Why I don't have my mother's homemade recipes in the first place

As I mentioned, my mother passed on September 18th of 2008. That very next day, my father asked my older sister to come out to the house my mother and father lived in to clean out and pack up all of my mother's belongings. Yes - the very next day. Most people who lose loved ones can't bear the thought of moving their loved one's personal belongings, but evidently my dad just couldn't wait and my sister couldn't wait to pillage through all the goodies that she wanted for family, but mainly for herself. I live 5 hours away by airplane, so this was a big priority for my sister to get it done before I would be able to have a last look at my momma's things and (God forbid) be able to choose what my family might need or what I might need. I'm going to stop here and point out a few characteristics of my family of origin.
Father - Selfish, liar, cheated on my mother while she was dying at home her last days, which is probably why he wanted my mother's items out of the house, but this is speculation on my part. Example: My mother was sent home to rest after her last surgery to recuperate. Unfortunately, each day that she was home, her body was slowly dying due to the fact that the heart was not pumping oxygen to her body. Every day she lost more and more weight and got weaker and weaker. No one noticed though, why? Because none of the rest of my family was there to care for her (and they all are driving distance), my father wouldn't let my mother's friends come to visit, and my father was gone every day golfing and out every night doing karaoke or billiards - of course he stopped home briefly to have my mother make him dinner before going out for the night.
Eldest Brother - Brilliant business man, very kind sometimes and very mean and spiteful others, currently homeless, depressed and revengeful
Second Eldest Brother - A wolf in sheeps clothing, backstabbing, judgmental, mean-hearted and spiteful. Example: Immediately after my mother's death, he and my father devised a plan to have my eldest brother removed from the family company and locked him out, cut off his health insurance, denied him unemployment benefits, saddled him with all of the company cars (such as a Porsche, Lexus etc. (I may be mistaken on the types of cars, but they surely weren't Hondas), leaving my eldest brother with thousands of dollars in debt, no transportation, no health insurance (with a life-threatening disease) and homeless
Older Sister - Well, my children fondly call her "the witch" (a story I'll get into another time), the "c" word is thrown around a lot when speaking of her, she has never had an original thought in her life, a follower, bossy, angry, judgmental, cruel, mean. Example: The last time I saw her at my mother's funeral, she rummaged through my luggage and broke a Tiffany silver jewelry box and stole a ring my mother gave me.
Then there is me - The youngest of four messed up children. Well, it's hard to judge yourself, but from what other's say I'm DEFINITELY not like my brothers or sister, which is such a relief! I would say that I'm a pretty good wife and mother and I love the family I made, I have a good work ethic, I'm very self-aware, very hard on myself and other's at times and I'm trying very hard to let go of my past so it stops preventing me from having a happy future.

So back to the recipes. One of the things (there were many) that my mother and I loved to do together was cook. I was promised her cookbooks by her prior to her death. These were the cookbooks that she used to stuff letters from us kids, like one from me "Mom, can I please go over to Susie's house? Check box Yes or No". But the most important cookbooks were the one's from her mother, which had all of the 'from scratch' recipes in our family. About 6 months after my mother passed, my father called and asked me if I wanted the recipe books and of course I was thrilled! I let him know that I was most interested in the one from my mom's mom. I even described it - cover had fallen off, and the pages were yellowed due to it's age, and it was barely bound together by a thick bright red bind. He said he had the books and would be sending them from the family warehouse. I waited every day for these books and couldn't wait to start putting all my favorite recipes my mother and I had made together into my computer. My older sister works at the family company too -and you guessed it, when the box came, all of the recipe books that were my mom's mom's were stolen out of the box before it was shipped.