In My Mailbox - 1/1/12

Credit goes to The Story Siren for creating and hosting the In My Mailbox feature.

This is my first In My Mailbox of 2012. Unfortunately since the mail was slow this week due to holidays, most of the books I ordered online did not arrive. However I did get three new books this week.

The Pledge by Kimberly Derting

In the violent country of Ludania, the classes are strictly divided by the language they speak. The smallest transgression, like looking a member of a higher class in the eye while they are speaking their native tongue, results in immediate execution. Seventeen-year-old Charlaina has always been able to understand the languages of all classes, and she's spent her life trying to hide her secret. The only place she can really be free is the drug-fueled underground clubs where people go to shake off the oppressive rules of the world they live in. It's there that she meets a beautiful and mysterious boy named Max who speaks a language she's never heard before . . . and her secret is almost exposed.
Charlie is intensely attracted to Max, even though she can't be sure where his real loyalties lie. As the emergency drills give way to real crisis and the violence escalates, it becomes clear that Charlie is the key to something much bigger: her country's only chance for freedom from the terrible power of a deadly regime.

Vice and Virtue by Veronica Bennett

What happens when you marry for neither love nor money? 1700, London: a city so crowded and unregulated that anyone, should they so desire, could slip away - disappear down a back street and become someone else. After the death of her father, seventeen-year-old Aurora Eversedge is left without a dowry and agrees to marry a much older man who claims to be wealthy, though in poor health. On their wedding night, Edward Francis confesses that, in fact, he is penniless but that his health is robust - also that his proposal of marriage carried an ulterior motive: he wants Aurora to act as a spy for him. Edward's father had left his fortune to his sworn enemy, Josiah Deede. Edward suspects that Josiah murdered his father and is determined to regain his inheritance and bring Josiah Deede to justice. Aurora's first assignment is to make the acquaintance of Josiah's daughter, Celia, and son, Jos, at a Covent Garden theatre. "Vice and Virtue" is full of acute observation of social life that characterizes Jane Austen's work - the sort of book Jane Austen would have written if she wrote mysteries.

The Mastermind Plot by Angie Frazier

Suzanna "Zanna" Snow can hardly believe her luck: She's just arrived in Boston, the city she's wanted to visit for as long as she can remember. Think of all the mysteries waiting to be solved here! Her grandmother and cousin, Will, welcome her warmly, but her famous detective uncle, Bruce Snow, seems anything but pleased. He doesn't want Zanna meddling in his current case involving a string of mysterious warehouse fires along the harbor front. But Zanna can't help herself. Is someone setting the fires? Just when she thinks she's on to something, a strange man starts following her. Is he a threat? Zanna needs to solve the case before she has the chance to find out.