Waiting on Wednesday (Jan 29, 2014)

 "Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine.  It spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

Servants of the Storm
by Delilah S. Dawson
Expected publication: August 5th 2014 by Simon Pulse

A year ago Hurricane Josephine swept through Savannah, Georgia, leaving behind nothing but death and destruction — and taking the life of Dovey's best friend, Carly. Since that night, Dovey has been in a medicated haze, numb to everything around her. 

But recently she's started to believe she's seeing things that can't be real ... including Carly at their favorite cafe. Determined to learn the truth, Dovey stops taking her pills. And the world that opens up to her is unlike anything she could have imagined. 

As Dovey slips deeper into the shadowy corners of Savannah — where the dark and horrifying secrets lurk — she learns that the storm that destroyed her city and stole her friend was much more than a force of nature. And now the sinister beings truly responsible are out to finish what they started.

Dovey's running out of time and torn between two paths. Will she trust her childhood friend Baker, who can't see the threatening darkness but promises to never give up on Dovey and Carly? Or will she plot with the sexy stranger, Isaac, who offers all the answers — for a price? Soon Dovey realizes that the danger closing in has little to do with Carly ... and everything to do with Dovey herself.

Waiting on Wednesday (Jan 22, 2014)

 "Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine.  It spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

Two Sisters

by Mary Hogan

On Sale Date: March 4, 2014

Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks

A powerful and poignant debut novel about two sisters learning how to live with the emotional damage caused by years of keeping family secrets

The third child in a family that wanted only two, Muriel Sullivant has always been the outsider. Single, twenty-three, she's living in a New York City rent-stabilized walk-up, a bird's nest of an apartment outfitted as much by serendipity as by intent: note the three-legged bedside table, her squat hand-painted pine dresser, a splotchy framed mirror, the spindled bathroom corner shelf-all found curbside on garbage day.

Her perfect older sister, Pia, lives in an endless house in Connecticut with her handsome, thick-haired husband, Will, her tween daughter, Emma, and a frothy, russet-colored Labradoodle named Root Beer. Pia is altogether Muriel's opposite. Muriel eats takeout from the carton; Pia makes salads from the microgreens in her garden. Pia takes "me" time to pray and do yoga. She believes every word in the bible, her faith pure and unquestioning. Pia is remarkably like their mother, Lidia. Or so Lidia would have Pia believe. Muriel knows better. Years earlier she discovered the truth about her mother's lies-not that she'll ever tell.

The story begins on an ordinary Saturday which turns out to be anything but. When Pia calls Muriel out of the blue, Muriel expects the same lecture about slimming down, toning up, highlighting her hair, getting a better job, and moving into an elevator building. Only this time it's different. Distressingly so. Pia takes the train into the city to visit her sister and leave her with-yet another-terrible secret she is sworn to keep.

Waiting on Wednesday: Before You Go

Waiting on Wednesday is hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine.

This week's pre-publication can't wait to read selection is:

Before You Go
by James Preller
Expected Publication Date: July 17, 2012,
 Feiwel and Friends


The summer before his senior year, Jude (yes, he’s named after the Beatles song) gets his first job, falls in love for the first time, and starts to break away from his parents. Jude’s house is kept dark, and no one talks much—it’s been that way since his little sister drowned in a swimming pool seven years ago when Jude was supposed to be watching her.

Now, Jude is finally, finally starting to live. Really live. And then, life spins out of control. Again. 

Acclaimed author James Preller explores life, death, love, faith, and resilience in his first young adult novel that will grip readers from the book’s dramatic first few pages to its emotional end.

Waiting on Wednesday: 77 Shadow Street

This week's pre-publication can't wait to read selection is:

77 Shadow Street

by Dean Koontz
Publication Date: Dec 27, 2011

I am the One, the all and the only. I live in the Pendleton as surely as I live everywhere. I am the Pendleton's history and its destiny. The building is my place of conception, my monument, my killing ground. . . .

The Pendleton stands on the summit of Shadow Hill at the highest point of an old heartland city, a Gilded Age palace built in the late 1800s as a tycoon’s dream home. Almost from the beginning, its grandeur has been scarred by episodes of madness, suicide, mass murder, and whispers of things far worse. But since its rechristening in the 1970s as a luxury apartment building, the Pendleton has been at peace. For its fortunate residents—among them a successful songwriter and her young son, a disgraced ex-senator, a widowed attorney, and a driven money manager—the Pendleton’s magnificent quarters are a sanctuary, its dark past all but forgotten.

But now inexplicable shadows caper across walls, security cameras relay impossible images, phantom voices mutter in strange tongues, not-quite-human figures lurk in the basement, elevators plunge into unknown depths. With each passing hour, a terrifying certainty grows: Whatever drove the Pendleton’s past occupants to their unspeakable fates is at work again. Soon, all those within its boundaries will be engulfed by a dark tide from which few have escaped.

Dean Koontz transcends all expectations as he takes readers on a gripping journey to a place where nightmare visions become real—and where a group of singular individuals hold the key to humanity’s destiny. Welcome to 77 Shadow Street.

Waiting on Wednesday is hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine.

What are you waiting for?

Waiting on Wednesday: Shelter

This week's pre-publication can't wait to read selection is:

Shelter

by Harlan Coben

Publication Date: Sept 6, 2011

A young adult debut from internationally bestselling author Harlan Coben


Mickey Bolitar's year can't get much worse. After witnessing his father's death and sending his mom to rehab, he's forced to live with his estranged uncle Myron and switch high schools.


A new school comes with new friends and new enemies, and lucky for Mickey, it also comes with a great new girlfriend, Ashley. For a while, it seems like Mickey's train-wreck of a life is finally improving - until Ashley vanishes without a trace. Unwilling to let another person walk out of his life, Mickey follows Ashley's trail into a seedy underworld that reveals that this seemingly sweet, shy girl isn't who she claimed to be. And neither was Mickey's father. Soon, Mickey learns about a conspiracy so shocking that it makes high school drama seem like a luxury - and leaves him questioning everything about the life he thought he knew.


First introduced to readers in Harlan Coben's latest adult novel, Live Wire, Mickey Bolitar is as quick-witted and clever as his uncle Myron, and eager to go to any length to save the people he cares about. With this new series, Coben introduces an entirely new generation of fans to the masterful plotting and wry humor that have made him an award-winning, internationally bestselling, and beloved author.

Waiting on Wednesday is hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine.

Waiting on Wednesday: 11/22/63

This week's pre-publication can't wait to read selection is:

11/22/63

by Stephen King

Publication Date: November 8, 2011

On November 22, 1963, three shots rang out in Dallas, President Kennedy died, and the world changed. What if you could change it back? Stephen King’s heart-stoppingly dramatic new novel is about a man who travels back in time to prevent the JFK assassination—a thousand page tour de force.

Following his massively successful novel Under the Dome, King sweeps readers back in time to another moment—a real life moment—when everything went wrong: the JFK assassination. And he introduces readers to a character who has the power to change the course of history.

Jake Epping is a thirty-five-year-old high school English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching adults in the GED program. He receives an essay from one of the students—a gruesome, harrowing first person story about the night 50 years ago when Harry Dunning’s father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a hammer. Harry escaped with a smashed leg, as evidenced by his crooked walk.

Not much later, Jake’s friend Al, who runs the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to 1958. He enlists Jake on an insane—and insanely possible—mission to try to prevent the Kennedy assassination. So begins Jake’s new life as George Amberson and his new world of Elvis and JFK, of big American cars and sock hops, of a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and a beautiful high school librarian named Sadie Dunhill, who becomes the love of Jake’s life—a life that transgresses all the normal rules of time.


A tribute to a simpler era and a devastating exercise in escalating suspense, 11/22/63 is Stephen King at his epic best.


Waiting on Wednesday is hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine.

Waiting on Wednesday: You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:

You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know

by Heather Sellers

Publisher/Publication Date: Riverhead, Oct 14, 2010

An unusual and uncommonly moving family memoir, with a twist that give new meaning to hindsight, insight, and forgiveness.

Heather Sellers is face-blind-that is, she has prosopagnosia, a rare neurological condition that prevents her from reliably recognizing people's faces. Growing up, unaware of the reason for her perpetual confusion and anxiety, she took what cues she could from speech, hairstyle, and gait. But she sometimes kissed a stranger, thinking he was her boyfriend, or failed to recognize even her own father and mother. She feared she must be crazy.

Yet it was her mother who nailed windows shut and covered them with blankets, made her daughter walk on her knees to spare the carpeting, had her practice secret words to use in the likely event of abduction. Her father went on weeklong "fishing trips" (aka benders), took in drifters, wore panty hose and bras under his regular clothes. Heather clung to a barely coherent story of a "normal" childhood in order to survive the one she had.

That fairy tale unraveled two decades later when Heather took the man she would marry home to meet her parents and began to discover the truth about her family and about herself. As she came at last to trust her own perceptions, she learned the gift of perspective: that embracing the past as it is allows us to let it go. And she illuminated a deeper truth-that even in the most flawed circumstances, love may be seen and felt.

Waiting on Wednesdays is hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine.

What are you waiting for?

Waiting on Wednesday: Faithful Place

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:

Faithful Place

by Tana French

Publication Date: July 13, 2010

Back in 1985, Frank Mackey was nineteen, growing up poor in Dublin's inner city, and living crammed into a small flat with his family on Faithful Place. But he had his sights set on a lot more. He and Rosie Daly were all ready to run away to London together, get married, get good jobs, break away from factory work and poverty and their old lives.

But on the winter night when they were supposed to leave, Rosie didn't show. Frank took it for granted that she'd dumped him-probably because of his alcoholic father, nutcase mother, and generally dysfunctional family. He never went home again.

Neither did Rosie. Everyone thought she had gone to England on her own and was over there living a shiny new life. Then, twenty-two years later, Rosie's suitcase shows up behind a fireplace in a derelict house on Faithful Place, and Frank is going home whether he likes it or not.

Getting sucked in is a lot easier than getting out again. Frank finds himself straight back in the dark tangle of relationships he left behind. The cops working the case want him out of the way, in case loyalty to his family and community makes him a liability. Faithful Place wants him out because he's a detective now, and the Place has never liked cops. Frank just wants to find out what happened to Rosie Daly-and he's willing to do whatever it takes, to himself or anyone else, to get the job done.

Faithful Place

Publisher/Publication Date: Viking, July 13, 2010

ISBN: 978-0670021873

416 pages

Waiting on Wednesdays is hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine.

What are you waiting for?

Waiting on Wednesday: 5-26-2010

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:

Let's Take the Long Way Home:

A Memoir of Friendship

by Gail Caldwell

Publication Date: Aug 10, 2010

“It’s an old, old story: I had a friend and we shared everything, and then she died and so we shared that, too.”

So begins this gorgeous memoir by Pulitzer Prize winner Gail Caldwell, a testament to the power of friendship, a story of how an extraordinary bond between two women can illuminate the loneliest, funniest, hardest moments in life, including the final and ultimate challenge.

They met over their dogs. Both writers, Gail Caldwell and Caroline Knapp, author of Drinking: A Love Story, became best friends, talking about everything from their shared history of a struggle with alcohol, to their relationships with men and colleagues, to their love of books. They walked the woods of New England and rowed on the Charles River, and the miles they logged on land and water became a measure of the interior ground they covered. From disparate backgrounds but with striking emotional similarities, these two private, fiercely self-reliant women created an attachment more profound than either of them could ever have foreseen.

The friendship helped them define the ordinary moments of life as the ones worth cherishing. Then, several years into this remarkable connection, Knapp was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer.

With her signature exquisite prose, Caldwell mines the deepest levels of devotion and grief in this moving memoir about treasuring and losing a best friend. Let’s Take the Long Way Home is a celebration of life and of the transformations that come from intimate connection—and it affirms, once again, why Gail Caldwell is recognized as one of our bravest and most honest literary voices. (Amazon)

Infinite Days

(Vampire Queen Novels)

by Rebecca Maizel

Publication Date: August 3, 2010

She longs to be like everybody else. But her history is written in blood...

Lenah Beaudonte is in many ways your average sixteen-year-old: the “new girl,” she struggles to fit in enough to survive at school, and stand out enough to catch the eye of the golden-boy captain of the lacrosse team. But her challenges are beyond what anyone could have expected. Lenah just happens to be a recovering five-hundred-year-old vampire turned human…

She’s just awakened from a century-long hibernation and each passing hour hears another tick of the time-bomb, counting down to the moment when her abandoned vampire coven will open the crypt where she should be sleeping, and find her gone. As her borrowed days slip by, Lenah resolves to live her newfound life as fully as the passing moments allow. But, to do so, she must first answer the ominous questions at hand: Can an ex-vampire survive in a time and place so alien to her? What can Lenah do to protect her new friends from the bloodthirsty menace about to descend upon them? And how is she ever going to pass her biology midterm? (Amazon)

Waiting on Wednesdays is hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine.

What are you waiting for?

Waiting on Wednesday: Lowcountry Summer

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:

Lowcountry Summer

by Dorothea Benton Frank

Publication Date: June 15, 2010

From the publisher:   Dorothea Benton Frank is a native of the South whose novels vividly capture the wild beauty, laid-back atmosphere, earthy characters, and charming eccentricities of life in South Carolina's Lowcountry. Written with compelling honesty and emotional depth, her stories have touched readers from coast to coast, and propelled her to the top ranks of bestsellerdom nationwide.

Now this remarkable writer revisits some of her most unforgettable characters in this enchanting new story sure to make you laugh and cry. Return with her to Tall Pines Plantation in this long-awaited sequel to her beloved bestseller Plantation. . . .

When Caroline Wimbley Levine returned to Tall Pines Plantation, she never expected to make peace with long-buried truths about herself and her family. The Queen of Tall Pines, her late mother, was a force of nature, but now she is gone, leaving Caroline and the rest of the family uncertain of who will take her place.

In the lush South Carolina countryside, old hurts, betrayals, and dark secrets will surface, and a new generation will rise along the banks of the mighty Edisto River.

Wonderfully evocative, infused with humor and poignancy, and rich with the lyrical cadences of the South, Lowcountry Summer is vintage Dorothea Benton Frank, a deeply moving novel you'll want to savor and share.

Waiting on Wednesdays is hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine.


What are you waiting for?

 
Lowcountry Summer
Publisher/Publication Date: William Morrow, June 15, 2010
ISBN: 978-0061961175
352 pages

Waiting on Wednesday: Frankenstein: Lost Souls

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:

Frankenstein: lost souls

by Dean Koontz

Publication Date: June 15, 2010

#1 New York Times bestselling author Dean Koontz brings his fertile imagination and unparalleled storytelling abilities to one of the most timeless—and terrifying—creations in all of fiction: the legend of Frankenstein.

In Lost Souls, Koontz puts a singular twist on this classic tale of ambition and science gone wrong, and forges a new legend uniquely suited to our times—a story of revenge, redemption, and the razor thin line that separates humanity from inhumanity as we consider a new invitation to apocalypse.

The work of creation has begun again. Only now things will be different. Victor Leben, once Frankenstein, has not only seen the future—he’s ready to populate it. Using stem cells, “organic” silicon circuitry, and nanotechnology, he will engender a race of superhumans—the perfect melding of flesh and machine. With a powerful, enigmatic backer eager to see his dream come to fruition and a secret location where the enemies of progress can’t find him, Victor is certain that this time nothing and no one can stop him.

It is up to five people to prove him wrong. In their hands rests nothing less than the survival of humanity itself. They are drawn together in different ways, by omens sinister and wondrous, to the same shattering conclusion: Two years after they saw him die, the man they knew as Victor Helios lives on. Detectives Carson O’Connor and Michael Maddison, Victor’s engineered wife, Erika 5 and her companion Jocko, and the original Victor’s first creation, the tormented Deucalion, have all arrived at a small Montana town where their old alliance will be renewed, as well astested, by forces from within and without, and where the dangers they face will eclipse any they have yet encountered. Yet in the midst of their peril, love will blossom, and joy, and they will discover sources of strength and perseverance they have not imagined.

They will need all these resources, and more. For a monumental battle is about to commence that will require all their ingenuity and courage, as it defines what we are to be . . . and if we are to be at all. (synopsis from Barnes and Noble)

Waiting on Wednesdays is hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine.

What are you waiting for?

Frankenstein: lost souls

Publisher/Publication Date: Random House, June 15, 2010

ISBN: 9780553808018

368 pages


 

 

Waiting on Wednesday: Infinity by Sherrilyn Kenyon

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:

Infinity

by Sherrilyn Kenyon

Publication Date: May 25, 2010

At fourteen, Nick Gautier thinks he knows everything about the world around him. Streetwise, tough and savvy, his quick sarcasm is the stuff of legends. . .until the night when his best friends try to kill him. Saved by a mysterious warrior who has more fighting skills than Chuck Norris, Nick is sucked into the realm of the Dark-Hunters: immortal vampire slayers who risk everything to save humanity.

Nick quickly learns that the human world is only a veil for a much larger and more dangerous one: a world where the captain of the football team is a werewolf and the girl he has a crush on goes out at night to stake the undead.

But before he can even learn the rules of this new world, his fellow students are turning into flesh eating zombies. And he’s next on the menu.

As if starting high school isn't hard enough. . .now Nick has to hide his new friends from his mom, his chainsaw from the principal, and keep the zombies and the demon Simi from eating his brains, all without getting grounded or suspended. How in the world is he supposed to do that?

For more information and an excerpt of Infinity.

Waiting on Wednesdays is hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine.
What are you waiting for?

Infinity

Publisher/Publication Date: St. Martin's Press, May 25, 2010

ISBN:  978-0312599072
480 pages

Waiting on Wednesday: Sparrow Rock

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:

Sparrow Rock
by Nate Kenyon
Publication date: Apr 27, 2010

Prepare yourself for an unforgettable experience in fear.

They were just a group of high school kids looking for a place to party. They didn’t know the end of the world was coming. Now, alone and trapped below ground, they are being stalked—and the creatures that come to visit them through the dirt and ash are like nothing anyone has ever seen before.

There is a new ruling life form on earth, and six humans are the only remaining prey.

Welcome to your worst nightmare. Welcome to…

SPARROW ROCK

Read the first chapter of Sparrow Rock.

What are you waiting for?


Waiting on Wednesdays is hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine.

 

Sparrow Rock

Publisher/Publication Date: Leisure Books, Apr 27, 2010

ISBN: 978-0843963779

336 pages

Waiting on Wednesday: Blind Spot

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:

Blind Spot

by Nancy Bush

Publication Date: June 29, 2010

In Blind Spot, a young man is slashed to ribbons at an Oregon rest stop, his pregnant girlfriend left alive but comatose. Psychologist Claire Norris is assigned to treat the Jane Doe at a private mental hospital, but ex-homicide detective Langdon Stone question's Claires every move, for he holds her responsible for his sister's murder. What they don't know is the killer is right in their midst, eager to see a mission evil through to its terrifying end.

Read an excerpt of Blind Spot.

What are you waiting for?

Waiting on Wednesdays is hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine.

Blind Spot
Publisher/Publication Date: Zebra, June 29, 2010
ISBN: 978-1420103410
384 pages

Waiting on Wednesdays: Friday Mornings at Nine

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:


Friday Mornings at Nine
by Marilyn Brant
Publication Date: Sept 28, 2010

Every woman remembers her firsts: Her first kiss. Her first lover. And her first time contemplating an affair...

Each Friday morning at the Indigo Moon Café, Jennifer, Bridget and Tamara meet to swap stories about marriage, kids and work. But one day, spurred by recent e-mails from her college ex, Jennifer poses questions they've never faced before. What if they all married the wrong man? What if they're living the wrong life? And what would happen if, just once, they gave in to temptation...

Soon each woman is second-guessing the choices she's made--and the ones she can unmake--as she becomes aware of new opportunities around every corner, from attentive colleagues and sexy neighbors to flirtatious past lovers. And as fantasies blur with real life, Jennifer, Bridget and Tamara begin to realize how little they know about each other, their marriages and themselves, and how much there is to gain--and lose--when you step outside the rules.

What are you waiting for?

Waiting on Wednesday is hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine.

Waiting on Wednesday: Caught

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:





Caught
by Harlan Coben
Publisher/Publication Date: Dutton Adult/March 23, 2010

From the #1 New York Times bestselling master of suspense comes a fast-paced, emotion-packed novel about guilt, grief, and our capacity to forgive

17-year-old Haley McWaid is a good girl, the pride of her suburban New Jersey family, captain of the lacrosse team, headed off to college next year with all the hopes and dreams her doting parents can pin on her. Which is why, when her mother wakes one morning to find that Haley never came home the night before, and three months quickly pass without word from the girl, the community assumes the worst.

Wendy Tynes is a reporter on a mission, to identify and bring down sexual predators via elaborate—and nationally televised—sting operations. Working with local police on her news program Caught in the Act, Wendy and her team have publicly shamed dozens of men by the time she encounters her latest target. Dan Mercer is a social worker known as a friend to troubled teens, but his story soon becomes more complicated than Wendy could have imagined.

In a novel that challenges as much as it thrills, filled with the astonishing tension and unseen suburban machinations that have become Coben’s trademark, Caught tells the story of a missing girl, the community stunned by her loss, the predator who may have taken her, and the reporter who suddenly realizes she can’t trust her own instincts about this story—or the motives of the people around her. (Amazon)

What are you waiting for?

Waiting on Wednesday is hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine.

Waiting on Wednesday: She's So Dead to Us

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:

She's So Dead to Us
by Kieran Scott
Publisher/Publication Date: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing/May 25, 2010

About the book: Perfect, picturesque Orchard Hill. It was the last thing Ally Ryan saw in the rear-view mirror as her mother drove them out of town and away from the shame of the scandal her father caused when his hedge fund went south and practically bankrupted all their friends -- friends that liked having trust funds and new cars, and that didn't like constant reminders that they had been swindled. So it was adios, Orchard Hill. Thanks for nothing.

Now, two years later, Ally's mother has landed a job back at the site of their downfall. So instead of Ally's new low-key, happy life, it'll be back into the snake pit with the likes of Shannen Moore and Hammond Ross.

But then there's Jake Graydon. Handsome, wealthy, bored Jake Graydon. He moved to town after Ally left and knows nothing of her scandal, but does know that he likes her. And she likes him. So off into the sunset they can go, right? Too bad Jake's friends have a problem with his new crush since it would make Ally happy. And if anyone deserves to be unhappy, it's Ally Ryan.

Ally was hoping to have left all the drama in the past, but some things just can't be forgotten. Isn't there more to life than money?

About the author: Kieran Scott is the author of the Non-Blonde Cheerleader series along with many other books for teens. She also writes the New York Times bestselling series Private under the pen name Kate Brian for Alloy Entertainment. She resides in New Jersey with her husband and son.

Waiting on Wednesday: Winter Garden

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:

Winter Garden
by Kristin Hannah
Publisher/Publication Date: St. Martin's Press, Feb 2010

Can a woman ever really know herself if she doesn’t know her mother?

From the author of the smash-hit bestseller Firefly Lane and True Colors comes a powerful, heartbreaking novel that illuminates the intricate mother-daughter bond and explores the enduring links between the present and the past

Meredith and Nina Whitson are as different as sisters can be. One stayed at home to raise her children and manage the family apple orchard; the other followed a dream and traveled the world to become a famous photojournalist. But when their beloved father falls ill, Meredith and Nina find themselves together again, standing alongside their cold, disapproving mother, Anya, who even now, offers no comfort to her daughters. As children, the only connection between them was the Russian fairy tale Anya sometimes told the girls at night. On his deathbed, their father extracts a promise from the women in his life: the fairy tale will be told one last time—and all the way to the end. Thus begins an unexpected journey into the truth of Anya’s life in war-torn Leningrad, more than five decades ago. Alternating between the past and present, Meredith and Nina will finally hear the singular, harrowing story of their mother’s life, and what they learn is a secret so terrible and terrifying that it will shake the very foundation of their family and change who they believe they are. (Amazon)

Winter Garden
Publisher/Publication Date: St. Martin's Press, Feb 2010
ISBN: 978-0312364120
400 pages

What are you waiting for? Waiting on Wednesdays is hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine.

Waiting on Wednesday: Captivity

Captivity by Deborah Noyes
Publisher/Publication Date: Unbridled Books, June 2010

This masterful historical novel by Deborah Noyes, the lauded author of Angel & Apostle, The Ghosts of Kerfol, and Encyclopedia of the End (starred PW) is two stories:

The first centers upon the strange, true tale of the Fox Sisters, the enigmatic family of young women who, in upstate New York in 1848, proclaimed that they could converse with the dead. Doing so, they unwittingly (but artfully) gave birth to a religious movement that touched two continents: the American Spiritualists. Their followers included the famous and the rich, and their effect on American spirituality lasted a full generation. Still, there are echoes. The Fox Sisters' is a story of ambition and playfulness, of illusion and fear, of indulgence, guilt and finally self-destruction.

The second story in Captivity is about loss and grief. It is the evocative tale of the bright promise that the Fox Sisters offer up to the skeptical Clara Gill, a reclusive woman of a certain age who long ago isolated herself with her paintings, following the scandalous loss of her beautiful young lover in London.

Lyrical and authentic--and more than a bit shadowy--Captivity is, finally, a tale about physical desire and the hope that even the thinnest faith can offer up to a darkening heart.

Captivity
Publisher/Publication Date: Unbridled Books, June 2010
ISBN: 978-1-936071-63-0
352 pages

What are you waiting for? Waiting on Wednesdays is hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine.

Waiting on Wednesday: The Postmistress

The Postmistress by Sarah Blake
Publisher: Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam
Publication Date: February 9, 2010

Those who carry the truth sometimes bear a terrible weight...

It is 1940. France has fallen. Bombs are dropping on London. And President Roosevelt is promising he won't send our boys to fight in "foreign wars."

But American radio gal Frankie Bard, the first woman to report from the Blitz in London, wants nothing more than to bring the war home. Frankie's radio dispatches crackle across the Atlantic ocean, imploring listeners to pay attention--as the Nazis bomb London nightly, and Jewish refugees stream across Europe. Frankie is convinced that if she can just get the right story, it will wake Americans to action and they will join the fight.

Meanwhile, in Franklin, Massachusetts, a small town on Cape Cod, Iris James hears Frankie's broadcasts and knows that it is only a matter of time before the war arrives on Franklin's shores. In charge of the town's mail, Iris believes that her job is to deliver and keep people's secrets, passing along the news that letters carry. And one secret she keeps are her feelings for Harry Vale, the town mechanic, who inspects the ocean daily, searching in vain for German U-boats he is certain will come. Two single people in midlife, Iris and Harry long ago gave up hope of ever being in love, yet they find themselves unexpectedly drawn toward each other.

Listening to Frankie as well are Will and Emma Fitch, the town's doctor and his new wife, both trying to escape a fragile childhood and forge a brighter future. When Will follow's Frankie's siren call into the war, Emma's worst fears are realized. Promising to return in six months, Will goes to London to offer his help, and the lives of the three women entwine.

Alternating between an America still cocooned in its inability to grasp the danger at hand and a Europe being torn apart by war, The Postmistress gives us two women who find themselves unable to deliver the news, and a third woman desperately waiting for news yet afraid to hear it.

Sarah Blake's The Postmistress shows how we bear the fact that war goes on around us while ordinary lives continue. Filled with stunning parallels to today, it is a remarkable novel. (Amazon)

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