Mailbox Monday-- The Bread Is Baking, Now What Books Did I Get Last Week?

Mailbox Monday is on tour! That's right-- my favorite weekly meme is out and about. For the entire month of August you'll be able to find Mailbox Monday on Shanyn's blog, Chick Loves Lit. If taking a look at the books other people discovered in their mailboxes intrigues you and if you'd like to participate, this just might be the meme for you. Thanks for hosting, Shanyn!

The slow cooker is bubbling away and a loaf of bread is baking. It's time for me to sit down in the office of Casa Kittling and write a few blog posts. Naturally the first one I'm going to write is all about the books I pulled from our big farm-style mailbox last week.

Last week, I was good. I sent 8 books to new Paperback Swap (PBS) foster homes, and I received 4 from two different sources. Here's the rundown on my "new" books:

1. The Trail of the Wild Rose: An English Gardening Mystery by Anthony Eglin (PBS). "Retired botany professor Lawrence Kingston is helping a friend restore his garden when he gets a call from his former colleague Clifford Attenborough, now curator of horticulture at Kew Gardens. It seems that a patient in critical condition at an Oxford hospital has been muttering strange things about a plant-hunting expedition. Attenborough asks Kingston to look into it, and Kingston jumps at the chance to visit Oxford. The few available clues lead to a convoluted tale about a plant-hunting expedition in China. The members of the expedition seem to be meeting untimely ends in unexplainable accidents. As Kingston continues to explore, he turns up evidence of theft and murder among the British aristocracy. The complex case full of garden lore and Asian antiquities will keep cozy aficionados turning the pages."
2. The Golden Age of American Lighthouses: A Nostalgic Look at U.S. Lights from 1850 to 1939 by Tim Harrison and Ray Jones (PBS). "This unique pictorial chronicle brings to life nearly a century of American lighthouse history with hundreds of archival photographs, many of them never before published. The Golden Age of American Lighthouses tells the often dramatic story of U.S. lighthouses from approximately the middle of the nineteenth century until shortly before World War II, an era than many consider the golden age of American lighthouses. Giant brick towers, sturdy cast-iron cylinders, and open-water 'spark-plug' towers that most people associate with lighthouses began to be built during this period. The majority of America's most beautiful and beloved lighthouses date from this time. This book is filled with vintage black-and-white views of classic towers such as those at Boston Harbor, Cape Hatteras, and Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay. It also focuses on the work life and day-to-day existence of lighthouse keepers and their families. Many images of key lighthouse personalities and old-time keepers and their home life are reproduced here."
3. Grayson by Lynne Cox (PBS). "In this slim and crisp memoir, Cox details a morning swim off the coast of California that took an unexpected turn: returning to shore, she discovered that she was being followed by a baby gray whale that had been separated from its mother. As Cox developed a rapport with the whale, she took on the responsibility of keeping it at sea until it was reunited with its mother. Cox expertly weaves fine details together, from the whale's mushroomlike skin to how other fish react to such a large creature. At times Cox's prose is uneven, alternating from emotional to factual, but her pure joy at connecting with Grayson (her name for the baby whale) overrides any technical inconsistencies. The combination of retelling her once-in-a-lifetime experience with her observations on life will have timeless appeal for all ages."

4. I'd Know You Anywhere by Laura Lippman (LibraryThing Early Reviewer). "After living in England, Eliza has returned to the Washington, D.C., area where she grew up with her successful husband and their sneaky 13-year-old daughter and sweet young son. Some might consider full-time housewife Eliza a throwback and oddly passive, yet as Lippman slowly reveals, she is actually a woman of considerable, if covert, wisdom and strength. Eliza’s story unfolds in two time frames. One exposes the profound complexity of her horrifying ordeal in 1985 when, at age 15, she was kidnapped and held hostage by Walter, a brooding, diabolically enthralling mechanic on a bloody spree, raping and murdering young women. The other tracks Eliza’s response when Walter, on Death Row just weeks away from his execution, manages to once again exert his sinister, manipulative powers." 

I love lighthouses, and Lippman's book sounds wonderful, so those are my two picks of this batch. What about you? Do any of these four books sound good to you?

Now it's time to visit all the other participants to see what books they found in their mailboxes. This is fun!