Mailbox Monday and In My Mailbox: An Heiress, Lunch Wars and Life... Along With A Little Dessert!

Mailbox Monday, created by Marcia at The Printed Page, is on a blog tour!

This month, Mailbox Monday is being hosted over at The Bluestocking Guide, so stop by and join the fun!

In My Mailbox is hosted by The Story Siren!

It is so much fun to see what everyone is getting in the mail.

Thanks for taking the time to visit ~ I just love hearing from you! Please let me know if you have read any of these books - I'd love to hear how you liked them!! :)

So this week I've got four books... three to review and one I picked up at a neighbor's garage sale for $1.00!


The American Heiress: A Novel by Daisy Goodwin ~ Fiction ~ Available June 21st ~ Received courtesy of the publisher for review... I have to say that I LOVE LOVE LOVE this cover! :)

Be careful what you wish for. Traveling abroad with her mother at the turn of the twentieth century to seek a titled husband, beautiful, vivacious Cora Cash, whose family mansion in Newport dwarfs the Vanderbilts’, suddenly finds herself Duchess of Wareham, married to Ivo, the most eligible bachelor in England. Nothing is quite as it seems, however: Ivo is withdrawn and secretive, and the English social scene is full of traps and betrayals. Money, Cora soon learns, cannot buy everything, as she must decide what is truly worth the price in her life and her marriage.

Life Gets Better: The Unexpected Pleasures of Growing Older ARC by Wendy Lustbader ~ Non-Fiction / Self-Help / Inspirational ~ Available August 18th ~ Received courtesy of the publisher for review via Shelf Awareness

The acclaimed author of What's Worth Knowing reveals the truth about aging: Old age often offers a richer, better, and more self-assured life than youth.

From our earliest lives, we are told that our youth will be the best time of our lives-that the energy and vitality of youth are the most important qualities a person can possess, and that everything that comes after will be a sad decline. But in reality, says Wendy Lustbader, youth is not the golden era it is often made out to be. For many, it is a time riddled with anxiety, angst, confusion, and the torture of uncertainty. Conversely, the media often feeds us a vision of growing older as a journey of defeat and diminishment. They are dead wrong. As Lustbader counters, "Life gets better as we get older, on all levels except the physical."

Life Gets Better is not a precious or whimsical tome on the quirky wisdom of the elderly. Lustbader-who has worked for several decades as a social worker specializing in aging issues-conducted firsthand research with aging and elderly people in all walks of life, and she found that they overwhelmingly spoke of the mental and emotional richness they have drawn from aging. Lustbader discovered that rather than experiencing a decline from youth, aging people were happier, more courageous, and more interested in being true to their inner selves than were young people.

Life Gets Better examines through first-person stories, as well as Lustbader's own observations, how a lifetime of lessons learned can yield one of the most personally and emotionally fruitful periods of anyone's life. As an eighty-six-year-old who contributed her story to the book noted, "For me, being old is the reward for outlasting all the big and little problems that happen to all of us along life's pathway."

The collected stories in Life Gets Better provide a hopeful corrective to the fear of aging aggressively instilled in us by the media. Don't dread the future: The best years of our lives just may be ahead.

Lunch Wars: How to Start a School Food Revolution and Win the Battle for Our Children's Health ARC by Amy Kalafa ~ Non-Fiction / Parenting / Food ~ Available August 18th ~ Received courtesy of the publisher for review via Shelf Awareness

There's a battle going on in school lunchrooms around the country...and it's a battle our children can't afford for us to lose.

The average kid will eat 4,000 school lunches between kindergarten and twelfth grade. But what exactly are kids eating in school lunchrooms around the country? Many parents don't quite know what their children are eating-or where it came from. As award-winning filmmaker and nutritionist Amy Kalafa discovered in researching her documentary film Two Angry Moms: Fighting for the Health of America's Children, these days it's pretty rare to find a piece of fresh fruit in your average school lunchroom amid all the chips, french fries, Pop-Tarts, chicken nuggets, and soda that's being served. But what, if anything, can parents do about it?

Written in response to the onslaught of requests she received from parents who saw her film and asked, "If I want to attempt to change the food culture in my kid's school, how on earth should I get started?!" this empowering book arms parents with the specific information and tools they need to get unhealthy-even dangerous-food out of their children's school cafeteria and to hold their schools and local and national governments accountable for ensuring that their growing children are served healthy meals at school. In Lunch Wars, Kalafa explains all the complicated issues surrounding school food; how to work with your school's "Wellness Policy"; the basics of self- operated vs. outsourced cafeterias; how to get funding for a school garden, and much more. Lunch Wars also features the inspiring stories of parents around the country who have fought for better school food and have won, as well as details Amy's quest to spark a revolution in her own school district.

For the future health and well-being of our children, the time has come for a school food revolution.

Semi-Homemade Desserts: Easy Delicious Desserts and Nothing is Made From Scratch by Sandra Lee ~ Non-Fiction / Cooking ~ Available Now ~ Fell in love with it at a neighbor's garage sale, so scooped it up for $1.00

Sandra Lee made a splash last year with her first book, Semi-Homemade Cooking. Her approach is deceptively simple-mix 70 percent ready-made products with 30 percent fresh ingredients-and take 100 percent of the credit, for delicious homemade dishes, without spending hours in the kitchen. Semi-Homemade Desserts is lled with over 100 recipes, each with a full page, color photograph. And everything can be whipped up quickly and easily with the help of cake mixes, frozen fruits, candies, cookies, and even Cool Whip.-® You'll nd sweet temptations, such as Chocolate Bundt Cake with Ganache Frosting; Angel Food Cake with Key Lime Whip; and Caramel Nut Marshmallows. And Sandra's recipes are foolproof because she recommends her favorite brands to ensure perfect results every time. Sandra also provides inspiring ideas for holidays andcelebrations, from baby showers to anniversaries-and a special chapter with recipes from your favorite celebrities including Queen Latifah, Sharon Stone, Jamie Lee Curtis, Eric McCormack-and more.

*Disclosure: I am an Amazon Associate. I get a very small amount for any purchases made when you click through a link from Wendi's Book Corner, which I then save up to buy more books. :)