Happy Boxing Day! I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas or holiday season. This week's edition of Mailbox Monday includes books and book-related items I received as Christmas gifts :-)
Mailbox Monday is a weekly
travelling meme that is being hosted for the month of December by
Jenny Q over at
Let Them Read Books.
Received for Review:
The Book of Lost Fragrances by M.J. Rose
A sweeping and suspenseful tale of
secrets, intrigue, and lovers separated by time, all connected through
the mystical qualities of a perfume created in the days of
Cleopatra-and lost for 2,000 years. Jac L'Etoile has always
been haunted by the past, her memories infused with the exotic scents
that she grew up surrounded by as the heir to a storied French perfume
company. In order to flee the pain of those remembrances-and of her
mother's suicide-she moves to America, leaving the company in the hands
of her brother Robbie. But when Robbie hints at an earth-shattering
discovery in the family archives and then suddenly goes missing-leaving
a dead body in his wake-Jac is plunged into a world she thought she'd
left behind.
Back in Paris to investigate her brother's
disappearance, Jac discovers a secret the House of L'Etoile has been
hiding since 1799: a scent that unlocks the mysteries of reincarnation.
The Book of Lost Fragrances fuses history, passion, and
suspense, moving from Cleopatra's Egypt and the terrors of
revolutionary France to Tibet's battle with China and the glamour of
modern-day Paris. Jac's quest for the ancient perfume someone is
willing to kill for becomes the key to understanding her own troubled
past.
Won (from Historical Fiction Connection)
Queen Hereafter by Susan Fraser King
Refugee. Queen. Saint. In eleventh-century Scotland, a young woman strives to fulfill her destiny despite the risks . . .
Shipwrecked on the Scottish coast, a young Saxon princess and her
family-including the outlawed Edgar of England-ask sanctuary of the
warrior-king Malcolm Canmore, who shrewdly sees the political
advantage. He promises to aid Edgar and the Saxon cause in return for
the hand of Edgar's sister, Margaret, in marriage.
A foreign
queen in a strange land, Margaret adapts to life among the barbarian
Scots, bears princes, and shapes the fierce warrior Malcolm into a
sophisticated ruler. Yet even as the king and queen build a passionate
and tempestuous partnership, the Scots distrust her. When her husband
brings Eva, a Celtic bard, to court as a hostage for the good behavior
of the formidable Lady Macbeth, Margaret expects trouble. Instead, an
unlikely friendship grows between the queen and her bard, though one
has a wild Celtic nature and the other follows the demanding path of
obligation.
Torn between old and new loyalties, Eva is bound by a
vow to betray the king and his Saxon queen. Soon imprisoned and charged
with witchcraft and treason, Eva learns that Queen Margaret-counseled
by the furious king and his powerful priests-will decide her fate and
that of her kinswoman Lady Macbeth. But can the proud queen forgive
such deep treachery?
Impeccably researched, a dramatic page-turner, Queen Hereafter
is an unforgettable story of shifting alliances and the tension
between fear and trust as a young woman finds her way in a dangerous
world.
Received as Christmas Gifts
11/22/63 by Stephen King
ON NOVEMBER 22, 1963, THREE SHOTS RANG OUT IN
DALLAS, PRESIDENT KENNEDY DIED, AND THE WORLD CHANGED. WHAT IF YOU
COULD CHANGE IT BACK?
In this brilliantly conceived tour de
force, Stephen King-who has absorbed the social, political, and popular
culture of his generation more imaginatively and thoroughly than any
other writer-takes readers on an incredible journey into the past and
the possibility of altering it.
It begins with Jake Epping, a
thirty-five-year-old English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes
extra money teaching GED classes. He asks his students to write about
an event that changed their lives, and one essay blows him away-a
gruesome, harrowing story about the night more than fifty years ago
when Harry Dunning's father came home and killed his mother, his
sister, and his brother with a sledgehammer. Reading the essay is a
watershed moment for Jake, his life-like Harry's, like America's in
1963-turning on a dime. Not much later his friend Al, who owns the
local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to the past, a
particular day in 1958. And Al enlists Jake to take over the mission
that has become his obsession-to prevent the Kennedy assassination.
So
begins Jake's new life as George Amberson, in a different world of Ike
and JFK and Elvis, of big American cars and sock hops and cigarette
smoke everywhere. From the dank little city of Derry, Maine (where
there's Dunning business to conduct), to the warmhearted small town of
Jodie, Texas, where Jake falls dangerously in love, every turn is
leading eventually, of course, to a troubled loner named Lee Harvey
Oswald and to Dallas, where the past becomes heart-stoppingly
suspenseful, and where history might not be history anymore.
Time-travel has never been so believable. Or so terrifying.
Songs of Love and Death Edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois
In
this star-studded cross-genre anthology,
seventeen of the greatest modern authors of fantasy, science fiction,
and romance explore the borderlands of their genres with brand-new
tales of ill-fated love. From zombie-infested woods in a
post-apocalyptic America to faery-haunted rural fields in eighteenth-
century England, from the kingdoms of high fantasy to the alien world
of a galaxy-spanning empire, these are stories of lovers who must
struggle against the forces of magic and fate.
Award-winning,
bestselling author Neil Gaiman demonstrates why he's one of the hottest
stars in literature today with "The Thing About Cassandra," a subtle
but chilling story of a man who meets an old girlfriend he had never
expected to see.
International blockbuster bestselling author
Diana Gabaldon sends a World War II RAF pilot through a stone circle to
the time of her Outlander series in "A Leaf on the Winds of All
Hallows." Torn from all he knows, Jerry MacKenzie determinedly survives
hardship and danger, intent on his goal of returning home to his wife
and baby-no matter the cost.
New York Times bestselling
author Jim Butcher presents "Love Hurts," in which Harry Dresden takes
on one of his deadliest adversaries and in the process is forced to
confront the secret desires of his own heart.
Just the
smallest sampling promises unearthly delights, but look also for
stories by New York Times bestselling romance authors Jo Beverley and
Mary Jo Putney, and by such legends of the fantasy genre as Peter S.
Beagle and Tanith Lee, as well as many other popular and beloved
writers, including Marjorie M. Liu, Jacqueline Carey, Carrie Vaughn,
and Robin Hobb. This exquisite anthology, crafted by the peerless
editing team of George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois, is sure to
leave you under its spell.
Towers of Midnight by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson
The Last Battle has started. The seals on the
Dark One's prison are crumbling. The Pattern itself is unraveling, and
the armies of the Shadow have begun to boil out of the Blight.
The sun has begun to set upon the Third Age.
Perrin Aybara is now hunted by specters from his past: Whitecloaks, a
slayer of wolves, and the responsibilities of leadership. All the
while, an unseen foe is slowly pulling a noose tight around his neck.
To prevail, he must seek answers in Tel'aran'rhiod and find a way--at long last--to master the wolf within him or lose himself to it forever.
Meanwhile, Matrim Cauthon prepares for the most difficult challenge
of his life. The creatures beyond the stone gateways--the Aelfinn and
the Eelfinn--have confused him, taunted him, and left him hanged, his
memory stuffed with bits and pieces of other men's lives. He had hoped
that his last confrontation with them would be the end of it, but the
Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills. The time is coming when he will again
have to dance with the Snakes and the Foxes, playing a game that cannot
be won. The Tower of Ghenjei awaits, and its secrets will reveal the
fate of a friend long lost.
This latest novel of Robert Jordan's #1 New York Times
bestselling series--the second based on materials he left behind when
he died in 2007--brings dramatic and compelling developments to many
threads in the Pattern. The end draws near.
Other Book-Related Gifts:
Gift cards to Chapters Indigo, my favourite book store
Lord of the Rings Trilogy, Blu Ray Extended Edition
House Stark Stein, Game of Thrones
Night's Watch Mug, Game of Thrones
That's it for me. What did you get in your mailbox or under the Christmas tree?
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