New Arrival - Thirsty

Thirsty

Author: Kristin Bair O'Keeffe
Publisher: Swallow Press
Release Date: October 1, 2009
format: Hardcover
pages: 207


from the publisher:
It is 1883, and all of Klara Bozic's girlish dreams have come crashing down as she arrives in Thirsty, a gritty steel town carved into the slopes above the Monongahela River just outside of Pittsburgh. She has made a heartbreaking discovery. Her new husband Drago is as abusive as the father she left behind in Croatia.

In Kristin Bair O'Keeffe's debut novel, Klara's life unfolds over forty years as she struggles to find her place in a new country where her survival depends on the friends who nurture her: gutsy, funny Katherine Zupanovic, who isn't afraid of Drago's fist; BenJo, the only black man in Thirsty to have his own shop; and strangely enough, Old Man Rupert, the town drunk.

Thirsty follows a chain of unlikely events that keep Klara's spirit aloft: a flock of angelic butterflies descends on Thirsty; Klara gives birth to her first child in Old Man Rupert's pumpkin patch; and BenJo gives her a talking bird. When Klara's daughter marries a man even more brutal than Drago, Klara is forced to act. If she doesn't finally break the cycle of violence in her family, her granddaughters will one day walk the same road, broken and bruised. As the threads that hold her family together fray and come undone, Klara has to decide if she has the courage to carve out a peaceful spot in the world for herself and her girls.


Special Thanks go to Shelby Sledge, Senior Publicist of Phenix & Phenix Literary Publicists for sending me a copy for review (I love the butterflies ) and a second copy to giveaway in January - my blogoversary.

New Review Book & a Giveaway

Title: The Manufactured Identity
Author: Heath Sommer
Publisher: Tate Publishing
Release Date: June 23, 2009
Pages: 305
Format: Trade Paperback
Genre: psychological thriller


from the back cover: Months after his mysterious disappearance from a routine fishing trip, no one realy expects over-the-hill Texas housewife Lory Latchley to find her missing husband-especially her husband. The Manufactured Identity is clinical sychologist Heath Sommer's ever-escalating immersion into the world of unlikely friends who each awaken to find their faithful companions missing without warning or reason. Desperate to find meaning in their pain, they are thrust by the auspices of fate into a common thread of mystery and human frailty. In the end, the fate of all may reside in the unstable hand of rookie pastor John Joe, but ultimately Lory and her newfound partners will uncover a truth so unnerving it makes even infidelity look palatable.


Special Thanks: Heath Sommer has sent me a copy for review and a second to giveaway!


Check out www.themanufacturedidentity If you'd like to read an excerpt.


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ends: November 25 at noon PDT


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Ship:
sorry, just the US this time

~Good Luck Everyone~

New Review Book Arrived this week

The Tallest of smalls

Author: Max Lucado
Illustrated by Maria Monescillo
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Release Date: November 3, 2009
format: Hardcover
reading level: Ages 4-8
pages: 32



from the publisher:

A delightful rhyming story about the Too-Smalls who live in the Stiltsville. Every evening a six, the Too-Smalls meet in the square where they hope they’ll be picked to receive stilts to strut about above the stilt-less masses below. They come to see if they matter—if they’re awesome, if they’re pretty, if they’re clever, or funny. Ollie, the smallest of too-smalls, pleas to be picked. He wants to be like the high-ups of Stiltsville who are proud of their stilts, the ultimate status. But once he gets stilts, oh how it hurts when he stumbles and tumbles and loses his stilts. That is . . . until he meets Jesus who chose low over high telling him, "Keep your feet on the ground. You matter already.”

from me:
The smalls and Stiltsville is introduced in Fearless.

Amazon.com Sales Rank, as of 10-24: #15,255 in Books
Popular in these categories:
#19 in Books > Children's Books > Religions > Christianity > Ages 4-8
#32 in Books > Children's Books > People & Places > Social Situations > Self-Esteem & Self-Respect > Fiction
#38 in Books > Children's Books > People & Places > Social Situations > Values > Fiction

New Review Book Arrived

Stepmonster:
A New Look at Why Real Stepmothers Think, Feel, and Act the Way We Do

Author: Wednesday Martin, Ph.D
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Release Date: May 4, 2009
format: Hardcover
pages: 336
Subject(s):
FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS: Parenting - Stepparenting
PSYCHOLOGY: Psych - Interpersonal Relations

from the publisher:

A groundbreaking and truly stepmother-centered way of understanding the tensions that seem to define relations between women and their stepchildren

Half of all women in the United States will live with or marry a man with children. And what woman with stepchildren has not—in order to defuse the often overwhelming challenges of the role—referred to herself as a "stepmonster"?

As Hope Edelman does in her book for motherless daughters, Wednesday Martin’s empowering and original Stepmonster unlocks the emotional mysteries of why stepmothers think and feel and act the way they do. Martin draws upon her own experience as a stepmother, interviews with other stepmothers and stepchildren, and fascinating insights from literature, anthropology, psychology, and evolutionary biology to reveal the little-understood realities of this most demanding role.

Stepmonster illuminates the harrowing process of becoming a stepmother, considers the myths and realities of being married to a man with children, counteracts the cultural notion that stepmothers are solely responsible for the challenges they encounter, identifies the "Five Step-Dilemmas That Create Conflict," and considers the emotional and social challenges men with children face when they remarry.

Finally, in an unexpected twist, Martin shows why the myth of the Wicked Stepmother is our single best tool for understanding who real stepmothers are and how they feel.

Amazon.com Sales Rank, as of 10-23: #15,774 in Books
Popular in these categories:
#5 in Books > Parenting & Families > Family Relationships > Stepparenting & Blended Families
#30 in Books > Health, Mind & Body > Psychology & Counseling > Counseling > Couples & Family Therapy

New Review Book Arrived

Prince Harming Syndrome
Break Bad Relationship Patterns for Good-5 Essentials for Finding True Love (and they're not what you think!)

Author: Karen Salmansohn
Publisher: QNY, an imprint of Langenscheidt Publishing Group
Release Date: September 15, 2009
format: Hardcover
pages: 224
Ages:
genre/category: self-help

from the publisher:
The Fairy Goddess Mentor of New York City strikes again with another innovative fresh breath of self-help insights.

Author, talk-show host, columnist, radio and TV personality Karen Salmansohn has been writing advice and mentoring young women for years, encouraging an end to the cycle of less-than-healthy relationship choices that are easy to start, but oh so difficult to break.

Salmansohn’s personal overcoming of difficult relationship traps has become Prince Harming Syndrome—a brand new self-help book that mixes Karen’s life experience and the philosophy of Aristotle to create an intimately witty and personal account for women of all ages looking to break their bad habits for good! Karen will teach you how to seek out the 5 essentials for true love—NONE OF THEM being what you'd normally think about looking for! For example, one essential is to seek a guy who "values growing." If your man doesn’t value growing, then your relationship won’t survive—because a relationship is only as strong as its weakest moments. If your man values growing, he will be open to discussing problems, meeting your needs and evolving—so as to make sure problems don’t keep repeating.

Prince Harming Syndrome is a call to action for knowing how to recognize the important difference between Prince Harmings and Prince Charmings by understanding the important difference between "pleasure" and "happiness."

This book is for you if-
- You feel like your love life should be renamed your angst life
- You’re now absolutely ready to break your bad love patterns for good!

New Review Book Arrived

Children of Dust
A Memoir of Pakistan
Ali Eteraz


Publisher: HarperOne
Release Date: October 13, 2009
format: Hardcover (6x9)
pages: 352
Ages: 18+
genre/category: memoir

from the publisher:
Children of Dust is a searing memoir revealing the truth about militant Islamic fundamentalism in Pakistan and the culture shock of moving to the U.S. Author Ali Eteraz is a compelling young male Muslim voice, and in telling his coming-of-age story he captures not merely pain, but also the love, laughter, and pathos of Muslim life.

An extraordinary personal journey from Islamic fundamentalism to a new life in the West.

Astonishingly honest, darkly comic, and beautifully told, Children of Dust is an extraordinary adventure that reveals the diversity of Islamic beliefs, the vastness of the Pakistani diaspora, and the very human search for home.

To see what I left out, visit HarperCollins

New Review Book Arrived this week

Nibble & Khun
David Schmahmann


Publisher: Academy Chicago Publishers
Release Date: November 1, 2009
format: Hardcover
pages: 256
Ages:
genre/category: legal fiction

from the publisher
An unraveling law firm. An unwinnable case. An unworkable love.

Derek Dover has it all.

Derek’s up for partner at Nibble & Kuhn just as that most proper of Boston law firms comically tries to ‘rebrand’ itself for the Google era. Pompous and arbitrary, the ruling junta of partners saddles him with a high visibility lawsuit just weeks before trial. The diligent young attorney arranges things so that Maria Parma, a new associate in the firm for whom he’s fallen hard, also gets named to the case. Maria, in turn, can’t keep her hands off Derek, but it’s complicated because she’s engaged to someone else.

As Derek prepares his case on behalf of seven young victims of an industrial polluter, his anxieties about his career and his torments over Maria’s mixed messages only increase. Have his eccentric WASP superiors handed him a ‘toxic’ case to ruin his chances of becoming a partner? How can he get his opponents to settle – an outcome the presiding judge all but demands – unless his unorthodox ‘expert witnesses’ perform with enough gravitas to match that of the other side with its Harvard Medical School scientist? Will Nibble & Kuhn survive the partners’ spectacularly bad business judgments? Does it even matter to Derek, given that his looming fiasco of a trial and his indiscretions with Maria seem set to sink any chance he ever had at partnership?

Ultimately, Derek sets into motion a line of inquiry that spins events entirely out of the control of the judge, jury, and any and all attorneys.