What a great "in the mail" week! #Books

My favorite time of the day is 3:00pm. That is when the mail comes.  Okay, it’s also 5:00pm, when husband comes home and picks up my mail from my PO box 20 minutes away. Two times a day when I can feel the happy thrill of opening a package to a brand new read. What adventure will this one take me?

I guess receiving books in the mail is my “Amelie” – opening the package and seeing this beautifully bound book inside. I like opening the pages, seeing what font they used and if they autographed the inside. (Oh how I LOVE when they do that). Their two second signature makes this very special book, a collector. Maybe it’s absolutely nerdy – but I spend a good 5-10 minutes just looking at the book in its entirety. How luck this author is to get their thoughts down on paper and bound together for others to enjoy.

I received some great books in the mail this week, which deserve recognition for their thoughtfulness and dedication to literature!

Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation – by Mitch Horowitz (Thank you, Bantam Books!)

Synopsis: (Taken from inside of book)

It touched lives as disparate as those of Frederick Douglas, Franklin Roosevelt, and Mary Todd Lincoln – who once convinced her husband, Abe, to host a seance in the White House. Americans all, they were among the famous figures whose paths intertwined with the mystical and esoteric movement broadly known as the occult. Brought over from the Old World and spread throughout the New by some of the most obscure but gifted men and women of early U.S. history, this “hidden wisdom” transformed the spritual life of the still-young nation, through it, much of the Western world.

Yet the story of the American occult has remained largely untold. Now a leading writer on the subject of alternative spirituality reveals the facts behind the fictions. Here is a rich, fascinating, and colorful story of a religious revolution and an epic of offbeat history.

From the meaning of the symbols on the one dollar bill to the origins of the Ouija board, Occult America briskly sweeps from the nations’ Freemasonic roots to the birth of the New Age era and traces many people and episodes including:

• The spirit medium who in 1776 became America’s first female religious leader.
• The supernatural passions that marked the career of Mormon prophet Joseph Smith.
• The rural Sunday-school teacher whose clairvoyant visions heralded the dawn of the New age.
• The prominence of mind-power mysticism in the black-nationalist politics of Marcus Garvey.
• The Idaho druggist whose mail-order mystical religion ranked as the eight-largest faith in the world during the Great Depression.

Here, too, are America’s homegrown religious movements, from Transcendentalism to Spiritualism to Christian Science to the positive-thinking philosophy that continues to exert such a powerful pull on the public today. A feast for believers in alternative spirituality, an eye-opener for anyone curious about the unknown byroads of American history, Occult America is an engaging, long-overdue portrait of one nation, under many gods, whose revolutionary influence is still being felt in every corner of the globe.

Worst Nightmares by Shane Briant: A Novel of Suspense

Synopsis: (Taken from inside of book)

Dermot Nolan is an international, award-winning, bestselling author who seems to have it all – a successful career, fame, fortune, and a beautiful wife. Between the royalties coming from his most recent book, and the revenue he has received from the film company that bought the rights, Dermot seems every bit the literary darling.

And yet, for the last year, he has suffered from a bout of writer’s block and an in the process has grossly overspent his income. So when Dermot comes across an unsolicited horror manuscript stuffed into his mailbox from one Albert K. Arnold entitled My Worst Nightmares – My Delicious Memoirs, he cannot help but feel intrigued. It tells the story of the twisted, homicidal “Dream Healer” who snares his victims via his website worstnightmares.net, seduces them into revealing their own very own nightmares upon them, magnified a hundredfold. And while Dermot is disgusted by the horror of Mr. Arnold’s manuscript, he is so deeply intrigued, so much so that he seeks to solve his writer’s block by rewriting Arnold’s novel as his own.

Sweeping aside the threatening prospect of plagiarism, Dermot begins to rework the novel while simultaneously researching Arnold’s stories. In his search, he slowly begins to realize that the novel may not be entirely fictional, that these poor characters may have perished at the hands of the twisted torturer.  Could the Dream Healer be real? Could hese innocent cyber-surfers have fallen victim to a raving maniac? And could Dermot be writing his own ticket to death .. his very own worst nightmare?

Wretched (This is my Sorry) – Katherine Marple

Synopsis: (Taken from Back of Book)

Shane loves her but is afraid of her sickness. They’ve been together for years, but have grown apart. Even though they constantly fight, he clings to her as much as he can, because he’s afraid to let her go.

Drew loves her because she seems to understand him. She’s beautiful and open, exciting, and his best friend. But he knows her heart belongs to Shane, no matter what she tries to believe. She isn’t ready for him. Or is she?

She is confused and battling with every aspect of her life. Her relationship with her mother is volatile; her father is calmly holding her emotions together; her disease is taking over her body and her life; and her passionate relationships with men are simply stressing her out.

Will she put her unpredictable emotions in check before she loses everything?

Random Magic by Sasha Soren

Synopsis: (Taken from Inside Book)

When absent-minded Professor Random misplaces the main character from Alice in Wonderland, young Henry Witherspoon must book-jump to fetch Alice before chaos theory kicks in and the world vanishes.

Along the way he meets Winnie Flapjack, a wit-cracking doodle witch with nothing to her name but a magic feather and a plan.

Such as it is.

Henry and Winnie brave the Dark Queen, whatwolves, pirates, Struths, and fluttersmoths, Priscilla and Charybdis, and obnoxiously cheerful vampires, Baron Samedi, a nine-demensional cat, and one perpetually inebriated Muse to rescue Alice and save the world by tea time.

Watch the Hour by J.R. Lindermuth

Synopsis: (Taken from the back of book) Ben Yeager is a police officer, sworn to protect property of mine owners in the 1870s in Pennsylvania’s anthracite coal region. His job makes him the enemy of the Irish. And that’s the crux of his troubles. For Ben is in love with an Irish girl.

—

I would like to thank these authors and publishers for allowing me to read their books. It means a lot!