Monday, November 20, 2017

Mailbox Monday - November 20



Mailbox Monday is a meme started by Marcia of To Be Continued. Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came in their mailbox during the last week. It now has a permanent home at the Mailbox Monday blog.

Warning: Mailbox Monday can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles, and humongous wish lists.

Happy Thanksgiving week! Not sure what your plans are but mine involve cleaning, baking, and spending time with my family. I'm working today and have a class tomorrow morning, but I'm hoping to be off after after that until next week. Annual Christmas bazaar at church is slated for this coming Saturday from 9 to 3.

As far as reading materials go, I received a couple of great books for review and also picked up a resource I found at the Write Angles Conference I attended on Saturday.


Can a religious separatist and an opportunistic spy make it in the New World?
A brand new series for fans of all things related to history, romance, adventure, faith, and family trees.

Mary Elizabeth Chapman boards the Speedwell in 1620 as a Separatist seeking a better life in the New World. William Lytton embarks on the Mayflower as a carpenter looking for opportunities to succeed—and he may have found one when a man from the Virginia Company offers William a hefty sum to keep a stealth eye on company interests in the new colony. The season is far too late for good sailing and storms rage, but reaching land is no better as food is scarce and the people are weak. Will Mary Elizabeth survive to face the spring planting and unknown natives? Will William be branded a traitor and expelled?

Join the adventure as the Daughters of the Mayflower series begins with The Mayflower Bride by Kimberley Woodhouse.


The inimitable Faith Fairchild returns in a chilling New England whodunit, inspired by the best Agatha Christie mysteries and with hints of the timeless board game Clue.

For most of her adult life, resourceful caterer Faith Fairchild has called the sleepy Massachusetts village of Aleford home. While the native New Yorker has come to know the region well, she isn’t familiar with Havencrest, a privileged enclave, until the owner of Rowan House, a secluded sprawling Arts and Crafts mansion, calls her about catering a weekend house party.

Producer/director of a string of hit musicals, Max Dane—a Broadway legend—is throwing a lavish party to celebrate his seventieth birthday. At the house as they discuss the event, Faith’s client makes a startling confession. "I didn’t hire you for your cooking skills, fine as they may be, but for your sleuthing ability. You see, one of the guests wants to kill me."

Faith’s only clue is an ominous birthday gift the man received the week before—an empty casket sent anonymously containing a twenty-year-old Playbill from Max’s last, and only failed, production—Heaven or Hell. Consequently, Max has drawn his guest list for the party from the cast and crew. As the guests begin to arrive one by one, and an ice storm brews overhead, Faith must keep one eye on the menu and the other on her host to prevent his birthday bash from becoming his final curtain call.

Full of delectable recipes, brooding atmosphere, and Faith’s signature biting wit, The Body in the Casket is a delightful thriller that echoes the beloved mysteries of Agatha Christie and classic films such as Murder by Death and Deathtrap.


Americans have long regarded the freedom of travel a central tenet of citizenship. Yet, in the United States, freedom of movement has historically been a right reserved for whites. In this book, Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor shows that African Americans fought obstructions to their mobility over 100 years before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus. These were "colored travelers," activists who relied on steamships, stagecoaches, and railroads to expand their networks and to fight slavery and racism. They refused to ride in "Jim Crow" railroad cars, fought for the right to hold a U.S. passport (and citizenship), and during their transatlantic voyages, demonstrated their radical abolitionism. By focusing on the myriad strategies of black protest, including the assertions of gendered freedom and citizenship, this book tells the story of how the basic act of traveling emerged as a front line in the battle for African American equal rights before the Civil War.

Drawing on exhaustive research from U.S. and British newspapers, journals, narratives, and letters, as well as firsthand accounts of such figures as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, and William Wells Brown, Pryor illustrates how, in the quest for citizenship, colored travelers constructed ideas about respectability and challenged racist ideologies that made black mobility a crime.

I hope you'll share your mailbox with us. Wishing you a blessed Thanksgiving.




17 comments:

  1. Those are all new to me. The Body in the Casket is the one that interests me the post. I hope you have a great week and a Happy Thanksgiving!

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  2. New to me, but they all look tempting. The Body in the Casket looks like my kind of read

    Enjoy your week and your family time. Thanks for visiting my blog.

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    1. Thanks for stopping by, Laurel. Hope you had a great week.

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  3. THE MAYFLOWER BRIDE and THE BODY IN THE CASKET look very good.

    ENJOY your week and your books.

    Elizabeth
    Silver's Reviews
    My Mailbox Monday

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  4. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving and happy reading!

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  5. The Mayflower Bride looks good. Enjoy your time off!

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    1. I'm excited to be starting at the beginning of the series, Laura. So many times I miss a book or two. Thanks for visiting.

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  6. Hi Cheryl,

    You have a real mixed bag this week and if I had all the time in the world in which to sit and read, I would probably take a chance on any or all of your titles.

    However, things are what they are, so I have to choose the book I am most likely to read short term, and that is 'The Body In The Casket'. I am a long time Agatha Christie reader and this tale is very similar to that of a Hercule Poirot investigation, in the way in which it is constructed and presented - so what's for me not to like :)

    Thanks for sharing and enjoy a Happy Thanksgiving holiday :)

    Yvonne

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    1. "The Body in the the Casket" certainly looks fabulous. I can't wait to read it. Hope you had a nice Thanksgiving.

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  7. All of these look really good. I especially like the sound of The Mayflower Bride.
    Have a wonderful Thanksgiving and Happy Reading!

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    1. Thanks for visiting, Martha. The Mayflower Bride certainly catches the eye. Hope you had a great Thanksgiving.

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