Monday, April 23, 2012

Mailbox Monday (04-22-12 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 received over the last few weeks:


Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey
Won from So Many Precious Books, So Little Time

Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead, and especially tough for recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, they are drifting apart--he breaking under the weight of the work of the farm; she crumbling from loneliness and despair. In a moment of levity during the season's first snowfall, they build a child out of snow. The next morning the snow child is gone--but they glimpse a young, blonde-haired girl running through the trees. This little girl, who calls herself Faina, seems to be a child of the woods. She hunts with a red fox at her side, skims lightly across the snow, and somehow survives alone in the Alaskan wilderness. As Jack and Mabel struggle to understand this child who could have stepped from the pages of a fairy tale, they come to love her as their own daughter. But in this beautiful, violent place things are rarely as they appear, and what they eventually learn about Faina will transform all of them.


Walter's Muse by Jean Davies Okimoto
Won from Great Imaginations

 It's the first summer of her retirement and librarian Maggie Lewis is relishing the unfolding of sweet summer days on Vashon Island: walking on the beach, reading the classics, and kayaking. But in June when a sudden storm hits the island, Maggie's summer becomes about as peaceful as navigating whitewater. Not only does her wealthy sister arrive uninvited with a startling announcement, but Maggie finds herself entangled with her new Baker's Beach neighbor, Walter Hathaway. A famous children's author and recovering alcoholic, Walter has a history with Maggie they would each like to forget. Delightfully told with humor and insight, Walter's Muse is a page turner for romantics, writers, and the young at heart at any age.


An Invisible Thread by Laura Schroff
Won from Peeking Between the Pages

When Laura Schroff brushed by a young panhandler on a New York City corner one rainy afternoon, something made her stop and turn back. She took the boy to lunch at the McDonald's across the street that day. And she continued to go back, again and again for the next four years until both of their lives had changed dramatically. Nearly thirty years later, that young boy Maurice has gotten married and has his own children. Now he works to change the lives of disadvantaged kids, just like the boy he used to be.An Invisible Thread is the true story of the bond between a harried sales executive and an eleven-year-old boy who seemed destined for a life of poverty. It is the heartwarming story of a friendship that has spanned three decades and brought meaning to an over-scheduled professional and hope to a hungry and desperate boy living on the streets.

 
The Warmest December by Bernice L. McFadden
Won through LibraryThing

For Kenzie, growing up in the Lowe home means opening the bottom drawer of her father's dresser to choose which belt she will be whipped with that night, furtive trips to the Bee Hive Liquor store for her father's vodka, and dreaming of the day she can escape apartment A5.

Buoyed by the lyrical, redemptive voice that distinguished Bernice L. McFadden's earlier novel, The Warmest December tells the powerful, deeply moving story of one family and the alcoholism and abuse that marked all of their lives. Moving fluidly between the past and the present -- as the adult Kenzie visits the bedside of her dying father -- it is an ultimately cathartic tale of hope, healing, and forgiveness.


The Fire Starter Sessions by Danielle LaPorte
Received from Crown Publishing

The Fire Starter Sessions is an apathy-kicking, integrity-infusing guide to defining success on your own terms.

As the creator of DanielleLaPorte.com--deemed “the best place online for kick-ass spirituality,” Danielle LaPorte’s straight-talk life-and-livelihood sermons have been read by over one million people. Bold but empathetic, she reframes popular self-help and success concepts:

: Life balance is a myth, and the pursuit of it is causing us more stress then the craving for balance itself.
: Being well-rounded is over-rated. When you focus on developing your true strengths, you enter your mastery zone.
: Screw your principles (they might be holding you back).
: We have ambition backwards. Getting clear on how you want to feel in your life + work is more important than setting goals. It's the most potent form of clarity that you can have, and it's what leads to true fulfillment

1 comment:

Jo-Jo said...

The Snow Child intrigues me...enjoy your new goodies!