Books That Caught Our Eye

At Mailbox Monday we encourage participants to not only share the books they received, but to check out the books others have received.

Every Wednesday we will each share two books that caught our eye from that week’s Mailbox Monday.

We encourage you to share the books that caught your eye in the comments.

Serena

Serena’s whole family is down with the flu so she wasn’t able to visit this week to make a BTCOE choice.
We hope the whole family gets better quickly.

Martha

I was tempted to pick extra titles but that wouldn’t be fair since Serena and I have different tastes. 🙂
Leslie’s second pick was one of mine so I did get to pick another from my list.
My first pick is a serial killer mystery with a paranormal twist that sounds good:

Nightfall Bay by Carolyn J. Rose, found at Fiction Books. 

When her grandmother dies, Rain Paxton inherits an extraordinary gift—the ability to follow a phantom dog into the afterlife, to a place called Nightfall Bay. There, at the edge of a dark sea, the souls of the missing and murdered must wait for earthly mysteries to be solved.

Pierce Jennings is a wealthy man, rich enough to fund a crime task force. But money can’t buy what he wants most—to know whether his wife is dead or alive. Missing more than two years, Ariel is one of a dozen women taken by a serial killer known as the Peddler.

Drawn to Pierce, and longing to learn Ariel’s fate and free the souls of the Peddler’s victims, Rain prepares to journey to Nightfall Bay. But the Peddler will kill to keep her from speaking with the dead and revealing his identity.

——–

I really like reading stories about the Civil War, and based on true is even better, so Pick 2 for me this week is:
Touched with Fire: Based on the True Story of Ellen Craft by Christopher Datta, found at Library of Clean Reads. 

Touched with Fire, a novel of the Civil War inspired by the true story of Ellen Craft. Awarded top Historical Fiction Gold Medal Award for 2016 by eLitAwards.

Ellen Craft is property; in this case, of her half-sister Debra, to whom she was given as a wedding gift. The illegitimate daughter of a Georgia plantation owner and a house slave, she learned to hate her own image, which so closely resembled that of her “father”: the same wiry build, the same blue eyes, and the same pale – indeed, lily-white – skin. Ellen lives a solitary life until she falls, unexpectedly, in love with a dark-skinned slave named William Craft, and together they devise a plan to run north. Ellie will pose as a gentleman planter bound for Philadelphia accompanied by his “boy” Will. They make it as far as Baltimore when Will is turned back, and Ellie has no choice but continue. With no way of knowing if he is dead or alive, she resolves to make a second journey – south again. And so Elijah Craft enlists with the 125th Ohio Volunteers of the Union Army: she will literally fight her way back to her husband.

Eli/Ellie’s journey is the story of an extraordinary individual and an abiding love, but also of the corrosive effects of slavery, and of a nation at a watershed moment.

Leslie

Wife 22 by Melanie Gideon at Bookfan. 

Maybe it was those extra five pounds I’d gained. Maybe it was because I was about to turn the same age my mother was when I lost her. Maybe it was because after almost twenty years of marriage my husband and I seemed to be running out of things to say to each other.

But when the anonymous online study called “Marriage in the 21st Century” showed up in my inbox, I had no idea how profoundly it would change my life. It wasn’t long before I was assigned both a pseudonym (Wife 22) and a caseworker (Researcher 101). And, just like that, I found myself answering questions.

Before the study, my life was an endless blur of school lunches and doctor’s appointments, family dinners, budgets, and trying to discern the fastest-moving line at the grocery store. I was Alice Buckle: spouse of William and mother to Zoe and Peter, drama teacher and Facebook chatter, downloader of memories and Googler of solutions.

But these days, I’m also Wife 22. And somehow, my anonymous correspondence with Researcher 101 has taken an unexpectedly personal turn. Soon, I’ll have to make a decision—one that will affect my family, my marriage, my whole life. But at the moment, I’m too busy answering questions.

As it turns out, confession can be a very powerful aphrodisiac.

This book has been on my TBR shelf for a few years. I had almost forgotten about it!

——–

The Little Book of Hygge: Danish Secrets to Happy Living by Meik Wiking at Carol’s Notebook. 

Embrace Hygge (pronounced hoo-ga) and become happier with this definitive guide to the Danish philosophy of comfort, togetherness, and well-being.

Why are Danes the happiest people in the world? The answer, says Meik Wiking, CEO of the Happiness Research Institute in Copenhagen, is Hygge. Loosely translated, Hygge—pronounced Hoo-ga—is a sense of comfort, togetherness, and well-being. “Hygge is about an atmosphere and an experience,” Wiking explains. “It is about being with the people we love. A feeling of home. A feeling that we are safe.”

Hygge is the sensation you get when you’re cuddled up on a sofa, in cozy socks under a soft throw, during a storm. It’s that feeling when you’re sharing comfort food and easy conversation with loved ones at a candlelit table. It is the warmth of morning light shining just right on a crisp blue-sky day.

The Little Book of Hygge introduces you to this cornerstone of Danish life, and offers advice and ideas on incorporating it into your own life

We can all use a little more happy!