Mailbox Monday

This meme was started by Marcia at The Printed Page and Kristi at The Story Siren. This week Chick Loves Lit is hosting Mailbox Monday for Marcia.




I received three books last week.

The first, Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English by Natasha Solomons (click on the author's name and explore her website - it's worth the visit!), arrived with an envelope of Earl Grey lavender tea and a packet of Walker's Shortbread cookies. Also included was a lovely note from the author saying she hopes I enjoy the book. I love the cover of this one and the card from the author mirrored the book cover. From Hachette's website, the description of this book reads:

At the outset of World War II, Jack Rosenblum, his wife Sadie, and their baby daughter escape Berlin, bound for London. They are greeted with a pamphlet instructing immigrants how to act like "the English." Jack acquires Saville Row suits and a Jaguar. He buys his marmalade from Fortnum & Mason and learns to list the entire British monarchy back to 913 A.D. He never speaks German, apart from the occasional curse. But the one key item that would make him feel fully British -membership in a golf club-remains elusive. In post-war England, no golf club will admit a Rosenblum. Jack hatches a wild idea: he'll build his own.

It's an obsession Sadie does not share, particularly when Jack relocates them to a thatched roof cottage in Dorset to embark on his project. She doesn't want to forget who they are or where they come from. She wants to bake the cakes she used to serve to friends in the old country and reminisce. Now she's stuck in an inhospitable landscape filled with unwelcoming people, watching their bank account shrink as Jack pursues his quixotic dream.

In her tender, sweetly comic debut, Natasha Solomons tells the captivating love story of a couple making a new life-and their wildest dreams-come true.

The whole concept of Mr. Rosenblum has drawn me in and I'm already enjoying this book.

The second book I received is a LibraryThing early reviewer book. I snagged this one last February but it only showed up now. It's a nice finished hardcover of The Inheritance by Simon Tolkien. From the publisher's website:

A complex mystery of deception and betrayal that follows the court case of a young man set to hang for the murder of his father

When a famed Oxford historian is found dead in his study one night, all evidence points to his son, Stephen. About to be disinherited from the family fortune, Stephen returns to home after a long estrangement—and it happens to be the night his father is shot to death. When his fingerprints are found on the murder weapon, Stephen’s guilt seems undeniable. But there were five other people in the manor house at the time, and as their stories slowly emerge—along with the revelation that the deceased man was involved in a deadly hunt for a priceless relic in Northern France at the end of World War II—the race is on to save Stephen from a death sentence.

Everyone has a motive, and no one is telling the truth.

Unwilling to sit by and watch the biased judge condemn Stephen to death, an ageing police inspector decides to travel from England to France to find out what really happened in that small French village in 1945—and what artifact could be so valuable it would be worth killing for.

The third book is The News Where You Are by Catherine O'Flynn and it is also a LT review book. From the Random House website:

The News Where You Are tells the funny, touching story of Frank, a local TV news presenter in England. Beneath his awkwardly corny screen persona, Frank is haunted by disappearances: the mysterious hit-and-run that killed his predecessor Phil Smethway; the demolition of his father's post-war brutalist architecture; and the unmarked passing of those who die alone in the city. Frank struggles to make sense of these absences whilst having to report endless local news stories and trying to cope with his resolutely miserable mother. The result is that rare thing: a page-turning novel that asks the big questions in an accessible way, and is laugh-out-loud funny, genuinely moving and ultimately uplifting.

This is a slim book (about 250 pages) so it shouldn't take too long to read. I anticipate starting it this week.