Monday Mailbox - August 20

I've been cutting way back on review copies since I'm also trying to deal with real life and read some other books that have been sitting on my shelves way too long.  So while I was gone on vacation, I only received two--both of them contest wins.


Linda Castillo's Kate Burkholder series is immensely popular at our little library, so I was delighted to win this giveaway held by Caite at A Lovely Shore Breeze.  This is one of my favorite blogs, so be sure to stop by.

In the newest chilling thriller from New York Times bestselling author Linda Castillo, Chief of police Kate Burkholder is called upon to assist when an Amish teenager disapears without a trace.

A missing child is a nightmare to all parents, and never more so than in the Amish community, where family ties are strong. So when a body turns up and another young girl goes missing, fear spreads through the community like a contagion. Kate and state agent, John Tomasetti, delve into the lives of the missing teens and discover links to cold cases that may go back years. But will Kate piece together all the parts of this sinsiter puzzle before it's too late? Or will she find herself locked in a fight to the death with a merciless killer.

LibraryThing.com has a wonderful giveaway program called Early Reviewers.  This month they chose me to get an ARC: David R. Gillham's City of Women.

It is 1943—the height of the Second World War. With the men taken by the army, Berlin has become a city of women. And while her husband fights on the Eastern Front, Sigrid Schröder is, for all intents and purposes, the model soldier’s wife: She goes to work every day, does as much with her rations as she can, and dutifully cares for her meddling mother-in-law, all the while ignoring the horrific immoralities of the regime.
But behind this façade is an entirely different Sigrid, a woman who dreams of her former Jewish lover, who is now lost in the chaos of the war.
Sigrid’s tedious existence is turned upside down when she finds herself hiding a mother and her two young daughters—whom she believes might be her lover’s family—and she must make terrifying choices that could cost her everything.

I downloaded several possibilities from Net Galley, and actually read two while I was on vacation.  I'll be posting reviews before the end of the month.

And then there are the books we added to our Nook and our Kindle.  Most were freebies that looked interesting enough to grab and peruse as time permits, but both hubbie and I decided to add Stephen King's latest 11-22-63 to our permanent collection.  We were both in college then, and still recall every detail of that day and the weekend that followed, so we are anxious to read this "What if?"  It sounds irresistable.

On November 22, 1963, three shots rang out in Dallas,
President Kennedy died, and the world changed.
If you had the chance to change history, would you?
Would the consequences be worth it?
Jake Epping is a thirty-five-year-old high school English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching adults in the GED program. He receives an essay from one of the students—a gruesome, harrowing first person story about the night 50 years ago when Harry Dunning’s father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a hammer. Harry escaped with a smashed leg, as evidenced by his crooked walk.
Not much later, Jake’s friend Al, who runs the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to 1958. He enlists Jake on an insane—and insanely possible—mission to try to prevent the Kennedy assassination. So begins Jake’s new life as George Amberson and his new world of Elvis and JFK, of big American cars and sock hops, of a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and a beautiful high school librarian named Sadie Dunhill, who becomes the love of Jake’s life—a life that transgresses all the normal rules of time.

Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came into their house recently. Created by Marcia at The Printed Page, Mailbox Monday, now has its own blog. Hosting duties are rotated every month. Jennifer at 5 Minutes for Books.com is hosting Augusts's postings. Be sure to drop by to see what everyone else got this week.