In My Mailbox...

In My Mailbox... I've received some great books in my mailbox! And I decided I would join in on the fun sharing them with you and the other bloggers participating in Mailbox Monday!

Mailbox Monday is a weekly event for bloggers to share what books arrived in their mailboxes. Mailbox Monday was originally created by Marcia of To Be Continued and is now hosted by Vicki, Serena and Leslie at Mailbox Monday's own blog.

So, here are the books...


The Echo in Twilight by Judith Kinghorn... A captivating and moving story of the unlikely relationship between a lady and her maid on the eve of World War I.

As I watched him—his long legs striding the narrow path through the heather, his golden hair catching the sun—I had a hideous feeling in the pit of my stomach. For it seemed as though he was already marching away from me.

In 1914, despite the clouds of war threatening Europe, Pearl Gibson's future is bright. She has secured a position as a lady's maid to a wealthy Northumberland aristocrat, a job that will win her not only respect but an opportunity to travel and live in luxury. Her new life at Lady Ottoline Campbell's Scottish summer estate is a whirlwind of intrigue and glamour, scandals and confidences—and surprisingly, a strange but intimate friendship with her employer. 

But when violence erupts in Europe, Pearl and Ottoline's world is irrevocably changed. As the men in their lives are called to the front lines, leaving them behind to anxiously brace for bad news, Pearl realizes she must share one final secret with her mistress—a secret that will bind them together forever...

This sounds wonderful! I love the idea of these two women from different social "classes", coming together to survive the horrors of the war. I also love the cover! So excited to have gotten an eGalley from Berkley Publishing Group! Thank you! This was released the beginning of January.

Lincoln in The Bardo by George Saunders... February 1862. The Civil War is less than one year old. The fighting has begun in earnest, and the nation has begun to realize it is in for a long, bloody struggle. Meanwhile, President Lincoln's beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie, lies upstairs in the White House, gravely ill. In a matter of days, despite predictions of a recovery, Willie dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. “My poor boy, he was too good for this earth,” the president says at the time. “God has called him home.” Newspapers report that a grief-stricken Lincoln returned to the crypt several times alone to hold his boy's body.

From that seed of historical truth, George Saunders spins an unforgettable story of familial love and loss that breaks free of its realistic, historical framework into a thrilling, supernatural realm both hilarious and terrifying. Willie Lincoln finds himself in a strange purgatory, where ghosts mingle, gripe, commiserate, quarrel, and enact bizarre acts of penance. Within this transitional state—called, in the Tibetan tradition, the bardo—a monumental struggle erupts over young Willie's soul.

I loved George Saunders short stories in Tenth of December, so when I heard about this book I was looking forward to diving into a full length novel written by this master storyteller! This book sounds so wild and fun. I love when an author takes a familiar historical figure and imagines a whole different life then we are familiar with. I am so happy to have gotten an eGalley from Random House! Thank you! The release date for this imaginitive story is Feb. 14, 2017!

Twelve Angry Librarians by Miranda James... The New York Times bestselling author of No Cats Allowed and Arsenic and Old Books is back with more Southern charm and beguiling mystery as Charlie and Diesel must find a killer in a room full of librarians...

Light-hearted librarian Charlie Harris is known around his hometown of Athena, Mississippi, for walking his cat, a rescued Maine Coon named Diesel. But he may soon be taken for a walk himself—in handcuffs... Charlie is stressed out. The Southern Academic Libraries Association is holding this year's annual meeting at Athena College. Since Charlie is the interim library director, he must deliver the welcome speech to all the visiting librarians. And as if that weren't bad enough, the keynote address will be delivered by Charlie's old nemesis from library school. It's been thirty years since Charlie has seen Gavin Fong, and he's still an insufferable know-it-all capable of getting under everyone's skin. In his keynote, Gavin puts forth a most unpopular opinion: that degreed librarians will be obsolete in the academic libraries of the future. So, when Gavin is found dead, no one seems too upset...

But Charlie, who was seen having a heated argument with Gavin after the speech, has jumped to the top of the suspect list. Now Charlie and Diesel must check out every clue to refine their search for the real killer among them before the next book Charlie reads comes from a prison library...

How can I resist a Cozy about a library with a cat who helps solve murder mysteries! This just sounded like a fun, enjoyable read and I am so delighted that I received an eGalley from Berkley Publishing Group! Thank you! Nothing better than a Cozy in the winter!  I love the cover too! Release date is Feb. 21, 2017!

What new books have you gotten this week?!

The Tenth of December by George Saunders… A Review

Satire is irony, it's sarcasm, it's George Saunders, who wrote Tenth of December. This book of short stories, Tenth of December, is filled with the ironies of everyday life, sometimes existing in a futuristic world, and a wry sense of humor. Not everything is humorous in Tenth of December, but George Saunders has an incredible gift of language that makes for some great reading even in the wake of some disturbing narrative.

The short story itself needs to be a taunt, never veering without purpose, kind of writing. A good short story needs to takes us from A to Z in a brief period of time without wasting words, and George Saunders is a master of that. These stories in his newest collection, pack an emotional punch, almost slapping, with their sometimes gritty, urban settings and stripped down humanity. But you can see the truth in what he writes and appreciate the honesty in the way he writes it.

In Tenth of December we meet Kyle, who's parents have created a kind of pacifist and who now must make a choice to abandon what they drilled into him to save the life of the little girl next door. Two Mothers who are similar, yet not; A shop owner who fantasizes about making that one decision that will make his life perfect; And a criminal who volunteers for pharmaceutical testing only to have it create a battle with his moral character, that "they" created in him. And even a maintenance kid in a Medieval Times job who aspires to move up the ladder to make life better for his family, but witnesses something that changes those plans. In all there are ten stories, all with their own special quality.

My Thoughts… Tenth of December is a great collection of stories. At first I was struggling with reading these stories. I wasn't "getting it" or why the author was lauded for being the reincarnation of Mark Twain. I watched George Saunders give a talk at Google about his writing. I liked him; I liked the passage he was reading from this book. Then I realized that my normal reading definitely wasn't satire, and I had to take a breather from the literary fiction I was reading to give Tenth of December a chance. And it worked. In each of these stories, George Saunders gets to the heart of his characters, no matter how flawed they are, to show us what makes us human. I laughed, I felt pain, I felt sadness.

Favorite stories? The Semplica Girl Diaries, My Chivalric Fiasco, and Tenth of December.

If short stories are something you've wanted to try and you enjoy good satire, Tenth of December by George Saunders is a great choice. I really enjoyed the time I spent in George's world. ..

About the Author…

"I was born in Amarillo, Texas, grew up in Chicago, and (barely) graduated from the Colorado School of Mines with a degree in exploration geophysics.  There was an oil-boom on, which meant that even someone like me could get work in the oil-fields.  So after college I went to work in Sumatra, as a field geophysicist.  We worked four weeks on and two weeks off, in a jungle camp that was a forty-minute helicopter ride to the nearest town – so this is when my reading life really started.  The game became filling up an entire suitcase with books sufficient to get me through the next two weeks of camp life.  About a year and a half at this job, I got sick after going swimming in a river that was polluted with monkey shit (I remember looking up at about 200 of them, sitting on our oil pipeline crapping away, and thinking: “I wonder if swimming here is okay?”) and came home to try and be Kerouac II.  I worked as a doorman, a roofer, a convenience store clerk, and a slaughterhouse worker (a “knuckle-puller,” to be exact), and all of this contributed to my understanding of capitalism as a benign-looking thing that, as Terry Eagleton says, “plunders the sensuality of the body.

I’d always been interested in reading, ever since a nun I was secretly in love with turned me on to “Johnny Tremaine” in third grade.  But I’d never met a writer and so it took me awhile to realize that a person could actually write for a living."

*P.S. Want to read one of his stories? You can get a sampling of his writing at openculture.com, where you can read 10 of his stories! Including The Semplica Girl Diaries and Tenth of December.