Mailbox Monday (Oct 18 - Oct 24)

In My Mailbox is hosted Sundays at The Story Siren.  Mailbox Monday's host for October is Avis at She Reads and Reads. Please visit these posts and take a look at what packages everybody else got this week!

The Distant Hours

by Kate Morton

A long lost letter arrives in the post and Edie Burchill finds herself on a journey to Milderhurst Castle, a great but moldering old estate, where the Blythe spinsters live and where her mother was billeted fifty years before as a thirteen-year-old girl during WWII.  The elder Blythe sisters are twins and have spent most of their lives looking after the third and youngest sister, Juniper, who hasn't been the same since her fiance jilted her in 1941.

Inside the decaying castle, Edie begins to unravel her mother's past.  but there are other secrets hidden in the stones of Milderhurst, and Edie is about to learn more than she expected.  The truth of what happened in "the distant hours" of the past has been waiting a long time for someone to find it.

Morton once again enthralls readers with an atmospheric story featuring characters beset by circumstance and haunted by memory.  The Distant Hours is an homage to the great classics of gothic literature and to the power of storytelling.

Ansel Adams in the National Parks

For many Americans, the names Yosemite, the High Sierra, and the Grand Canyon conjure up first and foremost an Ansel Adams photograph.  A lifelong environmentalist, Adams was one of the most ardent champions of our national parks and wilderness systems, and through his magnificent photographs, letter-writing campaigns, and Sierra Club activities, he arguably did more than any individual since John Muir to raise our awareness and appreciation of America's wild places.

He visited more than forty national parks in his lifetime, lugging an 8x10-inch view camera, tripod, and photographic gear through dense old-growth forest and over precarious mountain passes, often with a burro as traveling companion and baggage handler.  His customized wood-paneled station wagon, nicknamed Helios, took him across the land and boasted a photographic platform on its roof, a mobile stage from which he could gain the best possible vantage points for image making.

With more than 225 photographs -- many rarely seen and 50 never before published -- Ansel Adams in the National Parks is the most comprehensive book of Adams' photographs of our national parks and wilderness areas.  Edited by Andrea G. Stillman, who worked for Adams in the 1970s, it features original essays by critic Richard B. Woodward and commentary by Stillman on the making of numerous photographs, enlivened by quotations from Adams.  Essays by Wallace Stegner, William A. Turnage of The Ansel Adams Trust, and Adams himself capture the essence of Ansel Adams as both gifted photographer and passionate environmentalist. 

The Peanuts Collection

In 1950, Charles M. Schulz's Peanuts made its unassuming debut in just seven newspapers.  Today, ten years after Schulz inked his final strip, Peanuts appears in 2,200 newspapers in 75 countries, and Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and the gang live on in film and advertisements and on television -- adored by fans and forever ingrained in popular culture.

The Peanuts Collection features rare materials -- some never before published -- carefully selected from the Charles M. Schulz Museum and family archives.  With quotes from Schulz family members and a foreward by daughter Amy Schulz Johnson, The Peanuts Collection offers insight into the world's most endearing comic strip characters and the man who made them an essential part of our world.

Includes:

• Frameable prints of Peanuts characters
• Animation cels from holiday specials
• Peanuts stickers and booklets
• Rare draft sketches from throughout Schulz's career
• Cookbook featuring Snoopy's recipe for dog treats
• Much more!

Vixen

by Jillian Larkin

Every girl wants what she can't have.  Seventeen-year-old Gloria Carmody wants the flapper lifestyle -- and the bobbed hair, cigarettes, and music-filled nights that go with it.  Now that she's engaged to Sebastian Grey, scion of one of Chicago's most powerful families, Gloria's party days are over before they've even begun . . . or are they?

Clara Knowles, Gloria's goody-two-shoes cousin, has arrived to make sure the high-society wedding comes off without a hitch -- but Clara isn't as lilywhite as she appears.  Seems she has some dirty little secrets of her own that she'll do anything to keep hidden. . .

Lorraine Dyer, Gloria's social-climbing best friend, is tired of living in Gloria's shadow.  When Lorraine's envy spills over into desperate spite, no one is safe.  And someone's going to be very sorry. . .

From debut author Jillian Larkin, Vixen is the first novel in the sexy, dangerous, and ridiculously romantic new series set in the Roaring Twenties. . . when anything goes.

The House of Dead Maids

by Clare B. Dunkle

A chilling prequel to Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights that blends Yorkshire lore and Bronte family history.

The child who will become Heathcliff is already a savage little creature when Tabby Aykroyd arrives at Seldom House as his nursemaid.  The ghost of the last maid will not leave Tabby in peace, and her spirit is only one of many.  As she struggles against the evil forces that surround the house, Tabby tries to befriend her uncouth young charge, but her kindness cannot alter his fate.  Long before he reaches the old farmhouse of Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff has already doomed himself and any who try to befriend him.



Moondogs

by Alexander Yates

A singularly effervescent novel about the disappearance of an American businessman in the Pilippines and the estranged son, jilted lover, misguided felon, and supernatural saviors who all want a piece of him.

Benicio has not spoken with Howard -- his jet-setting father -- in five years, but after his mother's death Benicio travels to Manila so they can heal their relationship.  When he arrives, Howard is nowhere to be found -- leaving an irritated son to conclude that his father has let him down again.  But Howard has actually been kidnapped by a meth-addled cabdriver and his villainous rooster.

Benicio's search for Howard uncovers the truth about his father's womanizing ways and suspicious business deals.  Interspersed with Benicio's intense inquiry and his father's calamitous life in captivity are the high-octane interconnecting narratives of Reynato Ocampo, the local celebrity-hero policeman charged with rescuing Howard; Ocampo's rag-tag team of wizardry-infused soldiers; and Monique, a novice officer at the American Embassy, whose family still feels desperately unmoored in the Philippines.

With blistering speed, wonderfully bizarre turns, and glimpses into both Filipino and ex-pat culture, Moondogs marches toward a stunning climax and challenges our conventional ideas of family and identity.

Hollywood Ending

by Lucie Simone

Trina Stewart needs cash.  Fast. She's barely got enough dough to keep her fanny off the streets, let alone any spending money for hot nights clubbing on Sunset Strip.  And her job teaching English as a Second Language is seriously lacking in both pay and glamour.  But not just any job will do.  She's after a real Hollywood job.  The kind that makes her $100,000 in film school debt and ten years in Tinsel Town not seem like such a big fat waste of time and money.  But a girl can't fritter away all her time fretting over her next paycheck, can she?  Certainly not when a man like Matiu Wulf, a sexy Maori from New Zealand, parks his oh-so-fine self in the apartment above hers while he takes his best shot at Showbiz.

If only Matiu didn't seem so. . . repelled by Trina.  Really, though, it's Los Angeles that Matiu finds so revolting.  He's only in L.A. to get some scene design experience to beef up his resume, and then he's headed back to New Zealand to follow his dreams in peace, thank you very much.  That's his plan, anyway, until he falls hard for Trina. . . and Trina falls under the spell of a toothy-grinned wannabe actor who charms the pants right off her.

With Matiu on a mission to win Trina's heart, and Trina on a mission to nail down that ever elusive Hollywood job, these two soon discover that when love gets tossed in the mix, life in Tinsel Town isn't all red carpets, after parties, and celebrity gossip.  In fact, Hollywood can be a downright bitch!

What books found a home with you this week?