Mailbox Monday (Mar 21, 2011)

 Mailbox Monday's host for March is I'm Booking It. In My Mailbox is hosted Sundays at The Story Siren. Please visit these posts and take a look at what packages everybody else got this week! 

The Sandalwood Tree

by Elle Newmark

From incredible storyteller and nationally bestselling author Elle Newmark comes a rich, sweeping novel that brings to life two love stories, ninety years apart, set against the backdrop of war-torn India.

In 1947, an American anthropologist named Martin Mitchell wins a Fulbright Fellowship to study in India. He travels there with his wife, Evie, and his son, determined to start a new chapter in their lives. Upon the family’s arrival, though, they are forced to stay in a small village due to violence surrounding Britain’s imminent departure from India. It is there, hidden behind a brick wall in their colonial bungalow, that Evie discovers a packet of old letters that tell a strange and compelling story of love and war involving two young Englishwomen who lived in the very same house in 1857.

Drawn to their story, Evie embarks on a mission to uncover what the letters didn’t explain. Her search leads her through the bazaars and temples of India as well as the dying society of the British Raj. Along the way, a dark secret is exposed, and this new and disturbing knowledge creates a wedge between Evie and her husband. Bursting with lavish detail and vivid imagery of Bombay and beyond, The Sandalwood Tree is a powerful story about betrayal, forgiveness, fate, and love.

Mothers and Daughters

by Rae Meadows

Violet, Iris, Samanth.  Three women, three generations, three lives.

When a box of Iris's belongings arrives on Sam's doorstep, she discovers things about her mother she never knew -- or could even guess.  But she is puzzled by much of what she finds.  She learns that Violet, the woman she knows as her grandmother, left New York City as an eleven-year-old girl and found a better life in the Midwest.  But what was the real reason behind Violet's journey?  And how could she have come that far on her own at such a tender age?

Mothers and Daughters is a luminous novel about three generations of women, the love they share, the dreams they refuse to surrender, and the secrets they hold.

Hybrid

by Brian O'Grady

The most horrifying virus the world has ever known.

It's worse than lethal.

It's evil.

Seven years ago, Amanda flynn returned from a Honduran camp as the sole survivor of a mysterious new virus known as EDH1.  Most of its victims die a gruesome, agonizing death.  Others become violent savages.  But a precious few, like Amanda, survive. . . and change.

Amanda escaped from a three-month quarantine because the virus made her different, superior.  She can sense things, do things, using only her mind -- and these abilities tempt her to test their limits.  To harm.  Even, though she may resist, to kill.  Now, an outbreak of violent deaths in a peaceful Colorado town leads Amanda to suspect that a mutated EDH1 has arrived in America.  The virologists she warns want her back, for her immunity may be the only key to its defect.  But no lab can hold her.  Not while she wields the power.

And now there is another.  A man of menace:  tall, amoral, relentless.  His mission is nothing less than the end of human society -- and the birth of a new order forged of his own will.  He has the power, too.  And, armed with his own store of virulent death, he is coming.

Combining the technological authority of The Andromeda Strain with the dark mystery of The X Files, here is a heart-pounding thriller you'll never forget.

The Deepest Waters

by Dan Walsh

For John and Laura Foster, what began as a fairytale honeymoon in 1857 aboard the steamshipp SS Vandervere soon becomes a nightmare.  A terrible hurricane strikes and the grand ship is lost in the murky depths of the Atlantic.  Laura finds herself rescued with the other women and children, but how can she feel anything but despondent without her groom?  Suspecting her John is gone but still daring to hope for a miracle, Laura must face the possibility of life alone.

Talented author Dan Walsh skillfully tells an epic story of hope, faith, and love through an intimate lens.  Inspired by real events, this emotional and honest story will capture your heart as you sail through its pages.

The American Heiress

by Daisy Goodwin

Be careful what you wish for.  Traveling abroad with her mother at the turn of the twentieth century to seek a titled husband, beautiful, vivacious, Cora Cash, whose family mansion in Newport dwarfs the Vanderbilts', suddenly finds herself Duchess of Wareham, married to Ivo, the most eligible bachelor in England.  Nothing is quite as it seems, however: Ivo is withdrawn and secretive, and the English social scene is full of traps and betrayals. Money, Cora soon learns, cannot buy everything, as she must decide what is truly worth the price in her life and her marriage.

Witty, moving, and brilliantly entertaining, Cora's story marks the debut of a glorious storyteller who brings a fresh new spirit to the world of Edith Wharton and Henry James.

Death of a Chimney Sweep

by M.C. Beaton

( I won this one from Wise Owl Reviews.)

In the south of Scotland, residents get their chimneys vacuum-cleaned.  But in the isolated villages in the very north of Scotland, the villagers rely on the services of the itinerant sweep, Pete Ray, and his old-fashioned brushes.  Pete is always able to find work in the Scottish highlands. . . until the day Police Constable Hamish Macbeth notices blood dripping on to the floor of a villager's fireplace and a dead body stuffed inside the chimney.

The entire town of Lochdubh is certain Pete is the cluprit, but Hamish doesn't believe that the affable chimney sweep is capable of committing murder.  And when Pete's body is found on the Scottish moors, the mystery deepens.  Once again, it's up to Hamish to discover who's responsible for the dirty deeds -- and he must do it soon, before the murderer makes a clean getaway. . .



What lovely books came into your home this week?