Monday, March 19, 2012

Mailbox Monday (03-19-12 edition)

 Image licensed from bigstockphoto.com
Copyright stands

Mailbox Monday is now hosted monthly by a different blog. Here is the official blog of Mailbox Monday.  Here's what I've gotten (none actually came in my mailbox):

Edge of Dark Water by Joe R. Lansdale
E-book received from Little, Brown and Company through Netgalley

Mark Twain meets classic Stephen King--a bold new direction for widely acclaimed Edgar Award winner Joe R. Lansdale.

May Lynn was once a pretty girl who dreamed of becoming a Hollywood star. Now she's dead, her body dredged up from the Sabine River.

Sue Ellen, May Lynn's strong-willed teenage friend, sets out to dig up May Lynn's body, burn it to ash, and take those ashes to Hollywood to spread around. If May Lynn can't become a star, then at least her ashes will end up in the land of her dreams.

Along with her friends Terry and Jinx and her alcoholic mother, Sue Ellen steals a raft and heads downriver to carry May Lynn's remains to Hollywood.

Only problem is, Sue Ellen has some stolen money that her enemies will do anything to get back. And what looks like a prime opportunity to escape from a worthless life will instead lead to disastrous consequences. In the end, Sue Ellen will learn a harsh lesson on just how hard growing up can really be.



These books I purchased at the local reading festival, and had autographed by the authors:

Last Known Victim by Erica Spindler

August 2005.

Amid death and destruction, hurricane-savaged New Orleans has a new dark force to fear.

As the rescue efforts unfold, a grisly discovery is made at one of the massive refrigerator 'graveyards.' One of these metal hulks contains six human hands--all female, all right hands. The press has dubbed the unknown perpetrator 'The Handyman.' But with no way to trace the origin of this refrigerator, and with evidence lost to time and the elements, the case dead-ends.

Captain Patti O'shay is a straight-arrow, by-the-book cop who is assigned to the case. Her tough, unflinching character is fractured when her husband and fellow police captain is found murdered--surprised by looters taking advantage of the post-storm chaos.

August 2007Patti, still grieving and disillusioned, gets a call from homicide: skeletal remains have been unearthed in City Park. The unknown victim-- a female--is missing her right hand. But for Patti, this grave holds something even more shocking. Found beside the victim's bones is her husband's police badge.

Casting aside the very 'rule book' by which she has lived her life, Patti is fearless--but so is the killer. As he stalks her she is forced to question all she believes in, to doubt the code she has lived by--because she knows that if she doesn't find The Handyman first, she will become his last known victim.



Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History by Erik Larson

September 8, 1900, began innocently in the seaside town of Galveston, Texas. Even Isaac Cline, resident meteorologist for the U.S. Weather Bureau failed to grasp the true meaning of the strange deep-sea swells and peculiar winds that greeted the city that morning. Mere hours later, Galveston found itself submerged in a monster hurricane that completely destroyed the town and killed over six thousand people in what remains the greatest natural disaster in American history--and Isaac Cline found himself the victim of a devestating personal tragedy.

Using Cline's own telegrams, letters, and reports, the testimony of scores of survivors, and our latest understanding of the science of hurricanes, Erik Larson builds a chronicle of one man's heroic struggle and fatal miscalculation in the face of a storm of unimaginable magnitude. Riveting, powerful, and unbearably suspenseful, Isaac's Storm is the story of what can happen when human arrogance meets the great uncontrollable force of nature.


Elijah of Buxton by Christopher Paul Curtis

Eleven-year-old Elijah is the first child born into freedom in Buxton, Canada, a settlement of runaway slaves just over the border from Detroit. He's best known in his hometown as the boy who made a memorable impression on Frederick Douglass. But things change when a former slave steals money from Elijah's friend, who has been saving to buy his family out of captivity in the South. Elijah embarks on a dangerous journey to America in pursuit of the thief, and he discovers firsthand the unimaginable horrors of the life his parents fled—a life from which he'll always be free, if he can find the courage to get back home.

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