Giveaway Winners: Testimony

Random Sequence Generator

Here is your sequence:

 9  1  3 12  8 10 11  2  6  4  7  5 

Timestamp: 2009-05-25 20:20:05 UTC

And the winners are:

• Shauna
• Irene Y
• Heather
• ♔ jessica.marie
• Cyn

The other 7 comments are alternates. If I do not hear back from some of the winners, or any have won copies elsewhere, I will go down the list in the order that random.org produced. The original post can be found here.

Buy Testimony by Anita Shreve:
IndieBound {} Powell's {} Amazon

GIVEAWAY: Testimony

Author: Anita Shreve
ISBN: 9780316067348
Pages: 352
Published by: Back Bay Books (May, 2009 this ISBN)
Genre: Fiction

About the Book: At a New England boarding school, a sex scandal is about to break. Even more shocking than the sexual acts themselves is the fact that they were caught on videotape. A Pandora's box of revelations, the tape triggers a chorus of voices--those of the men, women, teenagers, and parents involved in the scandal--that details the ways in which lives can be derailed or destroyed in one foolish moment.

Writing with a pace and intensity surpassing even her own greatest work, Anita Shreve delivers in TESTIMONY a gripping emotional drama with the impact of a thriller. No one more compellingly explores the dark impulses that sway the lives of seeming innocents, the needs and fears that drive ordinary men and women into intolerable dilemmas, and the ways in which our best intentions can lead to our worst transgressions.

This would be a great book for Book Clubs. It contains a Reading Group Guide. You can also download this guide.

About the author: Anita Shreve is the critically acclaimed author of fourteen novels, including Body Surfing, The Pilot's Wife, which was a selection of Oprah's Book Club, and The Weight of Water, which was a finalist for England's Orange Prize. She lives in Massachusetts.

Five (5) lucky blog readers will get a copy of Testimony courtesy of Valerie Russo! Just leave a comment here. If you do not have an e-mail link on your blogger profile, please leave an email address in your comment. I will close this post to comments on the morning of Friday May 22nd. I will use random.org to select the winners. Per publisher's rules this giveaway is open to residents of the US and Canada only. No PO Boxes.

GOOD LUCK!

Buy Testimony by Anita Shreve:
IndieBound {} Powell's {} Amazon

Giveaway Winners - GIRLS IN TRUCKS

I used random.org's Random Sequence Generator to select the winners for THE GIRLS IN TRUCKS giveaway . There were 8 comments but only 7 were entries. I put "1" as the smallest value and "8" as the largest value. I then chose the first five numbers as the winners. Since comment #6 was not an entry I am skipped it and am declaring comments 5, 8, 7, 4, 2 as winners going by the list the the generator spit out.

5 -- Cheryl S. Winner
8 -- Melsy626 Winner 
7 -- katiepea Winner
6 -- Beth F non-entry
4 -- stateofdenmark2 Winner
2 -- quelleheure4 Winner
3 -- rubymoon alternate
1 -- Jess alternate

I am now going to send e-mails to the winners!

GIVEAWAY: Girls in Trucks

Author: Katie Crouch
ISBN: 9780316002127
Pages: 272
Published by: Back Bay Books (April, 2009 this ISBN)
Genre(s): Fiction

From GoodReads: Sarah Walters is a less-than-perfect debutante. She tries hard to follow the time-honored customs of the Charleston Camellia Society, as her mother and grandmother did, standing up straight in cotillion class and attending lectures about all the things that Camellias don't do. (Like ride with boys in pickup trucks.)

But Sarah can't quite ignore the barbarism just beneath all that propriety, and as soon as she can she decamps South Carolina for a life in New York City. There, she and her fellow displaced Southern friends try to make sense of city sophistication, to understand how much of their training applies to real life, and how much to the strange and rarefied world they've left behind.

When life's complications become overwhelming, Sarah returns home to confront with matured eyes the motto "Once a Camellia, always a Camellia"- and to see how much fuller life can be, for good and for ill, among those who know you best.

I apologize for not also posting my review as well as the giveaway. I hadn't finished writing my review before waking up this morning with a migraine. I will tell you that I am giving it a "C" and that I will have my review posted as soon as I can.

Five (5) lucky blog readers will get a copy of Girls in Trucks courtesy of Valerie Russo! Just leave a comment here. If you do not have an e-mail link to your profile, please leave an email address in your comment. I will close this post to comments on the morning of Thursday April 30th. I will use random.org to select the winners. Per publisher's rules this giveaway is open to residents of the US and Canada only. No PO Boxes.

GOOD LUCK!

Giveaway Winners - THE CRIMES OF PARIS

I used random.org's Random Sequence Generator to select the winners for THE CRIMES OF PARIS giveaway. There were 21 comments so I put "1" as the smallest value and "21" as the largest value; I then chose the first five numbers as the winners. I am displaying the first seven numbers so that you can see the first two alternates; I have copied all of the numbers for myself so that I can go down the list in case I don't hear back from the winners.

• 18 - Angela C
  
• 10 - Paris-Insider
  
• 7 - bridget3420
  
• 11 - scottsgal
  
• 2 - Bookfool

First two alternates

• 1 - BethF
  
• 9 - Christina

I'm off to notify the winners and I hope to hear from them soon!

Review of: The Crimes of Paris

Author: Dorothy Hoobler and Thomas Hoobler
ISBN: 9780316017909
Pages: 368
Published by: Little, Brown and Company (April, 2009)
Genre(s): Non-Fiction, Art History
Grade: A-
Challenge(s): 100+ Reading Challenge - Read 'n Review '09 - 2009 Pub Challenge - Spring Reading Thing 2009 - Well-Seasoned Reader Challenge

Let me start off by saying this: Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler have written a lot of books. Seriously, check out this list.

If you read my Tuesday posts then you have been teased not once, but twice. And I'll let you know now, the reason that the man (or men) were hiding in the storage closet in the Louvre was to steal the Mona Lisa. According to the authors, there were many small rooms and hidden alcoves like this in the 700 year old building; museum officials don't even know just how many there are.

One of the earlier suspects of the theft was Pablo Picasso, yes THAT Picasso. Nineteen year old Pablo Ruiz had arrived in Paris in 1900 to see (and exhibit a painting) at the Paris Exposition Universelle. Though he left Paris after this, he would return as Pablo Picasso (his mother's family name).

There are many other crimes discussed and dissected in THE CRIMES OF PARIS; burglaries, bank robberies, murders, even the first use of a getaway car (one of the bank robberies). There is explanations of the system known as bertillonage, which was widely used in France before the discovery that fingerprints were a much better system of identification.

I do not normally read non-fiction (with the exception of biographies and memoirs), but over-ruled my initial instinct about THE CRIMES OF PARIS and requested a copy. I'm really glad I did. There were times while reading THE CRIMES OF PARIS that I actually forgot that I was reading a non-fiction book. There writing is easy to understand and the authors do not bog you down with long, dry explanations.

I'm definitely going to keep this ARC and reread it at a later time; it's that good! I'm also going to check my library for some of their other books, specifically THE IRISH AMERICAN FAMILY ALBUM and THE GERMAN AMERICAN FAMILY ALBUM.

Buy The Crimes of Paris by Dorothy Hoobler and Thomas Hoobler:
IndieBound {} Amazon

Giveaway Closed!

Five (5) lucky blog readers will get a copy courtesy of Valerie Russo! Just leave a comment here. If you do not have an e-mail link to your profile, please leave one in your comment. I will close this post to comments on the morning of Wednesday April 8th. I will use random.org to select the winners. Per publisher's rules this giveaway is open to residents of the US and Canada only. No PO Boxes.

GOOD LUCK!