Mailbox Monday

Apartment call buttons and mailboxes - New Orleans, LA
(image source)

In February, Mailbox Monday is hosted by DCMetroreader at Metroreader. 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 or mailish thing that is somehow associated with what I'm reading right now.  I'm reading The Glass Rainbow by James Lee Burke.  His books are set on Bayou Teche in the southeast part of Louisiana.  Since I couldn't find any mailboxes along the Bayou Teche, I found a cool picture of some New Orleans mailboxes.

Here are the books I received this past week:

Printed Matter (all from publishers)

Glow by Jessica Marie Tuccelli.  In the autumn of 1941, Amelia J. McGee, a young woman of Cherokee and Scotch-Irish descent, and an outspoken pamphleteer for the NAACP, hastily sends her daughter, Ella, alone on a bus home to Georgia in the middle of the night-a desperate action that is met with dire consequences when the child encounters two drifters and is left for dead on the side of the road.  Ella awakens to find herself in the homestead of Willie Mae Cotton, a wise hoodoo practitioner and former slave, and her partner, Mary-Mary Freeborn, tucked deep in the Takatoka forest. As Ella begins to heal, the legacies of her lineage are revealed.

The Last Storyteller by Frank Delaney.   “Every legend and all mythologies exist to teach us how to run our days. In kind fashion. A loving way. But there’s no story, no matter how ancient, as important as one’s own. So if we’re to live good lives, we have to tell ourselves our own story. In a good way.” So says James Clare, Ben MacCarthy’s beloved mentor, and it is this fateful advice that will guide Ben through the tumultuous events of Ireland in 1956.

Kindle Books (from publishers via NetGalley or Edelweiss/Above the Treeline or the author):

I downloaded (for free) an omnibus edition of three books by Scott Nicholson.  It contains the following books:

Crime Beat by Scott Nicholson.  When John Moretz takes a job as a reporter in the Appalachian town of Sycamore Shade, a crime wave erupts that boosts circulation and leaves people uneasy. Then a murder victim is discovered, and Moretz is first on the scene.  As more bodies are discovered, Moretz comes under police suspicion, but the newspaper's sales are booming due to his coverage of sensational crime. His editor is torn between calling off his newshound and cashing in on the attention, plus the editor is romancing the big-city reporter assigned to cover the suspected serial killer.  And Moretz seems to be one step ahead of the other reporters, the police, and even the killer himself.

Disintegration by Scott Nicholson.  Identical twins vie for a family empire built on deceit, cruelty, and dark secrets--and one woman stands between them while another waits in the shadows.

The Skull Ring by Scott Nicholson.  Julia Stone will remember, even if it kills her.  Dr. Pamela Forrest is determined to bring Julia's memories to the surface, hoping to heal Julia's panic disorder. The therapist keeps returning Julia to a night twenty-three years ago when Julia was four. A night of hooded figures, strange chants, pain, and blood. The night her father disappeared from the face of the earth.

Here's the rest of what I got:

Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt.  1987. There’s only one person who has ever truly understood fourteen-year-old June Elbus, and that’s her uncle, the renowned painter Finn Weiss. Shy at school and distant from her older sister, June can only be herself in Finn’s company; he is her godfather, confidant, and best friend. So when he dies, far too young, of a mysterious illness her mother can barely speak about, June’s world is turned upside down. But Finn’s death brings a surprise acquaintance into June’s life—someone who will help her to heal, and to question what she thinks she knows about Finn, her family, and even her own heart.

The Great Silence:  Britain from the Shadow of the First World War to the Dawn of the Jazz Age by Juliet Nicolson.  Two years after the Armistice of 1918, an unidentified soldier was given a state funeral and buried in Westminister Abbey. He represented the loved ones of all those who had been denied the comfort of the basic rituals of mourning.  The Great Silence is the story of the period leading up to this moment: two years of celebration, anger, denial and hope. Juliet Nicolson evokes what England was like for those who had danced through settled Edwardian times and whose lives were now so altered. Against a background of social upheaval, even shorter skirts, the movies and the sound of jazz, a spirit of resilience and survival began to triumph

Buried in the Sky:  The Extraordinary Story of the Sherpa Climbers on K2's Deadliest Day by Peter Zuckerman, Amanda Padoan.  When Edmund Hillary first conquered Mt. Everest, Sherpa Tenzing Norgay was at his side. Indeed, for as long as Westerners have been climbing the Himalayas, Sherpa porters have been the anonymous experts in the background. In August 2008, when eleven climbers died on the world s most dangerous peak, Chhiring Dorje Sherpa and Pasang Lama survived. More than mere porters, these men had emerged from poverty and political turmoil to become two of the best mountaineers on earth. Based on unprecedented access and interviews in rare and dying languages, Buried in the Sky reveals the Sherpas story for the first time. The book travels back to Chhiring and Pasang s home villages, exploring their customs and culture, and then follows them to Base Camp and their dramatic encounter in the Death Zone. This thrilling book reveals a world in which climbing represents not only the most lucrative career for impoverished young men but also a terrible sin against the mountain.

Happy reading!