Mailbox Monday — November 1

Welcome to Mailbox Monday, the weekly meme created by Marcia from 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’s host is Julie from Knitting and Sundries.

Here’s what I added to my shelves:

On Maggie’s Watch by Ann Wertz Garvin, from Penguin

Maggie Finley has returned to her Wisconsin hometown, trading a high-powered job for the life of a homemaker and awaiting the any-minute-now birth of her baby.  Life has dealt some painful blows to Maggie and her husband, and she’s determined to create a safe haven on Hemlock Street, a neighborhood that has always meant security, community, and love.  One way to do that:  resurrect the defunct Neighborhood Watch program.

The Watch folks are mostly concerned with dog poop and litterbugs.  But Maggie’s done some digging and discovered a potential threat living just around the corner — a threat that must be eradicated.  But the more Maggie tries to take control, the more out of control she gets.  Soon she’s flirting dangerously with her handyman and taking three a.m. bike trips in her pajamas to scope out the bad guy.  All she wants is to keep her family safe.  If only she could keep herself sane…  (publisher’s summary)

By Fire, By Water by Mitchell James Kaplan, from the author and Other Press

Luis de Santángel, chancellor to the court and longtime friend of the lusty King Ferdinand, has had enough of the Spanish Inquisition.  As Inquisitor General Tomás de Torquemada’s power and influence over Queen Isabel grow, so does the brutality of the Spanish church and the paranoia it inspires.  When a dear friend’s demise brings the violence close to home, Santángel takes retribution into his own hands, though the risk is great.  Santángel is from a family of conversos, and his Jewish heritage makes him a target.  Soon, he finds himself implicated in the murder of the first Chief Inquisitor of Aragon and in possession of a mysterious text that has brought death and discrimination to Jews for centuries.  As he witnesses the horrific persecution of his loved ones, he begins slowly to reconnect with the Jewish faith his family left behind.  Feeding his curiosity about his past is his growing love for Judith Migdal, a clever and beautiful Jewish woman navigating the mounting tensions in Granada.  While he struggles to decide what his reputation is worth and what he can sacrifice, one man offers him a chance he thought he’d lost … the chance to hope for a better world.  Christopher Columbus has plans to discover a route to paradise, and only Luis de Santángel can help him.

Within this dramatic story lies a subtle, insightful examination of the crisis of faith at the heart of the Spanish Inquisition.  Irresolvable conflict rages within the conversos, who are torn between the religion they left behind and the conversion meant to ensure their safety.  In this story of love, God, faith, and torture, fifteenth-century Spain comes to dazzling, engrossing life.  (publisher’s summary)

Nella Last in the 1950s: The Further Diaries of Housewife, 49 edited by Patricia & Robert Malcolmson, an unexpected review copy from Meryl Zegarek PR, Inc.

This third compelling volume sees Nella, now in her sixties, writing of what ordinary people felt during the early 1950s in a modernizing Britain.  Her diary offers a fascinating, touching and humorous narrative of daily life at a time that shaped the society we live in today.  It is an account that’s full of surprises, as we learn more about her attitude towards changes in society, her fears of nuclear war, and her relationship with “my husband” — she rarely used his name.  Outwardly Nella’s life was commonplace; but behind this there was a penetrating mind and a lively pen.  Her childhood dream to become a published writer, which was not fulfilled in her lifetime, has now been realized.  (publisher’s summary)

What books did you add to your shelves recently?

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© 2010 Anna Horner of Diary of an Eccentric. All Rights Reserved. Please do not reproduce or republish content without permission.