The Virtual Mailbox is overflowing

Last week, when I posted for my normal Mailbox Monday, I mentioned that I was receiving many more books via the Virtual mailbox than through print contributions, so this week, I thought I'd catch up on some of those that I have accepted invitations to review in e-format. My Nook has become an e-mailbox, and it certainly beats going out in the rain to pick up a book!! Here are the highlights that are singing to me.

First up is an e-galley Beneath the Shadows I got through a request on Shelf Awareness.  It fits right in with my May Murder and Mayhem reading.

When Grace’s husband, Adam, inherits an isolated North Yorkshire cottage, they leave London behind to try a new life. A week later, Adam vanishes, leaving their baby daughter, Millie, in her stroller on the doorstep. The following year, Grace returns to the tiny village on the windswept heath. She is desperate for answers, but the slumbering, deeply superstitious hamlet is unwilling to give up its secrets. As Grace hunts through forgotten corners of the cottage searching for clues and digs deeper into the lives of the locals, strange dreams begin to haunt her. Are the villagers hiding something, or is she becoming increasingly paranoid? Only as snowfall threatens to cut her and Millie off from the rest of the world does Grace make a terrible discovery. She has been looking in the wrong place for answers all along, and she and her daughter will be in terrible danger if she cannot get them away in time.

SARA FOSTER lives in Western Australia with her husband and young daughter.
Thanks to Minotaur press for the e-galley. 
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The setting reached out to me from The House of Serenades by Lina Simone. I'm trying to include reviews of imprints from smaller independent publishers, and this one looks like it will make the cut. 

  In 1910 Genoa, an Italian port city of divided classes and ancient power struggles, the Berillis are wealthy, powerful, and respected—until the day their darkest secrets begin to surface. Once the police intervene and the gossip grapevine is set in motion, the Berillis' demise is unavoidable. But love lives on, and there's a mandolin player in town who is not giving up on the girl of his dreams. Never underestimate the power of music. The House of Serenades is a brilliant portrait of the Italian upper class at the turn of the twentieth century, its habits, and its ways of life. At the same time, the story denounces the abuse and repression of women (sisters, daughters, wives) that was so common in those years.   

Moonleaf Publishing made this one available for review through Net Galley. 

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From Knopf Doubleday via Net Galley. Due for publication in mid-June, The World Without You by Joshua Henkin is going to be a good one to kick off summer reading.

 It's July 4th, 2005, and the Frankel family is descending upon their beloved summer home in the Berkshires. But this is no ordinary holiday: the family is gathering for a memorial. Leo, the youngest of the four Frankel siblings and an intrepid journalist and adventurer, was killed one year ago while on assignment in Iraq. His parents, Marilyn and David, are adrift in grief, and it's tearing apart their forty-year marriage. Clarissa, the eldest, is struggling at thirty-nine with infertility. Lily, a fiery-tempered lawyer, is angry about everything. Noelle, a born-again Orthodox Jew (and the last person to see Leo alive), has come in from Israel with her husband and four children and feels entirely out of place. And Thisbe--Leo's widow and mother of their three-year-old son--has arrived from California bearing her own secret. Over the course of three days, the Frankels will contend with sibling rivalries and marital feuds, volatile women and silent men, and, ultimately, with the true meaning of family. 

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Thanks to Midnight Ink Books for this e-galley.  It's a perfect read for May Murder and Mayhem.
 I've been reading lots of cozies lately, and Leonard Goldberg's thriller Patient One sounds like it will be a good change of pace.

U.S. President John Merrill is hosting Russian President Dimitri Suslev at a glittering state dinner to celebrate a new economic pact. As the after-dinner toasts begin, the two leaders, their wives, and scores of prominent guests become violently ill. Merrill and Suslev, along with the other stricken guests, are rushed to the nearest hospital. As Secret Service agents struggle to secure the hospital and locate Merrill's daughter, the President's personal physician - who's been withholding critical medical information about the Commander-in- Chief - tries desperately to stabilize the President.

In the chaos, Chechen terrorists make their move, breaching the secured area and taking both presidents hostage. Emergency-room physician David Ballineau, a former commando struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder, and trauma nurse Carolyn Ross may be the President Merrill's only hope for survival.