Mailbox Monday

This meme is hosted by Marcia at The Printed Page and Kristi at The Story Siren.






I received two books in the mail last week. The first is The Betrayal by Helen Dunmore which I won through the LibraryThing early reviewer programme.

From Helen Dunmore's website:

Leningrad in 1952, a city recovering from war. Andrei, a hospital doctor, and Anna, a nursery teacher, are forging a life together. They try to avoid coming to the attention of the authorities, but their private happiness is precarious. Stalin is still in power, and when Andrei has to treat the seriously-ill child of a senior secret police officer, he and Anna are caught in a web of betrayal.

I only realized after I received this book that it's a sequel to another book called The Siege! Thankfully, my library had a copy and I was able to borrow it.

The second book I received is Then Came the Evening by Brian Hart.

From Bloomsbury's website:

Bandy Dorner, home from Vietnam, awakes with his car mired in a canal, his cabin reduced to ashes, and his pregnant wife preparing to leave town with her lover. Within moments, a cop lies bleeding in the road.

Eighteen years later, Bandy's son -- a stranger bearing his name -- returns to the town, where the memory of his father's crime still hangs thick. When an accident brings the family -- paroled father, widowed mother, injured son -- back together, the three must confront their past, and struggle against their fate.

Like a traditional Greek tragedy, suffused with the mud, ice, and rock of the raw Idaho landscape, Then Came the Evening is tautly plotted and emotionally complex -- a stunning debut.