Monday Mailbox: Posting after so long

Mailbox Monday is a gathering place for readers to share the books that came into their house last week and explore great book blogs. Mailbox Monday can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles and humongous wish lists. It has finally found a permanent  home at Mailbox Monday with the following new administrators:

Leslie of Under My Apple Tree
Serena of Savvy Verse & Wit
Vicki of I'd Rather Be at the Beach

I have received a lot of books but haven't done a mailbox post for so long. I am posting only the print copies I received in the past two weeks or so. 

I received the following in my mailbox, thanks to publicists/Authors:

 Hello, My Love! (Book 1) by E Journey:

Beyond broad shoulders and heaving bosoms.

This thoughtful woman’s romance novel explores the inner life (thoughts, hopes, and doubts) of a couple as they contend with the realities of compelling relationships.

A modern-day pastiche of Jane Austen novels. Elise is a bright, beautiful law student, focused on a career and distrustful of men. She butts heads with Greg at her parents’ dinner parties. Dark, good-looking, internet-business owner, he finds Elise intriguing, so unlike the dark-haired seductive beauties he used to escort around. 

Specter of revenge. Unable to deny their attraction for each other, they spend an unexpected night together two days before he is to wed someone else. Lori, the jilted fiancée, exacts revenge, tearing Greg and Elise apart and forcing them to face who they are and what they really want.

An accident. Older and wiser, Greg and Else reunite two years later. He is in for a surprise. Later, their lives are thrown again into disarray when Elise becomes the victim of a hit-and-run. Is Lori back to haunt them again?

A delicious romance with a literary slant, spiced with a twist of whodunit.

Hello, Agnieszka! (Book 2) by E Journey:

A raw tale of early love, rivalry and betrayal. Her oldest son’s suicide attempt shocks the Halversons and forces Agnieszka to reveal a past she has kept from her children. 

Passion for music. Hearing her talented, irrepressible grandaunt Jola, a concert pianist in Poland, give a piano recital, young Agnieszka discovers a passion for music. Jola hones her talent and feeds her dreams.

Shattered dreams. Real-world problems, thorny relations with a mother tied to her roots and betrayal by Jola shatter her dreams.

A 70s love story. Agnieszka falls in love, but fate deals her first love a death blow. She rises from the losses she has suffered and gets a second chance at happiness.

A mother’s youthful dreams thwarted and renewed, amidst the exciting promise of the 70s.

 Welcome, Reluctant Stranger! (Book 3) by E Journey:

Frantic flight, peaceful life. Act of treason on an island country. Cauldron of warring emotions. Exotic beauty, ace with a gun. Hunk with gifts for mockery and cooking.

Nine-year-old Leilani and her family mysteriously flee the island country of Costa Mora, leaving her father. Years later, her peaceful solitary life in California ends when she rescues Justin Halverson from thugs and she learns a devastating truth about her father. As she agonizes over her father, Justin comforts her, and they’re drawn closer together.

With Justin, she returns to her birthplace to get her father quietly out. There, she reconnects with her past, but can she forgive her father and accept him for who he is? Can she finally be at peace with who she is? Welcome, Reluctant Stranger interweaves a love story into a tale of past political intrigue and Leilani’s inner journey, accepting her past.    

About the author:

​E Journey is a realist who thinks she has little imagination. Credit that to her training (Ph. D., University of Illinois) and work in mental health, writing for academics and bureaucrats, and critiquing the work of others. She’s been striving ever since to think and write like normal people.

She’s a well-traveled flâneuse—a female observer-wanderer—who watches, observes, listens. And writes. A sucker for happy endings, she finds enough that depresses her about real life, but seeks no catharsis by writing about it. For her, writing is escape, entertainment. She doesn’t strive to enlighten. Not deliberately. But the bias of her old profession does carry over into her writing. So, instead of broad shoulders and heaving bosoms, she goes into protagonists' thoughts, emotions, inner conflicts, insecurities, and struggles to reach balance and grow.

The Arithmetic of Breasts and Other stories’ by Rochelle Potkar:

A cluster of 7½ literary short stories presenting the romantic-sexual facets of: Narain who lusts for Munika, Old Jaganlal who wants a favour from young Dia, Jackie who is in love with Nic, a surgeon who is changing more than a patient s hairline, nose, lip, and chin, Shonali and Neel who are realizing that infidelity might not be such an easy thing, a woman who walks the tight rope between tradition and sexual exploitation, and Sunil who meets the woman of his desires through an adult dating site. Through these stories, Rochelle Potkar explores the intensely personal unrelationship that exists alongside its conventional and socially articulate twin, the relationship.

Brutal by Uday Satapathy:

Brutal is the debut novel of Uday Satpathy. Two ace journalists—Prakash and Seema stir up a hornet's nest as they chase the story of a schoolteacher who murders 11 of his students. Their pursuit of the truth takes them to the ominous forests of Bandhavgarh where an eerily similar incident had occurred 8 years ago. One by one, their leads end up dead and they soon realise that they're pitted against forces more evil and powerful than they could have ever imagined.

Wet Silence: Poems about Hindu Widows by Sweta Srivastava Vikram

Wet Silence bears moving accounts of Hindu widows in India. The book raises concern about the treatment of widowed women by society; lends their stories a voice; shares their unheard tales about marriage; reveals the heavy hand of patriarchy; and, addresses the lack of companionship and sensuality in their lives. It’s a collection of poems that covers a myriad of subjects centered on social evils such as misogyny, infidelity, gender inequality, and celibacy amongst other things. The poems in the collection are bold, unapologetic, and visceral. The collection will haunt you.

Monday: Mailbox/What Am I reading?

Mailbox Monday is a gathering place for readers to share the books that came into their house last week and explore great book blogs. Mailbox Monday can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles and humongous wish lists. It has finally found a permanent  home at Mailbox Monday with the following new administrators:

Leslie of Under My Apple Tree
Serena of Savvy Verse & Wit
Vicki of I'd Rather Be at the Beach


I received the following in my mailbox:

Two Hearts: When I Said I Do, I Meant Forever by James Eric Richey

Jaxon Tagget is a cattle-rancher's son, born and raised on the Double T, just outside of Dillon, Montana. In love with his high-school sweetheart, Annie, Jaxon proposes on graduation night, presenting her with a wedding ring made from gold he mined himself. Annie accepts immediately, to the horror of her bitter, man-hating mother.

Jaxon's a wonderful husband, but the warnings of Annie's mother linger in the young bride's ears. And it doesn't help that women continue to fall all over the markedly handsome Jaxon.

Unaware of his wife's persistent doubts, Jaxon is struggling with his own troubles when he finds out his dad is sorely in need of money to save the ranch. But hope glimmers gold when he rediscovers the old mine on the Double T.

While Jaxon travels to verify the mine's productivity, Annie grows increasingly suspicious. Is Jaxon's absence what it seems, or does he have another, less faithful reason for his travels? When Annie sees a picture of the beautiful laboratory owner whom Jaxon is visiting, she's sure the only gold he's interested in is long, blond hair. Is Annie right, or will it be her doubts that forever sever their Two Hearts?

Vexed Questions by Anne Higgins: (POETRY E-BOOK)

“Leave the given/in order to imagine/the possible,” poet Anne Higgins tells us, and this she does in poems of striking delicacy and imagination. Whether her subject is the avocado’s “lizardlike skin,” the larkspur’s “lacy face,” or her own fear and rebirth after cancer, Higgins’ inventive mind and flawless ear trace the transformations of one thing into another as new worlds open in surprise and splendor. In poems that capture the rosary-bead mysteries of a lifetime that encompasses both world travel and merciless history, Anne Higgins asks the vexed questions that challenge and sustain us: “What is not forgiveness?/What is not to forgive?” Her poems are “all flame and feather/all flight and curve,” and it is a pleasure to read and take flight with them.

Rarity from the Hollow by Robert Eggleton

Lacy Dawn is a true daughter of Appalachia, and then some. She lives in a hollow with her worn-out mom, her Iraq War disabled dad, and her mutt Brownie, a dog who's very skilled at laying fiber optic cable. Lacy Dawn's android boyfriend, DotCom, has come to the hollow with a mission. His equipment includes infomercial videos of Earth's earliest proto-humans from millennia ago. DotCom has been sent by the Manager of the Mall on planet Shptiludrp: he must recruit Lacy Dawn to save the Universe in exchange for the designation of Earth as a planet which is eligible for continued existence within a universal economic structure that exploits underdeveloped planets for their mineral content. Lacy Dawn’s magic enables her to save the universe, Earth, and, most importantly, her own family.

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Hosted by Sheila @ One Person's Journey Through a World of Books. We discuss the books that we've read and what we're planning to read for the week.

I read a few poetry books along romance novels...

Monday: Mailbox/What Am I reading?

Mailbox Monday is a gathering place for readers to share the books that came into their house last week and explore great book blogs. Mailbox Monday can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles and humongous wish lists. It has finally found a permanent  home at Mailbox Monday with the following new administrators:

Leslie of Under My Apple Tree
Serena of Savvy Verse & Wit
Vicki of I'd Rather Be at the Beach

I received two poetry books via snail mail:

The Arranged Marriage by Jehanne Dubrow:

With her characteristic music and precision, Dubrow's prose poems delve unflinchingly into a mother's story of trauma and captivity. The poet proves that truth telling and vision can give meaning to the gravest situations, allowing women to create a future on their own terms.

Apocalypse Now: Poems and Prose from the End of Days

Every society and every generation has its version of the apocalypse: swine flu, genetic mutation, global warming, nuclear fallout, the second coming, peak oil, mass extinction, giant irradiated ants, zombies… Apocalypse Now: Poems and Prose from the End of Days is the first anthology of its kind to bring together the poetry and prose of some of America’s finest (though not always most well-known) literary voices with an eye for the literary and the popular, for story and lyric, for the past and the future, for the psychological and the physical, for the real and the fantastic.

Authors include Margaret Atwood, Paolo Bacigalupi, Brian Barker, Jenna Bazzell, Nicky Beer, Pinckney Benedict, Kristin Bock, Tina Connolly, David J. Daniels, Darcie Dennigan, Brian Evenson, Seth Fried, TR Hummer, Rodney Jones, Judy Jordan, Kelly Link, Alexander Lumans, Charles Martin, Davis McCombs, Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum, Marc McKee, Tessa Mellas, Wayne Miller, Simone Muench, Keith Montesano, Joyce Carol Oates, Ed Pavlić, Catherine Pierce, Kevin Prufer, Joshua Robbins, David Roderick, Jeffrey Schultz, Maggie Smith, Chet Weise, Josh Woods, and E. Lily Yu.

Apocalypse Now examines our obsession with life and death, creation and destruction, and the physical realms we occupy and, eventually, no longer will, asking: How will the end come? What will we do when all the lights go out?

I also received following e-books:

Mama Cried by Talia Haven:

Jenny was enjoying herself on the swings when Azula, one of the guardians of the playground came to take her away. 

Together they journey to a cinder building where Jenny must make a powerful decision.

Mama Cried is a new adult, speculative fiction, paranormal/ ghost, about 3600 words.

Flashes of Emotion: A Collection of Poems by Augustine Sam:

Flashes of Emotion is a book of romantic poetry, a selection that allows the reader to tap into the poet's insights into a wide variety of topics from life and love to death and drudgery - a collection that showcases Augustine Sam's lively, refreshing and innovative style. A 'must have' for anyone who has ever experienced love, pain, defeat, or joy.

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Hosted by Sheila @ One Person's Journey Through a World of Books. We discuss the books that we've read and what we're planning to read for the week.

I read two poetry books along with romance novels...

Monday: Mailbox/What Am I Reading?

Mailbox Monday is a gathering place for readers to share the books that came into their house last week and explore great book blogs. Mailbox Monday can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles and humongous wish lists. It has finally found a permanent  home at Mailbox Monday with the following new administrators:

Leslie of Under My Apple Tree
Serena of Savvy Verse & Wit
Vicki of I'd Rather Be at the Beach

After a long time, I received a poetry book:

The Book of Men by Dorianne Laux: The narrative poems in Dorianne Laux's fifth collection charge through the summer of love, where Vietnam casts a long shadow, and into the present day, where she compassionately paints the smoky bars, graffiti, and addiction of urban life. Laux is "continually engaging and, at her best, luminous". 

To Kiss Frank

 make out with him a bit, 
this is what my friend would like to do
oh these too many dead summers later, 
and as much as I want to stroll with her 
into the poet's hazy fancy 
all I can see is O'Hara's long gone lips 
fallen free of the bone, slumbering 
beneath the grainy soil.

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Hosted by Sheila @ One Person's Journey Through a World of Books. We discuss the books that we've read and what we're planning to read for the week.

I have read 151 books till date, in 2015....

Monday: Mailbox/What Am I Reading?

Mailbox Monday is a gathering place for readers to share the books that came into their house last week and explore great book blogs. Mailbox Monday can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles and humongous wish lists. It has finally found a permanent  home at Mailbox Monday with the following new administrators:

Leslie of Under My Apple Tree
Serena of Savvy Verse & Wit
Vicki of I'd Rather Be at the Beach

I received three poetry books for two tours....

TLC tour for THE ANTIGONE POEMS by Marie Slaight hosted by Lisa Munley

Poetic Book Tours hosted by Serena Agusto-Cox for The Robot Scientist's Daughter by Jeannine Hall Gailey and Reconnaissance by Anne Higgins


The Antigone Poems

Featuring poetry by Marie Slaight and charcoal drawings by Terrence Tasker, The Antigone Poems was created in the 1970’s, while the artists were living between Montreal and Toronto. An intensely personal invocation of the ancient Greek tale of defiance, the illustration and poetry capture the despair of the original tale in an unembellished modernized rendition.  

 The Antigone Poems provides a special expedition into the depths of the ancient Sophocles tragedy while questioning  power, punishment and one of mythology’s oldest themes: rebellion.

The Robot Scientist’s Daughter by Jeannine Hall Gailey

Dazzling in its descriptions of a natural world imperiled by the hidden dangers of our nuclear past, this book presents a girl in search of the secrets of survival. In The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, Jeannine Hall Gailey creates for us a world of radioactive wasps, cesium in the sunflowers, and robotic daughters. She conjures the intricate menace of the nuclear family and nuclear history, juxtaposing surreal cyborgs and mad scientists from fifties horror flicks with languid scenes of rural childhood. Mining her experience growing up in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, the writer allows the stories of the creation of the first atomic bomb, the unintended consequences of scientific discovery, and building nests for birds in the crooks of maple trees to weave together a reality at once terrifying and beautiful. The Robot Scientist’s Daughter reveals the underside of the Manhattan Project from a personal angle, and charts a woman’s – and America’s – journey towards reinvention.

 Reconnaissance by Anne Higgins
Early praise for the book can be found in the The Hollins Critic magazine:

“Reconnaissance is Anne Higgins’s seventh poetry collection. In it, she reconnoiters her past, significant events in American history (the assassination of JFK, 9/11, a fire in which twenty-eight eight-year-olds died), her diminishing eyesight. (In “Another Blind Beggar” she informs us that there is “a grey footprint in the center of my vision, / a grey cat sits in the center of the field.” She writes about life as a nun and favorite pop songs. There are poems about birds, insects, and her mother. In short, this book maps an entire life, the life of a vibrant, intelligent, and sharply observant woman. “Morning yelps with cold,” she writes, and we feel and hear the charged air, become conscious of the exciting chill.” — Review by Kelly Cherry

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Hosted by Sheila @ One Person's Journey Through a World of Books. We discuss the books that we've read and what we're planning to read for the week.

I have read 103 novels till date, in 2015....

Monday: Mailbox/What Am I Reading?

Mailbox Monday is a gathering place for readers to share the books that came into their house last week and explore great book blogs. Mailbox Monday can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles and humongous wish lists. It has finally found a permanent  home at Mailbox Monday with the following new administrators:

Leslie of Under My Apple Tree
Serena of Savvy Verse & Wit
Vicki of I'd Rather Be at the Beach

I received two books, thanks you the authors/publicists:

Night is the Hunter by Steven Gore

They call it pulling the trigger. Not by a killer in the night, but by a judge on the bench.

Twenty years ago, Judge Ray McMullin proved to the people of San Francisco he could pull that trigger by sentencing Israel Dominguez to death for a gangland murder. But it meant suppressing his own doubts about whether the punishment really did fit the crime.

As the execution date nears, the conscience-wracked judge confesses his unease to former homicide detective Harlan Donnally on a riverbank in far Northern California. And after immersing himself in the Norteno and Sureno gang wars that left trails of bullets and blood crisscrossing the state and in the betrayals of both cops and crooks alike, Donnally is forced to question not only whether the penalty was undeserved, but the conviction itself.

Soon those doubts and questions double back, for in the aging judge's panic, in his lapses of memory and in his confusions, Donnally begins to wonder whether he's chasing facts of the case or just phantoms of a failing mind. But there's no turning back, for the edge of night is fast closing in on Dominguez, on McMullin, and on Donnally himself.

The Pocket Wife by Susan Crawford:

Dana Catrell wakes from a drunken stupor in time to see an ambulance pull into her neighbour's house a few doors down. Celia Steinhauser has been murdered. But Dana was at her house only a few hours ago. Celia wanted to show her a photo - a photo of Dana's husband with another woman - and Dana has blank spots of what happened to the rest of the afternoon . . .

This is a thriller that makes the reader question everything. Dana, we learn, has a history of mental illness and as she descends into another manic episode, the line between what actually happened and what she has imagined becomes blurred.

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Hosted by Sheila @ One Person's Journey Through a World of Books. We discuss the books that we've read and what we're planning to read for the week.

I have read 23 novels+ 1 poetry book in Feb. Not bad, eh?

Musing Mondays

Musing Mondays is a weekly meme that asks you to write about anything related to books.

I am one of those who has never tried to listen to audio books. Maybe I should. I don't know to go about it. Can anyone recommend free audio books? What apps should I download to listen to audio books on my tab?


 THIS WEEK’S RANDOM QUESTION: What do you think about re-purposing old books (eg. into art journals, etc)? Why?

I have not thought about it. Maybe, the  time has come for me to think about it. It is a creative art and I ought to pursue it....

Monday: Mailbox/What Am I Reading?

Mailbox Monday is a gathering place for readers to share the books that came into their house last week and explore great book blogs. Mailbox Monday can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles and humongous wish lists. It has finally found a permanent  home at Mailbox Monday with the following new administrators:

Leslie of Under My Apple Tree
Serena of Savvy Verse & Wit
Vicki of I'd Rather Be at the Beach

I received two books, thanks you the authors/publicists:

Trigger Warning by Neil Gaiman: It is a spectacular blend—twenty-five pieces in all—of horror and ghost stories, fabulism and poetry, science fiction and fairy tales that explore the realm of experience and emotion. A writer whose creative genius is unparalleled, Gaiman entrances readers with his literary alchemy, transporting us deep into the realm of imagination, where the fantastical becomes real and the everyday incandescent. Full of wonder and terror, surprises and delights, TRIGGER WARNING is a dazzling gift that will engage the mind, stir the heart, and shake the soul. 


Doll God by Luanne Castle: Luanne Castle's debut poetry collection, Doll God, studies traces of the spirit world in human-made and natural objects--a Japanese doll, a Palo Verde tree, a hummingbird. Her exploration leads the reader between the twin poles of nature and creations of the imagination in dolls, myth, and art.

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Hosted by Sheila @ One Person's Journey Through a World of Books. We discuss the books that we've read and what we're planning to read for the week.

I have only been reading romance novels since August 2014. Beginning from Jan 1, 2015, I have finished more that 43 novels till date. I am feeling good but I know I need to read serious stuff. Maybe in the next two months, I will do that!

Musing Mondays: October 27, 2014

Musing Mondays asks you to muse about one of the following each week…

• Describe one of your reading habits

Many a times  I read till 3 am. Even if the next day is a working day. I can't sleep unless I have finished what I have been reading.

Monday: Mailbox/What Am I reading?

Mailbox Monday is a gathering place for readers to share the books that came into their house last week and explore great book blogs. Mailbox Monday can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles and humongous wish lists. It has finally found a permanent  home at Mailbox Monday with the following new administrators:

Leslie of Under My Apple Tree
Serena of Savvy Verse & Wit
Vicki of I'd Rather Be at the Beach

I received two books this past week, thanks to the publicist:

Both the novels are techno-thrillers...

Death Never Sleeps by E. J. Simon

Death Logs In by E. J. Simon

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Hosted by Sheila @ One Person's Journey Through a World of Books. We discuss the books that we've read and what we're planning to read for the week.

It has been around three months and I have only been reading romances. Life has been kinda busy so reading romances seems like light reading. I have finished more that 230 novels till date. My goal was to read 150. I am feeling good but I know I need to read serious stuff. Maybe in the next two months, I will do that!