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, but for the month of December MM is on tour and hosted by Lady Q @ Let Them Read Books.

Hello all!  I hope this post finds you well and ready for the holidays!  I still can't believe the end of the year is almost here and only a few more Mailbox Mondays to go until 2011!  Good thing this year is coming to an end with some awesome ARCs in my mailbox!

Madame Tussaud: A Novel of the French Revolution
by Michelle Moran

Acquired via: Won on GoodReads!

Release Date:  February 15, 2011

SYNOPSIS:  The world knows Madame Tussaud as a wax artist extraordinaire…but who was this woman and how did she become one of the most famous sculptresses of all time? In these pages, her tumultuous story comes to life as only Michelle Moran could tell it. The year is 1788, and a revolution is about to begin…

Marie Tussaud has learned the secrets of wax sculpting by working alongside her uncle in their celebrated wax museum, the Salon de Cire. From her popular model of the American Ambassador, Thomas Jefferson, to her tableau of the royal family at dinner, Marie’s museum provides Parisians with the very latest news on fashion, gossip, even politics. Her customers hail from every walk of life, and when word arrives that the royals themselves are coming to see their likenesses, Marie never dreams that the king’s sister will request her presence at Versailles as a royal tutor in wax sculpting. Yet when a letter with a gold seal is delivered to her home, Marie knows she cannot refuse—even if it means time away from her beloved Salon and her increasingly dear friend, Henri Charles.

As Marie becomes acquainted with her pupil, Princess Élisabeth, she is taken to meet both Marie Antoinette and King Louis XVI, who introduce her to the glamorous life at court. From lavish parties with more delicacies than she’s ever seen, to rooms filled with candles lit only once before being discarded, Marie steps into to a world entirely different from her home on the Boulevard du Temple, where people are selling their teeth in order to put food on the table.

Meanwhile, many resent the vast separation between rich and poor. In salons and cafés across Paris, people like Camille Desmoulins, Jean-Paul Marat, and Maximilien Robespierre are lashing out against the monarchy. Soon, there’s whispered talk of revolution…Will Marie be able to hold on to both the love of her life and her friendship with the royal family as France approaches civil war? And more importantly, will she be able to fulfill the demands of powerful revolutionaries who ask that she make the death masks of beheaded aristocrats, some of whom she knows?

Spanning five years from the budding revolution to the Reign of Terror, Madame Tussaud brings us into the world of an incredible heroine whose talent for wax modeling saved her life and preserved the faces of a vanished kingdom.

I Am The Chosen King
by Helen Hollick


Acquired via:  Sourcebooks Publishing

Release Date:  March 1, 2011

SYNOPSIS:  England 1044. As dawn breaks over a summer's landscape. Harold Godwinesson is riding east. One of seven sons of the noble Godwine family, he is newly created Earl of East Anglia. But marrying for love sets him against his family and his King.

In France, William, the bastard son of a duke, is hungry for power. A charismatic leader, he cares nothing for the hypocrisy of court, only his next victory. Matched by his determined wife Mathilda, he casts his eyes toward England.

King Edward is alternately influenced and angered by his powerful mother, the Dowager Queen Emma. Manipulated into a marriage of convenience with Harold's sister, he is at the mercy of his nobles - and he lacks an heir.

That's my mailbox....how about yours?