Mailbox Monday — October 7

Welcome to Mailbox Monday, the weekly meme created by Marcia of To Be Continued, 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 Book Dragon’s Lair.

Here’s what I received:

The Tulip Eaters by Antoinette van Heugten — from Harlequin MIRA for review

In a riveting exploration of the power the past wields over the present, critically acclaimed author Antoinette van Heugten writes the story of a woman whose child’s life hangs in the balance, forcing her to confront the roots of her family’s troubled history in the dark days of World War II…

It’s the stuff of nightmares: Nora de Jong returns home from work one ordinary day to find her mother has been murdered.  Her infant daughter is missing.  And the only clue is the body of an unknown man on the living room floor, clutching a Luger in his cold, dead hand.

Frantic to find Rose, Nora puts aside her grief and frustration with the local police to start her own search.  But the contents of a locked metal box she finds in her parents’ attic leave her with as many questions as answers — and suggest the killer was not a stranger.  Saving her daughter means delving deeper into her family’s darkest history, leading Nora half a world away to Amsterdam, where her own unsettled past and memories of painful heartbreak rush back to haunt her.

As Nora feverishly pieces together the truth from an old family diary, she’s drawn back to a city under Nazi occupation, where her mother’s alliances may have long ago sealed her own — and Rose’s — fate.  (publisher’s summary)

What She Left Behind by Ellen Marie Wiseman — a surprise from Kensington (and I so excited given how much I loved The Plum Tree!)

Ten years ago, Izzy Stone’s mother fatally shot her father while he slept.  Devastated by her mother’s apparent insanity, Izzy, now seventeen, refuses to visit her in prison.  But her new foster parents, employees at the local museum, have enlisted Izzy’s help in cataloging items at a long-shuttered state asylum.  There, amid piles of abandoned belongings, Izzy discovers a stack of unopened letters, a decades-old journal, and a window into her own past.

Clara Cartwright, eighteen years old in 1929, is caught between her overbearing parents and her love for an Italian immigrant.  Furious when she rejects an arranged marriage, Clara’s father sends her to a genteel home for nervous invalids.  But when his fortune is lost in the stock market crash, he can no longer afford her care — and Clara is committed to the public asylum.

Even as Izzy deals with the challenges of yet another new beginning, Clara’s story keeps drawing her into the past.  If Clara was never really mentally ill, could something else explain her own mother’s violent act?  Piecing together Clara’s fate compels Izzy to re-examine her own choices — with shocking and unexpected results.  (publisher’s summary)

Justice by Carey Harrison — free ebook

A novel about mid-20th century Italy: Miri, a Jewish girl from London, marries an Italian communist nobleman, but her safety is threatened when Mussolini’s fascist government begins deporting Jews to the death camps.  Miri escapes to England, leaving her son in her husband’s hands.  Local politics takes a hand in their fate, however, with terrible consequences.  When the war ends, Miri returns to a devastated Italy, seeking a reckoning.  If needs be, revenge.  (publisher’s summary)

What books did you add to your shelves recently?

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