Mailbox Monday (April 11, 2011)

 Mailbox Monday's host for April is Amy at Passages to the Past. 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! 

I won this first book from the author:

One Day and One Amazing Morning on Orange Street

by Joanne Rocklin

An orange tree. An orange cone.  A dog digging in the dirt.  A rock shaped like a heart.  What do these things have in common?  At first glance, not much.  But they all appear on Orange Street on one amazing day.

When a mysterious man arrives on the block, the children who live there try to find out who he is and why he's there.  Little do they know that his story -- and the story of a very old orange tree -- connect to each of their personal worries in surprising ways.

Taking place over the course of a day and a half, Joanne Rocklin's masterful novel deftly builds a story about family, childhood anxieties, and the importance of connection.  In the end the fate of the tree (and the kids who care for it)  reminds us of the magic of the everyday and of the rich history all around us.

For my birthday:

Under the Dome

by Stephen King

Just down Route 119 in Chester's Mill, Maine, all hell is about to break loose. . .

On an entirely normal, beautiful fall day, a small town is suddenly and inexplicably sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field.  Planes crash into it and rain down flaming wreckage.  A gardener's hand is severed as the dome descends.  Cars explode on impact.  Families are separated and panic mounts.  No one can fathom what the barrier is, where it came from, and when -- or if -- it will go away.  Now a few intrepid citizens, led by an Iraq vet turned short-order cook, face down a ruthless politician dead set on seizing the reins of power under the dome.  But their main adversary is the dome itself.  Because time isn't just running short.  It's running out.

For Review:

The Last Letter

by Kathleen Shoop

Katherine wouldn't have believed it if she hadn't found the last letter. . .

Katherine Arthur's dying mother arrives on her doorstep, forcing her to relive a past she wanted to forget.  When Katherine was young, the Arthur family had been affluent city dwellers until shame sent them running for the prairie, into the unknown.  Taking her family, including young Katherine, to live off the land was the last thing Jeanie Arthur had wanted, but she would do her best to make a go of it.  For Jeanie's husband Frank it had been a world of opportunity.  Dreaming, lazy Frank.  But, it was a society of uncertainty -- a domain of natural disasters, temptation, hatred, even death.

Ten-year-old Katherine had loved her mother fiercely, put her trust in her completely, but when there was no other choice, and Jeanie resorted to extreme measures on the prairie to save her family, she tore Katherine's world apart.  Now, seventeen years later, Katherine has found the truth -- she has discovered the last letter.  After years of anger, can Katherine find it in her heart to understand why her mother made the decisions that changed them all?  Can she forgive and finally begin to heal before it's too late?

Battlefield of the Mind

by Joyce Meyer

A war is raging.

Your mind is the battlefield.

Worry, doubt, confusion, depression, anger, and feelings of condemnation . . . all these are attacks on the mind.  If you suffer from negative thoughts, take heart!  Joyce Meyer has helped millions win these all-important battles -- and she can help you, too.  In her most popular bestseller ever, now newly updated, the beloved author and teacher shows you how to change your life by changing your mind.  She teaches you how to deal with thousands of thoughts you have every day and focus your mind to think the way God thinks.  And she shares the trials, tragedies, and ultimate victories from her own marriage, family, and ministry that led her to wondrous, life-transforming truth -- and reveals her thoughts and feelings every step of the way.  Now it's your turn to:

• Gain control over your mind and find freedom and peace
• Recognize damaging thoughts and stop them from influencing your life
• Be patient with yourself even when you make mistakes
• Arm yourself with the Word of God, praise, prayer, and other powerful spiritual weapons
• Overcome your mental "wilderness" -- the bad attitudes and excuses people use that keep them from God -- and find undreamed of happiness and fulfillment.

Don't surrender to misery another day.  Find out today how to guarantee your victory in your Battlefield of the Mind!

The Paperbark Shoe

by Goldie Goldbloom

From 1941 to 1947, 18,000 Italian prisoners of war were sent to Australia.  Many of these exiles were sent to work on isolated farms, unguarded.

The Paperbark Shoe is the unforgettable story of Gin Boyle.  An albino, a classically trained pianist, and a woman with a painful past.  Disavowed by her wealthy step-father, her unlikely savior is the farmer Mr. Toad -- a little man, with a taste for ladies corsets.  Together with their two children they weather the hardship of rural life, and the mockery of their neighbors.  But with the arrival of two Italian prisoners of war, their lives are turned upside down.  Thousands of miles from home, Antonio and John find themselves on Mr. and Mrs. Toad's farm, exiles in the company of exiles.  The Paperbark Shoe is a remarkable novel about the far-reaching repercussions of war, the subtle violence of displacement, and what it means to live as a captive -- in enemy country, and in one's own skin.

The next 3 are ebooks for review:

Liquid Fear

by Scott Nicholson

When Roland Doyle wakes up with a dead woman in his motel room, the only clue is a mysterious vial of pills bearing the label “Take one every 4 hrs or else.”


Ten years before, six people were involved in a secret pharmaceutical trial that left one of them dead and five unable to remember what happened. Now the experiment is continuing, as Dr. Sebastian Briggs concludes his research into fear response and post-traumatic stress disorder. He’s backed by a major drug company and an ambitious U.S. Senator, but he also has a personal stake in the outcome.


Only by taking the mysterious pills can the survivors stave off the creeping phobias, sexual impulses, and inflicted madness that threaten to consume them. But the pills have an unexpected side effect—the survivors start remembering the terrible acts they perpetrated a decade ago. They are lured back to the Monkey House, the remote facility where the original trials took place, and Briggs has prepared it for their return.


Now they are trapped, they each have only one pill left, and cracks are forming in their civilized veneer.


After the pills are gone, there’s only one option. “Or else.”

Ladies and Gentlemen. . . The Redeemers

by Michael Scott Miller

Ladies and Gentlemen…The Redeemers tells the story of Bert Ingram, once a successful rep in the music industry, who has lost his way. Desperate for redemption, the perpetual dreamer decides to put together a band, recruiting musicians who have only one thing in common: the need to overcome a significant obstacle in their lives. The volatile mix of the musicians' personalities and backgrounds threatens to derail the band at every opportunity, but in time, the Redeemers begin to realize they have more to gain from one another than they ever could have imagined.

The War is Language: 101 Short Works

by Nath Jones

The War is Language: 101 Short Works is a compilation in three sections and culminates with absurdest letters to a fake advice columnist. These ultra short pieces exist at story's amorphous limit of spoken word and deconstruction.

As a whole, this high-impact triptych of prose poetry and flash fiction probes identity in experience. The first and second sections of the book explore memory and dichotomy respectively by focusing on the impressions of a woman and a soldier as 21st-century Americans. The book’s third section, letters to a fake advice columnist, is a sarcastic interaction with an absurd existential authority figure. The book calls into question our post-post-modern establishment of anti-authority conformists.

The War is Language: 101 Short Works is the first in an e-book series, On Impulse, which explores the spectrum of narrative. 

What books came home to you last week?