Mondays - Blue or Gold?

Do you view Monday as a good day to bring anew and accomplish goals for the coming week or is Monday a bad day when you have to get back to the grind of work leaving the carefree weekend behind?

For me, it’s a little of both. I try to use Monday as my day to really get organized for the week concerning things that I know have to be done. It usually doesn’t work, but at least I keep trying. One day, who knows, I might actually make it.

Today I’m going to do a little round-up of sorts. I have the Mother’s Day Romance Giveaway winners to announce and I also have three new audio books to offer as giveaways. I’ve signed up to do reviews on these audios, as well as two others. This will be my first audio reviews, not that they would be not much different than reviewing a book.

First up, the winners of the Mother’s Day Romance Giveaway. Thanks to everyone who entered the contest. Congratulations to these winners: Doreen R. of Canada, Amber D. of MI, and Kay from My Random Acts of Reading. They each won a package containing six titles from Romance Forever section of the Hachette Book Group. The titles include: MONTANA DESTINY by R.C. Ryan, RAVISHED BY A HIGHLANDER by Paula Quinn, STILL THE ONE by Robin Wells, DESIRE ME by Robyn DeHart, KNIGHT OF PASSION by Margaret Mallory, and TO SURRENDER TO A ROGUE by Cara Elliott.

Next, thanks to Anna and the folks at Hachette Audio, have three copies of each of the following audio books to giveaway. The giveaway is open to residents of the U.S. and Canada only and no post office box addresses can be used, as pre Hachette’s requirements. The deadline to enter will be at 8 p.m. (EST) on Friday, May 28. To enter, just send me an e-mail (mcbookshelf@gmail.com) with “Win” and the book title in the subject line. Include your name and mailing address in the body of the e-mail. In case, you’re new to my giveaways, I don’t share or use the mailing addresses for anything other than submitting them to Hachette if you win.  

The audio books are all unabridged, cover several different genres, and include:

GOD NEVER BLINKS by Regina Brett (ISBN: 9781607881681) and read by the author.

Already an internet phenomenon, these wise and insightful lessons by popular newspaper columnist and Pulitzer Prize finalist Regina Brett will make you see the possibilities in your life in a whole new way.

When Regina Brett turned 50, she wrote a column on the 50 lessons life had taught her. She reflected on all she had learned through becoming a single parent, looking for love in all the wrong places, working on her relationship with God, battling cancer and making peace with a difficult childhood. It became one of the most popular columns ever published in the newspaper, and since then the 50 lessons have been emailed to hundreds of thousands of people.

Brett now takes the 50 lessons and expounds on them in essays that are deeply personal. From "Don't take yourself too seriously-Nobody else does" to "Life isn't tied with a bow, but it's still a gift," these lessons will strike a chord with anyone who has ever gone through tough times--and haven't we all?

MEN AND DOGS by Katie Crouch (ISBN: 978160788134) and read by Gabra Zackman.

In April of 1985, Buzz Legare went fishing. The next day all that was found was his boat and his waiting, faithful dog.

Twenty years later, his daughter Hannah still finds hope in believing, alone among her family, that he's still alive somewhere. She has a smart husband, a thriving business, a beautiful home in San Francisco-and a huge hole in her troubled heart. True to her trademark talent for self-sabotage, she finds herself one starry night climbing up the fire escape in a desperate (and drunken) attempt to win back her own husband--and failing disastrously.

Slightly worse for the wear, Hannah returns to Charleston to salve her wounds. There, old loves, unrepented crimes, and family legends are stirred up from the dust. Hannah's brother Palmer, the stoic with a secret of his own, cannot dissuade her from a manic search to uncover clues to the past, and they will both face shocking discoveries that lead them to reconcile their very different notions of loyalty and blind faith.

As she did so memorably in her bestselling debut, Girls in Trucks, Katie Crouch has created another great voice--spiky, tender, and hilarious--in the screwball heroine Hannah Legare. Much like Julia Roberts in My Best Friend's Wedding, Hannah follows the misguided impulses of a heart that's in the right place.

DELIVER US FROM EVIL by David Baldacci (ISBN: 9781600249648) and read by Ron McLarty.

In South America a 96-year-old man of great wealth reads a book late one night and an hour later he lies dead in his bed, the secrets of his past starkly revealed. Six months later another mystery man lies dead at the bottom of his pool in a villa in Provence. This time, however, there's a witness at the scene: Shaw, the shadowy operative from The Whole Truth, who barely escapes with his life. Meanwhile, a half a world away, photojournalist Katie James is working on a story of international importance.

Okay, how’s your Monday going so far? Do you have a plan in place? If you’re a writer, do you ever have your characters worrying about what day it is or put any emphasis on the week in your writing?