In My Mailbox Monday

Israeli Mailbox

In January, Mailbox Monday is sponsored by the wonderful Rose City Reader. In My Mailbox is sponsored by The Story Siren.  These are the places where we brag about share the books that arrived in our mailboxes each week.  As always, I also try to find a mailbox that is somehow associated with what I'm reading right now.  I'm reading Murder Duet by Batya Gur.  It's set in Israel so I found an Israeli mailbox.

Three books this week:

The Invisible Line:  Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White by Daniel J. Sharfstein (from the publisher for a TLC Book Tour).  In this sweeping history, Daniel J. Sharfstein unravels the stories of three extraordinary families from different eras of American history to represent the complexity of race in America and to force us to rethink our basic assumptions about who we are. The Gibsons were wealthy landowners in the South Carolina backcountry who became white in the 1760s, ascending to the heights of the Southern elite and, ultimately, to the United States Senate. The Spencers were hardscrabble farmers in the hills of eastern Kentucky, joining an isolated Appalachian community in the 1840s and for the better part of a century hovering on the line between white and black. The Walls were fixtures of the rising black middle class in post-Civil War Washington, D.C., only to give up everything they had fought for to become white at the dawn of the twentieth century. Together, their interwoven and intersecting stories uncover a forgotten America in which the rules of race were something to be believed, but not necessarily obeyed.

The True Memoirs of Little K by Adrienne Sharp (from the author's agent).  Exiled in Paris, tiny, one-hundred-year-old Mathilde Kschessinska sits down to write her memoirs before all that she believes to be true is forgotten. A lifetime ago, she was the vain, ambitious, impossibly charming prima ballerina assoluta of the tsar’s Russian Imperial Ballet in St. Petersburg. Now, as she looks back on her tumultuous life, she can still recall every slight she ever suffered, every conquest she ever made.

The Survivor by Sean Slater (from the publisher for participating in the Book Chick City Mystery and Suspense Reading Challenge).  Columbine. Dunblane. Virginia Tech. Winnenden. But Saint Patrick's High?

In his first hour back from a six-month leave of absence, Detective Jacob Striker's day quickly turns into a nightmare. He is barely on scene five minutes at his daughter's high school when he encounters an Active Shooter situation. Three men wearing hockey masks - Black, White, and Red - h...moreColumbine. Dunblane. Virginia Tech. Winnenden. But Saint Patrick's High? In his first hour back from a six-month leave of absence, Detective Jacob Striker's day quickly turns into a nightmare. He is barely on scene five minutes at his daughter's high school when he encounters an Active Shooter situation. Three men wearing hockey masks - Black, White, and Red - have stormed the school with firearms and are killing indiscriminately. Striker takes immediate action. Within minutes, two of the gunmen are dead and Striker is close to ending the violence. But the last gunman, Red Mask, does something unexpected. He runs up to his fallen comrade, racks the shotgun, and unloads five rounds into the man, obliterating his face and hands. Before Striker can react, Red Mask flees - and escapes.