Monday Mailbox - September 3rd

This week has been one where tons of books came into my personal library:

•  I finally started unpacking a bag of books I inherited from my Dad.  There'll be a separate post on that one.
• We've been weeding like crazy at the town library, and there were several books that were withdrawn that I just could not bear to let go until I've had a chance to read them.  A separate post on weeding/withdrawing and book lust is on the boards for sometime this month!!!
• Books in the Virtual Mailbox that landed on my E-readers
• Real paper/print books that arrived in my old fashioned mailbox (or its equivalent here in Maine - the front door.)

Let's start with the Virtual Mailbox:

 - Books downloaded on my Nook - weekly freebies or low priced volumes.
 Two that I've had on my radar for awhile that fit the September series bill:

• Murder on the Cote D'Azur by Susan Kiernan Lewis
• Mad Dog and Englishman by J.D. Hayes

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- Books from Net Galley - Review copies that grabbed me:

Seattle, 1933. Single mother Vera Ray kisses her three-year-old son, Daniel, goodnight and departs to work the night-shift at a local hotel. She emerges to discover that a May-Day snow has blanketed the city, and that her son has vanished. Outside, she finds his beloved teddy bear lying face-down on an icy street, the snow covering up any trace of his tracks, or the perpetrator's.

Seattle, 2010. Seattle Herald reporter Claire Aldridge, assigned to cover the May 1 "blackberry winter" storm and its twin, learns of the unsolved abduction and vows to unearth the truth. In the process, she finds that she and Vera may be linked in unexpected ways...

Net Galley provided another September sequel.  This one is the second in Susan Elia MacNeal's Maggie Hope series that began with  Mr. Churchill's Secretary - another series I'm anxious to get into.

As World War II sweeps the continent and England steels itself against German attack, Maggie Hope, former secretary to Prime Minister Winston Churchill, completes her training to become a spy for MI-5. Spirited, strong-willed, and possessing one of the sharpest minds in government for mathematics and code-breaking, she fully expects to be sent abroad to gather intelligence for the British front. Instead, to her great disappointment, she is dispatched to go undercover at Windsor Castle, where she will tutor the young Princess Elizabeth in math.

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 - In the Pony Express Mail (or the UPS pony) I got

• From the Early Reviewers program on LibraryThing.com I received this biography of Hetty Green.  Biography is one of my favorite genres, so this one is definitely going right onto the teetering Mt. Toobie. 

  No woman in the Gilded Age made as much money as Hetty Green. At the time of her death in 1916, she was worth at least 100 million dollars, equal to more than 2 billion dollars today. A strong believer in women being financially independent, she offered valuable lessons for the present times.

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• And then Amazon delivered a book I ordered in hard copy:

We've started a Mah Jongg class at our library, so of course I had to audit and be sure it was something we wanted to continue to sponsor.  I got hooked on this fun game, and now look forward to our weekly sessions of the clack of the tiles.  This book, by Elaine Sandberg is one of the best I've found to explain the rules and the strategies of this ancient game to those of us who are clueless.  Since our instructor is leaving to winter in Florida later this month, the rest of us wanted to be well-armed with help so we can keep going during those long winter afternoons.  A welcome break from reading, groups like this one prevent me from becoming a total recluse - a state I'm not quite ready for yet.
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Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came into their house recently. Created by Marcia at The Printed Page, Mailbox Monday, now has its own blog. Hosting duties are rotated every month. Kathy at Bermudaonion's Weblog is our host for September. Be sure to drop by to see what everyone else got this week.