In My Mailbox #119

In My Mailbox brought to you by The Story Siren

Bought:

Brave Story - Miyuki Miyabe

Young Wataru Mitani’s life is a mess. His father has abandoned him and his mother has been hospitalized after a suicide attempt. Desperately he searches for some way to change his life—a way to alter his fate. To achieve his goal, he must navigate the magical world of Vision, a land filled with creatures both fierce and friendly. And to complicate matters, he must outwit a merciless rival from the real world. Wataru’s ultimate destination is the Tower of Destiny where a goddess of fate awaits. Only when he has finished his journey and collected five elusive gemstones will he possess the Demon’s Bane—the key that will unlock his future. Charity, bravery, faith, grace and the power of darkness and light: these are the provinces of each gemstone. Brought together, they have the immeasurable power to bring Wataru’s family back together again.

The Kingdom of Childhood - Rebecca Coleman

The Kingdom of Childhood is the story of a boy and a woman; sixteen-year-old Zach Patterson, uprooted and struggling to reconcile his knowledge of his mother's extramarital affair, and Judy McFarland, a kindergarten teacher watching her family unravel before her eyes. Thrown together to organize a fundraiser for their failing private school and bonded by loneliness, they begin an affair that at first thrills, then corrupts each of them. Judy sees in Zachthe elements of a young man she loved as a child, but what Zach does not realize is that their relationship is, for Judy, only the latest in a lifetime of disturbing secrets.

Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day - Ben Loory

Loory's collection of wry and witty, dark and perilous contemporary fables is populated by people–and monsters and trees and jocular octopi–who are united by twin motivations: fear and desire. In his singular universe, televisions talk (and sometimes sing), animals live in small apartments where their nephews visit from the sea, and men and women and boys and girls fall down wells and fly through space and find love on Ferris wheels. In a voice full of fable, myth, and dream, Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day draws us into a world of delightfully wicked recognitions, and introduces us to a writer of uncommon talent and imagination.

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark - Guillermo del Toro

(Didn't realize this was based on the movie. I'll have to watch it soon.)

An illustrated novel that dives into the world of the 2011 Miramax film “Don’t be Afraid of the Dark.” The movie, a thriller written and produced by Guillermo del Toro, starring Guy Pearce and Katie Holmes, is about a young girl sent to live with her father (Pierce) and his girlfriend (Holmes). They move into a historic New England manor, which is secretly inhabited by a brood of small creatures. These creatures seem, at first, to be playful figments of his daughter’s imagination, but they quickly turn into a very real and very deadly threat. The illustrated novel takes place a hundred years before the movie begins. It chronicles the travels and adventures of Emerson Blackwood, a young nature scientist who begins to understand there’s more to the world than science understands. He travels across the globe, learning more and more about the world of secret and dangerous creatures. The book will have two components - the sections that tell the story of Blackwood's travels through the world, the people and creatures he encounters, and the increasing peril he finds himself in; and another set of sections which will show the illustrated "Field Guide to Dangerous Fairies" which Blackwood is creating.

So that's what I got this week. What did you all get?