In My Mailbox Monday: Bitter in the Mouth, State of Wonder

In My Mailbox is hosted by The Story Siren, and Mailbox Monday is hosted at Passages to the Past. This past week I received two books from the Amazon Vine program…

Bitter in the Mouth by Monique Truong (August 2010, Random House)

For as long as she can remember, Linda has experienced a secret sense—she can “taste” words, which have the power to disrupt, dismay, or delight. She falls for names and what they evoke: Canned peaches. Dill. Orange sherbet. Parsnip (to her great regret). But with crushes comes awareness. As with all bodies, Linda’s is a mystery to her, in this and in other ways. Even as Linda makes her way north to Yale and New York City, she still does not know the truth about her past.

 State of Wonder by Ann Patchett (June 2011, Harper)

Years ago, Marina Singh traded the hard decisions and intensity of medical practice for the quieter world of research at a pharmaceutical company, a choice that has haunted her life. Enveloping herself in safety, limiting emotional risk, she shares a quiet intimacy with her widowed older boss, Mr. Fox, and a warm friendship with her colleague Anders Eckman. But Marina’s security is shaken when she learns that Anders, sent to the Amazon to check on a field team, is dead–and Mr. Fox wants her to go into the jungle to discover what happened.

In My Mailbox Monday: The Girl Who Chased the Moon

In My Mailbox is hosted by The Story Siren, and Mailbox Monday is hosted at Library of Clean Reads. My hubbers bought me this for Valentines Day! I’ve been dying to read Sarah Addison Allen’s third novel ever since I finished her first two long ago. So excited!

The Girl Who Chased the Moon by Sarah Addison Allen (Random House, Originally released March 2010)

Emily Benedict has come to Mullaby, North Carolina, hoping to solve at least some of the riddles surrounding her mother’s life. But the moment Emily enters the house where her mother grew up and meets the grandfather she never knew, she realizes that mysteries aren’t solved in Mullaby, they’re a way of life: Here are rooms where the wallpaper changes to suit your mood. Unexplained lights skip across the yard at midnight. And a neighbor, Julia Winterson, bakes hope in the form of cakes, not only wishing to satisfy the town’s sweet tooth but also dreaming of rekindling the love she fears might be lost forever. Can a hummingbird cake really bring back a lost love? Is there really a ghost dancing in Emily’s backyard? The answers are never what you expect. But in this town of lovable misfits, the unexpected fits right in.

In My Mailbox Monday: The Red Garden

In My Mailbox is hosted by The Story Siren, and Mailbox Monday is hosted at Rose City Reader. It’s been a while since I posted anything, super-duper busy editing away, but I wanted to share my latest mailbox surprise by my favorite author! I’m 50 pages in and LOVING it.

The Red Garden by Alice Hoffman (January 2011)

The Red Garden is a transforming glimpse into small-town America, presenting us with three hundred years of passion, dark secrets, loyalty, and redemption in a web of tales where characters’ lives are intertwined by fate and by their own actions. From the time the town of Blackwell is founded by a brave, young woman from England who has no fear of blizzards or of bears, to the day a young man who runs away to New York City with only his dog for company, the characters in The Red Garden are extraordinary and vivid: a young wounded civil war solider who is saved by a passionate neighbor, a woman who meets a fiercely human historical character, a poet who falls in love with a blind man, a mysterious traveler who comes to town in the year that summer never arrives. At the center of everyone’s life is a mysterious garden where only red plants can grow, and where the truth can be found by those who dare to look. Hoffman once again enchants us as lives are linked, changed, and redeemed. Delightful and compelling, The Red Garden is as unforgettable as it is moving.

In My Mailbox Monday: Water for Elephants, The Inkheart Trilogy

In My Mailbox is hosted by The Story Siren, and Mailbox Monday is hosted at Rose City Reader. I was good and selective with my bookish Christmas list this year, thus these are the only books I received and I am OKAY with that!

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

As a young man, Jacob Jankowski was tossed by fate onto a rickety train that was home to the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. It was the early part of the great Depression, and for Jacob, now ninety, the circus world he remembers was both his salvation and a living hell. A veterinary student just shy of a degree, he was put in charge of caring for the circus menagerie. It was there that he met Marlena, the beautiful equestrian star married to August, the charismatic but twisted animal trainer. And he met Rosie, an untrainable elephant who was the great gray hope for this third-rate traveling show. The bond that grew among this unlikely trio was one of love and trust, and, ultimately, it was their only hope for survival. 

The Inkheart Trilogy by Cornelia Funke

One cruel night, Meggie’s father, Mo, reads aloud from INKHEART, and an evil ruler named Capricorn escapes the boundaries of fiction, landing instead in their living room. Suddenly, Meggie’s in the middle of the kind of adventure she thought only took place in fairy tales. Somehow she must master the magic that has conjured up this nightmare. Can she change the course of the story that has changed her life forever?

In My Mailbox Monday: The Anatomy of Ghosts

In My Mailbox is hosted by The Story Siren, and Mailbox Monday is hosted at Let Them Read Books. Just one from last week, my LibraryThing Early Reviewer book:

The Anatomy of Ghosts by Andrew Taylor (Hyperion, January 2011)

1786, Jerusalem College Cambridge. The ghost of Sylvia Whichcote is rumoured to be haunting Jerusalem since disturbed fellow-commoner, Frank Oldershaw, claims to have seen the dead woman prowling the grounds. Desperate to salvage her son’s reputation, Lady Anne Oldershaw employs John Holdsworth, author of The Anatomy of Ghosts – a stinging account of why ghosts are mere delusion – to investigate. But his arrival in Cambridge disrupts an uneasy status quo as he glimpses a world of privilege and abuse, where the sinister Holy Ghost Club governs life at Jerusalem more effectively than the Master, Dr Carbury, ever could. And when Holdsworth finds himself haunted – not only by the ghost of his dead wife, Maria, but also Elinor, the very-much-alive Master’s wife – his fate is sealed. He must find Sylvia’s murderer or the hauntings will continue. And not one of them will leave the claustrophobic confines of Jerusalem unchanged.

In My Mailbox Monday: The Athena Project, Wither

In My Mailbox is hosted by The Story Siren, and Mailbox Monday is hosted at Let Them Read Books. Here are my arrivals from the past week:

The Athena Project by Brad Thor (Nov. 2010, Simon & Schuster)

The world’s most elite counterterrorism unit has just taken its game to an entirely new level. And not a moment too soon . . .

From behind the rows of razor wire, a new breed of counterterrorism operator has emerged.

Just as skilled, just as fearsome, and just as deadly as their colleagues, Delta Force’s newest members have only one thing setting them apart—their gender. Part of a top-secret, all-female program codenamed The Athena Project, four of Delta’s best and brightest women are about to undertake one of the nation’s deadliest assignments. 

Wither by Lauren DeStefano (March 2011, Simon & Schuster)

I don’t actually know what this is about, as I didn’t ask for it, and it’s YA so I’m not sure if it’s my style, but I’ll let you know if I decide to read it or give it away!

In My Mailbox Monday: The Emerald Atlas, Safe Haven

In My Mailbox is hosted by The Story Siren, and Mailbox Monday is hosted by Knitting and Sundries. Here are my arrivals from the past week:

The Emerald Atlas by John Stephens (Random House, April 2011)

Kate, Michael, and Emma have been in one orphanage after another for the last ten years, passed along like lost baggage.

Yet these unwanted children are more remarkable than they could possibly imagine. Ripped from their parents as babies, they are being protected from a horrible evil of devastating power, an evil they know nothing about.

Until now.

Before long, Kate, Michael, and Emma are on a journey to dangerous and secret corners of the world…a journey of allies and enemies, of magic and mayhem.  And—if an ancient prophesy is correct—what they do can change history, and it is up to them to set things right.

Safe Haven by Nicholas Sparks (Grand Central Publishing, September 2010)

When a mysterious young woman named Katie appears in the small North Carolina town of Southport, her sudden arrival raises questions about her past. Beautiful yet self-effacing, Katie seems determined to avoid forming personal ties until a series of events draws her into two reluctant relationships: one with Alex, a widowed store owner with a kind heart and two young children; and another with her plainspoken single neighbor, Jo. Despite her reservations, Katie slowly begins to let down her guard, putting down roots in the close-knit community and becoming increasingly attached to Alex and his family.

But even as Katie begins to fall in love, she struggles with the dark secret that still haunts and terrifies her . . . a past that set her on a fearful, shattering journey across the country, to the sheltered oasis of Southport. With Jo’s empathic and stubborn support, Katie eventually realizes that she must choose between a life of transient safety and one of riskier rewards . . . and that in the darkest hour, love is the only true safe haven.

In My Mailbox Monday: The Paris Vendetta, Emily Hudson

In My Mailbox is hosted by The Story Siren, and Mailbox Monday is hosted by Knitting and Sundries. Here are my arrivals from the past week:

The Paris Vendetta (Cotton Malone #5) by Steve Berry (Ballantine Books)

When Napoleon Bonaparte died in exile in 1821, he took to the grave a powerful secret. As general and emperor, he had stolen immeasurable riches from palaces, national treasuries, and even the Knights of Malta and the Vatican. In his final days, his British captors hoped to learn where the loot lay hidden. But he told them nothing, and in his will he made no mention of the treasure. Or did he?

Former Justice Department operative Cotton Malone isn’t looking for trouble when it comes knocking at his Copenhagen bookshop. Actually, it breaks and enters in the form of an American Secret Service agent with a pair of assassins on his heels. Malone has his doubts about the anxious young man, but narrowly surviving a ferocious firefight convinces him to follow his unexpected new ally.

Emily Hudson: A Novel by Melissa Lynn Jones (Pamela Dorman Books)

After the start of the Civil War, Emily Hudson-an orphan who lost her family to consumption and fever-finds herself the begrudged guest at the home of her relatives in Newport. Emily’s longing to be an artist is dismissed by her puritanical uncle, who wants nothing more than to rid himself of her through marriage. Her only friend is her aesthete cousin, William, an ailing young writer. When a promising engagement to the eligible Captain Lindsay is broken, William rescues Emily from an uncertain future by taking her to England. Lonely and desperate to escape her cousin-once her confidante, now her obsessively controlling patron-Emily sets out alone to meet her destiny in the eternal city of Rome.

Reminiscent of the novels of Edith Wharton, Emily Hudson is an exquisitely told tale about a heroine struggling to be true to herself, and also find love in a society where only marriage or an independent income guaranteed a woman the freedom to do as she pleased.

In My Mailbox Monday: The Sherlockian, Being Polite to Hitler

In My Mailbox is hosted by The Story Siren, and Mailbox Monday is hosted by Knitting and Sundries. Couple of intriguing picks arrived from Hachette this week. They are:

The Sherlockian by Graham Moore

In December 1893, Sherlock Holmes-adoring Londoners eagerly opened their Strand magazines, anticipating the detective’s next adventure, only to find the unthinkable: his creator, Arthur Conan Doyle, had killed their hero off. London spiraled into mourning — crowds sported black armbands in grief — and railed against Conan Doyle as his assassin.

Then in 1901, just as abruptly as Conan Doyle had “murdered” Holmes in “The Final Problem,” he resurrected him. Though the writer kept detailed diaries of his days and work, Conan Doyle never explained this sudden change of heart. After his death, one of his journals from the interim period was discovered to be missing, and in the decades since, has never been found.

Or has it?

When literary researcher Harold White is inducted into the preeminent Sherlock Holmes enthusiast society, The Baker Street Irregulars, he never imagines he’s about to be thrust onto the hunt for the holy grail of Holmes-ophiles: the missing diary. But when the world’s leading Doylean scholar is found murdered in his hotel room, it is Harold – using wisdom and methods gleaned from countless detective stories – who takes up the search, both for the diary and for the killer. 

Being Polite to Hitler by Robb Forman Drew

After teaching and raising her family for most of her life, Agnes Scofield realizes she is truly weary of her routine. But how, at 51, to establish a separate identity?

Her newfound freedom may not sit so well with the rest of the Scofields, who operate strictly within the confines of polite Midwestern values. They’d be polite to Hitler if need be. But underneath the façade, private triumphs and tragedies—including struggles with alcoholism and illicit affairs-simmer, and Agnes finds herself becoming even more entangled in the family web.

BEING POLITE TO HITLER is a richly wrought portrait of a woman coming into her own in the middle of her life and a family that experiences passions, joys, and grief against the backdrop of the post-WWII era.

In My Mailbox Monday: The Paris Wife

In My Mailbox is hosted by The Story Siren, and Mailbox Monday is hosted by She Reads and Reads.

From LibraryThing Early Reviewers I received The Paris Wife by Paula McClain (Feb. 2011).

No twentieth-century American writer has captured the popular imagination as much as Ernest Heminway. This novel tells his story from a unique point of view — that of his first wife, Hadley. Through her eyes and voice, we experience Paris of the Lost Generation and meet fascinating characters such as Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and Gerald and Sara Murphy. The city and its inhabitants provide a vivid backdrop to this engrossing and wrenching story of love and betrayal that is made all the more poignant knowing that, in the end, Hemingway would write of his first wife, “I wish I had died before I loved anyone but her.”