Thrillers Drawings Winners

I've been remiss in posting the winners of the three drawings I held on June 22, so, without further ado, here they are!

The Scarecrow by Michael Connelly - unabridged audiobook:

Linda Ellen
ScottsGal
Cstironkat

Cemetery Dance by Preston and Child - unabridged audiobook:

Esme
Averitasm-Amanda M.
Alicia

The Night Gardener by George Pelecanos

Aimala
Dixie
Amber
A Reader (liane66)

Congratulations to the winners and thanks so much to everyone for visiting my blog and participating in the drawings.

Ah, I see a few puzzled looks out there. Some of you may have noticed there are only four winners of The Night Gardener named, though I promised to give away five copies. Well, as it turned out, I actually drew seven names, but only four people responded that they still wanted the book. The other three had already won it from another blog contest and asked me to draw another name.

So, rather than keep drawing names of those who've already gotten it elsewhere, I had this brilliant idea (well, I thought it was brilliant, anyway) to ask everyone who entered the contest the first time but who has not yet gotten hold of The Night Gardener from someplace else to post a comment here letting me know you are still interested in winning this book. On Friday, July 10, I'll draw the last winner from those names.

Oh, yeah, one important last thing: PLEASE leave your email addy so I can reach you if your name is drawn. If you don't, and I can't find it easily by checking your blog, then I'm going to draw another name. Thanks!

Good luck!

MORE Thrills, Chills, & Giveaways!

Life doesn't get much better than this! I've got three (count 'em, 3) copies each of two (yep, 2) unabridged audiobooks to give away, again courtesy of those wonderful folks at Hatchette Books. These are mystery/thrillers by some of the best-known, best-selling authors around today, and I am so excited to be able to offer them to my friends in the blogosphere.

First: THE SCARECROW by Michael Connelly, read by Peter Giles

If you aren't familiar with Michael Connelly, then you are in for a rare treat ~ an introduction into the world of Jack McEvoy (The Poet and this, The Scarecrow, his latest) by one of the best and most prolific mystery writers around today. Other mystery series by Connelly feature Harry Bosch (starting with Black Echo) and Mickey Haller (The Lincoln Lawyer & The Brass Verdict). I've read every one of his novels, as well as his non-fiction look at his experiences as a crime reporter, and cannot speak highly enough of him and his books.

Synopsis

Forced out of the Los Angeles Times amid the latest budget cuts, newspaperman Jack McEvoy decides to go out with a bang, using his final days at the paper to write the definitive murder story of his career. He focuses on Alonzo Winslow, a 16-year-old drug dealer in jail after confessing to a brutal murder. But as he delves into the story, Jack realizes that Winslow's so-called confession is bogus. Jack is soon running with his biggest story since The Poet made his career years ago. He is tracking a killer who operates completely below police radar--and with perfect knowledge of any move against him. Including Jack's.

To learn more, visit Michael Connelly’s website or become a fan on Facebook.

Second: CEMETERY DANCE by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child, read by Rene Auberjonois

I may be the last reader of mystery/thrillers on the planet who has not yet had the pleasure of reading Preston & Child. That will soon be remedied when I listen to the audiobook of Cemetery Dance.

Synopsis

Pendergast-the world's most enigmatic FBI Special Agent-returns to New York City to investigate a murderous cult.

William Smithback, a New York Times reporter, and his wife Nora Kelly, a Museum of Natural History archaeologist, are brutally attacked in their apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side. As Pendergast and Lieutenant Vincent D'Agosta undertake their own private-and decidedly unorthodox-quest for the truth. Their serpentine journey takes them to an enclave of Manhattan they never imagined could exist: a secretive, reclusive cult of Obeah and vodou which no outsiders have ever survived

.
For more info, visit Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child’s website.

Both giveaways are open to residents of the U.S. and Canada with a street address to provide. Leave a comment letting me know which audiobook giveaway you are interested in entering. An extra entry (for the same or the alternate audiobook) will be yours if you also indicate what your all-time absolute favorite mystery/thriller is. Be sure to provide a way for me to contact you if your name is drawn. Contest ends at midnight on June 21, and a random drawing will be held on June 22.

The Girl Who Stopped Swimming Giveaway

Hatchette Book Group USA is again making it possible for me to host a giveaway. This time, the book is The Girl Who Stopped Swimming by Joshilyn Jackson, which looks at the darker side of Southern living.

In the words of Entertainment Weekly, it is "[a] ghost story, family psychodrama, and murder mystery all in one. Jackson's latest is a wild, smartly calibrated achievement. A-." I'll be posting a review here as soon as I read the copy that's being sent to me, so stay tuned!

Up to 5 copies will be given away, and the drawing will take place at midnight on April 15. As usual, this giveaway is open to U.S. and Canadian residents only, and the novel cannot be sent to post office boxes.

Good luck, ya'll!

The Drawing for Sway

Congratulations to the winners of the drawing for a copy of Sway, and thanks so much to everyone who stopped by to visit and left a comment. I only wish I could have given away a copy to each one of you! Perhaps next time...

Which reminds me, I'm planning a special and unprecedented event here at Just One More Page...Or Two. Christine Weiser, the author of Broad Street, which I read, enjoyed, and reviewed back in 2008, has agreed to be my guest for my first-ever interview! Christine's written a new novel ~ the first of a series, perhaps? ~ that will be coming out soon, and she recently sent me a galley copy to read and review (to be posted shortly). I have to say, I loved it!

The Mom Squad is again set in Philly, and the main character is a rock band singer/guitarist named Maya, but there are big differences between the protagonists of The Mom Squad and Broad Street. For one thing, Maya is no longer a part of the band scene. Instead, she is the fond but slightly bored and definitely stressed stay-at-home mom of what I like to think of as a "strong-willed child" (scarily reminiscent of my own darling daughter when she was that age) and the reluctant step-mom of a rebellious, resentful teenage girl (eerily reminiscent of my own darling daughter when she was that age, except for the goth look and the fact I wasn't really her step-mom, no matter what she might have wished). Maya's posse consists of two other stay-at-home moms, and the three of them get all tangled up in dirty politics and murder. wOOt! That's one way to beat the baby-blahs.

Okay, enough said. I'll be posting the review in the next day or two, and soon after hope to set the date for the interview with Christine.

SHADES OF THE 60S

Sway by Zachary Lazar

3/7/09 - My review copy of Sway showed up yesterday, and it's all I can do not to dive in right away because it looks so good! I especially like the cover art. Jagger was so gorgeous back then. (I am a sap for "bad boys," and that's sure his look in that photo.) Anyway, I started on the first page of the first chapter and when I got to page 7 I had to force myself to put it down and finish the books I'm already reading. The first chapter has to do with the Manson family, which is still one of the creepier things about the 60s. Anyway, my eyes keep getting drawn back to that cover art, but I'm holding firm (so far).

I hope to be able to start reading it on Monday after a weekend gorging on my other review books (see TBR sidebar).

Tomorrow's the drawing for the free copies of Sway, so be sure to leave a comment if you haven't already done so.

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Oboy, oboy! Or, as we used to say back in the day, groovy! No, wait ~ I never really said "groovy," did I? God, I hope not. Cool. Hip. Bitchin' maybe. Never groovy. *shudders at the thought*

Anyway, back at the ranch (another 60s slang term ~ I'm full of 'em tonight, aren't I?!), I just heard about this really cool book about the 1960s scene. I have to say, I am excited about the chance to read it! I mean, it's about the era of my own misspent youth. How can I resist? I'll be reviewing it here as soon as possible. In the meantime, here is a description of the book from the Hatchette website:

Three dramatic and emblematic stories intertwine in Zachary Lazar's extraordinary new novel, SWAY--the early days of the Rolling Stones, including the romantic triangle of Brian Jones, Anita Pallenberg, and Keith Richards; the life of avant-garde filmmaker Kenneth Anger; and the community of Charles Manson and his followers.

Lazar illuminates an hour in American history when rapture found its roots in idolatrous figures and led to unprovoked and inexplicable violence. Connecting all the stories in this novel is Bobby Beausoleil, a beautiful California boy who appeared in an Anger film and eventually joined the Manson "family."

With great artistry, Lazar weaves scenes from these real lives together into a true but heightened reality, making superstars human, giving demons reality, and restoring mythic events to the scale of daily life.

"One hypnotic tone poem.... It is not the now-historic acts of violence that make Sway so riveting, but its vivid character portraits and decadent, muzzy atmosphere, all rendered with the heightened sensory awareness associated with drugs and paranoia.

The near miniaturist precision with which he describes Keith Richards's attempts to master his guitar, Brian Jones's acid trips and Anger's obsessive desire for Beausoleil bring this large-scale tableau into stunning relief." --Liz Brown, Time Out New York

I've got up to five copies to give away courtesy of the nice folks at Hatchette Book Group. To enter, please leave a comment here along with a way for me to get hold of you if your name is pulled from the hat. You can also blog about this contest for a second entry. Contest ends March 8 when I put all the names in the aforesaid hat and get my neighbor's cat to pick the winners. *mreow* >^..^<

Open only to U.S. and Canadian residents with a mailing address other than a P.O. Box.

*slouches over to pile of CDs to see if I can find my copy of Beggars' Banquet*

"The Italian Lover" ~ CONGRATULATIONS!

Well, we have our winners! There were three (because there were 15 comments):

Gwendolyn B.
Wendy aka Misswendiki
Olympianlady

I'll be in touch via email to get your snailmail addys, and soon after that I hope to hear that you received your copy!

The winner of the candle was Gwendolyn B. (she was entered twice because of the West of Mars - Win a Book blog post). I'll get that out to as soon as she decides which candle or candleholder she prefers.

Happy Valentine's Day and my thanks to all who participated. I wish you all could have won the prize!

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No, I'm not giving away a real, live, flesh-and-blood Italian lover. (I assure you that, if I had one, I'd keep him for myself. Yowza!) I am giving away up to five copies of Robert Hellenga's The Italian Lover, a novel of romance, art and food in Florence, Italy, which is almost as good, at least to those of us who love good books.

Anyway, thanks to the good folks at Hatchette Book Group, I'll be drawing names for a copy of The Italian Lover (now in paperback) on February 14, just in time for Valentine's Day. For every five comments I get, I'll add another copy of the book for up to five copies. If you blog about the contest and send me the link, it'll be counted as another comment and another entry. (So sorry, but winners are restricted to residents of the U.S. and Canada, and the book cannot be mailed to P.O. Boxes.)

Here is some information about the book, which I plan to review here in the near future. (I can't get enough of that cover art!)

THE ITALIAN LOVER

An exhilarating novel of romance, art, and food in Florence, featuring the beloved Margot Harrington, who graced Robert Hellenga's The Sixteen Pleasures. Margot Harrington's memoir about her discovery in Florence of a priceless masterwork of Renaissance erotica - and the misguided love affair it inspired - is now, 25 years later, being made into a movie.

Margot, with the help of her lover, Woody, writes a script that she thinks will validate her life. Of course their script is not used, but never mind - happy endings are the best endings for movies, as Margot eventually comes to see.

At the former convent in Florence where "The Sixteen Pleasures" - now called "The Italian Lover," - is being filmed, Margot enters into a drama she never imagined, where her ideas of home, love, art, and aging collide with the imperatives of commerce and the unknowability of other cultures and other people.

For more about The Italian Lover , Robert Hellenga, and his other books (which sound fascinating and wonderful!), visit Robert's website.

I'm Back ~ with a Great Giveaway (and a Review)

It's good to be back from my NaNoWriMo-induced hiatus from reading and blogging and socializing. During November, I managed to write 51,200 or so words of a novel that is not and never will be finished because I loathe it so much (another story). I had a great time during NaNo November, but I really missed blogging and socializing. Most of all, I missed reading. I mean, I usually read 8 to 10 books a month, and I kept it down to only 2 books last month.

As a reward for my fortitude (at least that's what I like to tell myself), Hachette Books sent me a copy of Gods Behaving Badly, a debut novel by Marie Phillips (click here to listen to a podcast interview). Gods Behaving Badly is about Greek gods and a couple of mortals with whom they cross paths. According to Kerry Fried in Newsday, it is "[t]he most amusing and instructive collision between gods and mortals since A Midsummer Night's Dream." High praise indeed, but is it true? Personally, I love the title, but the jury (of one ~ me) isn't in yet, though I can say that I've read the first chapter and it already had me laughing out loud.

The blurb on the back of the book gives a brief description of the novel:

Being a Greek god is not all it once was. Yes, the twelve gods of Olympus are
alive and well in the twenty-first century, but they are crammed together in a London townhouse-and none too happy about it. And they've had to get day jobs: Artemis as a dog-walker, Apollo as a TV psychic, Aphrodite as a phone sex operator, Dionysus as a DJ.

Even more disturbingly, their powers are waning, and even turning mortals into trees--a favorite pastime of Apollo's--is sapping their vital reserves of strength.

Soon, what begins as a minor squabble between Aphrodite and Apollo escalates into an epic battle of wills. Two perplexed humans, Alice and Neil, who are caught in the crossfire, must fear not only for their own lives, but for the survival of humankind. Nothing less than a true act of heroism is needed-but can these two decidedly ordinary people replicate the feats of the mythical heroes and save the world?

So, after the month I've had, I need a few laughs. I'm going to bed now to snuggle beneath the comforter and read more of Gods Behaving Badly.

But, first: The Giveaway! Leave a comment to this post and you will be entered to win a copy of Gods Behaving Badly. Put a link to the contest on your blog, and your name will be entered twice. For each five comments, one copy will be given away, up to five copies. So leave a comment, tell your friends, post a link on your blog. The contest will run through 12:00 p.m. (PDT) December 24, so if you win, it will be a nice early late Christmas present! (Sorry, contest open to residents of the U.S. and Canada only.)

I'll be back in a couple of days with my review.

And here it is, finally, my review: I thought it was a wonderful read, light and amusing without being fluffy, serious without being depressing. Imagine if you will the mighty Greek gods of Olympus ~ Zeus, Hera, Athena, Artemis, Mars, Persephone, Apollo, Hermes, and Pluto (not the Disney dog) ~ living all together (except for Persephone and Pluto who live in Hades) in a rundown tenement in London. And imagine these formerly powerful and amoral gods and goddesses trying to fit into modern times. Dysfunctional doesn't come near to what things are really like for them, especially now that their powers are in decline. I mean, think of it: Aphrodite as a phone sex operator, Artemis as a dog walker, Eros as a born-again Christian convert who doesn't believe in Christ but really really wants to.

The story begins when Artemis discovers that her brother Apollo has turned Kate, a mortal female who had apparently resisted his lovemaking, into a tree. She and their aunt, Aphrodite, force Apollo to swear on the River Styx that he will refrain from harming any more mortals unnecessarily for a decade or until they get their power back, whichever comes first. Things get interesting when Artemis hires Alice, a mousy, almost unbelievably ordinary mortal woman, to clean house for them. Unfortunately, Apollo has fallen madly in love with Alice (aided by an arrow shot by a certain god of love who will remain nameless), but Alice is too much in love with Neal, a painfully shy guy who is too afraid of rejection to ask her out on a date though he pretty much adores her too.

As happened all too often in mythology when the gods played with human emotions and lives, the games take a deadly turn of events, and Neal has to make a choice to turn his back on Alice or become the most unlikely hero that ever was.

Mr. White's Confession - A Review and a Giveaway

Mr. White's Confession by Robert Clark
Trade Paperback: 352 pages
Publisher: Picador (September 2, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 031242812X
ISBN-13: 978-0312428129

Winner of the Edgar Award for Best Novel, 1999

In the beginning, two police detectives are drinking coffee at a local White Castle when they happen to notice a bald, rotund, funny-looking man eating hamburgers at the counter. One of them muses that the odd-looking man sits on his stool "like an egg in an eggcup." That was only the first of many moments of pure enjoyment I have had from this murder mystery, which is much more than a whodunnit, and I am looking forward to many more, since I am only at about the halfway point in the novel.

It is late in the autumn of 1939, and St. Paul, Minnesota is still reeling from the effects of the Great Depression when the murdered body of a beautiful red-haired dime-a-dance girl is discovered on a hillside. Coincidentally, the investigation by the two detectives initially leads them to suspect Mr. White, the Humpty-Dumpty of a man they had noticed a week or so earlier at the White Castle.

Now, it turns out that Mr. White has a faulty memory ~ he cannot remember middle-distance events. He can recall in detail memories from his youth, and he is pretty good at remembering things that happened within the last day or so, but between that ~ nothing. As a substitute, he has devised various ways to keep track of his life: he is an avid photographer (particularly of dime-a-dance girls), and he keeps scrapbooks of his photos as well as newspaper articles of current events. On the day of his unknown encounter with the detectives at the White Castle, he had also decided to keep a diary. This diary becomes an integral part of the narrative and is, I think, the best part of Mr. White's Confession. In his diary, Mr. White's voice is formal and innocent and, most of all, blind to his own desires. In the first pages of his diary, recalling a visit by Ruby Fahey, one of the dime-a-dance girls he photographs, he writes: "She went back to my bedroom to change, and I must say I felt a huge sort of breathlessness at the idea that she was in my room shedding and then donning her garments, rather as if some mystery of great enormity were taking place right here in my humble quarters!"

The detective's portion of Mr. White's Confession seems to be a conscious parody of the hard-boiled Chandleresque detective novels, and occasionally it gets a little over-the-top, but overall it works to balance the almost dreamy ruminations of the diarist. So far, anyway.

September 26, 2008 ~ Review continued!

It is always exciting to find a good novel by an author whose work I haven't read before, but when that author is brand new, as in this is his first novel ever, well, that's nothing short of magical.

"Mr. White's Confession" is sort of a cross between a Chandleresque whodunnit and a noir fictional memoir. It tells the tale of an odd-looking and -acting young man who, mostly due to his strangeness, is suspected of murdering a young, beautiful dime-a-dance girl in 1939 during the Great Depression in St. Paul, Minnesota. He is not only socially inept and odd-looking, he has a memory disability. Because of his disability he keeps track of his life in journals and scrapbooks, and that makes up one part of the story. The part that focuses on the police investigation is told mostly through the eyes of the detectives, Lt. Wesley Horner, a chain-smoking, dogged, rough, but honest cop, and reads like a dime-detective novel from that era.

When the story begins, the two protagonists ~ Mr. White and Lt. Horner ~ are eons apart in personality and experience, but, as the novel continues, their lives begin to parallel each other.
I found Mr. White a sympathetic character, perhaps because he is also into photography, and I understood his descriptions of the photographic process and identified with his pleasure at watching an image appear from nothing. I also found his ruminations on the metaphorical aspects of photography as it relates to memory, love, life itself, really quite astute. I also sympathized with him for the way he was looked at ~ as a freak and a creep and even a murderer ~ only because he wasn't fashionable or good-looking. In this story, things got way out of hand because of that bias. I eventually started to like Lt. Horner too, rooting for his redemption when he made the decision that would result in a terrible loss, and feeling his pain over that loss when it occurred. I feel that the character of Lt. Horner grew as much as Mr. White's did until, by the end of the story, they both resembled the kind of quiet heroes the world needs more of but never really seems to appreciate fully.

The novel was a little slow in portions, but the writing itself was so good that it was always enough to keep me going until the pace would pick up again. Toward the end, maybe the last 50 pages or so, the story got so intense that I had to force myself to just keep reading and not skip to the end to see what happened. I did sort of figure out more or less who the murderer was, although it was never 100% certain, due to the ambiguities of Mr. White's faulty memory and everyone's intentional and unintentional falsehoods.

One other thing that bothered me (not about the novel but about one of the issues brought up in the story) was the way the criminal justice system in effect at the time could be so brutal and unfair. There were few of the checks that keep the system in line today, like the requirement for Miranda rights, the rights of the accused to representation and a fair trial by jury, the rights of a criminal not to be subjected to brutal, inhumane punishments, etc. While the criminal justice system today has flaws, they are nothing to what it was like back then. Some of the things that happened to some of the characters infuriated me, and I had to keep telling myself "it's only fiction," and "that was then, it's not like that here anymore."

Needless to say, I really enjoyed this novel and am looking forward to more from this author!

On October 1, a copy of "Mr. White's Confession" by Robert Clark will be raffled off to one lucky reader who leaves a comment below. Please be sure to include your email or blog address in your comment if you want to enter. Mention this contest on your own blog and add a link to the above post, and you'll be entered twice to win. (Open to U.S. and Canadian readers only.)