Mailbox Monday/In My Mailbox (March 7-8)

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

The Promise of Morning
by Ann Shorey
(from Revell/Baker)

Life in Beldon Grove on the Illinois frontier in the 1840's isn't easy. For Ellie Craig, the graves of her three infant children make it unbearably lonely, despite the love of her husband Matthew. When she uncovers a family secret that suggests she may not be as alone as she thought, Ellie is determined to find the truth.

Meanwhile, Matthew Craig faces controversy in the church he pastors when a man arrives in town claiming to be both a minister and the son of the town's founder. Will Matthew find the courage to reclaim his church? Or will he return to itinerant preaching, leaving Ellie even more alone than before? (back cover)

The Choice
by Suzanne Woods Fisher
(from Revell/Baker)

Lancaster County has always been her home -- but where does her heart belong?

One moment Carrie Weaver was looking forward to running away with Lancaster Barnstormers pitcher Solomon Riehl -- plans that included leaving the Amish community where they grew up. The next moment she was staring into a future as broken as her heart. Now, Carrie is faced with a choice. But will this opportunity be all she hoped? Or will this decision, this moment in time, change her life forever?

A tender story of love, forgiveness, and looking below the surface, The Choice uncovers the sweet simplicity of the Amish world -- and shows that it's never too late to find your way back to God. (back cover)

Worst Case (audio)
by James Patteson & Michael Ledwidge
(from Hachette)

Best case: Survival - The son of one of New York's wealthiest families is snatched off the street and held hostage. His parents can't save him, because this kidnapper isn't demanding money.

Worst case: Death - Detective Michael Bennett leads the investigation. As another student disappears, another powerful family uses their leverage and connections to turn up the heat to stop this killer. Their reach extends all the way to the FBI, which sends its top Abduction Specialist, Agent Emily Parker.

This case: Detective Michael Bennett is on it -- Before Bennett has a chance to protest the FBI's intrusion on his case, the mastermind changes his routine. His plan leads up to the most devastating demonstration yet -- one that could bring cataclysmic ruin to every inch of New York City. (back cover)

This One is Mine
by Maria Semple
(from Hachette)

Violet Parry has a picture-perfect life: a beautiful house, a successful husband, a darling daughter. Violet can speak French, quote Sondheim, and whip up dinner from the vegetables in her garden. She has everything under control -- except her own happiness. All it takes is a chance encounter with Teddy Reyes, a roguish small-time bass player with a highly evolved sexuality, to open Violet's eyes to what she's missing and upend her life completely.

Maria Semple writes with comic brilliance in this smart, compassionate, wickedly funny take on our need for more -- and the sometimes disastrous choices we make in the name of happiness. (back cover)

Mommy Power: Discovering Your Mommy Strength
by Dr. Sheila Schuller Coleman
(from Hachette)

Dr. Sheila Schuller Coleman knows firsthand how challenging -- even overwhelming -- parenting can be: her four boys were born in seven years' time! From the first day she found a baby in her arms, Sheila battled feelings of inadequacy, insecurity, and emotional fatigue.

But a surprising paradox was at work: Sheila discovered that she could be the mother she wanted to be by becoming more like a child. The more childlike she was in her faith, the more she trusted God the way a child would, the stronger she was as a mother. The secret was where she found the source of her strength as a mother -- not in herself, but in her powerful heavenly Father!

Readers can access the same peace and power. As they learn to put their hands in God the Father's, they'll realize He never lets go. And as they become the daughters He wants them to be, they, too, will become the mothers they want to be. (back cover)

Slip of the Knife
by Denise Mina
(from Hachette Books)

Paddy Meehan is no stranger to murder -- as a reporter she lives at crime scenes -- but nothing has prepared her for this visit from the police. Her former boyfriend and fellow journalist Terry Hewitt has been found hooded and shot through the head. Paddy knows she will be of little help -- she has not seen Terry in more than six months. So she is bewildered to learn that in his will he has left her his house and several suitcases full of notes.

Drawn into a maze of secrets and lies, Paddy begins making connections to Terry's murder that no one else has seen, and soon finds herself trapped in the most important -- and dangerous -- story of her career. (back cover)

Here Burns My Candle
by Liz Curtis Higgs
(From WaterBrook Multnomah)

A Mother who cannot face her future.
A daughter who cannot escape her past.

Lady Elisabeth Kerr is a keeper of secrets. A Highlander by birth and a Lowlander by marriage, she honors the auld ways, even as doubts and fears stir deep within her.

Her husband, Lord Donald, has secrets of his own, well hidden from the household, yet whispered among the town gossips.

His mother, the dowager Lady Marjory, hides gold beneath her floor and guilt inside her heart. Though her two abiding passions are maintaining her place in society and coddling her grown sons, Marjory's many regrets, buried in Greyfriars Churchyard, continue to plague her.

One by one the Kerr family secrets begin to surface, even as bonny Prince Charlie and his rebel army ride into Edinburgh in September 1745, intent on capturing the crown.

A timeless story of love and betrayal, loss and redemption, flickering against the vivid backdrop of eighteenth-century Scotland, Here Burns My Candle illumines the dark side of human nature, even as hope, the brightest of tapers, lights the way home. (back cover)

An Absence so Great
by Jane Kirkpatrick
(from Waterbrook Multnomah)

Did photography replace an absence in her life - or - expose the truth of heart's emptiness?

While growing in confidence as a photographer, eighteen-year-old Jessie Ann Gaebele's personal life is at a crossroads. Hoping she's put an unfortunate romantic longing behind her as "water under the bridge," she exiles herself to Milwaukee to operate photographic studios for those owners who have fallen ill with mercury poisoning.

Jessie gains footing in her dream to one day operate her own studio and soon finds herself in other Midwest towns, pursuing her profession. But even a job she loves can't keep painful memories from seeping into her heart when the shadows of a forbidden love threaten to darken the portrait of her life. (back cover)

The Curse Workers: White Cat
by Holly Black
(from Simon & Schuster)

Cassel comes from a family of curse workers -- people who have the power to change your emotions, your memories, your luck, by the slightest touch of their hands. And since curse work is illegal, they're all mobsters or con artists. Except for Cassel. He's the straight kid in a crooked family, if you ignore one small detail -- he killed his best friend, Lila, three years ago.

Now Cassel is having nightmares, terrifying dreams about a white cat that seems to want to tell him something. He's starting to notice other things, too -- the strange behavior of his two brothers, who seem caught up in a secret plot. As Cassel starts to suspect he's part of a huge con game, he must unravel his past and his memories. To find out the truth, Cassel will have to out con the conmon. (back cover)

Taroko Gorge
by Jacob Ritari
(from Unbridled Books)

A disillusioned and raggedy American reporter, along with his drunken photojournalist partner, is the last to see three Japanese schoolgirls who disappear into a dense and imposing Taroko Gorge, Taiwan's largest national park. The journalists -- who are themselves suspects -- investigate the disappearance along with the girls' distraught teacher, their bickering classmates, and a seasoned and wary Taiwanese detective. The conflicts between them all -- complicated by the outrageousness of the photographer and the raging hormones of the young students -- raise questions of personal responsibility, desire, honesty, and unvarnished self-interest.

The storm-driven world of this astounding debut and its immediate dangers -- both natural and personal -- are real, constantly changing, and always violently pressing. And the emotions that churn in the close, dark rooms overnight as the players gather in the park visitors' center are as intense as in any closet drama. But the action and the personal furor here will keep readers turning the pages for answers. Along the rugged way, a series of cultural revelations suggest that the human attachment to mystery can quickly outweigh the desire for safety. (back cover)

Glorious
by Bernice L. McFadden
(from the author)

Glorious is set against the backdrops of the Jim Crow South, the Harlem Renaissance, and the Civil Rights era. Blending fact and ficton, Glorious is the story of Easter Venetta Bartlett, a fictional Harlem Renaissance writer whose tumultuous path to success, ruin, and ultimately revival offers a candid and true portrait of the American experience in all its beauty and cruelty.

It is a novel informed by the question that is the title of Langston Hughes's famous poem: What happens to a dream deferred? Based on years of research, this heart-wrenching fictional account is given added resonance by factual events coupled with real and imagined larger-than-life characters. Glorious is an audacious exploration into the nature of self-hatred, love, possession, ego, betrayal, and finally, redemption. (back cover)

An Altar in the World
by Barbara Brown Taylor
(from Harper One)

In her critically acclaimed Leaving Church, Barbara Brown Taylor wrote about her experience leaving full-time ministry to become a professor, a decision that stretched the boundaries of her faith. Now, in her stunning follow-up, An Altar in the World, she shares how she learned to encounter God far beyond the walls of her church.

Taylor reveals meaningful ways to discover the sacred in the small things we do and see, from simple practices such as walking, working, and prayer. Something as ordinary as hanging clothes on a clothesline becomes an act of meditation if we pay attention to what we're doing and take time to notice the sights, smells, and sounds around us. Making eye contact with the cashier at the grocery store becomes a moment of true human connection. Allowing yourself to get lost leads to new discoveries. As we incorporate these practices into our daily lives, we begin to discover altars everywhere we go, in nearly everything we do. Through Taylor's expert guidance and delicate, thought-provoking prose, we learn to live with purpose, pay attention, slow down, and revere the world we live in. (inside cover)

is there a monster over there?
by Sally O. Lee
(from the author)

Ms. Lee's latest book, "Is there a monster over there?" tells the story of Mabel (and her cat, Tiffany) who are afraid of monsters. Mabel thinks they are hiding under her bed or in her closet. One day, she decides to face the monster, and she learns an important lesson about overcoming fears. (Amazon)

Angels
by Dr. David Jeremiah
(win from The Toy Box Years)

The Remarkable Truth about the Agents of Heaven

People have long been fascinated by stories of angel sightings, yet many contemporary beliefs about angels are based on misconception and myth rather than solid, biblical truth.

As he's done so brilliantly for decades, respected Bible teacher Dr. David Jeremiah uses Scripture to unveil the remarkable truth about these agents of heaven and their role in our world and our lives.

What are angels? What is their role in God's plan? Are they present? Do they appear? Do they give us personal insight about our work and our worship?

In this broad and thorough survey of Scripture, Dr. Jeremiah clearly and simply separates fact from fiction as it relates to angels. His enlightening findings are supported with illustrations and insights from prominent teachers, such as Billy Graham, Corrie ten Boom, C.S. Lewis, and more.

Dr. Jeremiah's down-to-earth style guides readers around the hype about angels and directly into the "substance of things unseen!" (back cover)

The Devil and Sherlock Holmes:
Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession
by David Grann

From acclaimed New Yorker staff writer David Grann, author of the bestselling The Lost City of Z, comes a collection of spellbinding true stories about murder, madness, and obsession.

The world's most renowned Sherlock Holmes scholar, hot on the trail of a priceless cache of long-lost Arthur Conan Doyle papers, is found garroted. Was he murdered?

A serial French imposter pretends to be a missing American boy and is taken in by the boy's real family. Is he the perfect con man, or is he the one being conned?

In Texas a father is about to be executed for setting a fire that killed his children. But could he be innocent?

A Polish detective, while investigating a brutal slaying, stumbles upon a postmodern novel by a darling of the avant-garde. Does this book hold the key to solving the crime?

Sherlock Holmes once said that "life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent." In that same spirit of curiosity and discovery, David Grann sets out to solve a dozen real-life mysteries in these hypnotic accounts. Wether he is reporting on the infiltration of U.S. prisons by the murderous Aryan Brotherhood, riding a cyclone-tossed skiff with a scientist in search of the elusive giant squid, or descending into the secret world of sandhogs hundreds of feet below New York City, Grann explores the nature of obsession and those caught in its grip. The unforgettable characters display the full power, and often the perversity, of the human spirit. The Devil and Sherlock Holmes is a gripping and supremely entertaining work -- a mosaic of ambition, deception, passion, and folly. (back cover)

Mockingbird
by Kathryn Erskine

In Caitlin's world, everything is black and white. Anything in between is confusing. That's the stuff her brother, Devon, always explained. But now Devon is dead, and her father cries a lot. She wants to help her dad -- and herself! -- but as a ten-year-old girl with Asperger's syndrome, she doesn't know how.

She turns to textbooks and dictionaries, easy for Caitlin because they're full of facts in black and white. After reading the definition of Closure, Caitlin knows this is just what she and her father need. And she is determined to find it. In her search, she discovers that not everything is really black and white -- the world is full of colors, messy and beautiful. And perhaps is she "Works At It," Caitlin and her father can have Closure and Empathy, too.

A warm and loving book that gives young readers a rare glimpse of a very special world and a brave and very special girl. (inside cover)