Mailbox Monday-- The Streak Continues?

Well...butter my butt and call me a biscuit! This past week I sent 5 books to new foster homes courtesy of Paperback Swap, and I only received 3. (I refuse to count the new IKEA catalog!)

Here's what I opened my mailbox to:

--Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones (PBS). "When the conflict between the natives and the invading redskin soldiers erupts on an unnamed tropical island in the early 1990s, 13-year-old Matilda Laimo and her mother, Dolores, are unified with the rest of their village in their efforts for survival. Amid the chaos, Mr. Watts, the only white local (he is married to a native), offers to fill in as the children's schoolteacher and teaches from Dickens's Great Expectations. The precocious Matilda, who forms a strong attachment to the novel's hero, Pip, uses the teachings as escapism, which rankles Dolores, who considers her daughter's fixation blasphemous. With a mixture of thrill and unease, Matilda discovers independent thought, and Jones captures the intricate, emotionally loaded evolution of the mother-daughter relationship."

--Bound by Sally Gunning (PBS). "Seven-year-old Alice Cole travels with her family from 1756 London to the New World, dreaming of a big house in Philadelphia and a new life. Her mother and brothers die on board and are buried at sea; the ship docks in Boston rather than Philadelphia; there, her father indentures her for 11 years without a backward glance. Alice does housework for the family of Simeon Morton of Dedham, in whose house she is treated almost like a second daughter, becoming constant companion to 10-year-old Abigail, or Nabby. When Nabby marries Emery Verley of Medfield, Alice's indenture is signed over to him, but the Verley household turns out to be an abusive one. Alice flees and winds up on Satucket, Cape Cod, where Lyddie Berry, heroine of Gunning's The Widow's War, and her companion, the lawyer Eben Freeman, give her shelter and a job. Alice works hard for them, and they grow fond of her, but when Alice discovers she's pregnant, she embarks on a journey of deceit and lies." I really enjoyed The Widow's War, so I'm looking forward to this one!

--The Sea Garden by Sam Llewellyn (PBS). "Victoria, a young American, and Guy, a young Englishman, meet, fall in love and get married. Soon thereafter, Guy inherits his family's estates and properties on the condition that he and his bride change their surname from Farrer to Blakeney-Jones. They move to a mansion on Trelise, his family's island off Cornwall. After purchasing Trelise in the 1840s, Joshua Jones, the famous medicinal herbalist, immediately began to turn the island into one large garden. When Victoria discovers some buried bones, Guy thinks they must be those of some long-ago monk. Victoria disagrees, so she begins to research the history of Trelise, consulting letters, invoices, diaries and other documents stored in the mansion."

There you have it! A big Thank You to Marcia of The Printed Page for hosting this meme. If you'd like to see what others found in their mailboxes, just click on the redhead with the flirty skirt at the top of this post. See you next Monday!