Mailbox Monday

Pirate Mailbox (image source)

So sorry for the delay in posting - the morning got away from me!  Today's mailbox is related to nothing I'm reading, but seems in the spirit of the whole Mailbox Monday thing we're doing here.

Thanks to everyone who participated.  Be sure to stop by April's host, Mari at MariReads to share your booty.

Teaser Tuesday

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme hosted by Miz B of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) random teaser sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS (make sure that what you share doesn't give too much away! You don't want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title and author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers! 

This Angel, a white woman in her twenties, was dressed the same as the others, but there was one big difference:  she was tied with a thick cord, arms spread out, Christlike, to a large branch.

     - Angel Wings by Howard Kaminsky

Mailbox Monday

LBJ Library Mailbox (image source)

Mailbox Monday is a long-standing meme for book bloggers and others who fancy bragging about sharing their new goodies books.  It was started by Marcia who hosted for a long time before turning it into a traveling meme.  I am fortunate to be the host for March and I'm so happy to welcome you all!

I'm currently reading the first volume of Robert Dallek's outstanding biography of Lyndon Johnson, Lone Star Rising:  Vol 1:  Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1908-1960.  This, of course, requires an LBJ mailbox.  This is a fascinating book about a fascinating and tragic man, although I will admit that when my Kindle Paperwhite reports that it's a 20-hour read it's a bit intimidating!

I got various kinds of things this past week and time to actually do some blog writing so I'm sharing.  All books came from publishers, literary agents, or literary PR agencies.

Printed Matter

The Guilty One by Lisa Ballantyne. An eight-year-old boy is found dead in a playground . . . and his eleven-year-old neighbor is accused of the crime. Leading the defense is London solicitor Daniel Hunter, a champion of lost causes.  A damaged boy from a troubled home, Daniel's young client, Sebastian, reminds Daniel of his own turbulent childhood--and of Minnie, the devoted woman whose love saved him. But one terrible act of betrayal irrevocably shattered their bond.  As past and present collide, Daniel is faced with disturbing questions. Will his sympathy for Sebastian and his own memories blind him to the truth? What happened in the park--and who, ultimately, is to blame for a little boy's death? Rethinking everything he's ever believed, Daniel begins to understand what it means to be wrong . . . and to be the guilty one.

The Sisterhood by Helen Bryan.  Menina Walker was a child of fortune. Rescued after a hurricane in South America, doomed to a life of poverty with a swallow medal as her only legacy, the orphaned toddler was adopted by an American family and taken to a new life. As a beautiful, intelligent woman of nineteen, she is in love, engaged, and excited about the future ? until another traumatic event shatters her dreams. Menina flees to Spain to bury her misery in research for her college thesis about a sixteenth-century artist who signed his works with the image of a swallow ? the same image as the one on Menina's medal. But a mugging strands Menina in a musty, isolated Spanish convent. Exploring her surroundings, she discovers the epic sagas of five orphan girls who were hidden from the Spanish Inquisition and received help escaping to the New World. Is Menina's medal a link to them, or to her own past? Did coincidence lead her to the convent, or fate?

The Fort by Aric Davis.  During the waning summer days of 1987, a deranged Vietnam vet stalks Grand Rapids, Michigan, abducting and murdering nameless victims from the streets, leaving no leads for police. That is, until he picks up sixteen-year-old Molly. From their treehouse fort in the woods, three neightborhood boys spy the killer holding a gun to Molly’s back, they go to the police—only to have their story disregarded. But the boys know evil lives in their midst. A growing sense of honor and urgency forces the boys to take action—to find Molly, to protect themselves, to stand guard for the last long days of summer.  At turns heartbreaking and breathtakingly thrilling, The Fort perfectly renders a coming-of-age story in the 1980s, in those final days of childhood independence, discovery, and paradise lost.

NOS4A2 by Joe Hill.  Charlie Manx burned a man to death in his black 1938 Rolls Royce Wraith, but that’s not the worst of it. Rumor has it that he kidnapped dozens of children, taking them to a place he calls “Christmasland.” The only child ever to escape was a very lucky girl named Victoria McQueen.  Vic has a gift – she can ride her bike through the Shorter Way bridge and she’ll come out the other side wherever she needs to be, even if it’s hundreds of miles away. Vic doesn’t tell anyone about her ability; no one would understand.  When Charlie Manx finally dies after years in prison, his body disappears...after the autopsy. The police and media think someone stole it, but Vic knows the truth: Charlie Manx is on the road again...and he has her kid. And this time, Vic McQueen’s going after him...

The Secret Life of a Submissive by Sarah K.  Sarah K has a secret.  By day she’s a writer and level-headed single mother; by night she’s a submissive, surrendering herself to forbidden delights. But will she perform the most illicit act of all – falling in love?

The Missing File by D.A. Mishant.  Crimes in Avraham’s quiet suburb are generally not all that complex. But when a sixteen-year-old boy goes missing and a schoolteacher offers up a baffling complication, Avraham finds himself questioning everything he thought he knew about his life.  

In the Garden of Stone by Susan Tekulve.  Shortly before daybreak in War, West Virginia, a passing train derails and spills an avalanche of coal over sixteen-year-old Emma Palmisano's house, trapping her sleeping family inside. The year is 1924, and the remote mines of Appalachia have filled with families like Emma's immigrant laborers building new lives half a world away from the island of Sicily. Emma awakes in total darkness, to the voice of a railroad man, Caleb Sypher, digging her out from the suffocating coal. From his pocket he removes two spotless handkerchiefs and tenderly cleans Emma's bare feet. Though she knows little else about this railroad man, Emma marries him a week later, and Caleb delivers her from the gritty coal camp to thirty-four acres of pristine Virginia mountain farmland. 

Kindle Galleys

The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes.  In Depression-era Chicago, Harper Curtis finds a key to a house that opens on to other times. But it comes at a cost. He has to kill the shining girls: bright young women, burning with potential. He stalks them through their lives across different eras until, in 1989, one of his victims, Kirby Mazrachi, survives and starts hunting him back. 

The Last Girl by Jane Casey.  Vast wealth offers London defense attorney Philip Kennford a lot of things: a gorgeous house with a pool in the backyard, connections in the top echelons of society, a wardrobe worthy of Milan runways. But his money doesn’t provide a happy marriage, or good relationships with his twin daughters…and it does nothing to protect his family when someone brutally murders his wife and daughter in their own home.When Detective Constable Maeve Kerrigan arrives at the scene, the two survivors—Philip and his second favorite daughter, Lydia—both claim to have seen nothing, but it’s clear right away that this is an unhappy family accustomed to keeping secrets. Maeve soon finds herself entangled in a case with a thousand leads that all seem to point nowhere, and it doesn’t help that her boss, whom she trusts more than almost anyone, is starting to make decisions that Maeve finds questionable at best.

Tuesday's Gone by Nicci French.  In Tuesday’s Gone, a London social worker makes a routine home visit only to discover her client, Michelle Doyce, serving afternoon tea to a naked, decomposing corpse. With no clues as to the dead man’s identity, Chief Inspector Karlsson again calls upon Frieda for help. She discovers that the body belongs to Robert Poole, con man extraordinaire. But Frieda can’t shake the feeling that the past isn’t done with her yet. Did someone kill Poole to embroil her in the investigation? And if so, is Frieda herself the next victim?

The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards by Kristopher Jansma.  From as early as he can remember, the hopelessly unreliable—yet hopelessly earnest—narrator of this ambitious debut novel has wanted to become a writer. From the jazz clubs of Manhattan to the villages of Sri Lanka, Kristopher Jansma’s irresistible narrator will be inspired and haunted by the success of his greatest friend and rival in writing, the eccentric and brilliantly talented Julian McGann, and endlessly enamored with Julian’s enchanting friend, Evelyn, the green-eyed girl who got away. After the trio has a disastrous falling out, desperate to tell the truth in his writing and to figure out who he really is, Jansma’s narrator finds himself caught in a never-ending web of lies.

The Plantagenets by Dan Jones.  The first Plantagenet king inherited a blood-soaked kingdom from the Normans and transformed it into an empire stretched at its peak from Scotland to Jerusalem. In this epic history, Dan Jones vividly resurrects this fierce and seductive royal dynasty and its mythic world. We meet the captivating Eleanor of Aquitaine, twice queen and the most famous woman in Christendom; her son, Richard the Lionheart, who fought Saladin in the Third Crusade; and King John, a tyrant who was forced to sign Magna Carta, which formed the basis of our own Bill of Rights. This is the era of chivalry, of Robin Hood and the Knights Templar, the Black Death, the founding of Parliament, the Black Prince, and the Hundred Year’s War. 

Angel Wings by Howard Kaminsky.  As a veteran member of the Providence police department's elite homicide squad, Detective Danny Martell has seen his fair share of dead bodies. But he's never seen anything quite like this. Women around the city are being brutally murdered, their dead faces elaborately made up and fabric angel wings attached to their lifeless bodies. The attacks are immediately dubbed the Angel Murders.  Yet it doesn't take long for the deadly crime wave to drag Danny into his own personal hell? Because soon after the killings begin, Danny's wife, Linda, abruptly disappears. And when his worst fears are realized, a grief-stricken Danny redoubles his efforts to hunt down the deranged serial killer. But is Linda just another random angel? Or is she the victim of a copycat killer with a vendetta against Danny?

Bolero by Joanie McDonnell.  Bolero introduces Nick Sayler, the private investigator who lives aboard a Hudson River barge with a brilliant savant, a retired psychiatrist and a stunning Creole girl. But Sayler's haunted by memories of the woman who took a bullet meant for him, so his good life is belied by a bad drinking habit. Then an emergency room doctor's desperate call about a ballerina with no memory and nothing on her except his card, changes everything. If he can dip into his notorious past to uncover the secret that will save the dancer, maybe he can finally save himself. 

Now it's your turn to brag share!

Let's Talk about Traditional Irish Soda Bread

(image source)

If you read up on Irish soda recipes you'll quickly learn that a recipe with anything other than flour, soda, buttermilk, and salt is not traditional.  The addition of seeds or raisins or orange zest or anything like that would make it a special occasion soda bread.  For instance, during harvest time it was often made with currants and whatnot as a treat for the men working hard in the fields.  There was a tradition in Donegal and Leitrim for adding caraway seeds and these are included as options in the recipe from Epicurious that I'm posting below.  My mother used to make soda bread when I was a kid and it was so good - simple, slathered with butter, just as good as biscuits!

White Soda Bread (image source)

White Soda Bread 

Bon Appétit | May 1996
Yield: Serves 8

Ingredients

3 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2 tablespoons caraway seeds (optional)
1 teaspoon baking-soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups (about) buttermilk

Directions

Preheat oven to 425°F. Lightly flour baking sheet. Mix flour, caraway seeds, if using, baking soda and salt in large bowl. Mix in enough buttermilk to form moist clumps. Gather dough into ball. Turn out onto lightly flour surfaced and knead just until dough holds together, about 1 minute. Shape dough into 6-inch-diameter by 2-inch-high round. Place on prepared baking sheet. Cut 1-inch-deep X across top of bread, extending almost to edges. Bake until bread is golden brown and sounds hollow when tapped on bottom, about 35 minutes. Transfer bread to rack and cool completely.

Happy Saint Paddy's Day!  Go have some Jameson's Irish whiskey - you'll be glad you did.

Weekend Cooking 

 is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews,  recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs.  If your  post  is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and  link up   anytime over the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page. For more information, see the welcome post.

Mailbox Monday

Mailbox Monday is a long-standing meme for book bloggers and others who fancy bragging about sharing their new goodies books.  It was started by Marcia who hosted for a long time before turning it into a traveling meme.  I am fortunate to be the host for March and I'm so happy to welcome you all!

As always I posted a mailbox related to the book I'm currently reading.  Today it's NOS4A2 by Joe Hill.  It's  set in New England, but also in Christmasland (which is way creepier than you think) so it's a Christmas mailbox.

Once again, I don't have any yummies to share with you all so it's even more important that you share with me!

Mailbox Monday

Mail Boxes Etc. in Colchester, England, UK (image source)

Mailbox Monday is a long-standing meme for book bloggers and others who fancy bragging about sharing their new goodies books.  It was started by Marcia who hosted for a long time before turning it into a traveling meme.  I am fortunate to be the host for March and I'm so happy to welcome you all!

As always I posted a mailbox related to the book I'm currently reading.  Today it's The Surrogate by Tania Carver.  It's a great horror/thriller set in Colchester, England so that's where the mailbox is from today = although that's actually a lot of mailboxes!

Oddly, I don't have any yummies to share with you all so it's even more important that you share with me!

In My Mailbox Monday

Public Health Advertisement on WWII Mailbox (image source)

In February, Mailbox Monday is hosted by Audra at Unabridged Chick.  In My Mailbox is hosted by The Story Siren.  Be sure to visit and check out all the great stuff people are bragging about sharing. I'm reading Bring Mulligan Home by Dale Maharidge.  It's a WWII book so I found a WWII mailbox.

Here are some of things that have come into my house recently:

Kindle

Six Years by Harlan Coben.  Six years have passed since Jake Sanders watched Natalie, the love of his life, marry another man. Six years of hiding a broken heart by throwing himself into his career as a college professor. Six years of keeping his promise to leave Natalie alone, and six years of tortured dreams of her life with her new husband, Todd.  But six years haven’t come close to extinguishing his feelings, and when Jake comes across Todd’s obituary, he can’t keep himself away from the funeral. There he gets the glimpse of Todd’s wife he’s hoping for . . . but she is not Natalie. Whoever the mourning widow is, she’s been married to Todd for more than a decade, and with that fact everything Jake thought he knew about the best time of his life—a time he has never gotten over—is turned completely inside out.

The Abandoned by Paul Gallico.  London hasn’t been kind to Peter, a lonely boy whose parents are always out at parties, and though Peter would love to have a cat for company, his nanny won’t hear of it. One day, as Peter is walking out the door, he sees a truck bearing down on a tabby. Dashing out to save the cat, he is struck by the oncoming truck himself.  Everything is different when Peter comes to: He has fur, whiskers, and claws; he has become a cat himself! But London isn’t any kinder to cats than it is to children. Jennie, a savvy stray who takes charge of Peter, knows that all too well. Jennie schools young Peter in the ways of cats, including how to sniff out a nice napping spot, the proper way to dine on mouse, and the single most important tactic a cat can learn: “When in doubt, wash.” Jennie and Peter will face many challenges—and not all of them are from the dangerous outside world—in their struggle to find a place that is truly home.

Astrology for Writers: Spark Your Creativity Using the Zodiac by Corrine Kenner.  Build your storytelling from the cosmic drama of the stars! The nighttime sky inspires writers and astrologers alike to spin stories on the strands of starlight. Discover inspiration for your creative writing in Astrology for Writers, an essential guide filled with exercises for character creation, techniques for constructing plotlines and setting, and much more.  Begin your creative journey with an introduction to the planets, the twelve signs of the Zodiac, the twelve houses of the horoscope, and other astrology basics. Learn how to develop unique characters based on mythic archetypes, how to use astrological imagery and symbolism for your descriptions and dialogue, and how to put theory into practice with writing prompts and samples.

Kundalini Meditation: The Path to Personal Transformation and Creativity by Kathryn McCusker.  Kundalini meditation unleashes the life force that exists in us all, allowing it to flow through each of the seven chakras. It's a hot trend that awakens our inspiration and insight; allays destructive anxieties and doubts; and helps us feel at one with the divine. This enlightening guide shows, in guided stages, how to become aware of the energy channels running along the spinal cord and which purification rituals, poses, positions, and breathing exercises open you up. Special guided meditations target common problems such as depression and anger.

Devil in the Delta: A Ghost Hunter's Most Terrifying Case ... to Date by Rich Newman.  When author Rich Newman first arrives at the battered doublewide trailer deep in the Mississippi Delta, it's clear that this is no ordinary haunting. Called from Memphis to assist a local ghost hunting team, Newman's investigation of the Martin house has become his most terrifying and mysterious case. What starts out as a malicious assault manifesting as deep rumbling sounds quickly spirals into a story of obsession, possession, witchcraft, and murder. When the evidence becomes overwhelming, long-buried memories from Newman's own past come back to haunt him--memories he'd rather forget. Collecting physical evidence, researching the violent history of the property, and sorting through the spiritual implications of demons, Newman's investigation of the Martin house is unlike any other.

The Sandoval Sisters' Secret of Old Blood (Sandoval Legacy #1) by Sandra Ramos O'Briant.  When Alma flees with her young lover to Texas to escape an arranged marriage with a much older man, she sets in motion a drama that will put the sisters and their legacy at risk. Pilar, a 14-year-old tomboy, is offered as a replacement bride, and what follows is a sensuous courtship and marriage clouded by the curses of her husband’s former lover, Consuelo. She will stop at nothing, even the use of black magic, in her effort to destroy the Sandoval family. The Mexican-American war begins and the Americans invade Santa Fe. The sisters are caught in the crosshairs of war from two important fronts-New Mexico and Texas. Their money and ancient knowledge offer some protection, but their lives are changed forever.

The Memory of Love by Linda Olsson.  Marion Flint, in her early fifties, has spent fifteen years living a quiet life on the rugged coast of New Zealand, a life that allows the door to her past to remain firmly shut. But a chance meeting with a young boy, Ika, and her desire to help him force Marion to open the Pandora’s box of her memory. Seized by a sudden urgency to make sense of her past, she examines each image one-by-one: her grandfather, her mother, her brother, her lover. Perhaps if she can create order from the chaos, her memories will be easier to carry. Perhaps she’ll be able to find forgiveness for the little girl that was her. For the young woman she had been. For the people she left behind.

Child to Soldier: Stories from Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army by Opiyo Oloya.  What happens when children are forced to become child soldiers? How are they transformed from children to combatants? In Child to Soldier, Opiyo Oloya addresses these timely, troubling questions by exploring how Acholi children in Northern Uganda, abducted by infamous warlord Joseph Kony and his Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), become soldiers.  Oloya - himself an Acholi, a refugee from Idi Amin's rule of Uganda, and a high ranking figure in Canadian education - is a scholar who challenges conventional thinking on child-inducted soldiers by illustrating the familial loyalty that develops within a child's new surroundings in the bush. Based on interviews with former child combatants, this book provides a cultural context for understanding the process of socializing children into violence. Oloya details how Kony and the LRA exploit and pervert Acholi cultural heritage and pride to control and direct the children in war.

The Tale of Raw Head and Bloody Bones by Jack Wolf.  Meet Tristan Hart, a brilliant young man of means. The year is 1751, and Mr Hart leaves his Berkshire home for London to lodge with his father's friend, the novelist and dramatist Henry Fielding, and study medicine at the great hospital of University College. It will be a momentous year for the cultured and intellectually ambitious Mr Hart, who, as well as being a student of Locke and Descartes and a promising young physician, is also, alas, a psychopath. His obsession is the nature of pain, and preventing it during medical procedures. His equally strong and far more unpredictable obsession is the nature of pain, and causing it. Desperate to understand his own deviant desires before they derail his career and drive him mad, Tristan sifts through his childhood memories, memories that are informed by dark superstitions about faeries and goblins and shape-shifting gypsies. Will the new tools of the age-reason