In My Mailbox: Week 4

In My Mailbox was started by Kristi, The Story Siren. :)

After missing last weekend, I've got two weeks' worth of books to post, so this is gonna be a long one (sorry!). Here's what I've found in my mailbox, at the bookstore, and at the library this week. Summaries are taken from Amazon and B&N.

Front and Center by Catherine Murdock (ARC) - After five months of sheer absolute craziness I was going back to being plain old background D.J. In photographs of course I’m always in the background . . . -- But it turns out other folks have big plans for D.J. Like her coach. College scouts. All the town hoops fans. A certain Red Bend High School junior who’s keen for romance and karaoke. Not to mention Brian Nelson, who she should not be thinking about! Who she is done with, thank you very much. But who keeps showing up anyway . . .

Drive Me Crazy by Erin Downing - Kate and her two best friends, Sierra and Alexis, are geared up for a week of fun and freedom on the road to their family lake houses in Love, Wisconsin. Best of all, when Kate reaches Love, she'll be reunited with Lucas, with whom she shared a steamy end-of-summer kiss last year. She can't wait to see Lucas again and pick things up exactly where they left off. Then Kate gets some seriously bad news: Alexis's sarcastic, condescending, hot-but-he-knows-it cousin is crashing the girls' road trip. Adam bugs Kate in every possible way. Now Kate just wants to get the road trip over with so she can spend the summer in Lucas's arms. But the road to Love is full of surprises....

Wicked: Resurrection by Nancy Holder and Debbie Viguie - What the Cahors witches thought was the end of their troubles was only the beginning. A threat more powerful and more frightening than anything they have faced has been watching and waiting. The Cahors witches must come together and find Jer and Eli as both the Deveraux and the Cahors family lines face eradication. All the secrets of the Cahors will be revealed, forcing them to overcome their greatest weaknesses in order to achieve their most powerful strengths. And only united do they have any chance at victory. Before the end, sacrifices will be made, alliances forged, and old friends lost forever.

The Diamond Secret by Suzanne Weyn - A Retelling of "Anastasia." Nadya is a mischievous kitchen girl in a Russian tavern. Having nearly drowned in the Iset River during the turmoil of the Revolution, she has no memory of her past and longs for the life she cannot remember. Then two young men arrive at the tavern and announce that Nadya's long-lost grandmother has sent them to find her. Yearning for family and friendship, she agrees to accompany them to Paris for the joyful reunion. Nadya eagerly embarks on her journey, never dreaming it will be one of laughter, love -- and betrayal.

If I Stay by Gayle Forman - In a single moment, everything changes. Seventeen-year-old Mia has no memory of the accident; she can only recall riding along the snow-wet Oregon road with her family. Then, in a blink, she finds herself watching as her own damaged body is taken from the wreck...

Princess of the Midnight Ball by Jessica Day George - A tale of twelve princesses doomed to dance until dawn… Galen is a young soldier returning from war; Rose is one of twelve princesses condemned to dance each night for the King Under Stone. Together Galen and Rose will search for a way to break the curse that forces the princesses to dance at the midnight balls. All they need is one invisibility cloak, a black wool chain knit with enchanted silver needles, and that most critical ingredient of all—true love—to conquer their foes in the dark halls below. But malevolent forces are working against them above ground as well, and as cruel as the King Under Stone has seemed, his wrath is mere irritation compared to the evil that awaits Galen and Rose in the brighter world above.

Crazy Beautiful by Lauren Baratz-Logsted (ARC) - In an explosion of his own making, Lucius blew his arms off. Now he has hooks. He chose hooks because they were cheaper. He chose hooks because he wouldn’t outgrow them so quickly. He chose hooks so that everyone would know he was different, so he would scare even himself. Then he meets Aurora. The hooks don’t scare her. They don’t keep her away. In fact, they don’t make any difference at all to her. But to Lucius, they mean everything. They remind him of the beast he is inside. Perhaps Aurora is his Beauty, destined to set his soul free from its suffering. Or maybe she’s just a girl who needs love just like he does.

The Dust of 100 Dogs by A.S. King - In the late seventeenth century, famed teenage pirate Emer Morrisey was on the cusp of escaping the pirate life with her one true love and unfathomable riches when she was slain and cursed with "the dust of one hundred dogs," dooming her to one hundred lives as a dog before returning to a human body-with her memories intact. Now she's a contemporary American teenager and all she needs is a shovel and a ride to Jamaica.

Red Glass by Laura Resau - One night Sophie and her parents are called to a hospital where Pedro, a six-year-old Mexican boy, is recovering from dehydration. Crossing the border into Arizona with a group of Mexicans and a coyote, or guide, Pedro and his parents faced such harsh conditions that the boy is the only survivor. Pedro comes to live with Sophie, her parents, and Sophie's Aunt Dika, a refugee of the war in Bosnia. Sophie loves Pedro—her Principito, or Little Prince. But after a year, Pedro’s surviving family in Mexico makes contact, and Sophie, Dika, Dika’s new boyfriend, and his son must travel with Pedro to his hometown so that he can make a heartwrenching decision.


Sophomore Switch by Abby McDonald - Take an administrative snafu, a bad breakup, and what shall heretofore be known as "The Hot-Tub Incident," and you’ve got two unprepared sophomores on a semester abroad. For American party girl Tasha, an escape to Oxford may be a chance to ditch her fame as a tabloid temptress, but wading Uggs-deep in feminist theory is not her idea of a break. Meanwhile, the British half of the exchange, studious Emily, nurses an aching heart amid the bikinis and beer pong of U.C. Santa Barbara. Soon desperation has the girls texting each other tips — on fitting in, finding love, and figuring out who they really are.

Braless in Wonderland by Debbie Reed Fischer - Allee Rosen is a lot of things: high school senior, overachiever, brain. The one thing Allee is not is supermodel material-at least that's what she thinks until modeling scouts spot her and she moves to Miami to work with an elite modeling agency. Suddenly Allee is swept up?p in a whirlwind of designer labels, photo shoots, go-sees and some seriously backstabbing models. Will this fabulous new life go to her head?

Being Nikki by Meg Cabot - Things aren't pretty for Emerson Watts. Em was sure there couldn't be anything worse than being a brainiac the body of a teenaged supermodel. But it turned out she was wrong. Because that supermodel could turn out to have a mother who's gone mysteriously missing, a brother who's shown up on her doorstep demanding answers, a former best friend who's intent on destroying Stark Enterprises to avenge the death of his lost love, and a British heartthrob who's written a song about her that's topping the charts. How can Em balance all that with school, runway shows, and weekend jaunts to St. Johns - especially when she's got ex-boyfriends crawling out of the woodwork who want more than just a photo op; a sister who is headed to the high school cheerleading championships; a company she represents that seems to be turning to the dark side... Not to mention trying to convince the love of her life that models aren't really airheads after all...especially one model in particular. But then, nobody said it was going to be easy being Nikki.

That's all for me. What's in your mailbox?