Cover Attraction

Cover Attraction is hosted by Marcia at The Printed Page. She says "I'm a very visual person and love beautiful or interesting cover art. It entices, and invites me to stop and take a peek, instead of walking right on by.

This is the first cover attraction that I have posted in awhile. I came across this book today while browsing, and fell in love with the cover; the story sounds good as well!

When her black sheep brother disappears, Amanda Janvier eagerly takes in her sixteen year-old niece Tally. The girl is practically an orphan: motherless, and living with a father who raises Tally wherever he lands- in a Buick, a pizza joint, a horse farm-and regularly takes off on wild schemes. Amanda envisions that she, her husband Neil, and their two teenagers can offer the girl stability and a shot at a 'normal' life, even though their own storybook lives are about to crumble.

Seventeen-year-old Chase Janvier hasn't seen his cousin in years, and other than a vague curiosity about her strange life, he doesn't expect her arrival will affect him much-or interfere with his growing, disturbing interest in a long-ago house fire that plagues his dreams unbeknownst to anyone else.

Tally and Chase bond as they interview two Holocaust survivors for a sociology project, and become startlingly aware that the whole family is grappling with hidden secrets, with the echoes of the past, and with the realization that ignoring tragic situations won't make them go away.

Will Tally's presence blow apart their carefully-constructed world, knocking down the illusion of the white picket fence and reveal a hidden past that could destroy them all-or can she help them find the truth without losing each other?

Copy: Paperback 9781400074570 Waterbrook Press, Colorado Springs, CO

~Cover Attraction! 7/1/09

Cover Attraction is hosted by Marcia at The Printed Page. She says "I'm a very visual person and love beautiful or interesting cover art. It entices, and invites me to stop and take a peek, instead of walking right on by.

I definitely agree! I was drawn to this book because of its cover. It brings memories of childhood, going to the fair, smells of cotton candy and popcorn, and of course, riding the ferris wheel. I do not own this book, but I have requested it from PBS.

From Amazon.com:
From Publishers Weekly
Martin (Belle Teal; the Baby-Sitters Club series) hints at a life-changing event from the first paragraph of this novel narrated by a perceptive and compassionate 12-year-old, and set in the summer of 1960. Hattie Owen had been anticipating a summer as comfortably uneventful as all the others ("I just want things all safe and familiar," she admits), helping her mother run their boarding house, painting alongside her artist father and reading "piles" of books. Then Uncle Adam (whom Hattie never knew existed) makes a surprise entrance, turning everything upside-down. Hattie's mother says that Uncle Adam has "mental problems." Hattie's grandparents act embarrassed whenever he is around, and her peers laugh at him. The author authentically conveys the ripples Adam sends through this small town. The heroine is continually amazed by his outlandish antics, moved by his sudden mood changes and secretly wonders if she and Adam might be kindred spirits. Hattie finds adventure and tragedy as well as enlightenment as she "lifts the corners of [her] universe" in order to better understand Adam. With characteristic tenderness and wisdom, the author portrays the complex relationship between the sympathetic heroine and her uncle ("I feel a little like his baby-sitter, a little like his mother, not at all like his niece, and quite a bit like his friend"). Readers will relate to Hattie's fear of being as "different" as Adam, and will admire her willingness to befriend an outcast. Hearts will go out to both Hattie and Adam as they step outside the confines of their familiar world to meet some painful challenges. Ages 12-up.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

~Doesn't it sound wonderful! I love stories that take place in the 1960's! I can't wait to read this one!

What is YOUR cover attraction?

~Cover Attraction and Waiting On Wednesday~

My Cover Attraction and Waiting On Wednesday are one and the same; Best Friends Forever by Jennifer Weiner! Publish date July 14, 2009.

Cover Attraction is hosted by Marcia at The Printed Page. She says "I'm a very visual person and love beautiful or interesting cover art. It entices, and invites me to stop and take a peek, instead of walking right on by."

Waiting on Wednesday is a meme hosted by Jill at Breaking The Spine.

From Amazon.com:

Some bonds can never be broken...

Addie Downs and Valerie Adler will be best friends forever. That's what Addie believes after Valerie moves across the street when they're both nine years old. But in the wake of betrayal during their teenage years, Val is swept into the popular crowd, while mousy, sullen Addie becomes her school's scapegoat.

Flash-forward fifteen years. Valerie Adler has found a measure of fame and fortune working as the weathergirl at the local TV station. Addie Downs lives alone in her parents' house in their small hometown of Pleasant Ridge, Illinois, caring for a troubled brother and trying to meet Prince Charming on the Internet. She's just returned from Bad Date #6 when she opens her door to find her long-gone best friend standing there, a terrified look on her face and blood on the sleeve of her coat. "Something horrible has happened," Val tells Addie, "and you're the only one who can help."

Best Friends Forever is a grand, hilarious, edge-of-your-seat adventure; a story about betrayal and loyalty, family history and small-town secrets. It's about living through tragedy, finding love where you least expect it, and the ties that keep best friends together.

Why I like the cover: I am a sucker for any book that has a beach scene on the cover. I love the muted colors on this cover, they are soothing to the eye. I can also identify with the two friends walking on the beach, maybe in the late afternoon, sharing stories and secrets.

Publisher: Atria (July 14, 2009)
ISBN-10: 0743294297

~COVER ATTRACTION~

~LOOKING FOR SALVATION AT THE DAIRY QUEEN~By Susan Gregg Gilmore

Cover Attraction is hosted by Marcia at The Printed Page. She says "I'm a very visual person and love beautiful or interesting cover art. It entices, and invites me to stop and take a peek, instead of walking right on by."

I just love the cover of this book! As soon as I saw it, I immediately read the preview...it really does sound good! The book is currently on my wish list on PaperbackSwap.com. The title is not due to be released until June 9, 2009.

Why I like the cover: It reminds me of being a child again, going to the Dairy Queen for a Dilly Bar on a warm summer evening, while the crickets and frogs chirp in the distance. Here is a peek at the first chapter, courtesy of Amazon.com:

Chapter One In the Beginning

My daddy always said that if the good Lord can take the time to care for something as small as a baby sparrow nesting in a tree, then surely He could take the time to listen to a little girl in Ringgold, Georgia. So every night before I went to bed I got down on my knees and begged the Lord to find me a way out of this town. And every morning, I woke up in the same old place.

It was a place that I, Catherine Grace Cline, never wanted to call home, even though I was born and raised here. It was a place where everybody knew everything about you, down to the color of underwear your mama bought you at the Dollar General Store. It was a place that just never felt right to me, like a sweater that fits too tight under your arms. It was a place where girls like me traded their dreams for a boy with a couple of acres of land and a wood-framed house with a new electric stove. It was a place I always planned on leaving.

When I was no more than nine years old, a tornado tore right close to my house. I remember yelling at my little sister to run and hide in the basement. “Martha Ann,” I warned her, “if that twister hits this town, nobody’s even going to notice it’s gone.”

She started crying for fear she was going to be swept up in the clouds and carried away, and nobody, not even our daddy, would be able to find her. Turned out the only thing of any importance swept up in the sky that day was Mr. Naylor’s old hound dog. People said that Buster Black flew some fifteen miles, those long lonesome ears of his flapping like wings, before landing in the middle of some cornfield over in the next county.

Mr. Naylor walked for miles looking for that dad-gum dog till finally my daddy and the sheriff had to go pick him up. And just when that poor man finished planting a wooden cross by Buster’s little house, darn it, if that four-legged fool didn’t come limping back home, wagging his tail and acting like he’d found the Promised Land. Mr. Naylor was crying, praising the Lord, holding Buster Black in his arms. The local newspaper ran a color picture of them both right on the front page, like that dog was some kind of prodigal son.

“You know, Martha Ann,” I told her after reading about Buster’s triumphant return, “a tornado like that just might be our ticket out of here, but unlike that stupid old hound dog, we are not going to limp back home.”

My daddy said I was a little girl with a big imagination. Maybe. Or maybe I was a patient girl with a big dream, or a despairing girl waiting for her divine deliverance. But either way, I was going to hitch a ride out of Ringgold, whether it was on a fiery twister ripping a path through the Georgia sky or on a Greyhound bus rolling its way down Interstate 75.

Truth be told, I never even liked the name Ringgold. I mean, there’s nothing in these green rolling hills that even faintly resembles a ring of gold, a ring of anything for that matter. And believe me, me and Martha Ann looked, somehow figuring that if we could find a ring of trees or ancient rocks, then just maybe our living here would have some kind of meaning. But after years of searching, the best I could figure was that it was just these darn hills that I had stared at every morning from my bedroom window that formed the ring, the ring that had kept me hostage for the first eighteen years of my life.

Nobody much ever bothers to visit this town except the truckers who stop to fill their fuel tanks because they can get some of the cheapest gas in the state here and Mrs. Gloria Jean Graves’s second cousin, who has come up from Birmingham every year for the Thanksgiving holiday since before I was born. She always said it was refreshing to get away from the big city for a few days.

One time the governor came by for about twenty-five minutes to cut a ribbon at the new elementary-school library. Everybody in town came out to see him. Daddy made me wear a dress and tie my hair back in a ribbon, just like I was going to church. Six days a week my daddy didn’t care too much how I looked, but on Sunday mornings there was no negotiating the dress code. My sister and I wore our very best dresses with a fresh pair of cotton panties underneath, out of respect for the Lord, Daddy said.

I really didn’t think Jesus cared what I wore to Cedar Grove Baptist Church, or to see the governor for that matter, considering the fact that in every picture I ever saw of the King of Kings, He was wearing sandals and bundled up in nothing more than a big, baggy robe. But I figured this governor must be the most important person I was ever going to meet if Daddy was making me wear my navy blue Sunday dress with the white lacy collar and my patent-leather Mary Janes.

Martha Ann pitched such a fit about wearing her Sunday clothes that Daddy ended up leaving her at home with a neighbor. My little sister is a couple of years younger than I am, but she has always been a couple of inches taller, my guess from the time she came into this world. She has thick, dark brown hair and deep brown eyes like our mama. I have blue eyes like my daddy and straight brown hair that looks more like the color of a field mouse.

Martha Ann was a pretty baby and a pretty girl. Everything on her face just fits together so perfectly. When we were little, people said we looked just like twins for no better reason than we might have been wearing the same color shirt. You had to wonder if they were truly looking at us. But one thing was for certain, Martha Ann hated putting on her Sunday clothes even more than I did. She’d have much rather been in the library picking out a new book to read than waiting to look at some strange man cut a ribbon.

I told her that if she didn’t stop all that stomping and snorting, she was going to get left behind. And sure enough, she did. She had to spend the entire afternoon with Ida Belle Fletcher shucking eighty-four ears of corn for Wednesday-night supper over at the church.

Ida Belle said she cooked for the Lord, but all I knew was that she smelled like an unsavory combination of leftover bacon grease and Palmolive soap. She kept her big, round tummy covered with a tattered, old apron permanently stained with the meals of another day. The only time I saw her without that apron was when she was sitting in church, and then she kept it folded in her pocketbook.

My patent-leather shoe rubbed a blister on my big toe, but it was worth it. The governor turned out to be, if nothing else, the most handsome-looking man I’d ever seen. He wore a dark navy suit and a crisp white shirt that must have been starched so stiff, it could’ve stood up on its own. A red-and-blue-striped tie was pulled around his neck, and the tip of a white handkerchief was peeking out of his suit pocket. I had never seen a man dressed so fancy. He was in Ringgold for only a few minutes, and then he jumped in the back of a long, black car and sped off down Highway 151. I wanted to go with him so bad that for weeks after that, when I went to bed at night, I got down on my knees and begged the Lord to make me the governor’s daughter.

But He didn’t bother to answer that prayer either, not that I really thought that He would. God put me here for a reason, Daddy kept telling me; I just hadn’t figured it out yet.

Now I know my father was a certified man of God, but at a fairly young age, I decided that when it came to my destiny, he did not know what he was talking about. He certainly did not understand that there was nothing for me here in Ringgold, Georgia. Sometimes I wondered if he had noticed that this town had only one red light, one part-time sheriff, and one post office, which was nothing more than a gray metal trailer perched on a bunch of cinder blocks in the back of the Shop Rite parking lot.

There was one losing high-school football team and one diner, which has been serving pork chops on Thursdays since 1962. There was one fire station, but it burned down five or six years ago when the entire fire department, which amounted to the sum total of Edward and Lankford Bostleman, were spending the night at their aunt’s house over in LaFayette.

Publisher: Three Rivers Press (June 9, 2009)
304 pages
ISBN-10: 0307395022

~COVER ATTRACTION~

Cover Attraction is hosted by Marcia at The Printed Page. She says "I'm a very visual person and love beautiful or interesting cover art. It entices, and invites me to stop and take a peek, instead of walking right on by."

The cover of this book caught my eye immediately as I was browsing books on Amazon.com. I knew that I wanted to read it because of the cover alone. I began reading the synopsis and it sounds wonderful. I haven't read this book yet...it has been on my wish list on PaperbackSwap since January. Hopefully it will become available soon. If not, then I will just buy it! :)

SYNOPSIS FROM AMAZON.COM: The Blue Hole by Joy Jordan-Lake

"Sacred's not a word I've ever much liked. But maybe some things, and some places, just are. And maybe the Blue Hole was one of those things."

Shelby (nicknamed Turtle) never had any female friends. But when a mysterious girl from Sri Lanka moved to town in the summer of 1979, Turtle invited her to a secret haven: the Blue Hole. Turtle had no idea how much that simple gesture would affect the rest of her life, or the lives of those she loved.

In a time when America was technically well beyond the Civil Rights era, there were those in Turtle's small Appalachian town who rejected the presence of someone different. And in just one summer-in a collision of love, hate, jealousy, beauty, and a sacred, muddy swimming hole-nothing and everything changed.

The cover depicts a country creek, looking peaceful and quiet. The perfect place to lie back and enjoy a book or an afternoon nap. I can't wait to read this one!

Publisher: David C. Cook 320 Pages ISBN: 143479993X

~COVER ATTRACTION~

Cover Attraction is hosted by Marcia at The Printed Page. She says "I'm a very visual person and love beautiful or interesting cover art. It entices, and invites me to stop and take a peek, instead of walking right on by."

Today I have chosen the cover from the book "You're Not You" by Michelle Wildgen.

I love the snow scene, with the two andirondack chairs facing each other. It makes me think of two close friends who were in those chairs in the summer, sharing secrets and stories. Now the chairs are covered with snow, left abandoned in the winter.
This is a wonderful novel that I found hard to get into at first, then couldn't put it down.
Bec is a floundering college student who is uncertain of the course that her life is taking. She impulsively answers a want ad seeking a caregiver, and meets Kate.
Kate is in her mid-thirties, and in the advanced stages of ALS (Lou Gherig's Disease). While in the early stages of her employ, Bec feels slightly uncomfortable around Kate, but soon the two form a very strong bond. As Kate becomes sicker, the friendship grows stronger. Bec becomes a vital part of Kate's life. They both know that Kate's time is growing shorter and as their bond deepens, the reality becomes clearer, and Bec will stay by Kates side until the end.
My Rating: 4 Stars
Picador
288 pages
ISBN-10: 0312369522

Cover Attraction ~ March 25th 2009

Cover Attraction is hosted by Marcia at The Printed Page. She says "I'm a very visual person and love beautiful or interesting cover art. It entices and invites to stop and take a peek instead of walking right on by."

The cover of this book grabbed my attention right away. A winter scene, set in West Virginia (where I have lived before) at twilight. I could see myself standing on that very street, breathing in the cold winter air.

This week my Cover Attraction is The Coalwood Way by Homer Hickam.

I enjoy reading memoirs. Reading a story about something that really happened appeals to me immensely. I especially like reading non-fictional stories that take place in the 50's and 60's, when life was better and less complicated than it is now. A great example of a story like this, is Homer Hickam's The Coalwood Way.

This is the memoir of Homer Hickam. He is a former NASA engineer and also author of the book Rocket Boys. The Coalwood Way is a follow up to that book. He tells the tale of the autumn of 1956, when he is sixteen years old, in the town of Coalwood, West Virginia. Homer and his friends start a club called "The Big Creek Missile Agency". They build homemade rockets and have big dreams of going off to college and landing good jobs when they are older. Homer and his father don't see eye to eye on that issue. Homer Hickam Sr. is superintendent of the Coalwood Mines. He doesn't want Homer Jr, to be disappointed if his dreams do not come true. Homer's mom, Elsie, supports her son 100%. Her desire is to leave Coalwood, WV and move to Myrtle Beach, SC. She wants her husband out of the coal mines, as he has already begun Black Lung Disease.
This is a truly wonderful memoir! The story stays with you long after you have finished reading it. (Five Stars)
Island Books; 1st edition (September 4, 2001)
400 pages
ISBN-10: 0440237165