At Mailbox Monday, we encourage participants to not only share the books they received, but also to check out the books received by others. Each week, our team is sharing with you a few Books That Caught Our Eye from that week’s Mailbox Monday.
This week, I featured a woman on our Mailbox Monday post, in honor of the Women’s International Day. I believe you will find some interesting women characters in the books that caught our eye this time.
We encourage you to share the books that caught your eye in the comments.
EMMA:
A charming and atmospheric debut mystery featuring a 25-year-old Indian police sergeant investigating a missing persons case in colonial Fiji.
1914, Fiji: Akal Singh would rather be anywhere but this tropical paradise—or, as he calls it, “this godforsaken island.” After a promising start to his police career in his native India and Hong Kong, Akal has been sent to Fiji as punishment for a humiliating professional mistake. Lonely and grumpy, Akal plods through his work and dreams of getting back to Hong Kong.
When an indentured Indian woman goes missing from a sugarcane plantation and Fiji’s newspapers scream “kidnapping,” the inspector-general reluctantly assigns Akal the case, giving him strict instructions to view this investigation as nothing more than cursory. Akal, eager to achieve redemption, agrees—but soon finds himself far more invested than he could have expected.
Now not only is he investigating a disappearance, but also confronting the brutal realities of the indentured workers’ existence and the racism of the British colonizers in Fiji—along with his own thorny notions of personhood and caste. Early interrogations of the white plantation owners, Indian indentured laborers, and native Fijians yield only one conclusion: there is far more to this case than meets the eye.
Nilima Rao’s sparkling debut mystery offers an unflinching look at the evils of colonialism, even as it brims with wit, vibrant characters, and fascinating historical detail.
and this is the first time I believe, I see a book set in Fiji!”
Go as a River, by Shelley Read
Historical novel found at Sam Still Reading
Set amid Colorado’s wild beauty, a heartbreaking coming-of-age story of a resilient young woman whose life is changed forever by one chance encounter. A tragic and uplifting novel of love and loss, family and survival—and hope—for readers of Great Circle, The Four Winds, and Where the Crawdads Sing.
Seventeen-year-old Victoria Nash runs the household on her family’s peach farm in the small ranch town of Iola, Colorado—the sole surviving female in a family of troubled men. Wilson Moon is a young drifter with a mysterious past, displaced from his tribal land and determined to live as he chooses.
Victoria encounters Wil by chance on a street corner, a meeting that profoundly alters both of their young lives, unknowingly igniting as much passion as danger. When tragedy strikes, Victoria leaves the only life she has ever known. She flees into the surrounding mountains where she struggles to survive in the wilderness with no clear notion of what her future will bring. As the seasons change, she also charts the changes in herself, finding in the beautiful but harsh landscape the meaning and strength to move forward and rebuild all that she has lost, even as the Gunnison River threatens to submerge her homeland—its ranches, farms, and the beloved peach orchard that has been in her family for generations.
Inspired by true events surrounding the destruction of the town of Iola in the 1960s, Go as a River is a story of deeply held love in the face of hardship and loss, but also of finding courage, resilience, friendship, and, finally, home—where least expected. This stunning debut explores what it means to lead your life as if it were a river—gathering and flowing, finding a way forward even when a river is dammed.
which I have enjoyed a lot.”
The Rush, by MichellePrak
thriller found at Sam Still Reading
SOME THREATS ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR …
The first drops start to fall when Quinn spies the body. With no reception and nothing but an empty road for miles, does she stop to help or keep driving to safety?
Back at the iconic country pub where Quinn works, Andrea is sandbagging the place in preparation for heavy rains. Alone with her sleeping son in the back room, she reluctantly lets a biker in to wait out the storm.
Out on the wet roads, tensions arise among four backpackers on their way to Darwin. They haven’t prepared for this kind of weather and the flooding isn’t the only threat on the horizon …
Chilling, tense and twisted, this compulsive thriller will send adrenaline coursing through your veins.
“This sounds like a pretty intense thriller with bad weather contributing to the danger.”
A Traitor in Whitehall, by JuliaKelly
historical novel found at Book Reviews by Linda Moore
Evelyne Redfern’s family specializes in notoriety. Her father is Sir Reginald Redfern, a feckless, louche second son of an English baron, and her late beloved mother was a glamorous French party girl. Their disastrous marriage ended in divorce and a very public custody battle over nine-year-old Evelyne that only resolved when Genevieve died three years later. However, the damage was done, with the press dubbing Evelyne “The Parisian Orphan” and making her the most notorious child in the world.
Years later in 1940, Evelyne is estranged from her father and working on the line at a munitions factory in wartime London. She’s bored and craving more from her life, but the only contentment she can find is with stacks of mystery novels that fight for space with her roommate Moira’s ever-expanding wardrobe.
When Mr. Fletcher, one of her father’s old friends, spots Evelyne at a night out at the Ritz, Evelyne seizes the chance for a change and finds herself plunged into the world of Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s cabinet war rooms. However, shortly after she settles into her new role as a secretary, one of the girls at the war rooms is murdered and Evelyne must use all of her amateur sleuthing expertise earned from years of reading mysteries to find the killer. Little does she know that doing so will put her right in the path of David Poole, a cagey minister’s aide who seems determined to thwart her investigations. That is, until Evelyne finds out David’s real reason for being in the cabinet war rooms is to root out a mole selling government secrets to Britain’s enemies, and the pair begrudgingly team up.
With her quick wit, sharp eyes, and determination, Evelyne is a heroine to root for. But can she find out who’s been selling England’s secrets and catch a killer all while battling her growing attraction to David and her own scandalous past?
“This sounds like an intriguing WWII mystery.”
Counterfeit, by Kirstin Chen
contemporary fiction found at Book Dilettante
Ava Wong has always played it safe. As a strait-laced, rule-abiding Chinese American lawyer with a successful surgeon as a husband, a young son, and a beautiful home–she’s built the perfect life. But beneath this façade, Ava’s world is crumbling: her marriage is falling apart, her expensive law degree hasn’t been used in years, and her toddler’s tantrums are pushing her to the breaking point.
Enter Winnie Fang, Ava’s enigmatic college roommate from Mainland China, who abruptly dropped out under mysterious circumstances. Now, twenty years later, Winnie is looking to reconnect with her old friend. But the shy, awkward girl Ava once knew has been replaced with a confident woman of the world, dripping in luxury goods, including a coveted Birkin in classic orange. The secret to her success? Winnie has developed an ingenious counterfeit scheme that involves importing near-exact replicas of luxury handbags and now she needs someone with a U.S. passport to help manage her business–someone who’d never be suspected of wrongdoing, someone like Ava. But when their spectacular success is threatened and Winnie vanishes once again, Ava is left to face the consequences.
Swift, surprising, and sharply comic, Counterfeit is a stylish and feminist caper with a strong point of view and an axe to grind. Peering behind the curtain of the upscale designer storefronts and the Chinese factories where luxury goods are produced, Kirstin Chen interrogates the myth of the model minority through two unforgettable women determined to demand more from life.
What books caught your eye this week?
Mailbox Monday 
Love the cover on this bvook – Go as a River.
Good choices…thanks.
Jeepers…a typo!!
Thank you for the shout out.
Several good looking books this week!