In My Mailbox

IMM (In My Mailbox) is a weekly meme hosted and created by Kristi at The Story Siren. 

This is a way to share books we received for review, bought, and borrowed from friends or library.

Received for review

On April 30, 1945, Adolf Hitler, one of the most notorious mass-murderers in history, retired to his room in his bunker, 25 feet beneath the old Reich Chancery garden. Above him, the Red Army was encircling Berlin as his dream of a thousand-year Aryan empire lay in ruins. Hitler placed a glass cyanide capsule between his teeth and pointed a loaded service pistol at his right temple. Then, smugly believing he had both evaded capture and escaped all accountability for his crimes, he bit down and pulled the trigger. He was wrong! The Last Way Station begins moments after Hitler’s successful suicide, when the Führer finds himself mysteriously transported to a numbingly cold, solitary holding cell in the afterworld. There, he meets his caseworker, a supernatural being tasked with helping him face, and work through, his sins. The caseworker explains that Hitler will remain in solitary confinement indefinitely, as he prepares his soul for eventual return to the material world. The method, Hitler learns, involves seeking enlightenment through physically embodying his victims and then personally reliving the atrocities committed against them in his name. This speculative, historical fantasy narrative explores Hitler’s psychology, the psychology of evil and asks, ‘What, if anything, constitutes fitting punishment for the ‘super evil?’'

Chicagoan, Summer Woodfield, is in for the surprise of her life when she inherits the family estate, an antebellum rice plantation in Georgia. Not only is the old plantation in ruin, but comes complete with a cast of characters--characters long dead. The discovery of antiquated love letters stored inside a trunk in the attic sparks uncontrollable curiosity, and especially a purposely placed thumbprint on one of the letters. When Summer touches the print, she is inadvertently whisked back in time to the Civil War, not as the mistress of the manor as she dreams to be in the 21st century, but as a slave on her own plantation! Trapped in the clutches of a devastating war as a servant to her ancestors, she discovers the forbidden secret of her inheritance, while a love lost in the passage of time is rekindled...a love that holds her hostage between the past and the present.

“If you could have a one time affair with someone you’ve never seen before and would never see again and there was no way that anyone could ever find out, would you?”

Jarvis Sloan was an Internet success story. He’d left a thriving private practice as a psychiatrist specializing in family and sexual medicine in San Diego to form LifeSolutions Seminars, an on-line counseling site for unhappy people looking for an alternative to classical counseling. He knew that he was targeting a need before he ever started the development for the site, but even he was surprised by how many unhappy people there were out there on the Internet. 

Ironically, his own marriage is a hollow shell. He loves his wife Sharon, when he isn’t hating her, and he loves his sons unconditionally. The problem with his marriage is that sex with his wife has become a lot like planning to catching a ghost, easier to conceive than to put into action.

Jarvis decides that there’s only one way for him to deal with his growing frustration, affairs. But one affair leads to another, then another, then another. He quickly comes to the conclusion that while they may be an answer, they aren’t necessarily a good answer or a safe one. The affairs pose a risk to his family. A risk he’s not willing to take. So he tries to come up with a better answer. To do it he takes a step in an unexpected direction. A site devoted to pairing people to meet one another’s sexual needs on a one-time basis.

A new technology he stumbles on accidently in the course of a casual affair sets the stage for his new plan. It’s a technology that fits his idea perfectly, because there’s virtually no chance of being detected, no notes, no phone calls, no electronic footprints, nothing. It’s a direct connection to another person willing to donate their time to help meet your needs, just like you’re willing to donate your time to meet theirs.

Jarvis had already started an Internet sensation by trying to meet the needs of unhappy people. He helped some of them and made a lot of money along the way. If he could make money on LifeSolutions he could make money on this new idea as well, and maybe help meet some of his own needs in the process. So Jarvis with the help of Brooke Werner, a brilliant young computer engineer, establishes a registry inside LifeSolutions, which allows members to enter a high-security area, in which they can locate anonymous sexual partners for a single meeting, no commitments, no attachments, no threat to either party’s marriage. To ensure confidentiality, all information about both parties is erased from the embedded server every seventy-two hours. Making any connections made inside the server impossible to trace. What starts as a small idea for a limited number of people, is quickly magnified and transformed by the power of the Internet, generating $60 million in its first two years of operation.

Little did Jarvis suspect, when he created the TimeDonors sub-site, that at the height of its success, it would inextricably link his own life to seven others in a web of death and betrayal. Over a two-month period, all eight of them would have their worlds irreversibly changed. More than half of them wouldn’t survive, and one woman would be forced to find reserves of courage she never knew she had

When Elabea, a girl of fourteen summers, hears a whisper calling her name, she asks,"Is this proof that the land of Claire wasn't destroyed in the Dark War?" But her question ignites fear in her village. "The Oracles of the Cauldron forbid you to speak...the name! Death will come! We will be cursed!" Furthermore, when her best friend, Galadin, rallies beside her, the villagers divulge a dark secret: their fathers were the only survivors of the massacre at Min Brock. Forged as outcasts of their own homes and village, they fear the worst when the Cauldron sends warriors to destroy them. Desperate, they flee to Claire where Elabea is promised to become an all-powerful storyteller and Galadin a great warrior. But does Claire exist? And if it does, will it be an ally or a greater foe? Battling whispers, warriors and mysterious creatures, Elabea and Galadin must also contend with the darker questions about their fathers' past and the...Tears of Min Brock