Mailbox Monday - 7/19

Mailbox Monday can be found at: The Printed Page
 
Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came into their house last week (checked out library books don’t count, eBooks & audio books do). Warning: Mailbox Monday can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles and humongous wish lists. 

It was my birthday on Sunday so I ended up getting quite a few books this week.

I actually got Naamah's Kiss through Bookmooch.com.  I loved Carey's other Kushiel books so I am hoping this book will be a great new start to a new series.  I got Erik's Ransom through paperbackswap.com.  Again I haven't started reading this series; I hope to start it next month.  I've heard great things about it so I just keep collecting the books in the series...


I got three books for my birthday.  The first was The Labyrinth by Catherynne Valente...I love everything I read by Valente so I was super excited to get this book.  The second was Inkdeath; I have the first two books and have been waiting for the third to get started on this series.  So, finally I can start the Inkheart series!  The final book was Illyria by Elizabeth Hand; I love everything Hand writes so this is another book I am really itching to read.


Then I got two more audio books through audible.com.  Audible.com was having their "audio book for paperback prices" sale.  So I paid $13 something for two audio books; a great deal.  I got "The Man Who Loved Books Too Much" and "The Mystery of Grace". Both books I was interested in reading but hadn't acquired yet...


All in all a ton of great books.  Hope that you all have a wonderful week of reading!

Naamah's Kiss by Jacqueline Carey
  
First Sentence: "I was born to the Maghuin Dhonn."
From Amazon.com: "Once there were great magicians born to the Maghuin Dhonn; the folk of the Brown Bear, the oldest tribe in Alba. But generations ago, the greatest of them all broke a sacred oath sworn in the name of all his people. Now, only small gifts remain to them. Through her lineage, Moirin possesses such gifts - the ability to summon the twilight and conceal herself, and the skill to coax plants to grow.

Moirin has a secret, too. From childhood onward, she senses the presence of unfamiliar gods in her life; the bright lady, and the man with a seedling cupped in his palm. Raised in the wilderness by her reclusive mother, it isn't until she comes of age that Moirin learns how illustrious, if mixed, her heritage is. The great granddaughter of Alais the Wise, child of the Maghuin Donn, and a cousin of the Cruarch of Alba, Moirin learns her father was a D'Angeline priest dedicated to serving Naamah, goddess of desire.

After Moirin undergoes the rites of adulthood, she finds divine acceptance...on the condition that she fulfill an unknown destiny that lies somewhere beyond the ocean. Or perhaps oceans. Beyond Terre d'Ange where she finds her father, in the far reaches of distant Ch'in, Moirin's skills are a true gift when facing the vengeful plans of an ambitious mage, a noble warrior princess desperate to save her father's throne, and the spirit of a celestial dragon."

Erak's Ransom (Ranger's Apprentice, Book 7) by John Flanagan
 
First Sentence: "The sentry never saw the dark-cloud figure ghosting through the night toward Castle Araluen."
From Amazon.com: "What does it mean to earn the Silver Oakleaf? So few men have done so. For Will, a mere boy, that symbol of honor has long felt out of reach. Now, in the wake of Araluen’s uneasy truce with the raiding Skandians comes word that the Skandian leader has been captured by a dangerous desert tribe. The Rangers are sent to free him. But the desert is like nothing these warriors have seen before. Strangers in a strange land, they are brutalized by sandstorms, beaten by the unrelenting heat, tricked by one tribe that plays by its own rules, and surprisingly befriended by another. Like a desert mirage, nothing is as it seems. Yet one thing is constant: the bravery of the Rangers. In this red-hot adventure, winner of the Australian Book of the Year Award for Older Children, John Flanagan raises the stakes on the series that has already sold millions of copies worldwide."

The Labyrinth by Catherynne M. Valente
 
First Sentence: "Look Closely.  This is not the way."
From Amazon.com: "Here Monsters are hidden...
A lyrical anti-quest through a conscious maze without center, borders, or escape--a dark pilgrim's progress through a landscape of vicious Angels, plague houses, crocodile-prophets, tragic chess-sets, and the mind of an unraveling woman, driven on by the mocking guide who seeks to destroy as much as save.
Enter the world of the Labyrinth, where Doors do not wait to be opened, but hunt you in the night. This is Zarathustra in Wonderland, a puzzle which defies solution, a twisted path through language and madness...
But where will you hide?"

Inkdeath by Cornelia Funke
 
First Sentence: "Moonlight fell on Elinot's bathrobe, her nightdress, her bare feet, and the dog lying in front of them."
From Amazon.com: "The Adderhead--his immortality bound in a book by Meggie's father, Mo--has ordered his henchmen to plunder the villages. The peasants' only defense is a band of outlaws led by the Bluejay--Mo's fictitious double, whose identity he has reluctantly adopted. But the Book of Immortality is unraveling, and the Adderhead again fears the White Women of Death. To bring the renegade Bluejay back to repair the book, the Adderhead kidnaps all the children in the kingdom, dooming them to slavery in his silver mines unless Mo surrenders. First Dustfinger, now Mo: Can anyone save this cursed story?"

Illyria by Elizabeth Hand
 
First Sentence: "Rogan and I were cousins; our fathers were identical twins."
From Amazon.com: "Madeleine and Rogan are first cousins, best friends, twinned souls, each other’s first love. Even within their large, disorderly family—all descendants of a famous actress—their intensity and passion for theater sets them apart. It makes them a little dangerous. When they are cast in their school’s production of Twelfth Night, they are forced to face their separate talents and futures, and their future together. This masterful short novel, winner of the World Fantasy Award, is magic on paper."

Audio Books:
The Man Who Loved Books Too Much by Allison Hoover Bartlett 
 
First Sentence: "April 28 2005, was bright and mild, the kind of spring day that in New York City seems full of promise, and on the corner of Park Avenue and East Sixty-sixth street a queue of optimistic people was growing." From Amazon.com: "In the tradition of The Orchid Thief, a compelling narrative set within the strange and genteel world of rare-book collecting: the true story of an infamous book thief, his victims, and the man determined to catch him.
Rare-book theft is even more widespread than fine-art theft. Most thieves, of course, steal for profit. John Charles Gilkey steals purely for the love of books. In an attempt to understand him better, journalist Allison Hoover Bartlett plunged herself into the world of book lust and discovered just how dangerous it can be.
Gilkey is an obsessed, unrepentant book thief who has stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of rare books from book fairs, stores, and libraries around the country. Ken Sanders is the self-appointed "bibliodick" (book dealer with a penchant for detective work) driven to catch him. Bartlett befriended both outlandish characters and found herself caught in the middle of efforts to recover hidden treasure. With a mixture of suspense, insight, and humor, she has woven this entertaining cat-and-mouse chase into a narrative that not only reveals exactly how Gilkey pulled off his dirtiest crimes, where he stashed the loot, and how Sanders ultimately caught him but also explores the romance of books, the lure to collect them, and the temptation to steal them. Immersing the reader in a rich, wide world of literary obsession, Bartlett looks at the history of book passion, collection, and theft through the ages, to examine the craving that makes some people willing to stop at nothing to possess the books they love."

The Mystery of Grace by Charles DeLint
 
First Sentence: "She woke up when he got out of bed."
From Amazon.com: "On the Day of the Dead, the Solona Music Hall is jumping.  That's where Altagracia Quintero meets John Burns, just two weeks too late.

Altagracia – her friends call her Grace – has a tattoo of Nuestra Señora de Altagracia on her shoulder, she's got a Ford Motor Company tattoo running down her leg, and she has grease worked so deep into her hands that it'll never wash out.  Grace works at Sanchez Motorworks, customizing hot rods.  Finding the line in a classic car is her calling.

Now Grace has to find the line in her own life.  A few blocks around the Alverson Arms is all her world -- from the little grocery store where she buys beans, tamales, and cigarettes (“cigarettes can kill you,” they tell her, but she smokes them anyway) to the record shop, to the library where Henry, a black man confined to a wheelchair, researches the mystery of life in death – but she’s got unfinished business keeping her close to home.

Grace loves John, and John loves her, and that would be wonderful, except that John, like Grace, has unfinished business – he’s haunted by the childhood death of his younger brother.  He's never stopped feeling responsible. Like Grace in her way, John is an artist, and before their relationship can find its resolution, the two of them will have to teach each other about life and love, about hot rods and Elvis Presley, and about why it's necessary to let some things go."