Mailbox Monday


Another Monday, Another Mailbox!! This is a feature where we all share with each other the yummy books that showed up at our doors! WARNING: Mailbox Mondays can lead to extreme envy and GINORMOUS wishlists!!

Mailbox Monday is hosted by Marcia at The Printed Page, but for the month of December MM is on tour and hosted by Rose City Reader. Yours truly will be the MM host for April!

Happy Monday everyone! This past week was a pretty good one especially because Atlanta has finally thawed and the mail was running again! I was sent a few for review and picked up a used Jean Plaidy book from Amazon.

by C.W. Gortner

Release Date: February 1, 2011

SYNOPSIS

Summer 1553: A time of danger and deceit. Brendan Prescott, an orp! han, is reared in the household of the powerful Dudley family. Brought to court, he finds himself sent on an illicit mission to the King's brilliant but enigmatic sister, Princess Elizabeth. But Brendan is soon compelled to work as a double agent by Elizabeth's protector, William Cecil--who promises in exchange to help him unravel the secret of his own mysterious past. A dark plot swirls around Elizabeth's quest to unravel the truth about the ominous disappearance of her seriously ill brother, King Edward VI. With Elizabeth's lady-in-waiting at his side, Brendan plunges into a ruthless gambit of half-truths, lies, and murder. Filled with the intrigue and pageantry of Tudor England, THE TUDOR SECRET is the first book in the Elizabeth's Spymaster series.

by Kate Pullinger

Publication Date: January 4, 2011

SYNOPSIS

The American debut of an award-winning novel about a ladys maids awakening as she journeys from the confines of Victorian England to the uncharted far reaches of Egypts Nile Valley.
When Lady Duff Gordon, paragon of London society, departs for the hot, dry climate of Egypt to seek relief from her debilitating tuberculosis, her ladys maid, Sally, doesnt hesitate! to leav e the only world she has known in order to remain at her mistresss side. As Sally gets farther and farther from home, she experiences freedoms she has never knownforgoing corsets and wearing native dress, learning Arabic, and having her first taste of romance.

But freedom is a luxury that a ladys maid can ill afford, and when Sallys newfound passion for life causes her to forget what she is entitled to, she is brutally reminded she is mistress of nothing. Ultimately she must choose her master and a way back homeor a way to an unknown future.

Based on the real lives of Lady Duff Gordon and her maid, The Mistress of Nothing is a lush, erotic, and compelling story about the power of race, class, and love.

by Chris Skidmore

Publication Date: January 18, 2011

SYNOPSIS

On the morning of September 8, 1560, at the isolated manor of Cunmor place, the body of a young woman was found at the bottom of a staircase, her neck broken. But this was no ordinary death. Amy Robsart was the wife of Elizabeth Is great favorite, Robert Dudley, the man who many believed she would marry, were he free. Immediately people suspected foul play and Eliza! beths ow n reputation was in danger of serious damage. Many felt she might even lose her throne. An inquest was begun, witnesses called, and ultimately a verdict of death by accident was reached. But the mystery refused to die and cast a long shadow over Elizabeths reign.

Using recently discovered forensic evidence from the original investigation, Skidmore is able to put an end to centuries of speculation as to the true causes of Robsarts death. This is the story of a treacherous period in Elizabeths life: a tale of love, death, and tragedy, exploring the dramatic early life of Englands Virgin Queen.

The Queen of Diamonds
by Jean Plaidy

Original Publication Date: 1958

SYNOPSIS

The affair of the Diamond Necklace shook the throne of France and, some say, precipitated the French Revolution and so helped to bring Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette to the guillotine. But why did these fantastic and ultimately sensational events fail so neatly into place? Why should a prince of the Royal House of France become so credulous and without question play the almost incredible part prepared for him? Why was an ambitious and predatory woman allowed to steal that famous piece of jewellery that represented a fortune? Who were the secret instigators of the plot?

In this novel Jean Plaidy offers one solution to an historical mystery, the motives behind which have long puzzled students and amate! ur detec tives of history.

So, that's my mailbox...what goodies came your way?


Photobucket

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Poetry puzzles

Who is Ozymandias? Why is Coleridge's Lime-Tree Bower his prison? And what is the proper spelling of The Waste Land? The solving of a poem's puzzles is one poetry's greatest pleasures In the late 1990s the indefatigable John Sutherland produced a series of entertaining books about puzzles in fiction (Why is Frankenstein's monster yellow? Where does Fanny Hill keep her contraceptives? Who gets what in Heathcliff's will?). The books were initially linked to reissues of novels in the Oxford World's Classics series, and I was struck at the time how beautifully these little inquisitions of Sutherland's, often on apparently absurd or marginal issues in the text, got readers reading again, with attention and interest. What Sutherland was doing, in effect, was smuggling serious literary criticism into an apparently superficial form of writing. Perhaps, in a sense, he was even re-inventing literary criticism. In this era of academic theorising and the downsizing of m...
Keep reading

CCCP: Cosmic Communist Constructions Photographed by Frdric Chaubin review

These images of Soviet architecture from the Brezhnev era are simply out of this world Soviet brutalism is not something traditionally thought of as beautiful, but Frdric Chaubin's stunning photographs, published under the facetious title CCCP: Cosmic Communist Constructions Photographed , should go some way to changing this. Fascinated by the massive scale of Brezhnev-era architecture, the French photographer has toured the former Soviet Union since 2003, in search of dramatic examples of these sculptural buildings. The 1970s-1990s was a strong period for Soviet architecture, especially in the peripheral republics, where outlandish designs were an expression of the striving for independence, an early inkling of the break-up of the USSR. Architects at this time picked up where they left off following the suppression of the avant-garde by Stalin in the early 1930s, and were able to capitalise on advances made in engineering in the interim period, producing buildings with enormous in...
Keep reading

BAFFLING BINGO MYSTERY DAY: 10TH ANNIVERSARY - A REVIEW AND GIVEAWAY

Image
WELCOME TO BOOKIN' WITH BINGO'S " BAFFLING BINGO DAY " I'M EXCITED TO ANNOUNCE THIS WEEK'S SPECIAL MYSTERY BOOK CHOICE IS..... 10TH ANNIVERSARY BY JAMES PATTERSON & MAXINE PAETRO ABOUT THE BOOK: For every secret... Detective Lindsay Boxer's long-awaited wedding celebration becomes a distant memory when she is called to investigate a horrendous crime : a badly injured teenage girl is left for dead, and her newborn baby is nowhere to be found. Li! ndsay di scovers that not only is there no trace of the criminals--but that the victim may be keeping secrets as well. For every lie... At the same time, Assistant District Attorney Yuki Castellano is prosecuting the biggest case of her life--a woman who has been accused of murdering her husband in front of her two young children. Yuki's career rests on a guilty verdict, so when Lindsay finds evidence that could save the defendant, she is forced to choose. Should she trust her best friend or ...
Keep reading