Polish Outlander

In My Mailbox is hosted by The Story Siren. Thanks Kristi!

Some things have trickled in this week. I have no idea when I will find the time to tackle all these great books when I have to catch up on some required reading for work. I always say that but then I force myself to find time, which is a good thing. I just need to avoid Netflix and the Wii. So here’s some stuff that truly came in the mailbox:

From PaperBackSwap, I got:

Vampires, werewolves, witches, shapeshifters — they live among us without our knowledge. Night World is their secret society, a secret society with very strict rules. And falling in love breaks all the laws of the Night World. In Dark Angel, Gillian is saved from drowning by her guardian angel. Only visible to Gillian, Angel will fulfill her heart’s every desire. But when Angel starts making strange and sinister requests, Gillian must question who he truly is and where he came from. Armed with a wooden stake, martial arts, and the will to resist a vampire’s mind control, Rashel struggles to avenge her mother’s death in The Chosen. Then she meets Quinn, her soulmate, who is part of the world she has vowed to destroy. Hannah receives notes warning her of incredible danger in Soulmate. But if death is her destiny, is the Lord of the Night World’s love strong enough to save her? (I read the first omnibus way back in the summer and am looking forward to these stories and how they all come together eventually.)

She was an empress-until she lost everything. Now known simply as Tathea, she will wander the Lost Lands and become empowered by the teachings in a book-a book will that guide her onto a path even greater than the one she walked as a ruler. (I have to admit: I already abandoned this. It wasn’t what I expected and I guess I just wasn’t looking for this great religious/philosophical read in this book. Maybe, at the right time, I might revisit this again but I just couldn’t get into it.)

From Amazon I ordered:

Be prepared to meet three unforgettable women: Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone. Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken. Minny, Aibileen’s best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody’s business, but she can’t mind her tongue, so she’s lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own. Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed. (So here’s the scoop: I had gotten this as a galley last year somehow and it sat on my desk all year and I never touched it. My mom’s school was having a fundraiser, so I gave her some books and galleys that I had laying around that I knew I was never going to get to. My mom had knew this was on the bestseller list so she kept it. Last month she read it. In like a week. Which was quite a success, since she has a hard time finding actual time to read. She was actually glad that they had a snow day last Friday because she got to finish it. She said she hadn’t read anything like this in a long time. So I had marching orders to order the book and I have marching orders to read this like right away. I’ll get to it Mom, I’ll get to it!)

Harriet Vanger, a scion of one of Sweden’s wealthiest families disappeared over forty years ago. All these years later, her aged uncle continues to seek the truth. He hires Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist recently trapped by a libel conviction, to investigate. He is aided by the pierced and tattooed punk prodigy Lisbeth Salander. Together they tap into a vein of unfathomable iniquity and astonishing corruption. (Another one of those “must read” books that is out there. My friend at work also ordered this and we’re trying to figure out when would be the best time to read this since we’d like to read this together.)

Sonora Carver was an American entertainer, most notable as one of the first female horse divers. Carver answered an ad placed by “Doc” William Frank Carver in 1923 for a diving girl and soon earned a place in circus history. Her job was to mount a running horse as it reached the top of a forty-foot (sometimes sixty-foot) tower and sail down along the animal’s back as it plunged into a deep pool of water directly below. Sonora was a sensation and soon became the lead diving girl for Doc Carver’s act as they traveled the country. In 1931, Sonora was blinded, a retinal detachment, due to hitting the water off-balance with her eyes open.while diving her horse, Red Lips, on New Jersey’s Steel Pier, the act’s permanent home since 1929. After her accident Sonora continued to dive horses until 1942. (I love the movie Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken!!!! I had known this book was out-of-print for quite some time. And the other day, while looking at the products Amazon was recommending me, this came up! I had no idea they reprinted this. Immediate purchase on my part!)

Percy Jackson is about to be kicked out of boarding school…again. And that’s the least of his troubles. Lately, mythological monsters and the gods of Mount Olympus seem to be walking straight out of the pages of Percy’s Greek mythology textbook and into his life. And worse, he’s angered a few of them. Zeus’s master lightning bolt has been stolen, and Percy is the prime suspect. Now Percy and his friends have just ten days to find and return Zeus’s stolen property and bring peace to a warring Mount Olympus. But to succeed on his quest, Percy will have to do more than catch the true thief: he must come to terms with the father who abandoned him; solve the riddle of the Oracle, which warns him of betrayal by a friend; and unravel a treachery more powerful than the gods themselves. (I am so late in the game with this. It sounds so fun to read though. I’m just glad this series is over! I can read them all without having to worry about when the next book is coming out.)

There you have it. Now back to cleaning this apartment and trying to figure out if the books on my floor can go somewhere better…..