Mailbox Mondays (click the icon to check out the new blog) has gone on tour since Marcia at A Girl and Her Books, formerly The Printed Page passed the torch. This month’s host is the Metro Reader.
Kristi of The Story Siren continues to sponsor her In My Mailbox meme.
Both of these memes allow 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 this week:
1. The Turning of Anne Merrick by Christine Blevins, which I won from Mailbox Monday.
She spies for General Washington, betrays the Redcoats and battles for America’s independence…
It’s 1777, and a fledgling country wages an almost hopeless struggle against the might of the British Empire. Brought together by a fateful kiss, Anne Merrick and Jack Hampton are devoted to each other and to their Patriot cause. As part of Washington’s daring network of spies, they are ready and willing to pay even the ultimate price for freedom.
From battlefields raging along the Hudson, to the desperate winter encampment at Valley Forge and through the dangerous intrigue of British-occupied Philadelphia, Anne and Jack brave the trials of separation, the ravages of war and an unyielding enemy growing ever more ruthless.
For love and for country, all is put at risk-and together the pair must call upon their every ounce of courage and cunning in order to survive.
2. The Music in Her Mind by Robert Gilkes, which I received from the publisher Winged Lion.
In June 1945, Colonel Alexander Litchfield is an exhausted war-torn officer, tormented by nightmares of the inhuman acts he has committed. In the last days of the war he takes the surrender of a vast army of Cossacks escaping from the Russians.
Among them is Larisa Korsakova, a concert cellist with whom he had an idyllic love affair in Paris before the war. High in the Alpine forest above the POW camp they escape from the horrors they have endured into their irresistible passionate desire for each other… Until Lara is handed over to the Soviets.
3. You and Three Others Are Approaching a Lake by Anna Moschovakis, which I received from the Academy of American Poets and won the 2011 James Laughlin Award.
A sharp-witted investigation of love, work, and human responsibility in the age of consumption and hyperexposure.
“[Moschovakis’] poems illuminate, amuse, and provoke. Plato would have loved them.”—Ann Lauterbach
In a world where we find “everything helping itself / to everything else,” Anna Moschovakis incorporates Craigslist ads, technobabble, twentieth-century ethics texts, scientific research, autobiographical detail, and historical anecdote to present an engaging lyric analysis of the way we live now. “It’s your life,” she tells the reader, “and we have come to celebrate it.”
4. Nadia Knows Best by Jill Mansell, which I received for review from Sourcebooks in May.
Nadia Kinsella meets Jay Tiernan after plowing her car into a snowdrift. When they end up stranded for the night in a rural pub, the attraction between them flares. But Nadia already has a boyfriend, and she’s not a one-night-stand kind of girl. When Nadia and her boyfriend break up months later, she bumps into Jay again. They start working together on a joint venture, but now it’s Jay’s turn to be otherwise involved…
5. All Roads Lead to Austen by Amy Elizabeth Smith, which I received for review from Sourcebooks in June.
Armed with only a suitcase and dozens of copies of Austen’s novels, professor Amy Elizabeth Smith took to the road and organized book clubs in six different Central and South American countries. Along the way, she battled through a life-threatening illness, discovered friendship and love, and learned more about life-and the power of Austen-than she ever could have imagined. All Roads Lead to Austen celebrates the wisdom of letting go and becoming, no matter what our age.
What did you receive this week?
