Mailbox Monday (Oct 10, 2011)

 Mailbox Monday's host for October is Savvy Verse and Wit. 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! 

 

 

 

Remembering Christmas

by Dan Walsh

 

Rick Denton lives his life on his terms.  He works hard, plays hard, and answers to no one.  So when his mother calls begging him to come home after his stepfather has an aneurysm, Rick is more than a little reluctant.  What was supposed to be just a couple days helping out at the family bookstore turns into weeks of cashing out old ladies and dealing with the homeless guy who keeps hanging around the store.  The one bright spot is the lovely and intriguing young woman who works at his side each day.

 

As Christmas nears, Rick's old life beckons, the hurts from his past loom large, and the decisions he makes will determine more than just where he spends Christmas Eve.

 

 

Skyjack: The Hunt for D.B. Cooper

by Geoffrey Gray

 

With exclusive access to confidential FBI files and new leads, Geoffrey Gray reopens one of the great unsolved criminal cases of the twentieth century:  the puzzling story of "D.B. Cooper," the only skyjacker never to be caught by authorities.

 

Called the Robin Hood of the Sky, Cooper hijacked and threatened to blow up a domestic airliner in the fall of 1971, extorted $200,000 and parachutes from its owner, Northwest Orient, then leaped from the airborne jet with more than twenty pounds of cash strapped to his body.  He was never seen again -- dead or alive. Four decades later, Cooper is the Bigfoot of law enforcement, evading one of the most extensive and costly American manhunts of the twentieth century   Over the years he (or was it she?) has developed an obsessive cult following.  Countless lives have been destroyed in the pursuit of the hijacker's identity, and those who get too close to the case claim it is cursed.

 

Now on the fortieth anniversary of Cooper's daring jump.  Skyjack separates myth from fact, and this definitive work and journey attempts to answer the question, once and for all:  Who was D.B. Cooper?

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Double Death on the Black Isle

by A.D. Scott

 

Two women, two murders. . . a stunning and suspenseful story of families, betrayal, and a community divided.

 

Nothing is ever quite at peace on Scotland's Black Isle -- the Traveling people are forever at odds with the locals, the fishermen have nothing in common with the farmers, and the villagers have no connection with the town.  But when two deaths occur on the same day, involving the same families from the same estate -- the Black Isle seems as forbidding as its name.

 

Joanne Ross, typist at the Highland Gazette, is torn whether to take on the plum task of reporting on these murders -- after all, the woman at the center of both crimes is one of her closest friends.  Joanne knows the story could be her big break, and for a woman in the mid-1950s -- a single mother, no less -- good work is hard to come by.

 

But the investigation by the staff on the Gazette reveals secrets that will forever change this quiet, remote part of the Highlands.  The ancient feudal order is crumbling, loyalties are tested, friendships torn apart, and the sublime beauty of the landscape will never seem peaceful again.

 

 

 

What books came home to you this week?