most important pages had been stolen.
Do the lost pages reveal a secret that will challenge Christianity's very belief about the creation of life, or even the power to unleash Armageddon? What if such explosive documents fell into the hands of modern-day terrorists, dictators, or religious fanatics?
During her investigation, Alessandra is plunged into a dark world of murder, conspiracy, sexual depravity, and most importantly, a race against the clock to save her own child.
Release Date: September 19, 2017
Publisher: TOR/FORGE
Notes: I am participating in a blog/social media campaign for this book in anticipation of its release on September 19! I will likely start reading this after my current read.
Goodreads Synopsis: A searing and profound Southern odyssey by National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward.
In Jesmyn Ward's first novel since her National Book Award winning Salvage the Bones, this singular American writer brings the archetypal road novel into rural twenty-first-century America. Drawing on Morrison and Faulkner, The Odyssey and the Old Testament, Ward gives us an epochal story, a journey through Mississippi's past and present that is both an intimate portrait of a family and an epic tale of hope and struggle. Ward is a major American writer, multiply awarded and universally lauded, and in Sing, Unburied, Sing she is at the height of her powers.
Jojo and his toddler sister, Kayla, live with their grandparents, Mam and Pop, and the occasional presence of their drug-addicted mother, Leonie, on a farm on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. Leonie is simultaneously tormented and comforted by visions of her dead brother, which only come to her when she's high; Mam is dying of cancer; and quiet, steady Pop tries to run the household and teach Jojo how to be a man. When the white father of Leonie's children is released from prison, she packs her kids and a friend into her car and sets out across the state for Parchman farm, the Mississippi State Penitentiary, on a journey rife with danger and promise.
Sing, Unburied, Sing grapples with the ugly truths at the heart of the American story and the power, and limitations, of the bonds of family. Rich with Ward's distinctive, musical language, Sing, Unburied, Sing is a majestic new work and an essential contribution to American literature.
Release Date: September 5, 2017
Publisher: Scribner
Notes: I cannot wait to read this one! This was a September Book of the Month Club pick and I have heard such great things about this book. I hope to read this one later this month or in October!
Goodreads Synopsis: This chilling psychological suspense novel--think Strangers on a Train for the modern age--explores the dark side of love and the unbreakable ties that bind two sisters together.
Felix and Tilda seem like the perfect couple: young and in love, a financier and a beautiful up-and-coming starlet. But behind their flawless facade, not everything is as it seems.
Callie, Tilda's unassuming twin, has watched her sister visibly shrink under Felix's domineering love. She has looked on silently as Tilda stopped working, nearly stopped eating, and turned into a neat freak, with mugs wrapped in Saran Wrap and suspicious syringes hidden in the bathroom trash. She knows about Felix's uncontrollable rages, and has seen the bruises on the white skin of her sister's arms.
Worried about the psychological hold that Felix seems to have over Tilda, Callie joins an Internet support group for victims of abuse and their friends. However, things spiral out of control and she starts to doubt her own judgment when one of her new acquaintances is killed by an abusive man. And then suddenly Felix dies--or was he murdered?
Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
Goodreads Synopsis: A searing and profound Southern odyssey by National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward.
In Jesmyn Ward's first novel since her National Book Award winning Salvage the Bones, this singular American writer brings the archetypal road novel into rural twenty-first-century America. Drawing on Morrison and Faulkner, The Odyssey and the Old Testament, Ward gives us an epochal story, a journey through Mississippi's past and present that is both an intimate portrait of a family and an epic tale of hope and struggle. Ward is a major American writer, multiply awarded and universally lauded, and in Sing, Unburied, Sing she is at the height of her powers.
Jojo and his toddler sister, Kayla, live with their grandparents, Mam and Pop, and the occasional presence of their drug-addicted mother, Leonie, on a farm on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. Leonie is simultaneously tormented and comforted by visions of her dead brother, which only come to her when she's high; Mam is dying of cancer; and quiet, steady Pop tries to run the household and teach Jojo how to be a man. When the white father of Leonie's children is released from prison, she packs her kids and a friend into her car and sets out across the state for Parchman farm, the Mississippi State Penitentiary, on a journey rife with danger and promise.
Sing, Unburied, Sing grapples with the ugly truths at the heart of the American story and the power, and limitations, of the bonds of family. Rich with Ward's distinctive, musical language, Sing, Unburied, Sing is a majestic new work and an essential contribution to American literature.
Release Date: September 5, 2017
Publisher: Scribner
Notes: I cannot wait to read this one! This was a September Book of the Month Club pick and I have heard such great things about this book. I hope to read this one later this month or in October!
White Bodies by Jane Robins
Goodreads Synopsis: This chilling psychological suspense novel--think Strangers on a Train for the modern age--explores the dark side of love and the unbreakable ties that bind two sisters together.
Felix and Tilda seem like the perfect couple: young and in love, a financier and a beautiful up-and-coming starlet. But behind their flawless facade, not everything is as it seems.
Callie, Tilda's unassuming twin, has watched her sister visibly shrink under Felix's domineering love. She has looked on silently as Tilda stopped working, nearly stopped eating, and turned into a neat freak, with mugs wrapped in Saran Wrap and suspicious syringes hidden in the bathroom trash. She knows about Felix's uncontrollable rages, and has seen the bruises on the white skin of her sister's arms.
Worried about the psychological hold that Felix seems to have over Tilda, Callie joins an Internet support group for victims of abuse and their friends. However, things spiral out of control and she starts to doubt her own judgment when one of her new acquaintances is killed by an abusive man. And then suddenly Felix dies--or was he murdered?
A page-turning work of suspense that announces a stunning new voice in fiction, White Bodies will change the way you think about obsession, love, and the violence we inflict on one another--and ourselves.
Release Date: September 19, 2017
Publisher: Touchstone
Notes: I may or may not have squealed when I opened this package! I am really into thrillers/suspense lately and this one sounds perfect for me. I have a little bit of a twin fascination and so I'm so pumped to read this one. It releases soon, so I'll probably start it after or simultaneously with Book of Judas.
House of Spines by Michael J Malone
Goodreads Synopsis: Ran McGhie's world has been turned upside down. A young, lonely and frustrated writer, and suffering from mental-health problems, he discovers that his long-dead mother was related to one of Glasgow's oldest merchant families. Not only that, but Ran has inherited Newton Hall, a vast mansion that belonged to his great-uncle, who appears to have been watching from afar as his estranged great-nephew has grown up. Entering his new-found home, he finds that Great-Uncle Fitzpatrick has turned it into a temple to the written word - the perfect place for poet Ran. But everything is not as it seems. As he explores the Hall's endless corridors, Ran's grasp on reality appears to be loosening. And then he comes across an ancient lift; and in that lift a mirror. And in the mirror ... the reflection of a woman ... A terrifying psychological thriller with more than a hint of the Gothic, House of Spines is a love letter to the power of books, and an exploration of how lust and betrayal can be deadly...
Release date: August 16, 2017
Publisher: Orenda Books
Notes: I heard someone talking about this book (@NovelGossip ??) on Instagram stories and I knew I had to read it! So excited about this one! Likely going to be an end of September or October pick!
Six Stories by Matt Wesolowski
Goodreads Synopsis: The novel is constructed as a series of podcasts, in which an investigative journalist describes the circumstances around the death of a teenaged boy in an outward-bound centre, interviewing witnesses, suspects and people close to the incident. Their six accounts form the six stories of the title, creating a "chilling and compelling, page-turning thriller that also delves deep into notions of truth, perception and loyalty".
Release date: March 30, 2017
Publisher: Orenda Books
Notes: One of my Instagram favorites (@garindeedreads) recommended this one to me and I am so excited that Orenda sent me this! Cannot wait to read this and will likely add it to my October lineup!
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