Mailbox Monday – 8/2

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.  

In an effort to make up for the measly one book I received last week, I got eight books this week.  Not counting the additional four I picked up from the library.

I got two books through the Amazon Vine program: a new zombie book Dust by Joan Frances Turner and a historical fiction novel The Education of Bet by Lauren Baratz-Logsted.  

Dust by Joan Frances Turner
 
First Sentence: “My right arm fell off today.”
From Amazon.com: “What happens between death and life can change a girl. Jessie is a zombie. And this is her story…
Nine years ago, Jessie was in a car crash and died. After she was buried, she awoke and tore through the earth to arise, reborn, as a zombie. Now Jessie’s part of a gang. They fight, hunt, and dance together as one-something humans can never understand. There are darkplaces humans have learned to avoid, lest they run into zombie gangs. But when a mysterious illness threatens the existence of both zombies and humans, Jessie must choose between looking away or staring down the madness-and hanging on to everything she now knows as life… “

The Education of Bet by Lauren Baratz-Logsted
 
First Sentence: “William, I am so disappointed in you!”
From Amazon.com: “When Will and Bet were four, tragic circumstances brought them to the same house, to be raised by a wealthy gentleman as brother and sister. Now sixteen, they’ve both enjoyed a privileged upbringing thus far. But not all is well in their household. Because she’s a girl, Bet’s world is contained within the walls of their grand home, her education limited to the rudiments of reading, writing, arithmetic, and sewing. Will’s world is much larger. He is allowed—forced, in his case—to go to school. Neither is happy.

Locke and Key: Welcome to Lovecraft by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez
 
First Sentence: “Mrs. Locke?”
From Amazon.com: “Locke & Key tells of Keyhouse, an unlikely New England mansion, with fantastic doors that transform all who dare to walk through them…. and home to a hate-filled and relentless creature that will not rest until it forces open the most terrible door of them all…! Acclaimed suspense novelist and New York Times best-selling author Joe Hill (Heart-Shaped Box) creates an all-new story of dark fantasy and wonder, with astounding artwork from Gabriel Rodriguez.”

Into this rich milieu is thrust Titus Quinn, former star pilot, bereft of his beloved wife and daughter who are assumed dead by everyone on earth except Quinn. Believing them trapped in a parallel universe–one where he himself may have been imprisoned–he returns to the Entire without resources, language, or his memories of that former life. He is assisted by Anzi, a woman of the Chalin people, a Chinese culture copied from our own universe and transformed by the kingdom of the bright. Learning of his daughter’s dreadful slavery, Quinn swears to free her. To do so, he must cross the unimaginable distances of the Entire in disguise, for the Tarig are lying in wait for him. As Quinn’s memories return, he discovers why. Quinn’s goal is to penetrate the exotic culture of the Entire–to the heart of Tarig power, the fabulous city of the Ascendancy, to steal the key to his family’s redemption.
But will his daughter and wife welcome rescue? Ten years of brutality have forced compromises on everyone. What Quinn will learn to his dismay is what his own choices were, long ago, in the Universe Entire. He will also discover why a fearful multiverse destiny is converging on him and what he must sacrifice to oppose the coming storm.
This is high-concept SF written on the scale of Philip Jose Farmer’s Riverworld, Roger Zelazny’s Amber Chronicles, and Dan Dimmons’s Hyperion.”

Valentine: Episodes 01 & 02 (English) (Comic Book / Graphic Novel) (Valentine ) (Kindle Edition)
 
 From Amazon.com: “DOUBLE-SIZED OPENING ISSUE! During Napoleon’s retreat from Russia in the War of 1812, cavalry officers Valentine and Oscar are separated from the main army by a brutal blizzard. They think the worst thing waiting out there in the snow for them is Death. They could not be more wrong.

The two soldiers stumble across an ancient conflict between beings more powerful than humanity can imagine, a conflict which now threatens to consume the Earth and all upon it – because those who have stood in the horror’s path, the few bastions of light, are going home.

The debut episodes of the acclaimed fantasy / thriller graphic novel series by comics writer Alex de Campi and artist Christine Larsen.”

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde  by Robert Louis Stevenson
 
First Sentence: “Mr. Utterson the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance that was never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse; backward in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary and yet somehow lovable.”
From Amazon.com: Robert Louis Stevenson’s all-time classic “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”

Jane is now the latest recipient of a gift basket from the Newly Undead Welcoming Committee, and her life-after-lifestyle is taking some getting used to. Her recently deceased favorite aunt is now her ghostly roommate. She has to fake breathing and endure daytime hours to avoid coming out of the coffin to her family. She’s forced to forgo her favorite down-home Southern cooking for bags of O negative. Her relationship with her sexy, mercurial vampire sire keeps running hot and cold. And if all that wasn’t enough, it looks like someone in Half Moon Hollow is trying to frame her for a series of vampire murders. What’s a nice undead girl to do?”

Library Books: