Mailbox Monday

It's Mailbox Monday, a fun weekly meme sponsored by Marcia at The Printed Page.  Just as the post office or mailbox is a place to gather to share the news, this gives readers  a chance to share the books that came into their house last week.  This week I had several goodies arrive at the Post Office.

The Dangerous Sports Euthanasia Society by Christine Coleman. 

This one even had to go through customs.  Several reading buddies on my LT thread were discussing this one, and the only way I could get my hands on it was to order it from the UK.  It arrived within a week (and cost me only $6.67 including postage!).

The back cover proclaims:

After her escape from an old people's home where her son, Jack and his new partner have placed her, (75 yr old) Agnes (Borrowdale)'s quest to find her grandchildren is complicated by unexpected encounters.  These new friends include Joe: the helpful lorry driver; Molly, the garrulous hotel-owner; Gazza the student; and Felix, the retired barrister's clerk, whom Agnes pulls back from attempted suicide.  Hoping to rekindle Felix's desire to live, she invents the Dangerous Sports Euthanasia Society, but soon fears that this falsehood, having acquired a momentum of its own, will end in tragedy.

Now who isn't ready to move this one to the top of the TBR pile?
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Little Bee by Chris Cleave.

A contest win from WiseOwl Book Review blog, this one promises to be a deep reading experience.  From the Amazon blurb:

The publishers of Chris Cleave's new novel "don't want to spoil" the story by revealing too much about it, and there's good reason not to tell too much about the plot's pivot point. All you should know going in to Little Bee is that what happens on the beach is brutal, and that it braids the fates of a 16-year-old Nigerian orphan (who calls herself Little Bee) and a well-off British couple--journalists trying to repair their strained marriage with a free holiday--who should have stayed behind their resort's walls. The tide of that event carries Little Bee back to their world, which she claims she couldn't explain to the girls from her village because they'd have no context for its abundance and calm. But she shows us the infinite rifts in a globalized world, where any distance can be crossed in a day--with the right papers--and "no one likes each other, but everyone likes U2." Where you have to give up the safety you'd assumed as your birthright if you decide to save the girl gazing at you through razor wire, left to the wolves of a failing state.

It may be fiction, but I suspect the there's much non-fiction truth to be found.

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Saving CeeCee Honeycutt by Beth Hoffman.

This was another contest win from  The Tome Traveler's Weblog. The description: 

Twelve-year-old CeeCee Honeycutt is in trouble. For years, she has been the caretaker of her psychotic mother, Camille-the tiara-toting, lipstick-smeared laughingstock of an entire town-a woman trapped in her long-ago moment of glory as the 1951 Vidalia Onion Queen. But when Camille is hit by a truck and killed, CeeCee is left to fend for herself. To the rescue comes her previously unknown great-aunt, Tootie Caldwell.

In her vintage Packard convertible, Tootie whisks CeeCee away to Savannah's perfumed world of prosperity and Southern eccentricity, a world that seems to be run entirely by women. From the exotic Miz Thelma Rae Goodpepper, who bathes in her backyard bathtub and uses garden slugs as her secret weapons, to Tootie's all-knowing housekeeper, Oletta Jones, to Violene Hobbs, who entertains a local police officer in her canary-yellow peignoir, the women of Gaston Street keep CeeCee entertained and enthralled for an entire summer.

Laugh-out-loud funny and deeply touching, Beth Hoffman's sparkling debut is, as Kristin Hannah says, "packed full of Southern charm, strong women, wacky humor, and good old-fashioned heart." It is a novel that explores the indomitable strengths of female friendship and gives us the story of a young girl who loses one mother and finds many others.

I've been doing a lot of reading set in the South lately, and this one sounds like it will be another delightful and charming read.
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The Secret Speech by Tom Rob Smith

 Another contest win from Gwendolyn at A Sea of Books.  The description on this one made hubby grab it:

Soviet Union, 1956. Stalin is dead, and a violent regime is beginning to fracture-leaving behind a society where the police are the criminals, and the criminals are innocent. A secret speech composed by Stalin's successor Khrushchev is distributed to the entire nation. Its message: Stalin was a tyrant. Its promise: The Soviet Union will change.  Facing his own personal turmoil, former state security officer Leo Demidov is also struggling to change. The two young girls he and his wife Raisa adopted have yet to forgive him for his part in the death of their parents. They are not alone. Now that the truth is out, Leo, Raisa, and their family are in grave danger from someone consumed by the dark legacy of Leo's past career. Someone transformed beyond recognition into the perfect model of vengeance.  From the streets of Moscow in the throes of political upheaval, to the Siberian gulags, and to the center of the Hungarian uprising in Budapest, THE SECRET SPEECH is a breathtaking, epic novel that confirms Tom Rob Smith as one of the most exciting new authors writing today.

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So ..... what was in your mailbox this week? Did you win any contests?  Don't forget to check my sidebar, and enter while there's still time.