In My Mailbox 4

In My Mailbox is a meme run by the Story Siren, in which bloggers share their good fortune and give a mention to all the lovely booky goodness coming their way. It runs weekly but you can do it less often like me.

It's only been a couple of weeks, I know, but it's been a good couple of weeks for the booky arrivals, so I thought another In My Mailbox was in order!

Breaking News: Incredibly Lucky Win

Daughter of Smoke and Bone was an incredibly fortuitous win in a Twitter giveaway run by @Lucyzilb,  publicist at Hodder and Stoughton. Just for being her 500th follower, I received this gorgeous hardback (and the picture really doesn't do it justice - the purply feathers are iridescent)! It was one of those entirely brilliant coincidences that happen online: I saw a tweet from her which mentioned a book I'd seen in our college library. That book was L'Auberge written by Julia Stagg, who is a former student of my college, so that piqued my interest. I followed both Julia and Lucy and found that I had won the giveaway (which I hadn't even known about...). Such a lucky day!

Anyway, as well as being beautiful, the book is an urban fantasy set in Prague, using folklore and some intriguing original ideas. It was only released a fortnight ago and the blogosphere is alight with praise for it, so I am extremely excited (if you can't tell already!) to have received a copy. I expect this will be a half term treat, so look out for my review.

Received For Review

These three lovelies arrived courtesy of the marvellous Caroline at Portrait of a Woman.

The Emerald Atlas:The Books of Beginning is a fantasy adventure for older children (9-12) that I have been wanting to read for a while. People have been calling it 'the new Harry Potter', which probably isn't helpful at all, but it does sound intriguing in its own right.

The Ghostgirl books look quirky (they're even a non-standard physical size and shape!) and a cool goth/emo take on the established YA plot of popularity issues in high school.

Death Sentence is a crime novel with a crime writer as its protagonist. Someone is using his plots to commit horrific murders and ruin his life. Sounds great, no? This one came as part of the Transworld Book Group. Watch out for the review!