Mailbox Monday/In My Mailbox 12-28-2009

Mailbox Monday is hosted at The Printed Page or In Your Mailbox at The Story Siren. Please stop by those posts and take a look at what packages everybody else got this week!

Well, I took an unexpected vacation the last couple of days. I hurt my back (I think shoveling snow, but I will never admit it!) and finally today feel like moving around and sitting up - not that I was allowed to not do anything! We celebrated Christmas with my in-laws on Friday in Wisconsin - thankfully missing the bad weather - and then had our Christmas at home on Saturday. The house still looks like a toy tornado went through! I am feeling better and plan on visiting my friendly chiropractor tomorrow! So, on with the mailbox!

The Marriage Project: 21 Days to More Love and Laughter
by Kathi Lipp

More love, more laughter - more lingerie.

Was the last time you flirted with your husband before you had kids?

Do you spend more time on the couch with your wife watching movies or with a bag of chips watching The Game?

Does your idea of a hot date include a drive-thru and springing for the extra-large fries?

What would your marriage look like if for 21 days you put it on project status? Plenty of books describe how to improve a marriage, how to save a marriage, and how to ramp up the intimacy in a marriage. In The Marriage Project, Kathi Lipp shows you how to put the fun back in marriage with 21 simple yet effective projects.

here are just a few of the results you'll see when you put The Marriage Project into practice.

• new levels of warmth and tenderness in your relationship
• a deeper sense of security with your spouse
• new ideas to bring fun and flirting back into your marriage

If you haven't given up on the dream of being head-over-heels with your spouse again, The Marriage Project will give you just the boost you need.

The Marriage Project is great for groups (a leader's guide is included) or for couples to do one-to-one. (back cover)

Hearing From God Each Morning: 365 Daily Devotions
by Joyce Meyer

In today's world we are surrounded by noise. We are overwhelmed by the voices around us, whether they're from our children, our friends, our spouses, or ourselves. Distracted by the sounds of others, we soon forget how to listen to the most important voice of all - the voice of God.

In this devotional, Joyce Meyer guides readers to a more intimate relationship with God, showing us how to cultivate qualities and behaviours that will help us recognize God's voice. Each message is based upon teachings from three of her books, How to Hear from God, Knowing God Intimately, and The Power of Simple Prayer.

This collection includes powerful meditations that will inspire and help you to:

• Make time for God
• Discern His responses to prayer
• Sustain relationships with others while developing your intimacy with God.

This book offers short, empowering reminders of how to reconnect with His plan and persevere through common obstacles ranging from fighting temptation of the mall to overcoming deeply held grudges. With daily readings that reinforce the power of peace, patience, obedience and love, Joyce Meyer provides strategies for opening ourselves to His wisdom by first opening our ears.

Whether preparing for a new day or reflecting on a day past, you too can hear from God! (back cover)

When Will There Be Good News?
by Kate Atkinson

On a hot, beautiful day in the English countryside, six-year-old Joanna Mason witnesses a horrific crime. Thirty years later, the man convicted of the crime is released from prison.

Sixteen-year-old Reggie works as a nanny for a doctor devoted to her infant son. When Dr. Hunter goes missing, Reggie - no stranger to bad luck and worse - seems to be the only person who is worried.

Detective Chief Inspector Louise Monroe is also looking for a missing person, unaware that hurtling toward her is an old friend, private detective Jackson Brodie, himself on a journey that becomes fatally interrupted.

As lives and histories intersect, as past mistakes and current misfortunes collide, Jackson and Louise both get caught up in an investigation that will call into question everything they once thought true. (back cover)

The Paris Vendetta
by Steve Berry

When Napoleon Bonaparte died in exile in 1821, he took to the grave a powerful secret. As general and emperor, he had stolen immeasurable riches from palaces, national treasuries, and even the Knights of Malta and the Vatican. In his final days, his British captors hoped to learn where the loot lay hidden. But he told them nothing, and in his will he made no mention of the treasure.

Or did he?

Former Justice Department operative Cotton Malone is about to find out when trouble comes knocking at his Copenhagen bookshop. Actually, it breaks and enters in the form of an American Secret Service agent with a pair of assassins on his heels. Malone has his doubts about the anxious young man, but narrowly surviving a ferocious firefight convinces him to follow his unexpected new ally.

Their first stop is the secluded estate of Malone's good friend Henrik Thorvaldsen. The wily Danish tycoon has uncovered the insidious plans of the Paris Club, a cabal of multimillionaires bent on manipulating the global economy. Only by matching wits with a terrorist-for-hire, foiling a catastrophic attack, and plunging into a desperate hunt for Napoleon's legendary lost treasure can Malone hope to avert international financial anarchy.

But Thorvaldsen's real objective is much more personal: to avenge the murder of his son by the larcenous aristocrat at the heart of the conspiracy. Thorvaldsen's vendetta places Malone in an impossible quandary -- one that forces him to choose between friend and country, past and present. Starting in Denmark, moving to England, and ending up in the storied streets and cathedrals of Paris, Malone plays a breathless game of duplicity and death, all to claim a prize of untold value. But at what cost? (inside cover)

The Mayo Clinic Diet: Eat well. Enjoy life. Lose weight.
By the weight-loss experts at Mayo Clinic
(I also received The Mayo Clinic Diet Journal)

In our work with literally thousands of patients, we've identified the critical habits of people who maintain a healthy weight, and the habits of those who don't.

With The Mayo Clinic Diet, we've boiled this research down to five simple habits to help you take off the extra weight -- and five habits to break so that you can keep it from coming back. Plus, we've made it easy, because what works best when it comes to weight loss is keeping it simple!

The Mayo Clinic Diet is composed of three sections to get you started, to keep you on track, and to give you the knowledge and tools you need to keep those unwanted pounds off for good.

1. Lost It! is a two-week quick-start program designed to help you lose 6 to 10 pounds in a safe and healthy way.
2. Live It! is a long-term plan in which you continue to lose 1 to 2 pounds a week until you reach your goal. Then, you team how to maintain your healthy weight for life.
3. All the extra stuff includes meal planners, recipes, tips on overcoming challenges and much more to help you along the way.

The Mayo Clinic Diet puts you in charge of reshaping your body and improving your health -- for a lifetime. (inside cover)

The Mudhogs
by Dalton James

No mud equals no fun for three little pigs.

Three little pigs try everything in their power to make or find mud. Along the way they learn a valuable life lesson.

This is the third book written by eight-year-old Dalton James - first two were very cute. I can't wait to read this one with my son.

Mr. Darcy Broke My Heart
by Beth Pattillo

In the tradition of best-selling Jane Austen Ruined My Life, Mr. Darcy Broke My Heart features an Austen fan who uncovers an early draft of Pride and Prejudice -- and discovers that Jane Austen didn't always have Darcy in mind for Elizabeth Bennet.

Claire Prescott doesn't understand Mr. Darcy's appeal. She's been comfortably dating Neil, a nice -- if a bit negligent -- sports fanatic. But when she agrees to stand in for her sister at a Jane Austen seminar in Oxford, England, she finds herself holding a lost version of Pride and Prejudice. Scholars thought Austen's original manuscript was destroyed centuries ago, but as Claire reads the first draft, she uncovers a long-hidden secret about the iconic Darcy, as well as the truth about Austen's own struggle to find the right hero for Elizabeth Bennet.

And when a tall, dark, and dashing stranger crosses her path, will the staid Claire sudd3enly discover her inner Lizzie Bennet? Neil's unexpected arrival in Oxford complicates Claire's journey to finding her own romantic lead, and she discovers that finding the right hero can be more difficult than she ever imagined.

Mr. Darcy Broke My Heart is the story of a woman who finds that falling in love may be the biggest adventure of all and that a true hero can appear in the most unexpected places. (back cover)