Mailbox Monday – July 30, 2012

Mailbox Monday is a weekly meme started by Marcia at Mailbox Monday in which bloggers can ramble on about the books they received/bought/stole over a given week.  Each month a new blogger hosts the meme, and this month it’s Mrs. Q: Book Addict.

Yeah, I yanked that mailbox from Jess Resides Here.  You want it back, Jess?  You gotta fight me for it.  Choose your weapon, choose the time and date, and we’ll fight to the death!  Or… maybe you can just ask nicely.  Whichever. 

Anyway, now that I’ve thrown down the gauntlet, it’s time to talk about some books.

--- The Books ---

Chalk Valley by D.L. Johnstone – Chalk Valley is a murder/mystery thriller by “corporate weenie” and weekend warrior author D. L. Johnstone.  We might as well be blood brothers.  His book tells the tale of a hunt for a serial killer in British Columbia.  Two police officers from totally different positions and places in life chase the killer from two different directions, each dead set on bringing the monster to justice.  Sounds like just the sort of thing I’d groove on hardcore.  And D.L. loves talking to his readers.  He can be reached by email, at his blog, on twitter, or on facebook.

The Madman Theory by Harvey Simon – Many thanks go to Jess (once again) for hooking me up with this gem.  It’s an alternate history novel set during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.  The crux of the “what if” paradigm?  Suppose Richard M. Nixon was in the White House rather than John F. Kennedy.  .  Harvey Simon uses this minute quirk of history (Kennedy only carried .2% more of the popular vote, so for all intents and purposes, it was a squeaker) and his understanding of the historical record to explore how things might have turned out oh-so-differently.  I’ll be participating in the September blog tour for this puppy, the details of which you can find here.

Shake Off by Mischa Miller  – Mulholland Books is named after that iconic road that winds its way through the Santa Monica Mountains, full of twists and turns and stomach-churning drop-offs.  And that’s the same sort of thing Mulholland Books brings to their fiction.  So when they asked me if I wanted to review their new spy thriller, Shake Off, I couldn’t say no.  They’ve got a jack-ton of other great titles that fit into my overall “mystery/crime/thriller” milieu.   This one involves a British intelligence agent, his unwitting girlfriend, and a race through Europe to discover “a secret that will change their lives forever.”  Despite the tag line as cliché as a hair metal ballad, it sounds promising.

And now that I’ve showed you mine, it’s time to show me yours.  What did you get in your mailbox this week?