Reveals only! :whip:

Blue Christmas by Mary Kay Andrews

It's the week before Christmas, and antiques dealer Weezie Foley is in a frenzy to garnish her shop for the Savannah historical district decorating contest, which she intends to win. Weezie is ready to shoot herself with her glue gun by the time she's done, but the results are stunning. She's certainly one-upped the owners of the trendy shop around the corner, but suddenly things start to go missing from her display, and there seems to be a mysterious midnight visitor to her shop.

Still, Weezie has high hopes for the holiday—maybe in the form of an engagement ring from her chef boyfriend. But Daniel, always moody at the holidays, seems more distant than usual.

Throw in Weezie's decidedly odd family, a 1950s Christmas-tree pin, and even a little help from the King himself (Elvis, that is), and maybe there will be a pocketful of miracles for Weezie this Christmas Eve.

Rootmartin's reveal

Skipping Christmas by John Grisham



"Imagine a year without Christmas. No crowded malls, no corny office parties, no fruitcakes, no unwanted presents. That’s just what Luther and Nora Krank have in mind when they decide that, just this once, they’ll skip the holiday altogether. Theirs will be the only house on Hemlock Street without a rooftop Frosty; they won’t be hosting their annual Christmas Eve bash; they aren’t even going to have a tree. They won’t need one, because come December 25 they’re setting sail on a Caribbean cruise. But, as this weary couple is about to discover, skipping Christmas brings enormous consequences–and isn’t half as easy as they’d imagined.

A classic tale for modern times, Skipping Christmas offers a hilarious look at the chaos and frenzy that have become part of our holiday tradition."

Irenic's reveal

The Boy Next Door by Josie Lloyd and Emlyn Rees

Synopsis
Is it true what they say about first loves being forever? As the 1980s dawn in the sleepy English village of Rushton, Mickey and Fred are next-door neighbours and best friends, in and out of scrapes from the day they're born. They're convinced that nothing will ever keep them apart. But they're wrong. Fifteen years later, Mickey is beginning a new phase of her life, with a small flower shop in London. Meanwhile, Fred's life is also changing: he's set to marry his girlfriend in just a few short weeks. Then he bumps into Mickey for the first time since their worlds fell apart. As they pick up the threads of their friendship, Fred and Mickey relive their glory days growing up in Rushton. But can they ever really overcome the devastating events that once tore them apart?

Giz's reveal



I know this has been revealed before but it's SUCH a fab book and always well stolen :)

Synopsis
Sometimes life is like a bad waiter - it serves you exactly what you don't want. The women of Freesia Court have come together at life's table, fully convinced that there is nothing that good coffee, delectable desserts and a strong shoulder can't fix. Laughter is the glue that holds them together - the foundation of a book group they call AHEB (Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons) - an unofficial club that becomes a lifeline. The five women each have a story to tell. There's Faith, the newcomer, a housewife and mother who harbours a terrible secret; big, beautiful Audrey, the resident sex queen who knows that with good posture and attitude you can get away with anything; Merit, the shy doctor's wife with the face of an angel and the private hell of an abusive husband; Kari, a wise woman with a wonderful laugh who knows that the greatest gifts appear after life's fiercest storms; and finally, Slip, activist and adventurer, a tiny spitfire who looks trouble straight in the eye and challenges it to arm wrestle. Holding on through forty eventful years - through the swinging Sixties, the turbulent Seventles, the anything-goes Eighties, the nothing's-impossible Nineties, to the present day - they take the plunge into the chaos that inevitably comes to those with the temerity to stay alive and kicking.

My book is:

Grave Tattoo by Val McDermid



From the Publisher
When torrential summer rains uncover a bizarrely tattooed body on a Lake District hillside, old wives’ tales come swirling to the surface.For centuries Lakelanders have whispered that Fletcher Christian, infamous Bounty mutineer, staged the massacre on Pitcairn Island so he could return home.And there he told his story to an old friend and schoolmate, William Wordsworth,who turned it into a long narrative poem—one kept hidden lest it expose Wordsworth to the gallows for harbouring a fugitive.

Wordsworth specialist Jane Gresham, herself a native of the LakeDistrict, feels compelled to discover once and for all if the manuscript ever existed—and whether it still exists today. But as she pursues each new lead,death follows hard on her heels. Suddenly Jane is at the heart of a 200-year-old mystery that continues to put lives on the line. Against the dramatic backdrop of England’s Lake District a drama of life and death plays out, its ultimate prize a bounty worth millions

msjoanna's reveal:

The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards



From Booklist
David Henry's life was turning out as he hoped. He was a doctor, married to a beautiful woman, Nora, with a baby on the way. But everything changed overnight because of one fateful decision. On a winter evening in 1961, a blizzard brewing, Nora goes into labor. Due to the weather, they could only make it to the clinic, not the hospital, and only Caroline, the nurse, arrived to help deliver the baby. David delivers his own child, a perfectly healthy son. But when Nora continues her labor, David realizes she is carrying twins; and the second child, a girl, is born with Down syndrome. Wanting to protect his wife from the devastating news, David gives the child to Caroline to take to an institution, asking her never to reveal the secret. Caroline takes the baby and disappears. Unfolding the plot over the course of 25 years, Edwards tells a moving story of two families bound by a secret that both eats away at relationships and eventually helps to create new ones.
----------------------------------

I read this book as part of a bookring earlier in the year. I didn't love the book; indeed, I wrote in the journal entry that I wouldn't be rushing to find another copy to share with more friends. At the same time, the book has stayed with me over the course of the year. While I wish the writing had been better and the characterizations fuller and the transitions less awkward, the book explored an interesting theme that I did enjoy pondering. So, now that another copy has found it's way into my house, I thought I'd offer it up here and see if others are looking to read this one. If not, I'll happily let whomever is "stuck" with this book pick something else (with the caveat that this book is ready now while something else might take me a month or two to get to).

Sunny's Reveal is:

Holly's Inbox by Holly Denham

Synopsis

Ever wanted a peek at someone else's e-mail? Discover the secrets of HOLLY'S INBOX. Meet Holly Denham. It's her first day as a receptionist at a City investment bank and, with no corporate front of house experience, Holly is struggling to keep up. Add to this her mad friends, dysfunctional family and gossipy colleagues, and Holly's inbox is a daily source of drama, laughter, scandal and even romance. But Holly's been keeping a secret from everyone - and the past is about to catch up with her.... Launched in February 2007, www.hollysinbox.com became a website phenomenon, with thousands of visitors from all over the world logging on daily to read Holly's e-mails. This novel tells Holly's story in full, and also includes exclusive extra material not available on the site.

My reveal: :flasher:



How I Paid For College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship and Musical Theatre by Marc Acito

A deliciously funny romp of a novel about one overly theatrical and sexually confused New Jersey teenager’s larcenous quest for his acting school tuition.

It’s 1983 in Wallingford, New Jersey, a sleepy bedroom community outside of Manhattan. Seventeen-year-old Edward Zanni, a feckless Ferris Bueller–type, is Peter Panning his way through a carefree summer of magic and mischief. The fun comes to a halt, however, when Edward’s father remarries and refuses to pay for Edward to study acting at Juilliard.

Edward’s truly in a bind. He’s ineligible for scholarships because his father earns too much. He’s unable to contact his mother because she’s somewhere in Peru trying to commune with Incan spirits. And, as a sure sign he’s destined for a life in the arts, Edward’s incapable of holding down a job. So he turns to his loyal (but immoral) misfit friends to help him steal the tuition money from his father, all the while practicing for his high school performance of Grease. Disguising themselves as nuns and priests, they merrily scheme their way through embezzlement, money laundering, identity theft, forgery, and blackmail. But, along the way, Edward also learns the value of friendship, hard work, and how you’re not really a man until you can beat up your father—metaphorically, that is.

How I Paid for College is a farcical coming-of-age story that combines the first-person tone of David Sedaris with the byzantine plot twists of Armistead Maupin. It is a novel for anyone who has ever had a dream or a scheme, and it marks the introduction to an original and audacious talent.

This is Nursie's reveal:

The Thong Also Rises: Further Misadventures from Funny Women on the Road by Jennifer L. Leo




Too many travel guides are dry lists of attractions or portentous histories of a place. This isn't the case with The Thong Also Rises. Hot on the (high) heels of Sand in My Bra and Whose Panties Are These? comes this collection of the best in women’s travel and humor writing. These Ms-adventures take readers around the world and back again — and they’ll be happy to be reading rather than experiencing some of these adventures. Subjects include learning how to go to the bathroom with a pig in Thailand, trying to explain that sex toy to customs while Mother is watching, attending naked wedding ceremonies on Valentine’s Day in Jamaica, conquering that consuming fear of wooden puppets with a visit to Prague, boarding a crusty old Soviet Bomber in Laos, and more.

Chronic's reveal is:




Synopsis

Claire and her mother are running out of time, but they don't know it. Not yet. Claire is wrapped up with the difficulties of her bourgeoning adulthood—boys, school, friends, identity; Claire's mother, a single mom, is rushed off her feet both at work and at home. They rarely find themselves in the same room at the same time, and it often seems that the only thing they can count on are notes to each other on the refrigerator door. When home is threatened by a crisis, their relationship experiences a momentous change. Forced to reevaluate the delicate balance between their personal lives and their bond as mother and daughter, Claire and her mother find new love and devotion for one another deeper than anything they had ever imagined.

Heartfelt, touching, and unforgettable, Life on the Refrigerator Door is a glimpse into the lives of mothers and daughters everywhere. In this deeply touching novel told through a series of notes written from a loving mother and her devoted fifteen-year-old daughter, debut author Alice Kuipers deftly captures the impenetrable fabric that connects mothers and daughters throughout the world. Moving and rich with emotion, Life on the Refrigerator Door delivers universal lessons about love in a wonderfully simple and poignant narrative.

KathyB's reveal



Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff

2008 Advanced Readers Copy

One dark summer dawn, at the exact moment that an enormous monster dies in Lake Glimmerglass, twenty-eight-year-old Willie (nee Wilhemina) Upton returns to her hometown of Templeton, NY in disgrace. She expects to be able to hide in the place that has been home to her family for generations, but Willie then learns that the story her mom, Vi, had always told her about her father has all been a lie. He wasn't the one-night stand Vi had led her to imagine, but someone else entirely. Someone from this very town.

As Willie digs for the truth about her lineage, voices from the town's past — both sinister and disturbing — rise up around her to tell their sides of the story. In the end, dark secrets come to light, past and present blur, old mysteries are finally put to rest, and the surprising truth about more than one monster is revealed.

catsalive's reveal:



The Three Miss Margarets by Louise Shaffer

From Publishers Weekly
Three elderly white Georgia women, all named Margaret, share a deep friendship and a dark secret in this winning debut by actress and television writer Shaffer. For reasons not entirely clear even to her, Laurel Selene McCready has inherited her mother's grudge against "the three Miss Margarets," upstanding icons in rural Charles Valley. Returning home drunk late one night, she spies the three ladies congregating unaccountably in a deserted cabin. The body of Vashti Johnson, a renowned African-American geneticist who had returned to Charles Valley to visit her mother, is soon discovered in the cabin, prompting an investigation by the police, as well as by Laurel Selene and her new boyfriend Josh, a journalist who's writing a book about Vashti. As the three Miss Margarets struggle with how much to reveal about Vashti's life and death, they also reflect on their own longtime intimacy and on the race hatred in their community that led, decades ago, to a series of ghastly crimes. Shaffer's achievement is making each Miss Margaret a complex character with a fiercely guarded interior life. She doesn't belabor the social forces that defined the lives of these doyennes; instead, she gradually reveals Dr. Maggie Harris's lesbian love life, Margaret (Li'l Bit) Hanning's decadelong affair with a redneck gardener and Peggy Garrison's embattled domestic arrangement. Sometimes Shaffer leans too much on heavy-handed foreshadowing, and the secondary characters are thin, especially Laurel Selene and Josh. Yet the three Miss Margarets are wholly imagined, rich creations whose reticence speaks volumes about their time and place.

Bree's reveal is:

Bree's Reveal is:

Alexander McCall Smith 2-fer

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith



AND

Tears of the Giraffe by Alexander McCall Smith



From Amazon.ca:
This artful, pleasing novel about Mma (aka Precious) Ramotswe, Botswana's one and only lady private detective. A series of vignettes linked to the establishment and growth of Mma Ramotswe's "No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency" serve not only to entertain but to explore conditions in Botswana in a way that is both penetrating and light thanks to Smith's deft touch. Mma Ramotswe's cases come slowly and hesitantly at first: women who suspect their husbands are cheating on them; a father worried that his daughter is sneaking off to see a boy; a missing child who may have been killed by witchdoctors to make medicine; a doctor who sometimes seems highly competent and sometimes seems to know almost nothing about medicine. The desultory pace is fine, since she has only a detective manual, the frequently cited example of Agatha Christie and her instincts to guide her. Mma Ramotswe's love of Africa, her wisdom and humor, shine through these pages as she shines her own light on the problems that vex her clients. Images of this large woman driving her tiny white van or sharing a cup of bush tea with a friend or client while working a case linger pleasantly. General audiences will welcome this little gem of a book just as much if not more than mystery readers.

From Breeze:
I just read these 2 this past week and loved them! Mma Ramotswe's descriptions of life in Africa and her pride in her country are so sweet. The 'mysteries' are usually humourous and light, makes for a GREAT weekend read!

LML's reveal
Deadly Housewives edited by Christine Matthews

Never-before published stories from Sara Paretsky, Nevada Barr, Denise Mina, Marcia Muller and many others.

In the expert hands of 14 unsurpassed storytellers, being a housewife takes on a whole new meaning. Get ready for a lethal mix of meddling mothers-in-law, creepy neighbors, cheating husbands, fickle female friends, careers left behind, out-of-control kids, steamy sex and much much more in this thrilling collection of never-before published stories.

gringuitica's reveal:



'Tis: A Memoir by Frank McCourt

The sequel to Frank McCourt's memoir of his Irish Catholic boyhood, Angela's Ashes, picks up the story in October 1949, upon his arrival in America. Though he was born in New York, the family had returned to Ireland due to poor prospects in the United States. Now back on American soil, this awkward 19-year-old, with his "pimply face, sore eyes, and bad teeth," has little in common with the healthy, self-assured college students he sees on the subway and dreams of joining in the classroom. Initially, his American experience is as harrowing as his impoverished youth in Ireland, including two of the grimmest Christmases ever described in literature. McCourt views the U.S. through the same sharp eye and with the same dark humor that distinguished his first memoir: race prejudice, casual cruelty, and dead-end jobs weigh on his spirits as he searches for a way out. A glimpse of hope comes from the army, where he acquires some white-collar skills, and from New York University, which admits him without a high school diploma. But the journey toward his position teaching creative writing at Stuyvesant High School is neither quick nor easy. Fortunately, McCourt's openness to every variety of human emotion and longing remains exceptional; even the most damaged, difficult people he encounters are richly rendered individuals with whom the reader can't help but feel uncomfortable kinship. The magical prose, with its singing Irish cadences, brings grandeur and beauty to the most sorrowful events, including the final scene, set in a Limerick graveyard.

Here is lmn60'sreveal!

The Red Queen by Margaret Drabble

This is number 7 in the 2000s section of '1001 Books you must read before you die'.


Book Description
Two hundred years after being plucked from obscurity to marry the Crown Prince of Korea, the Red Queen doesn't want her extraordinary existence to be forgotten. Her long and privileged life behind the Korean palace walls was not all it seemed, and the Red Queen (or her ghost) is still desperate to retell her tale. Dr Babs Halliwell, with her own complicated past, seems the perfect envoy - having read the memoirs of the Crown Princess on the plane to Seoul, Babs has become utterly engrossed in her story. But why has the Red Queen picked Babs to keep her story alive, and what else does she want from her?


A really well written novel - if at times a little 'detached' for my liking. One I'd definitely recommend though!

Candy's reveal is Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Wintserson.


Bizarre images and bawdy laughter galvanize this splendid English farce about a prodigious giantess and her explorer son in 17th-century London. Jordan fetches the first pineapple to the court of Charles II, while his mother, The Dog Woman, wreaks vengeance upon Puritans in a brothel. The plague; the flying princesses who defy laws of the courts and gravity; Jordan's travels to the floating city and the botanical wonders of the New World--the tale nips easily in and out of history and fantasy. The two characters eventually merge into the grievously polluted life of modern London. Metaphors abound with polemics on environmental concerns and politics of past and present. Not for the Jackie Collins set: readers need a background in surrealism to follow this story.

My reveal:


A Million Little Pieces by James Frey

The electrifying opening of James Frey's debut memoir, A Million Little Pieces, smash-cuts to the then 23-year-old author on a Chicago-bound plane "covered with a colorful mixture of spit, snot, urine, vomit and blood." Wanted by authorities in three states, without ID or any money, his face mangled and missing four front teeth, Frey is on a steep descent from a dark marathon of drug abuse. His stunned family checks him into a famed Minnesota drug treatment center where a doctor promises "he will be dead within a few days" if he starts to use again, and where Frey spends two agonizing months of detox confronting "The Fury" head on:

I want a drink. I want fifty drinks. I want a bottle of the purest, strongest, most destructive, most poisonous alcohol on Earth. I want fifty bottles of it. I want crack, dirty and yellow and filled with formaldehyde. I want a pile of powder meth, five hundred hits of acid, a garbage bag filled with mushrooms, a tube of glue bigger than a truck, a pool of gas large enough to drown in. I want something anything whatever however as much as I can.

One of the more harrowing sections is when Frey submits to major dental surgery without the benefit of anesthesia or painkillers (he fights the mind-blowing waves of "bayonet" pain by digging his fingers into two old tennis balls until his nails crack). His fellow patients include a damaged crack addict with whom Frey wades into an ill-fated relationship, a federal judge, a former championship boxer, and a mobster (who, upon his release, throws a hilarious surf-and-turf bacchanal, complete with pay-per-view boxing). In the book's epilogue, when Frey ticks off a terse update on everyone, you can almost hear the Jim Carroll Band's brutal survivor's lament "People Who Died" kicking in on the soundtrack of the inevitable film adaptation.

The rage-fueled memoir is kept in check by Frey's cool, minimalist style. Like his steady mantra, "I am an Alcoholic and I am a drug Addict and I am a Criminal," Frey's use of repetition takes on a crisp, lyrical quality which lends itself to the surreal experience. The book could have benefited from being a bit leaner. Nearly 400 pages is a long time to spend under Frey's influence, and the stylistic acrobatics (no quotation marks, random capitalization, left-aligned text, wild paragraph breaks) may seem too self-conscious for some readers, but beyond the literary fireworks lurks a fierce debut.

the girls by Lori Lansen



book synopsis

In twenty-nine years, Rose Darlen has never spent a moment apart from her twin sister Ruby. She has never gone for a solitary walk or had a private conversation. Yet, in all that time, she has never once looked into Ruby's eyes.

Joined at the head, 'The Girls' (as they are known in their small town) attempt to live a normal life, but can't help being extraordinary.

Rose and Ruby are on the verge of becoming the oldest living craniopagus twins in history, but they are remarkable for a lot more than their unusual sisterly bond…

The twins, or at least Ruby, decided they should write an autobiography of their life and so that is the form this book takes. It is all written in the first person, mainly by the character of Ruby although Rose does write sections in the later stages of the book. I found this book fascinating and not at all morbid. Iy is really the story of anyone growing up in small town Canada.

Luckaye's reveal



Across the Nightingale Floor by Lian Hearn

The debut novel of Lian Hearn's Tales of the Otori series, Across the Nightingale Floor, is set in a feudal Japan on the edge of the imagination. The tale begins with young Takeo, a member of a subversive and persecuted religious group, who returns home to find his village in flames. He is saved, not by coincidence, by the swords of Lord Otori Shigeru and thrust into a world of warlords, feuding clans, and political scheming. As Lord Otori's ward, he discovers he is a member by birth of the shadowy "Tribe," a mysterious group of assassins with supernatural abilities.
Hearn sets his tale in an imaginary realm that is and isn't feudal Japan. This device serves the author well as he is able to play with familiar archetypes--samurai, Shogun, and ninja--without falling prey to the pitfalls of history. The novel fills a unique niche that is at once period piece and fantasy novel. Hearn unfolds the tale of Takeo and the conflicting forces around him in a deliberate manner that leads to a satisfying conclusion and sets the stage for the rest of the series.

Camis's reveal is:

My reveal is










The Little Lady Agency by Hester Browne



When sweet, naive Melissa seeks a job with her old Home Economics teacher she is half way through the interview before it dawns on her that Mrs McKinnon isn't interested in her cookery skills, but is in fact running an escort agency. Melissa panics, but she needs the cash - and what harm can providing lonely men with stimulating conversation over dinner do? More exciting still, she'll get to wear a disguise! Enter her alter ego: Honey. As flirty and feminine as a Bond girl, as confident and sexy as Mary Poppins in silk stockings, Honey brings out a side to Melissa she never knew she had. A side that will get her into hot water, (and out of it) and that she'll never want to lose!

My reveal:

The Rescue by Nicholas Sparks



Description from the book:

When confronted by raging fires or deadly accidents, volunteer fireman Taylor McAden feels compelled to take terrifying risks -- risks no one else in the department would ever take -- to save lives. But there is one leap of faith Taylor can't bring himself to make: He can't fall in love. For all his adult years, Taylor has sought out women who need to be rescued, women he leaves as soon as their crisis is over, as soon as the relationship starts to become truly intimate.

Then, one day, a raging, record-breaking storm hits his small Southern town. Denise Holton, a young single mother, is driving through it when her car skids off the road. With her is her four-year old son, Kyle, a boy with severe learning disabilities and for whom she has sacrificed everything. Unconscious and bleeding, she -- but not Kyle -- will be found by Taylor McAden. And when she wakes, the chilling truth becomes clear to both of them: Kyle is gone.

During the search for Kyle, the connection, the lifeline, between Taylor and Denise takes root. Taylor doesn't know that this rescue will be different from all the others, demanding far more than raw physical courage. That it will lead him to the possibility of his own rescue from a life lived without love. That it will require him to open doors to his past that were slammed shut by pain. That it will dare him to live life to the fullest by daring to love.

tenneh's reveal is Starlight Passage by Anita Richmond Bunkley



Each of Bunkley's novels has dealt with the historical legacy of African Americans-Black Gold with black landowners in Texas in the early 1900s, and Wild Embers with African Americans in WWII. Here, taking up the issue of reparations for exploited black folk artists, she limns a contemporary black woman's search for her roots. Kiana Sheridan's faltering dissertation research leaps forward when she uncovers her deceased mother's family narrative. Convinced that an ancestor was Soddy Russell, an artisan whose work has begun to command record prices, she joins a Smithsonian tour she hopes will prove her case-only to learn, in D.C., that the trip has been canceled. Intrigued by Kiana's project, however, tour guide Rex Tandy agrees to lead her on a solo tour. Before departing for Tennessee, Kiana visits her stepsister Ida, who is deeply envious of Kiana despite a powerful job and her engagement to a rising black congressman. As Kiana grows suspicious of the sudden infusion of "Soddy Glass" into the art market, Ida-who commissions fakes that inflate prices-pursues desperate measures to prevent her carefully constructed world from collapsing. Meanwhile, a parallel subplot, set mostly during the Civil War, details the perseverance and courage of Kiana's ancestors, slave couple Adi and Price; while back in the present, Rex finds his growing romantic interest in Kiana distracting him from the troubles of his delinquent brother. Bunkley's lively characters, as well as her research into the question of reparation, elevate this tale above a standard romantic melodrama-but there's plenty of desire and danger here, too.

Momx3 reveal

[IMG=http://www.geocities.yahoo.com/momx3lovesbooks/girls.jpg][/IMG]


"The Same Sweet Girls" by Cassandra King

None of the Same Sweet Girls are really girls anymore, and none of them have ever actually been that sweet. But the six southern women of this spirited group, who have been holding biannual reunions ever since they were together in college, are suddenly facing middle age and major life changes.

My reveal:

Black Sheep by R.J. Kaiser



Jonas Lamb was a lost sheep. Now, after a trail of broken marriages and an endless ride from fortune to bankruptcy and back again, Jonas has one last chance to turn his life around.
His greatest regret is that he never had much of a relationship with his son. But now Patrick is back in Jonas's life. A genetic engineer, his son comes to him with news of a groundbreaking discovery--code-named Black Sheep in honor of Jonas--that could revolutionize energy markets, putting oil companies out of business and turning the world economy on its head. All Patrick needs is his father's help finding financial backing.
If Jonas plays his cards right, he can redeem himself with his child, win the heart of Patrick's mother--the only woman he has truly loved--and become one of the wealthiest men on earth. There's just one problem: everybody, including spies, femmes fatales and hit men, wants to stop him. And now he is risking everything he has--including his own life--for one last chance to win everything he has always wanted.

Here's the picture for my reveal.

sejent's reveal



Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See

"In nineteenth-century China, in a remote Hunan county, a girl named Lily, at the tender age of seven, is paired with a laotong, or "old same," in an emotional match that will last a lifetime. The laotong, Snow Flower, introduces herself by sending Lily a silk fan on which she has written a poem in nu shu, a unique language that Chinese women created in order to communicate in secret, away from the influence of men. As the years pass, Lily and Snow Flower send messages on the fan and compose stories on handkerchiefs, reaching out of isolation to share their hopes, dreams, and accomplishments. They both endure the agony of footbinding and together reflect upon their arranged marriages, shared loneliness, and the joys and tragedies of motherhood. The two find solace, developing a bond that keeps their spirits alive. But when a misunderstanding arises, their deep friendship suddenly threatens to tear apart."

Redhot-Brat's reveal


A Darker Justice by Sallie Bissell



Penzler Pick, November 2001: One of the last year's most interesting debuts was Sallie Bissell's In the Forest of Harm, which introduced Mary Crow, an assistant district attorney in Atlanta, Georgia, who is half Cherokee. Crow had some unfinished business in that book. Her mother was murdered and Mary discovered the body, but the murderer was never brought to justice. She also had residual feelings for an old beau, Jonathan Walkingstick, with whom she resumed their on-again, off-again affair.
At the start of A Darker Justice, Mary once again is in Atlanta when she is called away from a friend's wedding to be told that her mentor and friend, Judge Irene Hannah, may be the next target of a vicious killer who is murdering federal judges. When the judge refuses to accept help from the FBI, the feds ask Mary to intercede on their behalf so that they can put agents on her land to protect her. Hannah will have none of this, but does accept Mary's offer to stay with her as a bodyguard. Then, in one brief moment, she is abducted from under Mary's nose. In a race against time, Mary and FBI agent Dan Safer must try to find her before she, too, is killed.

In an equally compelling parallel story, we meet Tommy Cabe and Willett Pierson, who attend Camp Unakawaya in North Carolina. Their life at the camp, which is part military, part orphanage, is hell under the rule of Robert Wurth. The lives of Tommy, Willett, and Wurth will intersect with that of Mary Crow in an explosion of violence when many of Mary's questions about her mother's murder and her relationship with Jonathan will be resolved.

While I was a great fan of her first book, Bissell has written a second that is even better. --Otto Penzler