Mailbox Monday — February 27

Welcome to Mailbox Monday, the weekly meme created by Marcia from A girl and her books (formerly The Printed Page) where book lovers share the titles they received for review, purchased, or otherwise obtained over the past week. Mailbox Monday currently is on tour, and this month, it is being hosted by Metroreader.  **I am so excited that I will be the Mailbox Monday host for March!!**

Here’s what I received:

The Music in Her Mind by Robert Gilkes, from BookedPR for review (Amazon)

In June 1945, Colonel Alexander Litchfield is an exhausted war-torn officer, tormented by nightmares of the inhuman acts he has committed.  In the last days of the war he takes the surrender of a vast army of Cossacks escaping from the Russians.  Among them is Larisa Korsakova, a concert cellist with whom he had an idyllic love affair in Paris before the war.  High in the Alpine forest above the POW camp they escape from the horrors they have endured into their irresistible passionate desire for each other until Lara is handed over to the Soviets.  (publisher’s summary)

Chasing Mona Lisa by Tricia Goyer and Mike Yorkey, which I downloaded onto my husband’s e-reader because it was free on President’s Day (Amazon/IndieBound)

It is August 1944 and Paris is on the cusp of liberation. As the soldiers of the Third Reich flee the Allied advance, they ravage the country, stealing countless pieces of art. Reichsmarschall Hermann Goring will stop at nothing to claim the most valuable one of all, the Mona Lisa, as a post-war bargaining chip to get him to South America. Can Swiss OSS agents Gabi Mueller and Eric Hofstadler rescue DaVinci’s masterpiece before it falls into German hands?

With nonstop action, Chasing Mona Lisa is sure to get readers’ adrenaline pumping as they join the chase to save the most famous painting in the world. From war-ravaged Paris to a posh country chateau, the race is on–and the runners are playing for keeps.  (publisher’s summary)

Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne From Normandy to Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest by Stephen E. Ambrose, which I purchased because I absolutely loved the miniseries (which Jerry bought me for Christmas) and had to read the book (Amazon/Indiebound)

As good a rifle company as any in the world, Easy Company, 101st Airborne Division, U.S. Army, kept getting the tough assignments — responsible for everything from parachuting into France early D-Day morning to the capture of Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest at Berchtesgaden.  In Band of Brothers, Ambrose tells of the men in this brave unit who fought, went hungry, froze, and died, a company that took 150 percent casualties and considered the Purple Heart a badge of office.  Drawing on hours of interviews with survivors as well as the soldiers’ journals and letters, Stephen Ambrose recounts the stories, often in the men’s own words, of these American heroes.  (publisher’s summary)

All Roads Lead to Austen by Amy Elizabeth Smith, from Sourcebooks for review (Amazon/IndieBound)

Is the Magic of Jane a Movable Feast?  Jane Austen thrives in the 21st century, living on in book clubs, in conversations, in quiet reads with a cup of coffee.  She is unchanged by time.

But is she unchanged by place?  Does Austen still work magic in new time zones, new countries, new languages?  Amy Elizabeth Smith wanted to find out.

With a suitcase full of Austen novels en español, Smith set off on a yearlong Latin American road trip with Jane.  In six unique, unforgettable countries, she gathered book-loving new friends — taxi drivers and teachers, poets and politicians — to read Emma, Sense and Sensibility, and Pride and Prejudice.

On the road, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times (no, wait, that’s Dickens…).  Whether sharing rooster beer with Guatemalans, joining the crowd at a Mexican boxing match, feeding a horde of tame iguanas with Ecuadorean children, or wrangling with argumentative booksellers in Argentina, Smith came to learn what Austen knew all along:  we’re not always speaking the same language, even when we’re speaking the same language.

But with true Austen instinct, she could recognize when, unexpectedly, she’d found her own Señor Darcy.  All Roads Lead to Austen celebrates the wisdom (and pleasure!) of letting go and becoming a student again, no matter what our age.  (publisher’s summary)

What books did you add to your shelves recently?

Disclosure: I am an IndieBound affiliate and an Amazon associate.

© 2012 Anna Horner of Diary of an Eccentric. All Rights Reserved. Please do not reproduce or republish content without permission.