Mailbox Monday

Monday, September 7, 2015



Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came in their mailbox during the last week. Warning: Mailbox Monday can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles and humongous wish lists.
This week I'm very excited to share the following three advance review copies that I received through NetGalley (As a long-time fan of Frank Sinatra I'm quite anxious to read the first one!)

Sinatra: The Chairman
By James Kaplan
Douubleday Books
Publication Date:  October 27, 2015
Description:
Just in time for the Chairman's centennial, the endlessly absorbing sequel to James Kaplan's bestselling Frank: The Voice—finally the definitive biography that Frank Sinatra, justly termed "The Entertainer of the Century," deserves and requires. Like Peter Guralnick on Elvis, Kaplan goes behind the legend to give us the man in full, in his many guises and aspects: peerless singer, (sometimes) powerful actor, business mogul, tireless lover, and associate of the powerful and infamous.



In 2010's Frank: The Voice, James Kaplan, in rich, distinctive, compulsively readable prose, told the story of Frank Sinatra's meteoric rise to fame, subsequent failures, and reinvention as a star of live performance and screen. The story of "Ol' Blue Eyes" continues with Sinatra: The Chairman, picking up the day after Frank claimed his Academy Award in 1954 and had reestablished himself as the top recording artist in music. Frank's life post-Oscar was incredibly dense: in between recording albums and singles, he often shot four or five movies a year; did TV show and nightclub appearances; started his own label, Reprise; and juggled his considerable commercial ventures (movie production, the restaurant business, even prizefighter management) alongside his famous and sometimes notorious social activities and commitments.

The Palest Ink
By Kay Bratt
Lake Union Publishing
Publication Date: October 27, 2015
Description:
Set against the backdrop of Chairman Mao’s tumultuous Chinese Revolution, bestselling author Kay Bratt's The Palest Ink is a beautifully rendered novel about two best friends from very different walks of life.

A sheltered son from an intellectual family in Shanghai, Benfu spends 1966 anticipating a promising violinist career and an arranged marriage. On the other side of town lives Pony Boy, a member of a lower-class family—but Benfu’s best friend all the same. Their futures look different but guaranteed…until they’re faced with a perilous opportunity to leave a mark on history.

At the announcement of China’s Cultural Revolution, Chairman Mao’s Red Guard members begin their assault, leaving innocent victims in their wake as they surge across the country. With political turmoil at their door, both Benfu and Pony Boy must face heart-wrenching decisions regarding family, friendship, courage, and loyalty to their country during one of the most chaotic periods in history.

Weathering
By Lucy Wood
Bloomsbury USA
Publication Date: January 16, 2015
Description:
From the critically acclaimed, award-winning author of Diving Belles: a beautifully bewitching novel of memories, mothers, daughters, and ghosts.

Pearl doesn't know how she's ended up in the river--the same messy, cacophonous river in the same rain-soaked valley she'd been stuck in for years. But here her spirit swirls and stays . . . Ada, Pearl's daughter, doesn't know how she's ended up back in the house she left thirteen years ago--with no heating apart from a fire she can't light, no way of getting around apart from an old car she's scared to drive, and no company apart from her own young daughter, Pepper. She wants to clear out Pearl's house so she can leave and not look back. Pepper has grown used to following her restless mother from place to place, but this house, with its faded photographs, its boxes of cameras and its stuffed jackdaw, is something new. Fascinated by the scattering of people she meets, by the river that unfurls through the valley, and by the strange old woman who sits on the bank with her feet in the cold, coppery water, Pepper doesn't know why anyone would ever want to leave.

As the first frosts of autumn herald the coming of a long winter and Pepper and Ada find themselves entangled with the life of the valley, with new companions who won't be closed out, each will discover the ways that places can take root inside us, bind us together, and become us.

5 comments:

  1. Oooooo....The Palest Ink looks fantastic. The title is really drawing me in.

    The Sinatra book looks good too.

    ENJOY your week.

    Elizabeth
    Silver's Reviews
    My Mailbox Monday

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  2. Weathering looks really good to me. Enjoy all your new books!

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  3. I hope you love them all, especially the Sinatra book!

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  4. Weathering sounds good!! Enjoy your books.

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  5. They all look good to me but Sinatra is especially appealing. I can't wait to see what you think of it.

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