Welcome to Mailbox Monday, a meme started by Marcia of A Girl and Her Books. The host for July’s Mailbox Monday posts will be Mrs Q: Book Addict.
Mailbox Monday is a gathering place for readers to share the books that came into their house last week and explore great book blogs.
Warning: Mailbox Monday can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles and humongous wish lists.
After a couple of slow weeks in my mailbox, this week has been great! I also went shopping at my library bookstore, and got 3 books to add to my overflowing book collection.
Hocus Pocus Hotel by Michael Dahl from Capstone Publishing – I won this one, signed by the author! Releases Aug 1, 2012
“Ever since it was built by the great magician Abracadabra, the hotel Tyler Yu lives in has had its share of mysterious events. Ghosts wandering the halls, a magician who vanishes into thin air – Ty can’t figure these things out on his own. But Charlie Hitchcock, with his photographic memory, might be just the partner the school bully needs.”
The Wreck of the Whaleship Essex by Owen Chase, First Mate (bought at the Library Bookstore)
“On the morning of November 20, 1820, in the Pacific Ocean, an enraged sperm whale rammed the Nantucket whaler Essex. As the boat began to sink, her crew of thirty had time only to collect some bread and water before pulling away in three frail open boats. Without charts, alone on the open seas, and thousands of miles from any known land, the sailors began their terrifying journey of survival. Ninety days later, after much suffering and death by starvation, intense heat, and dehydration, only eight men survived to reach land. One of them was Owen Chase, first mate of the ill-fated ship, whose account of the long and perilous journey has become a classic of endurance and human courage. The elements of his tale inspired Herman Melville (who was born the year the Essex sank) to write the classic Moby Dick.”
Tulipomania by Mike Dash (bought at the Library Bookstore) – I’m not usually a big history genre reader, but this book seemed really interesting to me.
“In the 1630s, visitors to the prosperous trading cities of the Netherlands couldn’t help but notice that thousands of normally sober, hardworking Dutch citizens from every walk of life were caught up in an extraordinary frenzy of buying and selling. The object of this unprecedented speculation was the tulip, a delicate and exotic Eastern import that had bewitched horticulturists, noblemen, and tavern owners alike. For almost a year rare bulbs changed hands for incredible and ever-increasing sums, until single flowers were being sold for more than the cost of a house.”
The Little Sparrow: The Orphan Train Trilogy by Al & Joanna Lacy (bought from the Library Bookstore)
“Kearney, Cheyenne, Rawlins. Reno, Sacramento, San Francisco. At each train station, a few lucky orphans from the crowded streets of New York City receive the fulfillment of their dreams: a home and family. This “orphan train” is the vision of Charles Loring Brace, founder of the Children’s Aid Society, who cannot bear to see innocent children abandoned in the overpopulated cities of the mid-nineteenth-century.”
On the Island by Tracey Garvis Graves from Plume (a Penguin Imprint) – Releases July 10, 2012
“Anna Emerson is a thirty-year-old English teacher desperately in need of adventure. Worn down by the cold Chicago winters and a relationship that’s going nowhere, she jumps at the chance to spend the summer on a tropical island tutoring sixteen-year-old T.J. T.J. Callahan has no desire to go anywhere. His cancer is in remission and he wants to get back to his normal life. But his parents are insisting he spend the summer in the Maldives catching up on all the school he missed last year. Anna and T.J. board a private plane headed to the Callahan’s summer home, and as they fly over the Maldives’ twelve hundred islands, the unthinkable happens. Their plane crashes in shark-infested waters. They make it to shore, but soon discover that they’re stranded on an uninhabited island. At first, their only thought is survival. But as the days turn to weeks, and then months, the castaways encounter plenty of other obstacles, including violent tropical storms, the many dangers lurking in the sea, and the possibility that T.J.’s cancer could return.”
Falling in Love With Joseph Smith by Jane Barnes – a win from Shelf Awareness – Releases Aug. 16, 2012
“When award-winning documentary film writer Jane Barnes was working on the PBS Frontline/American Experience special series The Mormons, she was surprised to find herself passionately drawn to Joseph Smith. The product of an Episcopalian, “WASPy” family, she couldn’t remember ever having met a Mormon before her work on the series—much less having dallied with the idea of converting to a religion shrouded in controversy. But so it was: She was smitten with a man who claimed to have translated the word of God by peering into the dark of his hat.
Barnes describes her experiences working on the PBS series as she moved from secular curiosity to the brink of conversion to Mormonism. It all began when she came across Joseph Smith’s early writings. She was delighted to discover how funny and utterly unique he was—and how widely divergent his wild yet profound visions of God were from the Church of Latter-day Saints as we know it today. Her fascination deepened when, much to her surprise, she learned that her eighth cousin Anna Barnes converted to Mormonism in 1833. Through Anna, Barnes follows her family’s close involvement with Smith and the crises caused by his controversial practice of polygamy. Barnes’ unlikely path helps her gain a newfound respect for the innovative American spirit that lies at the heart of Mormonism—and for a religion that is, in many ways, still coming into its own.”
“Life is good for Maura Corrigan. Married to her college sweetheart, Pete, raising three young kids with her parents nearby in her peaceful Chicago suburb, her world is secure. Then one day, in a single turn of fate, that entire world comes crashing down and everything that she thought she knew changes. Maura must learn to move forward with the weight of grief and the crushing guilt of an unforgivable secret. Pete senses a gap growing between him and his wife but finds it easier to escape to the bar with his friends than face the flaws in his marriage. “
Inspired & Unstoppable: Wildly Succeeding in Your Life’s Work by Tama Kieves – Releases Aug. 30, 2012
“Tama Kieves, Harvard-lawyer-turned-career-coach, has spent the last decade crossing the United States and Canada, speaking to tens of thousands of people and sharing her inspiring story of moving from a career that was killing her to a life that has uplifted her, chronicled in her first book, This Time I Dance!: Creating the Work You Love. She has mentored thousands of people who, with her help, have followed their passion, and now live their dream lives. And now she takes us to the next step in our journey…
Within you is your purpose—your destiny—that will lead you to your greatest fulfillment, and your greatest success. What Kieves discovered in her own journey is that the way to success is an inspired path, not a linear one. She brings her mentoring ideas and actions together in her latest work, Inspired and Unstoppable. In this motivating book, Kieves teaches that it is only in unleashing this purpose that you can become truly happy and satisfied.”
The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln by Stephen L. Carter from Alfred Knopf – Releases July 10, 2012
I have to say, I was so SO excited when I got the email saying that I was receiving this book – I’m a big fan of President Lincoln, and I love the premise of this book – what might have happened if he survived the bullet wound.
“Stephen L. Carter’s thrilling new novel takes as its starting point an alternate history: President Abraham Lincoln survives the assassination attempt at Ford’s Theatre on April 14, 1865. Two years later he is charged with overstepping his constitutional authority, both during and after the Civil War, and faces an impeachment trial . . .
Twenty-one-year-old Abigail Canner is a young black woman with a degree from Oberlin, a letter of employment from the law firm that has undertaken Lincoln’s defense, and the iron-strong conviction, learned from her late mother, that “whatever limitations society might place on ordinary negroes, they would never apply to her.” And so Abigail embarks on a life that defies the norms of every stratum of Washington society: working side by side with a white clerk, meeting the great and powerful of the nation, including the president himself. But when Lincoln’s lead counsel is found brutally murdered on the eve of the trial, Abigail is plunged into a treacherous web of intrigue and conspiracy reaching the highest levels of the divided government.”
The Age of Desire by Jennie Fields from Viking. Releases Aug. 2, 2012
“When at the age of forty-five, Edith falls passionately in love with a dashing younger journalist, Morton Fullerton, and is at last opened to the world of the sensual, it threatens everything certain in her life but especially her abiding friendship with Anna. As Edith’s marriage crumbles and Anna’s disapproval threatens to shatter their lifelong bond, the women must face the fragility at the heart of all friendships.
Told through the points of view of both women, The Age of Desire takes us on a vivid journey through Wharton’s early Gilded Age world: Paris with its glamorous literary salons and dark secret cafés, the Whartons’ elegant house in Lenox, Massachusetts, and Henry James’s manse in Rye, England.”
I also got several Kindle books, but this list is already quite long, so I’ll stop with the print books. 🙂
What new books came into your home this week?
“Skyla Messenger is a dead girl walking.
“When her dad is transferred, Rachel Wood is uprooted from her home in Pennsylvania and forced to enter a new high school, in 10th grade, in an affluent suburb in Westchester, New York. She finds herself in way over her head, as she struggles to come to grips with meeting new friends, finding a boyfriend, avoiding the cliques of mean girls, and figuring out how to survive in such a hostile new world. She has trouble navigating this new world, where drinking and drugs seem the norm, and where social pressures build on her from every direction.Everything seems to go wrong for Rachel, until salvation comes in the form of Rob, a football player who takes a liking to her. But just as there romance is about to blossom, she finds herself confused by his actions.
“Molly Allen lives alone in Portland, but her heart is back in Franklin, Tennessee, where five years ago she walked away from a man she cannot forget, a rare sort of love she hasn’t found since. Ryan Kelly lives in Franklin and spends plenty of time at The Bridge—the oldest bookstore in historic downtown Franklin—remembering the long hours he and Kelly once spent there.Now, Ryan and Molly’s favorite bookstore is in trouble. For thirty years, Charlie and Donna Barton have run The Bridge, providing the people of middle Tennessee with coffee, conversation, and shelves of good books—even through dismal book sales and the rise of eBooks. Then in May a flood tore through Franklin and destroyed nearly every book in the store. By Christmastime, the bank threatens to pull the lease on The Bridge and is about to take the Bartons’ house as well. Despondent, Charlie considers ending his life. And in the face of tragedy, miracles begin to unfold.”
Up All Night Reading 