Mailbox Monday

Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came into their house last week

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Warning:  Mailbox Monday can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles, and humongous wish lists.
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Mailbox Monday, created by Marcia @A Girl and Her Books, has a permanent home now at  MAILBOX MONDAY.
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Here is a shout out to the administrators:

Emma @ Word and Peace

Serena @ Savvy Verse and Wit

Martha @ Reviews By Martha’s Bookshelf

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THANKS to everyone for keeping Mailbox Monday alive.

NetGalley's this week

The Ballad of Jacquotte Delahaye by Briony Cameron

This epic, dazzling tale based on true events illuminates a woman of color’s rise to power as one of the few purported female pirate captains to sail the Caribbean, and the forbidden love story that will shape the course of history.

In the tumultuous town of Yáquimo, Santo Domingo, Jacquotte Delahaye is an unknown but up-and-coming shipwright. Her dreams are bold but her ambitions are bound by the confines of her life with her self-seeking French father. When her way of life and the delicate balance of power in the town are threatened, she is forced to flee her home and become a woman on the run along with a motley crew of refugees, including a mysterious young woman named Teresa.

Jacquotte and her band become indentured servants to the infamous Blackhand, a ruthless pirate captain who rules his ship with an iron fist. As they struggle to survive his brutality, Jacquotte finds herself unable to resist Teresa despite their differences. When Blackhand hatches a dangerous scheme to steal a Portuguese shipment of jewels, Jacquotte must rely on her wits, resourcefulness, and friends to survive. But she discovers there is a grander, darker scheme of treachery at play, and she ultimately must decide what price she is willing to pay to secure a better future for them all.

An unforgettable tale told in three parts, The Ballad of Jacquotte Delahaye is a thrilling, buccaneering escapade filled with siege and battle, and is also a tender exploration of friendship, love, and the search for freedom and home.

Mercury by Amy Jo Burns

A roofing family’s bonds of loyalty are tested when they uncover a long-hidden secret at the heart of their blue-collar town—from Amy Jo Burns, author of the critically acclaimed novel Shiner

It’s 1990 and 17-year-old Marley West is blazing into the river valley town of Mercury, Pennsylvania. A perpetual loner, she seeks a place at someone’s table and a family of her own. The first thing she sees when she arrives in town are three men standing on a rooftop. Their silhouettes blot out the sun.

The Joseph brothers become Marley’s whole world before she can blink. Soon, she is young wife to one, The One Who Got Away to another, and adopted mother to them all. As their own mother fades away and their roofing business crumbles under the weight of their unwieldy father’s inflated ego, Marley steps in to shepherd these unruly men. Years later, an eerie discovery in the church attic causes old wounds to resurface and suddenly the family’s survival hangs in the balance. With Marley as their light, the Joseph brothers must decide whether they can save the family they’ve always known—or whether together they can build something stronger in its place.

Bookmail

Wild and Distance Seas by Tara Karr Roberts

Won on Bookachino speed dating

A gorgeous debut, laced through with magic, following four generations of women as they seek to chart their own futures.

Evangeline Hussey has made a home for herself on Nantucket, though she knows she is still an outsider to the island’s small, close-knit community, one that by 1849 has started to feel the decline of a once-thriving whaling industry. Her husband, Hosea, and the life they built together, was once all she needed―but now Hosea is gone, lost at sea. Evangeline is only able to hold on to his inn, and her place on the island, by employing a curious gift to glimpse and re-form the recent memories of those who would cast her out.

One night, an idealistic sailor appears on her doorstep asking her to call him Ishmael. He seeks only a warm bed and a bowl of chowder, and yet suddenly, unsettlingly, her careful illusion begins to fracture. He soon sails away with Ahab to hunt an infamous white whale, and Evangeline is left to forge a new life from the pieces that remain.

Her choices ripple through generations, across continents, and into the depths of the sea, in a narrative that follows Evangeline and her descendants from mid-nineteenth century Nantucket to Boston, Brazil, Florence, and Idaho. Moving, beautifully written, and elegantly conceived, Wild and Distant Seas takes Moby-Dick as its starting point, but Tara Karr Roberts brings four remarkable women to life in a spellbinding epic all her own.

Finding Sophie by Imran Mahmood 

Won on Bookachino speed dating

Two parents, desperate to find their missing daughter, stand accused of murder. How far will they go to find the truth?

Someone is guilty.

For the last seventeen years, everything Harry and Zara King have done has been for their crown jewel, Sophie, their one and only daughter. When she goes missing, Harry and Zara will stop at nothing to find her.

Someone knows what happened.

The police have no leads, and as the weeks pass there’s little news. Harry and Zara’s suspicion of a neighbor and his involvement in Sophie’s disappearance quickly becomes an obsession—and they'll do anything to get the answers to their questions.

Someone will pay.

When the neighbor is found dead in his apartment, Harry and Zara are arrested and charged with murder. They deny everything. Meanwhile, their precious daughter is still missing...