Mailbox Monday

I am really good with the Bad Bloggers, but I rarely post about the mail. These are the books that I have received in the mail the last couple weeks:

A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick - Received from Harper Collins Canada

Set in a small Wisconsin farming and manufacturing town still crumbling a decade after the depression of the 1890s, A Reliable Wife tells the story of Ralph Truitt, a wealthy businessman who advertises for “a reliable wife” in newspapers across America. The woman he chooses, Catherine Land, describes herself as “a simple, honest woman,” but in truth she is both complex and devious— not the missionary’s daughter she claims to be in her letter to Truitt but a courtesan of great beauty, kept by men and haunted by a terrible past. Catherine’s plan in accepting the marriage offer is simple: she will win this man’s devotion, and then, ever so slowly, she will poison him and leave Wisconsin a wealthy widow. What she has not counted on, though, is the passion she finds in this seemingly solid, forthright man—a man who also harbours secrets and whose own past is far from pure.

Filled with remarkable characters and drenched with colour and atmosphere, A Reliable Wife is a story of love and madness, longing and murder, played out in a world that seems to have gone temporarily off its axis.

Hand of Isis by Jo Graham - Received from Hachette Book Groups

Following her acclaimed debut, Jo Graham returns to the ancient world with a novel that will captivate lovers of fantasy, history and romance.

Set in Ancient Egypt, Hand of Isis is the story of Charmian, a handmaiden, and her two sisters. It is a novel of lovers who transcend death, of gods who meddle in mortal affairs, and of women who guide empires.

Automatic World by Struan Sinclair - Received from Random House Canada

A stunning and fearless first novel from the Canadian author of the critically acclaimed Everything Breathed.

In this exhilarating debut novel, four strands spanning several generations are woven together through the fragmented consciousness of a patient in rehabilitation from an accident that leaves him stuck in present tense. Unable to recall who he is, where he is from, or who he knows, and determined to access his history, the patient harvests and assembles the narratives of his friends, family, and other witnesses. Out of this miscellany emerge surprising stories: Merrick, an inventor who dreams of a clockwork universe; Dory, a girl who commits a mercy-killing at a local hospice; Merle, whose repeated suicide attempts function to forge a relationship with his estranged son, and, finally, the narrator’s own elusive past. Between these threads is the story of a train crash and of three minutes lost - three minutes that will prove a turning point in the lives of all the characters caught in this complicated clockwork.

Serendipity Market by Penny Blubaugh - Received from Harper Collins Canada.

When Toby breathes on Mama Inez's bird-shaped invitations, giving them the power to fly, plans for the Serendipity Market begin. Soon, eleven honored guests travel from afar and make their way to the storytellers' tent to share their stories. Each tale proves what Mama Inez knows—that magic is everywhere. Sometimes it shows itself subtly—a ray of sun glinting on a gold coin, or a girl picking a rose without getting pricked by the thorn—and sometimes it makes itself known with trumpets and fireworks. But when real magic is combined with the magic of storytelling, it can change the world.

This is a breathtaking debut novel written with elegance and grace.

Jo-Jo And the Fiendish Lot by Andrew Auseon - Received from Harper Collins Canada.

There is a life after death, but only for the terminally cool. . . .

Jo-Jo Dyas doesn't believe he has any reason to live, but then he finds the surprisingly lively dead girl in the culvert and she convinces him otherwise. She and her punk band, the Fiendish Lot, come from the Afterlife, a strange, colorless place where souls sometimes pause on the journey between this world and the next. When Jo-Jo follows her there, he gets a chance to make right all the things that have gone wrong in his life . . . but only if he can figure out how before he fades away into nothing. Maybe the answer lies in Jo-Jo's late-breaking realization: Being alive is kind of cool.

Rude, raw, and blisteringly funny, Andrew Auseon's new novel is like one of those insanely catchy songs that you can't forget and won't want to. So pay attention: The afterlife you save may be your own.

Then, I actually bought books! It's pretty rare that I do that anymore... I got:

The Snow Queen by Mercedes Lackey - Book Four in The Five Hundred Kingdoms series
Lords of Misrule by Rachel Caine - Book Five in The Morganville Vampires Series
As Shadows Fade by Colleen Gleason - Book Five in The Gardella Vampire Chronicles