Saturday, August 17, 2013

Bookish Getaways: Summer Escapes 2


What's your idea of a great getaway? 
White sand beaches, Roman ruins and sidewalk cafes, 
or an ambling road trip?
Celebrate the last weeks of summer with books that take you away from the everyday. 

Enter the Girlfriends Book Club Summer Escapes Giveaway for weekly chances to win. #SummerEscapes




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About the Books


LOVE FINDS YOU IN NEW ORLEANS


Unlocking the past could open the door to a new future. 

Ever since her parents died of yellow fever when she was two years old, Adelaide LeClerc has lived with her grandparents, who rarely speak of their son and his wife. They are on the verge of negotiating a contract with a suitor, a man Adelaide dreads, when they discover that she enjoys the company of Etienne Girod, a young Creole man. 

Adelaide's future hangs in the balance as her grandparents consider whether to stop keeping secrets and reveal the truth that they've known since before Adelaide's birth, a truth that will make the difference between a life of obligation and a life of choice for Adelaide.


 DIANA LIVELY IS FALLING DOWN 

Like the legendary London Bridge, Diana Lively has been transplanted from England to the Arizona desert. Trained as an architect and top in her class, she makes dollhouses. Widowed at a young age, she distrusted people who were kind to her, and married Ted, the one man who wasn't. Maybe it's a good thing that Diana Lively's life is suddenly out of her control.

A brash American billionaire wants to put up a King Arthur Theme Park smack in the middle of the Arizona desert. With dollar signs dancing in its head, Oxford University is only too happy to send Ted Lively, their resident Arthurian expert, to consult on the project. There, in the most unlikely place, in the most surprising ways, Diana is about to discover that the happiness she thought was lost forever can shower down on her again, can flood her dry life like a lake in the desert, and make it bloom.

ANYWHERE BUT HERE


Mary Kate Dupree has been spinning her wheels for too long. Trapped in an abusive marriage to an overbearing good ol’ boy, she finally decides break the cycle when she heads out to pick up her husband's dry cleaning and instead picks up a handsome hitchhiker. 

They impulsively set off on a road trip of self-discovery, peeling away layers of their dark pasts en route to Niagara Falls, but once there will they take the leap?




SCOT ON THE ROCKS 


When her ex-boyfriend, Trip, gets engaged to Hollywood’s latest It Girl, Manhattan attorney Brooke Miller plans to attend the wedding. Who says a modern girl can’t stay friends with her ex? Besides, Brooke’s got her sexy Scottish fiancé, Douglas, to take as her date. Okay, so maybe he’s not exactly her fiancé, but they’re living together in his apartment, so she’ll be getting the ring any minute, right?

Wrong.

When a fight leaves her without a boyfriend (much less a fiancé) just days before the wedding, Brooke faces the ultimate humiliation of attending her ex-boyfriend’s nuptials alone. Desperate to find a replacement to fill Douglas’s kilt, Brooke concocts an outrageous plan to survive the wedding and win the man of her dreams, all with her dignity ever-so-slightly intact.

I SHOT YOU BABE (Bombay Assassins #4) 

Coney Bombay isn't your average PhD. While he may be well versed in philosophy, he's also one of the most lethal members of the Bombay Family of assassins. Choosing to travel the world operating carnival rides and spending quite evenings knitting with his pet guinea pig, even in his crazy family, Cy stands out as wild card. But after a series of run-ins with perennial grad student, Veronica Gale, the cool cat is starting to feel a little hot under the collar.

In her research, Ronnie Gale has seen a lot. Problem is, she hasn't actually done a lot. The mysterious Cy Bombay seems about to change all of that when a whirlwind adventure takes them from the small-town country fair to the outer reaches of Mongolia, and into a murder mystery with Cy squarely in the center.

Ronnie's going to have to climb out of her ivory tower and get a little down and dirty if she wants to survive Cy Bombay's wild ride.

 THE LAST RESORT

Mojo and fitness guru, Rachel Woods, takes the women through adventures on the magic island to discover their deepest desires and fears. Readers will catch up with characters from Lott's previous novels: Ramona (Dating da Vinci), Taylor (The Stork Reality), Macy (Fixer Upper), Georgia (Life’s a Beach) and get introduced to Kelly, who gets her own novel, Something New, in Fall 2012.

The six women converge at the luxury resort in Maui at a time when their lives are at a crossroads, personally and professionally. From the workaholic Taylor, to the newly-divorced mom with the identity crisis Georgia, to the broken-hearted Kelly, the island helps them find their own mojo for what matters most. And their fearless leader, Rachel, has a secret of her own that set the whole chain of events in motion.


DECEPTIVE  (On the Run #3) 

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a missing Monet painting is worth millions in cold hard cash…

Freelancer Zoe Hunter specializes in living in the moment and keeping her options open so she holds back when her ex reappears, wanting to reboot their relationship. Zoe’s not sure she can handle a second crash and burn in the love department, but that issue takes a backseat when one of her clients dies.

Zoe discovers the death is linked to a stolen Monet painting, and she’s being set up to take the fall for both the murder and the black-market art sale. To clear her name, Zoe plunges into the shadowy world of art theft, teaming up with a former goth girl hacker, a persistent reporter, and a retired FBI agent turned cruise ship enthusiast.

With the help of her ragtag crew and her sexy ex, Zoe’s hunt takes her from Paris to sun-drenched villas on the Mediterranean coast. As she finds her way through a maze of lies and deceit, Zoe discovers staying alive is a fine art.


DRIVING SIDEWAYS

Leigh Fielding wants a life. Seriously. Having spent the past five years on dialysis, she has one simple wish: to make it to her thirtieth birthday. Now, thanks to the generosity of the late Larry Resnick and his transplanted kidney, it looks like her wish may come true.

With her newfound vitality (and Larry’s kidney) in tow, Leigh hits the road for an excursion that will carry her from Wisconsin to California, with a few stops in between: Mount Rushmore, the Badlands, the Rockies, Las Vegas–and a memorable visit to thank Larry’s family for the second chance.

Yet Leigh’s itinerary takes a sudden detour when she picks up a seventeen-year-old hitchhiker, Denise, a runaway with a bunch of stories and a couple of secrets. Add a long-lost mother, a loaded gun, an RV full of swingers, and Hall and Oates’s Greatest Hits to the mix, and Driving Sideways becomes a hilarious and original journey of friendship, hope, and discovery. 



Saturday, August 3, 2013

Escape the Everyday


What's your idea of a great getaway? 
White sand beaches, Roman ruins and sidewalk cafes, 
or an ambling road trip?
Celebrate the last weeks of summer with books that take you away from the everyday. 

Enter the Girlfriends Book Club Summer Escapes Giveaway for weekly chances to win. #SummerEscapes 





a Rafflecopter giveaway

About the Books


A Semester Abroad

Barely twenty and brokenhearted, Gabriella arrives in the beautiful Tuscan city of Siena on a bitter winter day looking for solace. In the brochures, Siena was sunny and warm, but in reality, she feels cold and lonely. She can't communicate with the locals, or her American roommates, who are struggling with their own demons. The only company she finds is at night in the clubs talking to men who'd rather not be talking. 

Soon Gaetano, a potentially dangerous older man from the south of Italy, is waiting outside her classroom every day to show her his Italy. As she travels though the country with a new group of friends, she walks a fine line between freedom and fear.

A Semester Abroad is a passionate, sensuous novel about obsession, friendship and what makes a girl a woman.


A Summer in Europe

On her thirtieth birthday, Gwendolyn Reese receives an unexpected present from her widowed Aunt Bea: a grand tour of Europe in the company of Bea's Sudoku and Mah-jongg Club. The prospect isn't entirely appealing. But when the gift she is expecting -- an engagement ring from her boyfriend -- doesn't materialize, Gwen decides to go. 

At first, Gwen approaches the trip as if it's the math homework she assigns her students, diligently checking monuments off her must-see list. But amid the bougainvillea and stunning vistas of southern Italy, something changes. Gwen begins to live in the moment: skipping down stone staircases in Capri, running her fingers over a glacier in view of the Matterhorn, racing through the Louvre, and taste-testing pastries at a Marseilles cafe. Revelling in every new experience -- especially her attraction to a charismatic British physics professor -- Gwen discovers that the ancient wonders around her are nothing compared to the renaissance unfolding within... 


Elusive (On the Run Book #1) 

Zoe Hunter loves living on the edge. Free-spirited and spontaneous, she’s built a life stringing together various freelance gigs that keep her bank account barely in the black.

But when her ex, Jack, goes missing along with several million dollars from his business and the FBI zeros in on her as a person of interest, Zoe’s life goes from delightfully unpredictable to downright frightening.

Plunged into a world of fake identities, deception, and murder, she’s afraid to trust anyone. Zoe impulsively skips town in a search for answers that takes her from Las Vegas to Italy, but instead of tracking down answers, she only uncovers more questions.

Who was Jack? Is he dead or did he fake his disappearance? And, what was he mixed up in—art theft, the mafia, espionage, or all three?

If you enjoy Elizabeth Peter’s Vicky Bliss series or Romancing the Stone, Elusive has the same mix of mystery, international travel, and light romance. 

WHAT IF YOUR MOTHER LEFT AND YOU DIDN'T HEAR FROM HER FOR 20 YEARS? 

Marlo came home from school one day to find her mother gone. Twenty years later, she gets a letter from Elizabeth inviting her three daughters on a trip around the world to see where she’s been the last 20 years – and what kept her away. 

What follows is an emotional ride for a family torn apart by abandonment, infidelity, cancer and a fear of commitment. Marlo, Taryn and Amelia are three sisters as different as they come, but united in their feelings of betrayal. Is it ever too late to trust in love? Take a journey around the world to learn the meaning of family and forgiveness. 


Lily is caught in a cycle of loss:  her mother died of cancer, her boyfriend left her for an earth mother, and she’s been fired from her job for reading Jane Austen novels when she should have been routing payroll tax deposits.  

When the opportunity arises to travel to England to re-enact Mansfield Park, she thinks she may finally realize her dream of living in a novel.  But even in England, where Lily is immersed in a literary festival so rich it seems Jane Austen is present, her problems find her.  

Lily must summon her resources and confront painful truths before she is demoted to the role of secondary character in her own life.



THERE'S MORE THAN ONE RECIPE FOR A HAPPY LIFE 

Hannah Goodman doesn't grow up like most kids on the Upper East side. Her mother, Gray, is an award-winning photojournalist with little time for the banalities of child-rearing, and when she's not jetting off to follow the latest scoop, she's camped out at the Hotel Chelsea. The closest thing Hannah's got to a traditional matriarch is her grandmother—a glamorous widow six times over with a sprawling Hampton’s estate.

But Gray is determined that her daughter resist the siren song of the trust fund set, and make her own way in the world. So Hannah does just that—becoming a successful lawyer in New York City, and dating a handsome musician. 

Hannah has it all, or so it seems, until one hot June day the carefully constructed pieces of her life break apart. When she throws it all in and seeks solace at her grandmother's estate, she discovers that where happiness is concerned, you don’t have to stick to the recipe.


Stand By Your Hitman (Bombay Assassins #3) 


Missi Bombay invents things--fatal flowers, Jell-O bullets, stroke-inducing panty hose and other ways to kill a target without leaving any kind of evidence. She's a great asset to her family of assassins. The one thing she can't invent, though, is a love life. Unfortunately, her mom has decided to handle that for her. 

Next thing Missi knows, she's packed off to Costa Rica for a wild reality show where she's paired with Lex, the hottest contestant on TV. Too bad she also has to scope out a potential victim. But the job becomes tougher when someone starts sabotaging the show...and love-of-her-life Lex thinks she's the culprit!



What a Mother Knows



Michelle Mason can't remember that day, that drive, that horrible crash that killed the young man in her car. All she knows is she's being held responsible, and her daughter is missing.

Despite a shaky marriage, a threatening lawsuit, and troubling flashbacks pressing in on her, Michelle throws herself into searching. Her daughter in the one person who might know what really happened that day, but the deeper Michelle digs, the more she questions the innocence of those closest to her, even herself. As her search hurtles toward a shattering revelation, Michelle must face the biggest challenge of her life.

A poignant story of the unshakable bond between mother and child, What a Mother Knows is about finding the truth that can set love free.