In My Mailbox: HUGE POST!

Ok, so maybe it's not that huge, but it's a pretty big one to me! This was started by The Story Siren!

The Borrowed: None

The Recieved/For Review: None

The Bought:

...before I start this list, I just want to make things clear. All the paperback books I bought were only $1.49, and the 2 hardcovers I got were $3.00. Guess where I got them? .....At a garden store. I know! How odd.... How could you not take such an offer? And believe me...There were thousands of books just laying on tables, piled high.

So, here it is:

Are You Alone On Purpose? by Nancy Werlin

Summary: "Alison Shandling and Harry Roth would seem
to have nothing in common. "Queen Nerd" Alison sticks with one close friend and
stays out of trouble; her parents have enough worries dealing with her autistic
twin, Adam. Harry, a bully, runs with the popular crowd and delights in
embarrassing his widowed father, a not terribly intelligent rabbi. But a bitter
set of coincidences draws Alison to Harry: her mother, infuriated by the rabbi's
insensitivity to Adam, tells the rabbi that she wishes his son were handicapped
too. When Harry is paralyzed in a diving accident, the rabbi sees it as divine
punishment and tries to atone by showering Adam with attention. First-novelist
Werlin compensates for the unlikely plot and the even less likely romance that
develops between Harry and Alison by investing her characters with rich, strong
personalities. She alternates between Alison's and Harry's perspectives to round
out the reader's understanding of both families."

Confessions Of A Not It Girl by Melissa Kantor

Summary: "Besides being named after an
obscure Renaissance painter (turning the name "Jan" into "Yahn,") and having a
butt so big that it "belongs in the Guinness Book of World Records," high school
senior Jan Miller also has the dubious honor of being best friends with Rebecca
Larkin, recently named one of CHIC magazine’s New York "IT" Girls. Add a
ridiculously huge crush on new-boy hottie Josh Gardner to this list of woes and
sympathetic readers can see why "life would be so much simpler if guys were like
mood rings, and they changed color when they liked you." It will take more than
just Rebecca’s easy assurances and a few pints of Ben & Jerry’s for Jan to
come to terms with her own inner "It" girl (or lack thereof)."

What Happened To Lani Garver by Carol Plum-Ucci

Summary: "The folks on Hackett Island, near
Philadelphia, are not too friendly to newcomers. Anyone the slightest bit
different is eyed with suspicion, as Claire found out when she missed a year of
junior high due to leukemia. Now she works hard at fitting in, following
treacherous but popular Macy's lead, hiding her passion for the guitar, and
never talking about her fear that her illness will return. Or her nightmares. Or
her eating disorder. The boys of Hackett Island's "in" crowd are members of the
"fish frat"--hunky sons of the local fishermen--and their horseplay even among
themselves is brutal and edge-of-danger.
And then Lani Garver shows up at
school, a tall, thin, strangely androgynous person. "No. Not a girl. Sorry," he
says pleasantly when Macy questions him about his gender with vicious curiosity.
But Claire, much to Macy's disgust, is drawn to Lani, and his wisdom and
kindness begins to heal her. He takes her to Philadelphia to meet his artistic
friends, talks sense to her about her eating disorder and her blind devotion to
Macy, finds her a therapist. Who is this Lani Garver? He resists "boxes" like
"gay." Even his age is a mystery to Claire. Strangest of all, could he be a
"floating angel," as his friends at the hospital seem to believe? Meanwhile, the
fish frat are closing in for the kill, and when their harassment turns lethal,
Lani shows a terrible side of himself Claire has never seen."

The Last Universe by William Sleator (One of my favorite
authors)

Summary: "Teenagers Susan and Gary live
in the house that has belonged to the family for generations. Now Gary has
contracted a disease that has him confined to a wheelchair and traveling to the
hospital regularly for transfusions. Susan is unwillingly spending her summer
vacation pushing her brother through the garden and woods of their peculiar
estate. Gary has been reading about quantum physics, a subject in which
Great-Uncle Arthur won an international prize many years earlier. He is also the
one largely responsible for the creation of the garden and just possibly the
maze that no one has ever seen except from one window in the house. Gary is
convinced that his illness has somehow triggered a quantum event that is
responsible for the bizarre changes he and his sister are finding each day. He
also seems to be getting better after each visit to the garden and so Susan
finds herself torn between her fear of it and her fear for her brother's life.
Sleator is a master of suspenseful science fiction and that mastery is evident
here. The action is slow at first, but as the garden begins to change, the pace
picks up correspondingly. Ultimately Susan must brave the maze on her own when
Gary is rushed to the hospital. The twist at the end is entirely logical (if
anything about quantum can be) and entirely shocking."

I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have To Kill You by Ally
Carter

Summary: "Cammie Morgan, 15, is a student at
Gallagher Academy, a top-secret boarding school for girls who are
spies-in-training. She studies covert operations, culture and assimilation, and
advanced encryption, and has learned to speak 14 languages. Her troubles begin
when she falls for Josh, a local boy who has no clue about her real identity.
Keeping her training secret forces her to lie to her new love, which leads to
comic complications. Subplots include Cammie's relationship with her mother–the
headmistress at Gallagher–and her grief over the loss of her father, who died
while on a spying assignment. The teen's double life leads to some amusing
one-liners, and the invented history of the Gallagher Girls is also
entertaining, but the story is short on suspense. The stakes never seem very
high since there are no real villains, and the cutesy dialogue quickly becomes
grating"

Prom by Laurie Halse Anderson

Summary: "Ashley has enough problems in her life
already, starting with the complexities of her crowded but loving working class
family -- her extremely pregnant mother and her three exuberant and prom-crazy
aunts, and her cab-driving father and three younger brothers, who think nothing
of happily trashing the kitchen in a game of hot dog baseball. Then there’s Mr.
Gilroy, the evil vice principal of discipline, who has Ashley on endless
detention, her awful job at EZ-CHEEZ-E, where she has trouble seeing the
customers through the eyeholes of her rat costume, and her good-looking but
lowlife boyfriend TJ, who wants her to join him in a future as depressing as the
dank one-room apartment he has so proudly rented for them. Not to speak of Nat’s
loony grandmother, who wears her red bathing cap even when she’s not doing the
backstroke in a wading pool, babbles at Ashley in Russian, and spits on the
floor to show her disapproval.
But in the end it’s grandma with her skill at
baking (pastries to bribe the custodians) and sewing (a magical prom dress) who
saves both the prom and Ashley’s belief in herself and her future in this
delightful and heartfelt novel."

The Red Queen's Daughter by Jacqueline Kolosov

Summary: "Orphaned as a young girl because
of the imprudent marriage of her mother, Queen Katherine Parr, Mary Seymour vows
never to fall in love-and under no circumstances will she marry. Lady Strange,
her mysterious guardian, offers the young woman an extraordinary alternative to
marriage: Mary is to become a white magician who will join Queen Elizabeth's
court and ensure the success of the Virgin Queen's reign. Accompanied by her
magical hound, Perseus, Mary sets out to learn the properties of different
stones and the art and precision of natural spells. Soon after her sixteenth
birthday, she joins Elizabeth's court as a lady-in-waiting. Upon her arrival,
Mary realizes that Elizabeth's court is rife with men and women who are vying
for power. The most dangerous of all is Edmund Seymour, Mary's disturbingly
handsome cousin. From the moment she meets Edmund, Mary has to fight her growing
attraction, especially once she discovers that he is a black magician, the dark
mirror of her own self. But, despite the threat Edmund poses to Mary, he seems
to be the only one who truly understands her. When Edmund becomes involved in a
plot against the Queen, Mary finds her beliefs tested in ways she never could
have imagined. "

Megan Meade's Guide to the McGowan Boys

Summary: "Megan Meade, 16, is a soccer star
whose parents are military lifers. When her mother and father are again
stationed overseas, she decides to stay with family friends in Boston. She is
immediately overwhelmed by the seven McGowan boys, each of whom embodies a
stereotype, e.g., genius, jock, rebel, etc. Shockingly, Megan falls for Evan,
Mr. Popular. Also shockingly, Evan has a mean girl girlfriend, Hailey, who is
trying to make Megan's life miserable. Will Megan become the team's starter?
Will Evan fall for her charms? Will readers care? The answers to these questions
are pretty obvious. "

Dramarama by E. Lockhart

Summary: "She was just big-boned, big-nose Sarah
living in Brenton, Ohio, where, as she puts it, "committing suicide would be
redundant." Then she meets Demi, who is trying hard to be
invisible--surprisingly easy considering he's black and gay. Alone they are,
well . . . alone, but brought together by their love of musical theater, they
light up. All this might sound like a stereotypical take on gay men and the
women who love them, and there is some of that, but there's also so much more.
The renamed Sayde and Demi make their way to a summer theater camp, and that's
where things change. Encouraged to become part of the ensemble, Sayde finds she
is too opinionated to do that, even as it turns out that she is less talented
than she believed. At the same time, Demi is discovering that he's a star who
can hang out with actual boyfriends rather than Sayde. "