Long Island Mailbox after Hurricane Sandy (image source)
Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday! Mailbox Monday was created by Marcia, who graciously hosted it for a long, long time, before turning it into a touring event (details here). Gina from Book Dragon's Lair is the October host. Be sure to visit Gina's blog to check out what all of us are bragging about sharing in books we got this past week! I'm currently reading Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery by Robert Kolker. It's set on Oak Beach in Long Island. Since tomorrow is the anniversary of Hurricane Sandy, this picture seemed appropriate.
Here's what I got from various sources including publishers, literary agents, publicity folks, etc.
The Necromancer's House by Christopher Buehlman. Andrew Ranulf Blankenship is a handsome, stylish nonconformist with wry wit, a classic Mustang, and a massive library. He is also a recovering alcoholic and a practicing warlock, able to speak with the dead through film. His house is a maze of sorcerous booby traps and escape tunnels, as yours might be if you were sitting on a treasury of Russian magic stolen from the Soviet Union thirty years ago. Andrew has long known that magic was a brutal game requiring blood sacrifice and a willingness to confront death, but his many years of peace and comfort have left him soft, more concerned with maintaining false youth than with seeing to his own defense. Now a monster straight from the pages of Russian folklore is coming for him, and frost and death are coming with her.
Kitty Genovese: The Murder, the Bystanders, the Crime that Changed America by Kevin Cook. The untold truth behind the sensational murder that cast a shadow over 1960s America.
What happened to Catherine “Kitty” Genovese? Slain on her front stoop in New York City just before the 1964 World’s Fair—a murder the New York Times called “a frozen moment of dramatic, disturbing societal change”—Kitty became an urban martyr, butchered in plain sight of thirty-eight witnesses who “didn’t want to get involved.” Her killing crystallized a new psychological concept: the “Bystander Effect.” That’s the story told by the Times’s legendary A. M. Rosenthal, Malcolm Gladwell, the authors of Freakonomics, and countless psychology textbooks. But it isn’t true. As Kevin Cook demonstrates, the tale of “thirty-eight witnesses” is a myth. The truth is more compelling—and so is the crime’s young victim. Now, on the fiftieth anniversary of the Genovese murder, Cook offers a riveting, suspenseful account of what really happened that night in Kew Gardens, Queens. Drawn from newly discovered documents and revelatory interviews with Kitty’s lover and other key figures, Kitty Genovese redefines a story America thought it already knew.
Havisham by Ronald Frame. Catherine Havisham was born into privilege. Spry, imperious, she is the daughter of a wealthy brewer. But she is never far from the smell of hops and the arresting letters on the brewhouse wall—HAVISHAM. A reminder of all she owes to the family name, and the family business. Sent by her father to stay with the Chadwycks, Catherine discovers elegant pastimes to remove the taint of her family’s new money. But for all her growing sophistication Catherine is anything but worldly, and when a charismatic stranger pays her attention, everything—her heart, her future, the very Havisham name—is vulnerable.
Sous Chef: 24 Hours on the Line by Michael Gibney. Sous Chef offers an adrenaline-fueled exploration into the world of professional cooking and the lives of people who have committed themselves to feeding others. It is both a love letter and a cautionary tale, meant to shed light in equal measure on the allures and adversities intrinsic to the job. Told uniquely in second person, the experience is immersive, allowing the curious kitchen enthusiast or basic home cook to imagine what it might be like to inhabit this world in real time, providing the fledgling cook with an honest picture of what lies ahead, giving voice to the hard work and dedication around which the Master Chef has built a career, and furnishing all manner of readers with a more mindful perspective from which to think on the craft.
Snowblind by Christopher Golden. The small New England town of Coventry is haunted by its memories of a deadly winter… in which loved ones were lost, families torn apart, and a town buried in a terrible blizzard. Now, twelve years later, the people plagued by their memories of that storm are haunted once again as a new storm approaches, promising to wreak new havoc. Old ghosts trickle back, and this storm will prove even more terrifying and deadly than the last.
Settled Blood by Mari Hannah. When a young girl is found dead at the base of Hadrian's Wall, it's not long before Detective Chief Inspector Kate Daniels realises her death was no ordinary homicide. She was thrown from a great height and was probably alive before she hit the ground. Then a local businessmen reports his daughter missing. Has Daniels found the identity of her victim, or is a killer playing a sickening game? As the murder investigation team delve deeper into the case and a mountain of obstacles, time is running out for one terrified girl.
The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay: An American Family in Iran by Hooman Majd. With U.S.–Iran relations at a thirty-year low, Iranian-American writer Hooman Majd dared to take his young family on a year-long sojourn in Tehran. The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay traces their domestic adventures and closely tracks the political drama of a terrible year for Iran's government.
Memories of a Catholic Girlhood by Mary MacCarthy. Originally published in large part as standalone essays in the New Yorker and Harper’s Bazaar, Mary McCarthy’s acclaimed memoir begins with her recollections of a happy childhood cut tragically short by the death of her parents during the influenza epidemic of 1918. Tempering memory with invention, McCarthy describes how, orphaned at six, she spent much of her childhood shuttled between two sets of grandparents and three religions—Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish. One of four children, she suffered abuse at the hands of her great-aunt and uncle until she moved to Seattle to be raised by her maternal grandparents. Early on, McCarthy lets the reader in on her secret: The chapter you just read may not be wholly reliable—facts have been distilled through the hazy lens of time and distance.
Practice to Deceive by Anne Rule. Nestled in Puget Sound, Whidbey Island is a gem of the Pacific Northwest; accessible only by ferry and the soaring Deception Pass Bridge, it is known for its artistic communities and stunning natural beauty. Life there is low-key, insular, and the island’s year-round residents tend to know one another’s business. But when the blooddrenched body of Russel Douglas was discovered the day after Christmas in his SUV in a hidden driveway near Whidbey’s most exclusive mansions, the whole island was shocked. A single bullet between his eyes was the cause of death, but no one could imagine who among them could plot such a devious, cold-blooded crime. At first, police suspected suicide, tragically common at the height of the holiday season. But when they found no gun in or near the SUV, Russel’s manner of death became homicide. Like a cast of characters from a classic mystery novel, a host of Whidbey residents fell under suspicion.
Touch (Queen of the Dead, Book 2) by Michelle Sagara. Nathan died the summer before his final year in high school. But he wakes in his room—or in the shrine of his room his mother’s made—confused, cold, and unable to interact with anyone or anything he sees. The only clear memory he has is a dream of a shining city and its glorious queen, but the dream fades, until he once again meets his girlfriend Emma by the side of his own grave. Nathan wants life. He wants Emma. But, even if Emma can deliver what he desires, the cost may be too high to pay...