Mailbox Monday~ Biblical & Global Histories

Welcome to The Burton Review Mailbox Monday

Mailbox Monday is hosted by Marcia at The Printed Page. We share what books that we found in our mailboxes last week. And I am adding what I purchased. Here's what I received during the last week:
Probably can't beat my favorite Mailbox Monday from last week, but I did get a few interesting ones this week. My favorite one I think I will be the Louis XIV one. I love finding old books on royalty (& in good shape)!

From a wonderful win over a month ago, I won the Asian Heritage Month Book Giveaway via Hachette Books. I had recently read several books by Japanese authors and loved them. And you can follow the links for a full description & photos that lead to Goodreads, I am feeling lazy this week, and it's a LOT of books.

Transparency: Stories (Paperback) by Hwang, Frances Short Stories "..captures the thousand minor battles waged in the homes of immigrants--struggles to preserve timehonored traditions or break free of them, to maintain authority or challenge it, and to take advantage of modern excesses without diluting one's ethnic identity."

Trail of Crumbs: Hunger, Love, and the Search for Home (Paperback) by Sunée, Kim "At a South Korean marketplace, three-year-old Kim Sunee's mother deposits her on a bench with a fistful of food and a promise to return. Three days later, a policeman takes the little girl and what is now a fistful of crumbs to a police station, where she learns that her mother isn't coming back."

Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans Au of... (Paperback) by Takaki, Ronald "Ronald Takaki relates the diverse 150-year history of Asian Americans. Through richly detailed vignettes--by turns bitter, funny, and inspiring--he offers a stunning panorama of a neglected part of American history."

Free Food for Millionaires (Paperback) by Lee, Min Jin "..her conflicts, relationships, and temperament that inform the novel. She is the child of immigrant Korean parents who work in the same laundry in Queens where they have always worked and are trying hard to hang on to their culture. Casey has catapulted out of that life on scholarships but now that college is over, she hasn't the same opportunities as her white friends.."

The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food (Paperback) by
Lee, Jennifer 8* Yes that's an 8 for an initial. Guess there were a lot of Jennifer Lee's and she wanted to stick out. Mission Accomplished. "... her search, Jennifer 8 Lee traces the history of Chinese-American experience through the lens of the food. In a compelling blend of sociology and history, Jenny Lee exposes the indentured servitude Chinese restaurants expect from illegal immigrant chefs, investigates the relationship between Jews and Chinese.."

And also from a win from Hachette Books:
Testimony by Anita Shreve "At a New England boarding school, a sex scandal is about to break. Even more shocking than the sexual acts themselves is the fact that they were caught on videotape. A Pandora's box of revelations, the tape triggers a chorus of voices--those of the men, women, teenagers, and parents involved in the scandal--that details the ways in which lives can be derailed or destroyed in one foolish moment."

From Paperbackswap, I recieved:

Mary :: Janis Cooke Newman Pub. 10/2007

"An engrossing novel about Mary Todd Lincoln – one of history’s most misunderstood and enigmatic women.Writing from Bellevue asylum — where the shrieks of the other inmates keep her awake at night — a famous widow can finally share the story of her life in her own words. From her tempestuous childhood in a slaveholding Southern family through the opium-clouded years after her husband’s death, we are let into the inner, intimate world of this brave and fascinating woman."

Louis XIV And The Greatness Of France by Maurice P. Ashley Publication Date: 2/1/1965
First Sentence: KING LOUIS XIII, the second Bourbon King of France, and Anne of Austria, the sister of the Habsburg Philip IV of Spain, were the parents of Louis XIV, and they detested each other. Read the first page

Thirty-plus years later there is only one review on Amazon, and no sypnopsis. At 192 pages it should be a quick and easy read, and I need to know more about the famous Louis.

The Diary of a Young Girl : The Definitive Edition :: Anne Frank After reading Miep Gies story on how she helped the Anne Frank family, she had suggested this book which is updated and more complete then from the original late 40's version.

Received for Review via Shelf Awareness:

The Brutal Telling by Louise Penny Pub. Sep. 2009 "Chaos is coming, old son.
With those words the peace of Three Pines is shattered. As families prepare to head back to the city and children say goodbye to summer, a stranger is found murdered in the village bistro and antiques store. Once again, Chief Inspector Gamache and his team are called in to strip back layers of lies, exposing both treasures and rancid secrets buried in the wilderness.

No one admits to knowing the murdered man, but as secrets are revealed, chaos begins to close in on the beloved bistro owner, Olivier. How did he make such a spectacular success of his business? What past did he leave behind and why has he buried himself in this tiny village? And why does every lead in the investigation find its way back to him?
As Olivier grows more frantic, a trail of clues and treasures— from first editions of Charlotte’s Web and Jane Eyre to a spider web with the word “WOE” woven in it—lead the Chief Inspector deep into the woods and across the continent in search of the truth, and finally back to Three Pines as the little village braces for the truth and the final, brutal telling."

SOUTH OF BROAD by Pat Conroy Pub. Aug. 11, 2009 "Charleston, S.C., gossip columnist Leopold Bloom King narrates a paean to his hometown and friends in Conroy's first novel in 14 years. In the late '60s and after his brother commits suicide, then 18-year-old Leo befriends a cross-section of the city's inhabitants: scions of Charleston aristocracy; Appalachian orphans; a black football coach's son; and an astonishingly beautiful pair of twins, Sheba and Trevor Poe, who are evading their psychotic father. The story alternates between 1969, the glorious year Leo's coterie stormed Charleston's social, sexual and racial barricades, and 1989, when Sheba, now a movie star, enlists them to find her missing gay brother in AIDS-ravaged San Francisco. Too often the not-so-witty repartee and the narrator's awed voice (he is very fond of superlatives) overwhelm the stories surrounding the group's love affairs and their struggles to protect one another from dangerous pasts. Some characters are tragically lost to the riptides of love and obsession, while others emerge from the frothy waters of sentimentality and nostalgia as exhausted as most readers are likely to be. Fans of Conroy's florid prose and earnest melodramas are in for a treat."

I picked this one for my last Waiting on Wednesday post, and I just received the galley, which should be an interesting interpretation of the Virgin Mary:

Girl Mary: A Novel by Petru Popescu Pub. Date: September 08, 2009 "The epic story of the Virgin Mary--not the icon, but the real teenage girl who seduced everyone, even God, with her soulful simplicity. Brings to life Mary of Nazareth as a beautiful, complicated girl in love, seen through the eyes of famous characters."

I also went shopping to support my local used bookstore, Roma's PreRead Books:

A Queen of this Realm by Jean Plaidy (I already have this but I liked the Three River Press cover better)
An oldie: The Plantagenets No. 4, Lady of the Garter by Juliet Dymoke

The Red Tent - Anita Diamant "The story of the biblical Dinah. Because it is based on a story in the Bible, many readers feel an extraordinary connection to its cast of characters, whose names and tales are part of our culture, and our families"

Wishing on Dandelions :: Mary E. Demuth ISBN-13: 9781576839539 "At seventeen, Maranatha admittedly has some trust issues--her mother abandoned her, a neighbor boy abused her for years, her best friend has left for college and God, ever since He spoke to her underneath the pecan tree three years ago, has remained elusive."