Mailbox Monday #248

Mailbox Monday (click the icon to check out the new blog) has gone on tour since Marcia at To Be Continued, formerly The Printed Page passed the torch.  November’s host is Rose City Reader.

***Just a note to say that a poll about what the community wants to do about hosting Mailbox Monday’s meme is on the Mailbox Monday blog. Go Vote.***

The meme allows bloggers to share what books they receive in the mail or through other means over the past week.

Just be warned that these posts can increase your TBR piles and wish lists.

Here’s what I received:

1.  War’s Trophies by Henry Morant from the author for review.

Murder and robbery on a seemingly routine intelligence mission in Vietnam cause a young army officer to exact his own revenge on a band of Viet Cong turncoats and his own senior officer. The lieutenant then settles into the relatively quiet life of a Seattle editor–until the senior officer is released from prison after 20 years and unleashes his own nightmarish game of copycat revenge killings on the editor’s friends and colleagues. Meanwhile, the police suspect the editor is the Seattle serial killer. The two ex-officers wage a deadly cat-and-mouse battle to determine which one will become the war’s last trophy.

2. Chasing Utopia: A Hybrid by Nikki Giovanni for review from William Morrow.

The poetry of Nikki Giovanni has spurred movements and inspired songs, turned hearts and informed generations. She’s been hailed as a healer and a national treasure. But if her reputation is writ large upon the national stage, her heart resides in the everyday where family and lovers gather, friends commune, and those no longer with us are remembered.

And at every gathering there is food, food as sustenance, food as aphrodisiac, food as memory. A pot of beans are flavored with her mother’s sighs, this sigh part cardamom, that one the essence of clove; a lover requests a banquet as an affirmation of ongoing passion; an homage is paid to the most time-honored appetizer, soup.

What did you receive?