Mailbox Monday


Another Monday, Another Mailbox!! This is a feature where we all share with each other the yummy books that showed up at our doors! WARNING: Mailbox Mondays can lead to extreme envy and GINORMOUS wishlists!!

Mailbox Monday is hosted by Marcia at The Printed Page.

This past week was a good one and I received a few for review and I picked up a couple at Goodwill and two that were on sale at Barnes & Noble.
For review I got...

by Kate Furnivall

Release Date:  August 3, 2010

SYNOPSIS:  The national bestselling author of The Russian Concubine takes us back to Tsarist Russia for a sweeping novel of love and intrigue.

Russia, 1910. Valentina Ivanova is the darling of St. Petersburg's elite aristocracy-until her romance with a Danish engineer creates a terrible scandal and her parents push her into a loveless engagement with a Russian count.

Meanwhile, Russia itself is bound for rebellion. With the Tsar and the Duma at each other's throats, and the Bolsheviks drawing their battle lines, the elegance and opulence of Tsarist rule are in their last days. And Valentina will be forced to make a choice that will change not only her own life, but the lives of those around her forever.


by Lauren Willig

Release Date:  October 28, 2010

SYNOPSIS:  Arabella Dempsey’s dear friend Jane Austen warned her against teaching. But Miss Climpson’s Select Seminary for Young Ladies seems the perfect place for Arabella to claim her independence while keeping an eye on her younger sisters nearby. Just before Christmas, she accepts a position at the quiet girls’ school in Bath, expecting to face nothing more exciting than conducting the annual Christmas recital. She hardly imagines coming face to face with French aristocrats and international spies.

Reginald “Turnip” Fitzhugh—often mistaken for the elusive spy known as the Pink Carnation—has blundered into danger before. But when he blunders into Miss Arabella Dempsey, it never occurs to him that she might be trouble.  When Turnip and Arabella stumble upon a beautifully wrapped Christmas pudding with a cryptic message written in French, “Meet me at Farley Castle”, the unlikely vehicle for intrigue launches the pair on a Yuletide adventure that ranges from the Austens’ modest drawing room to the awe-inspiring estate of the Dukes of Dovedale, where the Dowager Duchess is hosting the most anticipated event of the year: an elaborate 12-day Christmas celebration. Will they find poinsettias or peril, dancing or danger? And is it possible that the fate of the British Empire rests in Arabella and Turnip’s hands, in the form of a festive Christmas pudding?
    


by Jerrold M. Packard

SYNOPSIS:  Five women who shared one of the most extraordinary and privileged sisterhoods of all time.

Vicky, Alice, Helena, Louise, and Beatrice were historically unique sisters, born to a sovereign who ruled over a quarter of the earth's people and who gave her name to an era: Queen Victoria. Two of these princesses would themselves produce children of immense consequence. All five would face the social restrictions and familial machinations borne by ninetheenth-century women of far less exalted class.

Researched at the houses and palaces of its five subjects-- in London, Scotland, Berlin, Darmstadt, and Ottawa-- Victoria's Daughters examines a generation of royal women who were dominated by their mother, married off as much for political advantage as for love, and passed over entirely when their brother Bertie ascended to the throne. Packard, an experienced biographer whose last book chronicled Victoria's final days, provides valuable insights into their complex, oft-tragic lives as scions of Europe's most influential dynasty, and daughters of their own very troubled times.


by Lauren Willig

SYNOPSIS:  Determined to secure another London season without assistance from her new brother-in-law, Mary Alsworthy accepts a secret assignment from Lord Vaughn on behalf of the Pink Carnation. She must infiltrate the ranks of the dreaded French spy, the Black Tulip, before he and his master can stage their planned invasion of England. Every spy has a weakness and for the Black Tulip that weakness is beautiful black-haired women—his “petals” of the Tulip. A natural at the art of seduction, Mary easily catches the attention of the French spy, but Lord Vaughn never anticipated that his own heart would be caught as well. Fighting their growing attraction, impediments from their past, and, of course, the French, Mary and Vaughn find themselves lost in a treacherous garden of lies.

And as our modern-day heroine, Eloise Kelly, digs deeper into England’s Napoleonic-era espionage, she becomes even more entwined with Colin Selwick, the descendant of her spy subjects.


by Susan Vreeland

SYNOPSIS:  In her luminous debut novel, Susan Vreeland told the story of a Vermeer painting that transformed the lives of its many owners with its beauty. Now, in her stunning new novel, she tells the story of a painter who transformed Renaissance Italy with the beauty of her work. The Passion of Artemisia chronicles the extraordinary life of Artemisia Gentileschi, the first woman to make a significant contribution to art history.

At age eighteen, Artemisia Gentileschi finds herself humiliated in papal court for publicly accusing the man who raped her-Agostino Tassi, her painting teacher. When even her father does not stand up for her, she knows she cannot stay in Rome and begs to have a marriage arranged for her. Her new husband, an artist named Pietro Stiatessi, takes her to his native Florence, where her talent for painting blossoms and she becomes the first woman to be elected to the Accademia dell'Arte. But marriage clashes with Artemisia's newfound fame as a painter, and she begins a lifelong search to reconcile painting and motherhood, passion and genius.

Set against the glorious backdrops of Rome, Florence, and Genoa, peopled with historical characters such as Cosimo de' Medici and Galileo and filled with the details of the life of a Renaissance painter, The Passion of Artemisia is the story of Gentileschi's struggle to find love, forgiveness, and wholeness through her art. At once a dramatic tale of love and a moving father-daughter story, it is the portrait of an astonishing woman that will captivate lovers of Gentileschi's paintings and anyone interested in the life of a woman who ignored the conventions of her day and dared to follow her heart.


by Victoria Holt

SYNOPSIS:  For Harriet Delvaney, the great house of Menfreya, standing like a fortress on the Cornish coast, had always been a citadel of happiness and high spirits. Not until she herself came to Menfreya as a bride did Harriet discover the secret family legend of infidelity, jealousy and murder. And not until the legend seemed to come dangerously to life did Harriet begin to believe the old story that when the tower clock of Menfreya stopped, someone was about to die




So dear readers, what goodies came your way?


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12 comments:

  1. Th Jewel of St. Petersburg looks great and I love the cover of Mistletoe. Happy reading!

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  2. Ooh, I really liked The Passion of Artemesia! Nice mailbox haul!

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  3. Oh, Menfreya in the Morning - such memories it brings back - that was the very first Victoria Holt I ever read and got me hooked on her books, as well as the books of her alter ego Jean Plaidy. I must get a copy of it and reread it.

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  4. Would love to know what you think of Victoria's Daughters. It must be really tough following through after having such a distinguished mother.

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  5. Awesome selection Amy. That Victoria's Daughters book sounds so very interesting!

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  6. I am really looking forward to Jewel of St Petersburg myself!

    I have stuck with the Pink Carnation series this long, so I will keep reading it, although I have to say that this blurb doesn't really sell it to me that while.

    Passion of Artemisia is one of the few Susan Vreeland books I haven't yet read.

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  7. The Jewel of St. Petersburg sounds really good, but alas, I turned it down so I can catch up on my review copies. Happy reading!

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  8. It looks like you received a lot of goodies! Enjoy your new books.

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  9. Victoria's Daughters sounds particularly good to me! Enjoy all your new books!

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  10. Great mailbox Amy :)
    They all sound good, especially Victorias Daughters and The Mischief of the Mistletoe
    Happy reading!

    http://thebookworm07.blogspot.com/

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  11. Victoria's Daughters sounds very interesting. I think the cover on The Mischief of Mistletoe is beautiful! Enjoy all your new treasures!

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  12. Amy..awesome mailboxu. You talk about jealous??? The Mischef of the Mistletoe looks great and what a beautiful cover.
    I read The Passion of Artemesia a few years ago. Loved it, loved it, loved it!!!! I recommend you read it next.

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