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.
I think we have all started off the year with good TBRs and new hauls. May you continue with more good books.
We encourage you to share the books that caught your eye in the comments.
SERENA:
“I like stories with struggling artists, but this poor girl has it far worse than the rest of us.”
Inspired by a remarkable true story, a young teacher evacuates children to safety across perilous waters, in a moving and triumphant new novel from New York Times bestselling author Hazel Gaynor.
1940, Kent: Alice King is not brave or daring—she’s happiest finding adventure through the safe pages of books. But times of war demand courage, and as the threat of German invasion looms, a plane crash near her home awakens a strength in Alice she’d long forgotten. Determined to do her part, she finds a role perfectly suited to her experience as a schoolteacher—to help evacuate Britain’s children overseas.
1940, London: Lily Nichols once dreamed of using her mathematical talents for more than tabulating the cost of groceries, but life, and love, charted her a different course. With two lively children and a loving husband, Lily’s humble home is her world, until war tears everything asunder. With her husband gone and bombs raining down, Lily is faced with an impossible choice: keep her son and daughter close, knowing she may not be able to protect them, or enroll them in a risky evacuation scheme, where safety awaits so very far away.
When a Nazi U-boat torpedoes the S. S. Carlisle carrying a ship of children to Canada, a single lifeboat is left adrift in the storm-tossed Atlantic. Alice and Lily, strangers to each other—one on land, the other at sea—will quickly become one another’s very best hope as their lives are fatefully entwined.
“For those of you who enjoy WWII historical novels, this sounds really good!”

A young poet tells the unforgettable story of his harrowing migration from El Salvador to the United States at the age of nine in this moving, page-turning memoir hailed as the mythic journey of our era (Sandra Cisneros)
Trip. My parents started using that word about a year ago–“one day, you’ll take a trip to be with us. Like an adventure.”
Javier’s adventure is a three-thousand-mile journey from his small town in El Salvador, through Guatemala and Mexico, and across the U.S. border. He will leave behind his beloved aunt and grandparents to reunite with a mother who left four years ago and a father he barely remembers. Traveling alone except for a group of strangers and a coyote hired to lead them to safety, Javier’s trip is supposed to last two short weeks.
At nine years old, all Javier can imagine is rushing into his parents’ arms, snuggling in bed between them, living under the same roof again. He does not see the perilous boat trips, relentless desert treks, pointed guns, arrests and deceptions that await him; nor can he know that those two weeks will expand into two life-altering months alongside a group of strangers who will come to encircle him like an unexpected family.
A memoir by an acclaimed poet that reads like a novel, Solito not only provides an immediate and intimate account of a treacherous and near-impossible journey, but also the miraculous kindness and love delivered at the most unexpected moments. Solito is Javier’s story, but it’s also the story of millions of others who had no choice but to leave home.
“I keep seeing this one. Sounds like an essential autobiography.”
When Louise finds out her parents have died, she dreads going home. She doesn’t want to leave her daughter with her ex and fly to Charleston. She doesn’t want to deal with her family home, stuffed to the rafters with the remnants of her father’s academic career and her mother’s lifelong obsession with puppets and dolls. She doesn’t want to learn how to live without the two people who knew and loved her best in the world.
Mostly, she doesn’t want to deal with her brother, Mark, who never left their hometown, gets fired from one job after another, and resents her success. But she’ll need his help to get the house ready for sale because it’ll take more than some new paint on the walls and clearing out a lifetime of memories to get this place on the market.
Some houses don’t want to be sold, and their home has other plans for both of them…
“The cover and title caught my eye. This would be perfect for my October “haunted” reading.”

If Robyn Carr and Melinda Leigh had a book-baby, Hart’s Ridge would be it. Join Kay Bratt in this small town mystery series with cases to solve, and a small-town deputy determined to do it.
When five-year-old Molly walks into a gas station on the outskirts of town, alone and barely speaking, one sheriff’s deputy is determined to reunite her with her missing mother.
Nestled gently in the Blue Ridge mountains, Hart’s Ridge is a small and yet undiscovered quaint town. That is until you dig a little deeper and learn that no matter how perfect things look, every town has its secrets. Taylor Gray has lived there since she was a kid and has clawed her way out of poverty, foster care, and then the police academy to reach her dream of being in law enforcement.
However, the townspeople aren’t the only ones that she is committed to serve and protect. She’s also the unofficial caretaker of her father and adult sisters, a family fractured by tragedy and barely keeping it together. Her role is heavy and rarely appreciated, but she’ll stop at nothing to try to piece them back together one day.
The mother of a young girl is missing. Time is of the essence and Taylor plunges into the investigation, determined to find her and reunite mother and child. When the sheriff brings a familiar face in to take charge, things begin to unravel at a pace hard to keep up with, and what they find is every law enforcement officer’s worst nightmare.
Hart’s Ridge is a standalone novel and book one of the new Hart’s Ridge mystery series, written by Kay Bratt, International Best-Selling Author of Wish Me Home and the By the Sea series.
What books caught your eye this week?