Mailbox Monday January 4

Mailbox Monday is a fun meme where you can share the wonderful books you received during the week. It is hosted by Marcia over at The Printed Page. Check it out and play along. Just a warning though, it leads to very large to be read lists as you learn about all the interesting books others have received.

My Mailbox has been very empty lately until this past week.




Summerhouse by Jude Deveraux
Synopsis (borrowed from B&N)

Three best friends, all turning forty, celebrate at a summerhouse in Maine -- and take stock of their lives, loves, and choices. A mysterious "Madame Zoya" now arrives, offering them a chance to relive any three weeks from the past.

I received this book from a friend who just loved it. Thank you Lisa!



Letter To My Daughter by George Bishop
Synopsis(borrowed from B&N)

Dear Elizabeth,
It’s early morning and I’m sitting here wondering where you are, hoping you’re all right.

A fight, ended by a slap, sends Elizabeth out the door of her Baton Rouge home on the eve of her fifteenth birthday. Her mother, Laura, is left to fret and worry—and remember. Wracked with guilt as she awaits Liz’s return, Laura begins a letter to her daughter, hoping to convey “everything I’ve always meant to tell you but never have.”

In her painfully candid confession, Laura shares memories of her own troubled adolescence in rural Louisiana, growing up in an intensely conservative household. She recounts her relationship with a boy she loved despite her parents’ disapproval, the fateful events that led to her being sent away to a strict Catholic boarding school, the personal tragedy brought upon her by the Vietnam War, and, finally, the meaning of the enigmatic tattoo below her right hip.

Absorbing and affirming, George Bishop’s magnificent debut brilliantly captures a sense of time and place with a distinct and inviting voice. Letter to My Daughter is a heartwrenching novel of mothers, daughters, and the lessons we all learn when we come of age.

I received this book courtesy of Random House. Thank you Random House!




One Amazing Thing by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Synopsis(borrowed from B&N)

"Divakaruni is a brilliant storyteller; she illuminates the world with her artistry; and shakes the reader with her love."
--Junot Diaz


Late afternoon sun sneaks through the windows of a passport and visa office in an unnamed American city. Most customers and even most office workers have come and gone, but nine people remain. A punky teenager with an unexpected gift. An upper-class Caucasian couple whose relationship is disintegrating. A young Muslim-American man struggling with the fallout of 9/11. A graduate student haunted by a question about love. An African-American ex-soldier searching for redemption. A Chinese grandmother with a secret past. And two visa office workers on the verge of an adulterous affair.

When an earthquake rips through the afternoon lull, trapping these nine characters together, their focus first jolts to their collective struggle to survive. There's little food. The office begins to flood. Then, at a moment when the psychological and emotional stress seems nearly too much for them to bear, the young graduate student suggests that each tell a personal tale, "one amazing thing" from their lives, which they have never told anyone before. And as their surprising stories of romance, marriage, family, political upheaval, and self- discovery unfold against the urgency of their life-or-death circumstances, the novel proves the transcendent power of stories and the meaningfulness of human expression itself. From Chitra Divakaruni, author of such finely wrought, bestselling novels as Sister of My Heart, The Palace of Illusions, and The Mistress of Spices, comes her most compelling and transporting story to date. One Amazing Thing is a passionate creation about survival-and about the reasons to survive.

This book came courtesy of Voice through Shelf Awareness and came with a lovely little Reader's Guide with discussion questions.

What wonderful books made their way to your home?