In My Mailbox #18

This meme is hosted by the fabulous Story Siren and she was inspired by Alea of Pop Culture Junkie.



I have a cold. It stinks! This edition of In My Mailbox will undoubtedly be lacking in frills. So here are my books this week:

Borrowed from the library:

I ordered this book for the school library after seeing a review of it in the School Librarian Journal. I thought the children would enjoy it. When it arrived this week, I realised it was published by a small independent Scottish publisher so I thought I'd review it on The Bookette.

Breaker by Annemarie Allan

Tom and Beth are not happy when they move to North Berwick and find themselves facing a rainy, windswept beach, a house that's falling to pieces and a school full of strangers. When they meet Professor Macblain, with his weird and wonderful inventions, little do they know that he has a secret: not only is he a thief, but he has stolen the one thing that can save the Firth of Forth from environmental catastrophe. A madcap adventure unfolds in this funny and fast-paced tale of disasters waiting to happen.

Bought:
Yesterday hubby decided he needed to go to the barbers and said if I went with him he'd take me for tea and cake. How could I resist? So while he was getting his hair cut I spent an nearly an hour browsing in Waterstones. There were so many books that I was tempted to buy but these four are what I settled on. For the next staff book group meeting we are each taking a book to suggest for the next club read and as I didn't have any of your suggestions with me. I decided on the book below. Mainly because I have never read a book on this theme. Any of you read it?

The Wilderness by Samantha Harvey

It’s Jake’s birthday. He is sitting in a small plane, being flown over the landscape that has been the backdrop to his life – his childhood, his marriage, his work, his passions. Now he is in his mid-sixties, and he isn’t quite the man he used to be. He has lost his wife, his son is in prison, and he is about to lose his past. Jake has Alzheimer’s.



As the disease takes hold of him, Jake struggles to hold on to his personal story, to his memories and identity, but they become increasingly elusive and unreliable. What happened to his daughter? Is she alive, or long dead? And why exactly is his son in prison? What went so wrong in his life? There was a cherry tree once, and a yellow dress, but what exactly do they mean? As Jake fights the inevitable dying of the light, the key events of his life keep changing as he tries to grasp them, and what until recently seemed solid fact is melting into surreal dreams or nightmarish imaginings. Is there anything he’ll be able to salvage from the wreckage? Beauty, perhaps, the memory of love, or nothing at all?

Selina Penaluna by Jan Page


Selina Penaluna is a merrymaid - or so she believes...Taken as a baby to the seashore, she slips from her mother's grasp and plunges deep into a rockpool. When her mother finally gets a hold of the slippery creature, she finds a mermaid child looking back at her - her baby taken and replaced by a mermaid changeling...Ellen and Jack are twins, evacuated from the East End of London to Cornwall during the Second World War. The family that takes them in are middle-class and a little stuffy but Ellen relishes the opportunity to better herself. But Jack is different. He finds their attentions stifling and seeks freedom in the arms of Selina, the mysterious local girl he sees at the shore. Selina, Ellen and Jack's lives are intertwined in a series of events that lead to tragedy. Could Selina have finally reverted to her merrymaid roots?

The Sight by David Clement-Davies

In an epic tale of good and evil, legend and history, and the blessing and curse of an extraordinary gift of the Sight (an ability to see through others' minds and into the future), David Clement-Davies obliges the many fans of Fire Bringer with a new fantasy novel. The Sight features a Transylvanian wolf clan faced with the terrifying changes brought about by Morgra, a bitter she-wolf determined to fulfill an ancient legend in order to have supreme power over all Vargs (wolves). Young Larka, a white wolf pup born with the Sight, embarks with her brother Fell and the rest of her family on an extraordinary quest for truth and salvation, with shocking consequences that even the most astute reader may not foresee. Clement-Davies's multilayered and elaborate plot will keep young readers riveted for hours on end, drawing on Christianity, fairy tales, and mythology in a colossal allegory and cautionary tale for its human audience.

The Left Hand of God by Paul Hoffman

"Listen. The Sanctuary of the Redeemers on Shotover Scarp is named after a damned lie for there is no redemption that goes on there and less sanctuary."

The Sanctuary of the Redeemers is a vast and desolate place - a place without joy or hope. Most of its occupants were taken there as boys and for years have endured the brutal regime of the Lord Redeemers whose cruelty and violence have one singular purpose - to serve in the name of the One True Faith.

In one of the Sanctuary's vast and twisting maze of corridors stands a boy. He is perhaps fourteen or fifteen years old - he is not sure and neither is anyone else. He has long-forgotten his real name, but now they call him Thomas Cale. He is strange and secretive, witty and charming, violent and profoundly bloody-minded. He is so used to the cruelty that he seems immune, but soon he will open the wrong door at the wrong time and witness an act so terrible that he will have to leave this place, or die.

His only hope of survival is to escape across the arid Scablands to Memphis, a city the opposite of the Sanctuary in every way: breathtakingly beautiful, infinitely Godless, and deeply corrupt.

But the Redeemers want Cale back at any price… not because of the secret he now knows but because of a much more terrifying secret he does not.

Books for review:

(All links to go Goodreads)
Nearly Departed by Rook Hastings (from HarperCollins)

Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver (from Hodder and Stoughton)

Dark Secrets by Elizabeth Chandler (from Simon & Schuster)

The Diary of a Dr Who Addict by Paul Magrs (from Simon & Schuster)

If I Grow Up by Todd Strasser (from Simon & Schuster)

So that's me. It appears my laptop may have a virus. If I don't comment on your posts today, that is why. I'll take it with me to work tomorrow and get it sorted and then play catch up.