In My Mailbox (42)

From Kobo:

At the Back of the North Wind
by George MacDonald

At the Back of the North Wind is a brilliant allegorical tale by George MacDonald. The protagonist Diamond befriends the beautiful and majestic North Wind. Her powers bring change where ever she goes. At first this awesome power seems to be a terrible force, but it becomes clear that all of the changes she has caused with her amazing power have been for good. A timeless classic.

The Jacket (Star-Rover)
by Jack London

Darrell Standing is a university professor serving life imprisonment in San Quentin State Prison for murder. Prison officials try to break his spirit by means of a torture device called "the jacket," a canvas jacket which can be tightly laced so as to compress the whole body, inducing angina. Standing discovers how to withstand the torture by entering a kind of trance state, in which he walks among the stars and experiences portions of past lives.

The Princess and Curdie
by George MacDonald

The sequel to The Princess and the Goblin, this story begins a year after Curdie, the miner's son, saved the Princess Irene from being carried away by the goblins who lived under the earth. It looked as if the kingdom would run like clockwork once again, but the goblins were back.

From the author:

The Unfinished Song: Initiate
by Tara Maya

DEADLY INITIATION

A DETERMINED GIRL...
Dindi can't do anything right, maybe because she spends more time dancing with pixies than doing her chores. Her clan hopes to marry her off and settle her down, but she dreams of becoming a Tavaedi, one of the powerful warrior-dancers whose secret magics are revealed only to those who pass a mysterious Test during the Initiation ceremony. The problem? No-one in Dindi's clan has ever passed the Test. Her grandmother died trying. But Dindi has a plan.

AN EXILED WARRIOR...
Kavio is the most powerful warrior-dancer in Faearth, but when he is exiled from the tribehold for a crime he didn't commit, he decides to shed his old life. If roving cannibals and hexers don't kill him first, this is his chance to escape the shadow of his father's wars and his mother's curse. But when he rescues a young Initiate girl, he finds himself drawn into as deadly a plot as any he left behind. He must decide whether to walk away or fight for her... assuming she would even accept the help of an exile.

I guess I'm leaning toward reading some more classics, though I may not get to them soon (I've got too much else in my TBR pile at the moment).  I just thought I should pick up these e-books while I had some coupons (making them almost free); I paid less than $1.50 for the lot.

I have The Princess and the Goblin on my Kobo (it came free with the device), but I didn't have the sequel.  And I've been wanting to read The Jacket for years. I could not find a decent synopsis on any of the book sites, so the one above is adapted from the Wikipedia entry.

The Unfinished Song: Initiate looks interesting.  I'm not sure if I'll get to it right away (it's for Kindle, and since I don't have a Kindle, I'll have to read it using the PC app... and I'm kind of tired of reading books on my computer at the moment... or, rather, my eyes are tired of it!).  I have to say, though... I really like the cover.  Very pretty.


What was in your "mailbox" this week?

In My Mailbox was started by Kristi of The Story Siren.