Mailbox Monday – February 11, 2013

Mailbox Monday is a weekly meme started by Marcia at Mailbox Monday in which bloggers can ramble on about the books they received/bought/stole over a given week.  Each month a new blogger hosts the meme, and this month it’s Audra at Unabridged Chick.

--- The Books ---

Flesh by Khanh Ha – Flesh is the story of Tai, a boy living in Tonkin (northern Vietnam) at the turn of the 20^th Century.  He witnesses his father’s beheading (his father being a notorious bandit), and sets out to find his father’s head and the man who betrayed his father to the authorities.  It’s a coming of age story, a love story, and a revenge tragedy all twisted up and rolled into one.  In other words, just the sort of thing Ryan St. Onge loves.  Pretty freakin 'cool cover, too, right?  That’s why he’s taken on the book as part of the book tour being arranged through TLC Book Tours.  Expect to see more about that come April.  The author—Khanh Ha—was born in Hue, Vietnam, but now lives in United States.  More info about him and his work can be found at his website, authorkhanhha.com.  

The Trouble with Charlie by Merry Jones – The story begins with Elle finding her soon-to-be-ex-husband, Charlie, on her sofa stabbed to death with her kitchen knife.  She’s cleared on the murder charges, but as time goes on it feels as if he’s still around—a lingering presence, smells of his aftershave, etc.  She hears him accuse her of killing him.  And oddly enough, Elle has a gap in her memory around the time that Charlie bit the dust.  So like any sane woman being haunted by her husband’s ghost, she sets out to clear her conscience by finding out how Charlie died.  In the process she finds out that there were quite a few people who might have wanted to kill Charlie—not the least of whom is her.  Partners in Crime Tours is putting on this one, and our own Kayla has stepped up to the plate to get-r-done.  A review should be happening sometime around May.

And Then She Fell by Stephanie Laurens – OK, confession time.  For me (Jonathan, that is), this book takes me a bit out of my literary comfort zone.  As you can tell by the cover, it’s a Romance novel—and a Victorian romance novel, at that.  But one of our reviewers, Olga Livshin, really wanted to review it for the tour being organized by TLC Book Tours, and I thought, what the hell?  There’s a first time for everything, and we do pride ourselves on being eclectic around here.  So sometime in March we’ll be breaking new ground with a (gasp!) Romance review.  It could be the first of many.  It could be the last of its kind.  We’ll just have to wait and see.  Either way, make sure you hold onto your butt.  Shocking times are ahead!

Thrall by Steven L. Shrewsbury – Perhaps you remember from the not-so-long-ago past a review Joe Young penned about a novel called Overkill.  It’s from Seventh Star Press and features the 700 year old, hard-fighting and hard-wenching hero Gorias La Gaul.  Well Joe loved it so much that we had to go out and track down the next in the series, Thrall.  It actually wasn’t hard—just an email was all it took, but I like overdramatizing things.  Thrall is more of the same sword and sorcery swashbuckling adventure that Overkill brought you, and I’m sure Joe is going to love it.

And now that we’ve shown you ours, it’s time to show us yours.  What did you get in your mailbox this week?