Mailbox Monday

I had a credit to use at Amazon.com....what did I use it for? Books, of course!!

The Tin Box by Holly Kennedy
Kenly Alister is a Grownup. Unlike those who sail through life taking what they want regardless of how their actions affect others, Kenly cleans up other people's messes, picks up the pieces, and is the one who others turn to for solace. As the child of an alcoholic, she weathered abuse and sadness and emerged from childhood determined to bring comfort and happiness to those she loves.

While in college she fell for Ross Lowen. Ross wasn't looking for someone to take care of him--he wanted a lover, a friend, and a partner. In Kenly he found not only all that but a woman whose capacity for love and kindness bowled him over.

The last fifteen years have been good to them and Kenly basks in the glow of a wonderful marriage. An as an extral bonus she revels in their son who, even in his most arrogant, adolescent moments, still has the ability to take Kenly's breath away.

This happy life is threatened when her dearest childhood friend dies and Kenly receives an old battered tin box, a relic of her childhood. Inside are the remnants of Kenly's past and a secret she has sheltered for decades. To reveal the secret means the destruction of her happy family--but can she continue to shoulder the weight of years of silence?

The Tin Box is an achingly beautiful novel of one woman's desire to save all that she loves while honoring the past that made her into the woman she is.

Life Al Dente by Gina Cascone
Gina Cascone's Life al Dente: Laughter and Love in an Italian-American Family is an enjoyable, emotional roller coaster of a memoir. With the kind of sensitivity you get only from someone who's lived the experiences, Cascone's story is laugh-out-loud funny, heart-wrenchingly sad, and everything in between. The first-born in a tightly knit Italian Catholic family cursed with only girls, Cascone (the author of Pagan Babies) shares sweet memories of hilarious hiccups she experienced growing up, first in an overcrowded semi-detached house in a heavily Italian enclave in New Jersey, and then as the only ethnic variation in the suburbia of the "American Dream." You don't have to have been the only anything growing up to relate--as Cascone wisely acknowledges, we've all felt that way. Teenage angst is universal, as are the growing pains we experience from birth to death. So what sets Cascone's story apart is her intelligent sense of humor and the passionate love she feels for her family. She recognizes their quirks, and treasures every one of them. And just like in life, it's easier to laugh at just about anything in retrospect. An easy read that's impossible to put down, Life al Dente is the kind of memoir that makes us all wish we were taking notes growing up.

I won this book from Number One Novels!

Faces of the Gone: A Mystery by Brad Parks

Four bodies, each with a single bullet wound in the back of the head, stacked like cordwood in a weed-choked vacant lot: That’s the front-page news facing Carter Ross, investigative reporter with the Newark Eagle-Examiner. Immediately dispatched to the scene, Carter learns that the four victims—an exotic dancer, a drug dealer, a hustler, and a mama’s boy—came from different parts of the city and didn’t seem to know one another.

The police, eager to calm jittery residents, leak a theory that the murders are revenge for a bar stickup, and Carter’s paper, hungry for a scoop, hastily prints it. Carter doesn’t come from the streets, but he understands a thing or two about Newark’s neighborhoods. And he knows there are no quick answers when dealing with a crime like this.

Determined to uncover the true story, he enlists the aide of Tina Thompson, the paper’s smoking-hot city editor, to run interference at the office; Tommy Hernandez, the paper’s gay Cuban intern, to help him with legwork on the streets; and Tynesha Dales, a local stripper, to take him to Newark’s underside. It turns out that the four victims have one connection after all, and this knowledge will put Carter on the path of one very ambitious killer.

Treading the same literary turf as Harlan Coben, and writing with a fresh Jersey voice, Brad Parks makes an energetic, impressive debut.

What was in YOUR mailbox today???