In My Mailbox Monday

Mumbai Mailbox (image source)

In January, Mailbox Monday is hosted by Alyce at At Home with Books. In My Mailbox is hosted 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 try to find a mailbox that is somehow associated with what I'm reading right now.  I've been reading Lionheart by Sharon Kay Penman on my Kindle, but am also reading a printed book, A Walk Across the Sun by Corban Addison.  It takes place in varied locations, but right now I'm reading about things happening in Mumbai, so that's where the mailbox is.

All my advance copies this week came to my Kindle - they're either from the publisher or via NetGalley:

A Greyhound of a Girl by Roddy Doyle.  Mary O’Hara is a sharp and cheeky 12-year-old Dublin schoolgirl who is bravely facing the fact that her beloved Granny is dying. But Granny can’t let go of life, and when a mysterious young woman turns up in Mary’s street with a message for her Granny, Mary gets pulled into an unlikely adventure. The woman is the ghost of Granny’s own mother, who has come to help her daughter say good-bye to her loved ones and guide her safely out of this world. She needs the help of Mary and her mother, Scarlett, who embark on a road trip to the past. Four generations of women travel on a midnight car journey. One of them is dead, one of them is dying, one of them is driving, and one of them is just starting out.

Hit Lit:  Cracking the Code of the Twentieth Century's Biggest Bestsellers by James W. Hall.  What do Michael Corleone, Jack Ryan, and Scout Finch have in common? Creative writing professor and thriller writer James W. Hall knows, and now, in this fun, witty, and thought-provoking book, he reveals how bestsellers work. Using twelve of the biggest bestselling novels of the twentieth century as case studies—including The Godfather, Gone with the Wind, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Jaws—Hall offers a fascinating discussion of some of the common features of popular literature.

Enchantments by Kathryn Harrison.  St. Petersburg, 1917. After Rasputin’s body is pulled from the icy waters of the Neva River, his eighteen-year-old daughter, Masha, is sent to live at the imperial palace with Tsar Nikolay and his family—including the headstrong Prince Alyosha. Desperately hoping that Masha has inherited Rasputin’s miraculous healing powers, Tsarina Alexandra asks her to tend to Aloysha, who suffers from hemophilia, a blood disease that keeps the boy confined to his sickbed, lest a simple scrape or bump prove fatal.  Two months after Masha arrives at the palace, the tsar is forced to abdicate, and Bolsheviks place the royal family under house arrest. As Russia descends into civil war, Masha and Alyosha grieve the loss of their former lives, finding solace in each other’s company.

The Hunter by James Lescroart.  Raised by loving adoptive parents, San Francisco private investigator Wyatt Hunt never had an interest in finding his birth family-until he gets a chilling text message from an unknown number: "How did ur mother die?"  The answer is murder, and urged on by curiosity and the mysterious texter, Hunt takes on a case he never knew existed, one that has lain unsolved for decades. His family's dark past unfurls in dead ends. Child Protective Services, who suspected but could never prove that Hunt was being neglected, is uninformed; his birth father, twice tried but never convicted of the murder, is in hiding; Evie, his mother's drug-addicted religious fanatic of a friend, is untraceable. And who is the texter, and how are they connected to Hunt?

Poison Flower by Thomas Perry.  Poison Flower, the seventh novel in Thomas Perry’s celebrated Jane Whitefield series, opens as Jane spirits James Shelby, a man unjustly convicted of his wife’s murder, out of the heavily guarded criminal court building in downtown Los Angeles. But the price of Shelby’s freedom is high. Within minutes, men posing as police officers kidnap Jane and, when she tries to escape, shoot her.  Jane’s captors are employees of the man who really killed Shelby’s wife. He believes he won’t be safe until Shelby is dead, and his men will do anything to force Jane to reveal Shelby’s hiding place. But Jane endures their torment, and is willing to die rather than betray Shelby. Jane manages to escape but she is alone, wounded, thousands of miles from home with no money and no identification, hunted by the police as well as her captors. She must rejoin Shelby, reach his sister before the hunters do, and get them both to safety.

Plus I pre-ordered the next book in the House Wars series and it came early.  Yes, I ordered it for the Kindle.  I'll probably by the hardback later for my collection, but this is a big tome and I didn't want to lug it around.  This is, actually, what e-books are for - saving your wrists:

Skirmish by Michelle Sagara West.  At long last, Jewel is preparing to announce her candidacy to become the next Terafin and claim the House Seat. But it is a decision that has her targeted by demons who will stop at nothing to destroy Jewel and her allies as the House War begins...