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