Waiting on Wednesday: The Last Song

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



The Last Song by Nicholas Sparks

Publisher/Publication Date: Grand Central Publishing/Sept 8, 2009

About the book: #1 bestselling author Nicholas Sparks's new novel is at once a compelling family drama and a heartrending tale of young love.

Seventeen year old Veronica "Ronnie" Miller's life was turned upside-down when her parents divorced and her father moved from New York City to Wilmington, North Carolina. Three years later, she remains angry and alientated from her parents, especially her father...until her mother decides it would be in everyone's best interest if she spent the summer in Wilmington with him. Ronnie's father, a former concert pianist and teacher, is living a quiet life in the beach town, immersed in creating a work of art that will become the centerpiece of a local church.

The tale that unfolds is an unforgettable story of love on many levels--first love, love between parents and children -- that demonstrates, as only a Nicholas Sparks novel can, the many ways that love can break our hearts...and heal them. (from Barnes and Noble website)

About the author: Ever since The Notebook made Nicholas Sparks a word-of-mouth publishing sensation in 1996, he has maintained his status as a bestselling author of tragedy-tinged love stories. His spare, simply themed novels star ordinary people overcome by extraordinary emotions, and changed by them.

It's possible that Sparks might have enjoyed his level of popularity by writing these stories strictly from imagination, but in fact his family's struggles play an important role in many of his books, especially the earliest novels. (For exampleThe Notebook, his tale of a great love affair extending into old age, was inspired by his wife's grandparents; Message in a Bottle drew from Sparks' father's life story and A Walk to Remember from his late sister's.) In addition, a three-week trip he and his older sibling Micah undertook in 2003 became the basis for Three Weeks with My Brother, a unique memoir as moving and tenderhearted as any of his fiction.

Sparks is very methodical about his writing, an approach he makes transparent on his web site with several essays, updates on works in progress, and notes on the mechanics of his novels. Unsurprisingly, critics have faulted him for being too formulaic or cliched. Still, Sparks never fails to move his stories along quickly, maximizing emotional impact and featuring strong, down-to-earth characters. His endings also tend to depart from convention a bit, revealing tragedy where the walk into the sunset should be.

Although he is often classified as a Romance writer, Sparks is quick to point out that his books don't really satisfy the requirements of Romance publishers. Instead, he admits to writing love stories, a different genre altogether. Whatever he cares to call them, one thing's for sure: Nicholas Sparks continues to strike gold with his bittersweet novels of love and loss. (from Barnes and Noble website)

The Last Song
Publisher/Publication Date: Grand Central Publishing, Sept 2009
ISBN: 978-0446547567
400 pages




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

Waiting on Wednesday: Intertwined

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

Publisher/Publication Date: Harlequin Teen, Sept 1, 2009

About the book: Most sixteen-year-olds have friends. Aden Stone has four human souls living inside him:

One can time-travel.

One can raise the dead.

One can tell the future.

And one can possess another human.

With no other family and a life spent in and out of institutions, Aden and the souls have become friends. But now they're causing him all kinds of trouble. Like, he'll blink and suddenly he's a younger Aden, reliving the past. One wrong move, and he'll change the future. Or he'll walk past a total stranger and know how and when she's going to die.

He's so over it. All he wants is peace.

And then he meets a girl who quiets the voices. Well, as long as he's near her. Why? Mary Ann Gray is his total opposite. He's a loner; she has friends. He doesn't care what anyone thinks; she tries to make everyone happy. And while he attracts the paranormal, she repels it. For her sake, he should stay away. But it's too late….

Somehow, they share an inexplicable bond of friendship. A bond about to be tested by a werewolf shape-shifter who wants Mary Ann for his own, and a vampire princess Aden can't resist.

Two romances, both forbidden. Still, the four will enter a dark underworld of intrigue and danger—but not everyone will come out alive…. (from Amazon website)

About the author: Gena Showalter sold her first book at the age of 27 and now, four years later, is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of thirteen books, with eleven more on the way in a thrilling blend of genres: breathtaking paranormal and contemporary romances, cutting edge young adult novels, and stunning urban fantasy. Her novels have appeared in Cosmopolitan Magazine, MTV, Seventeen Magazine, and have been translated in French, Italian and Korean. The critics have called her books "sizzling page-turners" and "utterly spellbinding stories", while Showalter herself has been called "a star on the rise". (from Amazon website)


I want to know where these books were when I was a kid - I would have devoured them. I just don't understand why my kids don't read as much as I think they should with books like this available to them! Who were some of your favorite authors when you were a teen?

Intertwined
Publisher/Publication Date: Harlequin Teen, Sept 2009
ISBN: 978-0373210022
448 pages

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

Waiting on Wednesday: According to Jane

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



According to Jane by Marilyn Brant

Publisher/Publication Date: Kensington, September 29, 2009

About the book: It begins one day in sophomore English class, just as Ellie Barnett's teacher is assigning Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. From nowhere comes a quiet "tsk" of displeasure. The target: Sam Blaine, the cute bad boy who's teasing Ellie mercilessly, just as he has since kindergarten. Entirely unbidden, as Jane might say, the author's ghost has taken up residence in Ellie's mind, and seems determined to stay there.



Jane's wise and witty advice guides Ellie through the hell of adolescence and beyond, serving as the voice she trusts, usually far more than her own. Years and boyfriends come and go - sometimes a little too quickly, sometimes not nearly fast enough. But Jane's counsel is constant, and on the subject of Sam, quite insistent. Stay away, Jane demands. He is your Mr. Wickham.



Still, everyone has something to learn about love - perhaps even Jane herself. And lately, the voice in Ellie's head is being drowned out by another, urging her to look beyond everything she though she knew and seek out her very own, very unexpected, happy ending. . .


About the author: Marilyn Brant has been told she writes with honesty, liveliness and wit (descriptors she's grown terribly fond of) about complex, intelligent women--like her friends--and their significant personal relationships. Although her favorite passion is undoubtedly books, she proves she's not just a literary snob by confessing her lifelong fascination (read: obsession) with popular music, especially from the '70s & '80s, most flavors of ice cream and a variety of sensuous body lotions/oils...because, next to Amazon.com, Borders, Barnes & Noble and, well, Ben & Jerry's...Victoria's Secret is her favorite store.

In her books, she amuses herself by slipping in references to all of the above, a sneaky tactic intended to keep her mind alert at 1:00am when she’s supposed to be writing a big fight or love scene. Sometimes it takes including the ice cream, the lotions AND the music in her writing to effectively trick the muses into showing up. Sometimes it just makes her hungry, aroused and curiously obsessed with her iPod.

Marilyn lives in the Midwest where, before she became a full-time novelist, she worked as an elementary school teacher, a library staff member, a freelance magazine writer and a national book reviewer. She’s blessed to have a genuinely supportive husband and son, a loving family and a truly amazing group of friends, all of whom keep her grounded, sane and away from dangerous things like chocolate martinis (usually). She’d love to say she also has killer abs but--so far--this is still a fantasy. (from the author's website)

I had the pleasure of meeting Marilyn at Eloisa James' author visit that I went to. Turns out she lives in this area! I don't have to wait for her book as she has sent it to me! I am so excited to read it, especially after having met her.

According to Jane
Publisher/Publication Date: Kensington Books, September 29, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-7582-3461-2
288 pages

Waiting on Wednesday: The Day the Falls Stood Still

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

The Day the Falls Stood Still by Cathy Marie Buchanan

Publisher/Publication Date: Voice, August 25, 2009

About the book: Steeped in the intriguing history of Niagara Falls, this epic love story is as rich, spellbinding and majestic as the falls themselves.

1915. The dawn of the hydroelectric power era in Niagara Falls. Seventeen-year-old Bess Heath has led a sheltered existence as the youngest daughter of the director of the Niagara Power Company. After graduation day at her boarding school, she is impatient to return to her picturesque family home near Niagara Falls. But when she arrives, nothing is as she had left it. Her father has lost his job at the power company, her mother is reduced to taking in sewing from the society ladies she once entertained, and Isabel, her vivacious older sister, is a shadow of her former self. She has shut herself in her bedroom, barely eating-and harbouring a secret.

The night of her return, Bess meets Tom Cole by chance on a trolley platform. She finds herself inexplicably drawn to him-against her family's strong objections. He is not from their world. Rough-hewn and fearless, he lives off what the river provides and has an uncanny ability to predict the whims of the falls. His daring river rescues render him a local hero and cast him as a threat to the power companies that seek to harness the power of the falls for themselves. As their lives become more fully entwined, Bess is forced to make a painful choice between what she wants and what is best for her family and her future.

Set against the tumultuous backdrop of Niagara Falls, at a time when daredevils shot the river rapids in barrels and great industrial fortunes were made and lost as quickly as lives disappeared, The Day the Falls Stood Still is an intoxicating debut novel. (from Barnes and Noble website)

About the author: Cathy Marie Buchanan was born and raised in Niagara Falls and lives in Toronto. Her fiction has appeared in some of Canada's premier journals, including The Antigonish Review, The Dalhousie Review, Descant, and The New Quarterly. She is the recipient of grants from both the Toronto Arts Council and the Ontario Arts Council.

The Day the Falls Stood Still
Publisher/Publication Date: Voice, August 2009
ISBN: 9781401340971
320 pages

Barnes & Noble
Amazon


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

Waiting on Wednesday: Seeing Things

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

Seeing Things by Patti Hill

Publisher/Publication Date: B&H Publishing Group, Sept 2009

About the book: Birdie Wainwright, 72, isn’t concerned about seeing things that others can’t. For a woman who still climbs mountains with her dog (Miss Bee Haven) and likes to tango, the impractical visions brought on by macular degeneration are just another gift from God, adding more adventure to life. But when a tumble down the stairs breaks her ankle and leads back to her son’s home in Denver where she must convalesce, Birdie’s imagination really takes flight. Following a conversation with her grandson about The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, she begins to see and speak with the unkempt literary character himself on a regular basis. As the line between reality and whimsy turns brittle, faith is tested among friends and loved ones, and hope is reborn.

Seeing Things is a story about family, reconciliation, and hearing from God in unexpected ways. (from Amazon website)

About the author: Patti Hill, after years of raising children and then joyfully teaching elementary school, finally took her long-ago college English professor’s advice (“You should be a writer”) and fulfilled the dream of having her first novel published to wide acclaim in 2005. She writes almost every day now and lives with her husband in Grand Junction, Colorado.

Seeing Things
Publisher/Publication Date: B&H Publishing, Sept 2009
ISBN: 9780805447514
336 pages

Barnes & Noble
Amazon

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

Waiting on Wednesday: The Year of the Flood

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

The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

Publisher/Publication Date: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, September 22, 2009

I read The Handmaid's Tale last year and really like it - so I am looking forward to this one!

About the book: The long-awaited new novel from Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood is a brilliant visionary imagining of the future that calls to mind her classic novel The Handmaid’s Tale.

Adam One, the kindly leader of God’s Gardeners — a religion devoted to the melding of science and religion — has long predicted a natural disaster that will alter Earth as we know it. Now it has occurred, obliterating most human life. Two women have been spared: Ren, a young trapeze-dancer, locked inside a high-end sex club; and one of God’s Gardeners, Toby, who is barricaded inside a luxurious spa. Have others survived?

By turns dark, tender, violent, thoughtful, and witty, The Year of the Flood unfolds Toby’s and Ren’s stories during the years prior to their meeting again. The novel not only brilliantly reflects to us a world we recognize but poignantly reminds us of our enduring humanity. (from Barnes and Noble website)

About the author: When Margaret Atwood announced to her friends that she wanted to be a writer, she was only 16 years old. It was Canada. It was the 1950s. No one knew what to think. Nonetheless, Atwood began her writing career as a poet. Published In 1964 while she was still a student at Harvard, her second poetry anthology, The Circle Game, was awarded the Governor General's Award, one of Canada's most esteemed literary prizes. Since then, Atwood has gone on to publish many more volumes of poetry (as well as literary criticism, essays, and short stories), but it is her novels for which she is best known.

Atwood's first foray into fiction was 1966's The Edible Woman, an arresting story about a woman who stops eating because she feels her life is consuming her. Grabbing the attention of critics, who applauded its startlingly original premise, the novel explored feminist themes Atwood has revisited time and time again during her long, prolific literary career. She is famous for strong, compelling female protagonists -- from the breast cancer survivor in Bodily Harm to the rueful artist in Cat's Eye to the fatefully intertwined sisters in her Booker Prize-winning novel The Blind Asassin.

Perhaps Atwood's most legendary character is Offred, the tragic "breeder" in what is arguably her most famous book, 1985's The Handmaid's Tale. Part fable, part science fiction, and part dystopian nightmare, this novel presented a harrowing vision of women's lives in an oppressive futuristic society. The Washington Post compared it (favorably) to George Orwell's iconic 1984.

As if her status as a multi-award-winning, triple-threat writer (fiction, poetry, and essays) were not enough, Atwood has also produced several children's books, including Princess Prunella and the Purple Peanut (1995) and Rude Ramsay and the Roaring Radishes (2003) -- delicious alliterative delights that introduce a wealth of new vocabulary to young readers. (from Barnes and Noble website)

The Year of the Flood
Publisher/Publication Date: Knopf Doubleday, September 2009
ISBN: 9780385528771
448 pages

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

Waiting on Wednesday: Her Fearful Symmetry

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

Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger

Publisher/Publication Date: Simon & Schuster, September 2009

I can't wait to see what the cover of this book is going to look like also!

About the book: Six years after the phenomenal success of The Time Traveler's Wife, Audrey Niffenegger has returned with a spectacularly compelling and haunting second novel set in and around Highgate Cemetery in London.

When Elspeth Noblin dies of cancer, she leaves her London apartment to her twin nieces, Julia and Valentina. These two American girls never met their English aunt; they only knew that their mother, too, was a twin, and Elspeth her sister. Julia and Valentina are semi-normal American teenagers -- with seemingly little interest in college, finding jobs, or anything outside their cozy home in the suburbs of Chicago, and with an abnormally intense attachment to one another.

The girls move to Elspeth's flat, which borders Highgate Cemetery. They come to know the building's other residents. There is Martin, a brilliant and charming crossword puzzle setter suffering from crippling obsessive-compulsive disorder; Marjike, Martin's devoted but trapped wife; and Robert, Elspeth's elusive former lover, a scholar of the cemetery. As the girls become embroiled in the fraying lives of their aunt's neighbors, they also discover that much is still alive in Highgate, including -- perhaps -- their aunt, who can't seem to leave her old apartment and life behind. Niffenegger weaves a captivating story in Her Fearful Symmetry: about love and identity, about secrets and sisterhood, and about the tenacity of life -- even after death. (from Barnes and Noble website)

About the author: In her book Three Incestuous Sisters, Audrey Niffenegger tells the tale of a trio of sisters, each with her own special trait. There is blond Bettine, the beautiful one, blue-haired Ophile, the smart one, and then there's Clothilde. While hardly unintelligent and certainly not unattractive, it is still probably no coincidence that Niffenegger decided to cast her fellow redhead Clothilde as the talented one considering that she is so abundant in talent. A gifted illustrator and writer, Niffenegger is parlaying her quirky imagination into one of the most interesting bodies of work in contemporary literature.

Niffenegger's love of writing developed when she was a young girl, quietly spending her time writing and illustrating books as a hobby. Her wonderfully eccentric imaginativeness was in play from her earliest writing efforts. "My ‘first' novel was an epic about an imaginary road trip [sic] I went on with The Beatles," she explains on her website, "handwritten in turquoise marker, seventy pages long, which I wrote and illustrated when I was eleven."

Niffenegger's mini-magical mystery tour may have been her "first novel," but the first one to which the rest of the world would be privy came many years later. She had already established herself as a prominent artist whose work had been shown in the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Library of Congress, and the Houghton Library at Harvard University when The Time Traveler's Wife was published in 2003. "I wanted to write about a perfect marriage that is tested by something outside the control of the couple," Niffenegger told bookbrowse.com. "The title came to me out of the blue, and from the title sprang the characters, and from the characters came the story."

The Time Traveler's Wife, a sci-fi romance about the mercurial time traveler Henry and Clare, the wife who patiently awaits his return to the present, became a sensation upon its publication. This thoroughly original love story captured mass praise from USA Today, The Washington Post, People Magazine, and The Denver Post, not to mention celebrity couple Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt, who promptly purchased the rights to the book and are currently developing it into a motion picture.

Now that she had established herself as a talent to watch, Niffenegger finally had the opportunity to produce a book she would describe as "a fourteen-year labor of love." Three Incestuous Sisters: An Illustrated Novel, is a gorgeous, modern-gothic storybook about the love and rivalry shared between three women. With its minimal text, Niffenegger's chiefly uses her eerie illustrations to convey the sisters' story. Booklist summed up Three Incestuous Sisters quite succinctly by stating that "Niffenegger's grim yet erotic tale and stunningly moody gothic prints possess the sly subversion of Edward Gorey, the emotional valence of Edvard Munch, and her very own brilliant use of iconographic pattern, surprising perspective, and tensile line in the service of a delectable, otherworldly sensibility."

Now, Niffenegger is turning her attentions back to straight prose as she works on a new novel. "It's called Her Fearful Symmetry," she revealed in an online chat with the Hennepin County Library. "It's set in London's Highgate Cemetery, and features as many of the cliches of 19th century fiction as I can summon." Amazingly, with such a wide variety of styles in her still budding body of work -- from science fiction to fairy tale to her impending period piece -- Audrey Niffenegger's books still share a strong sense of unity, a distinctly peculiar and particular vision. "The thing that unites all my work is narrative," she said on her website. "I'm interested in telling stories, and I'm interested in creating a world that's recognizable to us as ours, but is filled with strangeness and slight changes in the rules of the universe."(from Barnes and Noble website)

Her Fearful Symmetry
Publisher/Publication Date: Simon & Schuster, September 2009
ISBN: 9781439165393
384 pages


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

Waiting on Wednesday: The Weight of Silence

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

The Weight of Silence by Heather Gudenkauf

Publisher/Publication Date: Mira, August 2009

While looking for a Waiting on Wednesday book this morning - I didn't have to go far, when this one jumped up at me from the beginnning of the Shelf Awareness e-mail!

About the book: Masterfully written and beautifully told, Heather Gudenkauf's debut is a stunning novel of family devotion, honesty and regret that will linger long after the last page is turned.

It happens quietly one August morning. As dawn’s shimmering light drenches the humid Iowa air, two families awaken to find their little girls have gone missing in the night.

Seven-year-old Calli Clark is sweet, gentle, a dreamer who suffers from selective mutism brought on by a tragedy that pulled her deep into silence as a toddler. Petra Gregory is Calli’s best friend, her soul mate and her voice. But neither Petra or Calli has been heard from since their disappearance was discovered.

Now these families are tied by the question of what happened to their children. And the answer is trapped in the silence of unspoken family secrets. (from the MIRA website)

About the author: Heather graduated from the University of Iowa with a degree in elementary education, has spent the past sixteen years working with students of all ages and is currently an instructional coach, and educator who provides curricular and professional development support to teachers.

Heather lives in Dubuque, Iowa, with her husband, three children and a very spoiled German shorthaired pointer named Maxine. When she's not working, Heather enjoys spending time with her family, reading, hiking and running.

The Weight of Silence is her first novel.

Click on The Weight of Silence for a link to preview this book.

The Weight of Silence
Publisher/Publication Date: Mira, August 2009
ISBN-13: 978-0-7783-2740-0
384 pages

What book are you waiting for?

Waiting on Wednesday: This Lovely Life

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

This Lovely Life by Vicki Forman
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publication Date: July 23, 2009

Vicki Forman gave birth to Evan and Ellie, weighing just a pound at birth, at twenty-three weeks’ gestation. During the delivery she begged the doctors to "let her babies go" — she knew all too well that at twenty-three weeks they could very well die and, if they survived, they would face a high risk of permanent disabilities. However, California law demanded resuscitation. Her daughter died just four days later; her son survived and was indeed multiply disabled: blind, nonverbal, and dependent on a feeding tube.

This Lovely Life tells, with brilliant intensity, of what became of the Forman family after the birth of the twins — the harrowing medical interventions and ethical considerations involving the sanctity of life and death. In the end, the longdelayed first steps of a five-year-old child will seem like the fist-pumping stuff of a triumph narrative. Forman’s intelligent voice gives a sensitive, nuanced rendering of her guilt, her anger, and her eventual acceptance in this portrait of a mother’s fierce love for her children. (from Barnes and Noble)

About the author: VICKI FORMAN’s work has appeared in the Seneca Review and the Santa Monica Review as well as in the anthologies Love You to Pieces: Creative Writers on Raising a Child with Special Needs, This Day: Diaries from American Women, and Literary Mama: Reading for the Maternally Inclined. She lives in La Canada, California.

Excerpt from This Lovely Life

This Lovely Life
Publication Date: July 23, 2009
ISBN-13: 9780547232751
272 pages

Waiting on Wednesday: Dismantled

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

Dismantled by Jennifer McMahon
Publisher: HarperCollins
Publication Date: June 16, 2009

The New York Times bestselling author of the acclaimed Island of Lost Girls and Promise Not to Tell returns with a chilling novel in which the secrets of the past come back to haunt a group of friends in terrifying ways.

Dismantlement = Freedom

Henry, Tess, Winnie, and Suz banded together in college to form a group they called the Compassionate Dismantlers. Following the first rule of their manifesto—"To understand the nature of a thing, it must be taken apart"—these daring misfits spend the summer after graduation in a remote cabin in the Vermont woods committing acts of meaningful vandalism and plotting elaborate, often dangerous, pranks. But everything changes when one particularly twisted experiment ends in Suz's death and the others decide to cover it up.

Nearly a decade later, Henry and Tess are living just an hour's drive from the old cabin. Each is desperate to move on from the summer of the Dismantlers, but their guilt isn't ready to let them go. When a victim of their past pranks commits suicide—apparently triggered by a mysterious Dismantler-style postcard—it sets off a chain of eerie events that threatens to engulf Henry, Tess, and their inquisitive nine-year-old daughter, Emma.

Is there someone who wants to reveal their secrets? Is it possible that Suz did not really die—or has she somehow found a way back to seek revenge?

Full of white-knuckle tension with deeply human characters caught in circumstances beyond their control, Jennifer McMahon's gripping story and spine-tingling plot prove that she is a master at weaving the fear of the supernatural with the stark realities of life. (from HarperCollins website)

Dismantled: A Novel
ISBN-13: 9780061689338
Publication Date: June 16, 2009
432 pages


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

Waiting on Wednesday: Abbeville

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


Abbeville by Jack Fuller
Publisher: Unbridled Books
ISBN: 978-1-932961-90-4
Available: August 2009

A story of our time. A novel for all times.

When the economy collapsed, it threatened everything George Bailey held dear. Returning to the little Central Illinois farm town where his grandfather had first prospered and then fallen into ruin during the Great Depression, George seeks out the details of this remarkable man's rise, fall and spiritual rebirth, hoping to find a way to recover himself. Abbeville is the story of a man caught by the tidal wave of economic disaster, and the meaning he finds in his quest for personal survival is as timely as today's news.

Author info: Jack Fuller has published six critically acclaimed novels and one book of non-fiction about journalism. He has been a legal affairs writer, a war correspondent in Vietnam, a Washington correspondent, and a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial writer. A graduate of NOrthwestern University and Yale Law School, he lives in Chicago wth his wife, Debra Moskovits. He has two children, Tim and Kate.




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

Waiting on Wednesday: What we Remember

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




What We Remember by Michael Thomas Ford

Publisher: Kensington Books

Available: May 26, 2009

Every family has a hidden story—even the perfect ones. Dig just a little, beyond the smiling holiday photographs and the oft-repeated anecdotes, and other memories come flooding back—the kind that can compel a family to stick together through catastrophe, or drive a chasm between them forever.
On the morning James McCloud, a Seattle district attorney, gets a call from his sister, Celeste, he senses his own long-buried family history is about to be dragged into the light. James’s father, Daniel, a police officer, disappeared eight years ago. Now his body has finally been found. James always believed that his father committed suicide after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. But the evidence leaves no doubt: Daniel was murdered.

James immediately returns to Cold Falls, New York, to be with the rest of his family. His mother, Ada, seems worn out and blank with disbelief. James’s brother, Billy, is twenty-one, gay, and even more troubled than James remembers. His brother-in-law, Nate Derry, is the town sheriff charged with investigating the case, and the mistrust that has hovered between them—ever since James dated Nate’s stepsister Nancy years ago—still exists. When James’s high school ring is discovered with Daniel’s body, making him the prime suspect, the McCloud and Derry families are both thrust into controversy and chaos. And as the truth emerges, piece by piece, so do the shadows and secrets in each relationship—secrets powerful enough to threaten another life and destroy the bonds that still remain.

Both suspenseful and deeply moving, What We Remember paints a compelling, thought-provoking portrait of a family as ordinary, as unique, as comforting and strange as our own. With unerring insight and candor, Michael Thomas Ford explores the complex ties—between fathers and sons, brothers and sisters, mother and child—that we may strive to leave behind but are compelled to carry with us, and reveals how little we can ever know with certainty, especially about those closest to us.

Michael Thomas Ford is the author of numerous books, most notably the “Trials from My Queer Life” series of essay collections—Alec Baldwin Doesn’t Love Me, That’s Mr. Faggot to You, It’s Not Mean If It’s True, The Little Book of Neuroses, and My Big Fat Queer Life. He lives in San Francisco with his partner and a very large black Lab.

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

Waiting on Wednesday: The Big Picture

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

The Big Picture (Filmmaking Lessons From a Life on the Set) by Tom Reilly


Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books/MacMillan

Available: May 12, 2009

Film production veteran Tom Reilly has worked on the sets of critically praised films and commercial blockbusters for more than three decades, including seventeen years alongside director Woody Allen. In The Big Picture, he explores the art and the craft of filmmaking from the vantage point of someone actually running the movie set. Using examples unlike any of those in other books on film, Reilly exposes not only the power and the personalities, but the secrets of the pros. He shares the insights he gleaned while working with more than sixty Oscar-winning professionals, from Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, and Vanessa Redgrave to Sydney Pollack, Sven Nykvist, and Barbra Streisand.

In these fifty entertaining, illuminating short essays, Reilly invites you to join him on the film set. What is it like to shoot a love scene? How do you do a full body burn? What is it like to film in the Everglades or in a morgue? What is blocking or matching, and how long should a script be? How do you decide when to build a set? Why is the color palette so critical? Is night shooting worth the suffering?

The Big Picture delivers the surprising answers to these and other fascinating questions about what it takes to make a feature film, offering a glimpse into what it’s like when the lights are bright, the camera is rolling, and the moviemakers are calling the shots. (Description from publisher's website)

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

Waiting on Wednesdays: Ravens

Ravens by George Dawes Green

Publisher: Hachette Books

Available: July 15, 2009

The Boatwrights just won 318 million dollars in the Georgia State lottery. It's going to be the worst day of their lives.

When Shaw McBride and Romeo Zderko pull up at a convenience store off I-95 in Georgia, their only thought is to fix a leaky tire and be on their way again to Florida-away from their dull Ohio tech-support jobs. But this happens to be the store from which a 318,000,000 million dollar Jackpot ticket has just been sold -- and when a pretty clerk accidentally reveals to Shaw the identity of the winning family, he hatches a ferociously audacious scheme: He and Romeo will squeeze the family for half their prize.

That night, he visits the Boatwright home and takes the family hostage, while Romeo patrols the streets nearby, prepared to murder the Boatwrights' loved ones at any sign of resistance. At first, the family offers none. But Shaw's plot depends on maintaining constant fear-merciless, unfaltering terror-and soon, under the pressure, everyone's sanity begins to unravel . . .

At once frightening, comic, and suspenseful, RAVENS is a wholly original and utterly compelling novel from one of our most talented writers.
(Description from Hachette website)

Waiting on Wednesday: Prairie Tale: A Memoir

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

Prairie Tale: A Memoir by Melissa Gilbert

Publisher: Simon Spotlight Entertainment

Available: June 9, 2009

Who doesn't know Melissa Gilbert? I grew up on both the books and the T.V. series so I was excited when I stumbled across this book this week. Who doesn't recognize the theme music as soon as it starts - and watching the little girls run through the tall prairie grass. Even thinking about the show reminds me of my childhood - you know, when you had all the time in the world to read however much you wanted! I am really looking forward to this book!

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

Waiting on Wednesday: Last Night in Montreal

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

Last Night in Montreal by Emily St. John Mandel

Publisher: Unbridled Books

Available: June 2, 2009

Lilia Albert has been leaving people behind for her entire life. She spends her childhood and adolescence traveling constantly and changing identities. In adulthood, she finds it impossible to stop. Haunted by an inability to remember her early childhood, she moves restlessly from city to city, abandoning lovers along with way, possibly still followed by a private detective who has pursued her for years. Then her latest lover follows her from New York to Montreal, determined to learn her secrets and make sure she’s safe. Last Night in Montreal is a story of love, amnesia, compulsive travel, the depths and the limits of family bonds, and the nature of obsession. In this extraordinary debut, Emily St. John Mandel casts a powerful spell that captures the reader in a gritty, youthful world—charged with an atmosphere of mystery, promise and foreboding—where small revelations continuously change our understanding of the truth and lead to desperate consequences. Mandel’s characters will resonate with you long after the final page is turned.

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

Waiting on Wednesday: Once Upon a Fastball

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

Once Upon a Fastball by Bob Mitchell

Publisher: Kensington Publishing

Available: April 28, 2009

Description: Your legacy is in the Attic.

The words leap from the cryptic poem left for Harvard professor Seth Stein by his Papa Sol, the doting grandfather who vanished without a trace two years earlier. It was Papa Sol who instilled an unquenchable passion for baseball in Seth’s soul; it was Sol who also ignited Seth’s obsession with history, spinning fabulous tales of times and people long gone.

Seth is still searching for answers to Papa Sol’s disappearance when the poem leads him to a scuffed, yellowed baseball resting in a box handmade by his grandfather. A single touch of the rough leather thrusts Seth through the swirling vortex of history onto the streets of 1950s Brooklyn, and then to the greatest baseball game ever played, the Bobby Thomson “Shot Heard ’Round the World” play-off classic. In this surreal, sepia-toned site of past glory, Seth begins a wondrous, life-changing odyssey to find the answers he so desperately seeks.

Suspenseful, thought-provoking, funny, and poignant, this beautifully crafted novel is a joyous tribute to our inspiring and timeless national pastime, and a rare treasure for all those who love baseball.

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

Waiting on Wednesday: Blind Sight

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

Blind Sight by Terri Persons

Publisher: Doubleday

Available: May 26, 2009

Description:
Terri Persons takes her third thriller featuring FBI
agent Bernadette St. Clare to a whole new level, as
she brings spine-tingling suspense together with elements
of the supernatural in a murder investigation
that’s as chilling as a Minnesota winter.

The deer hunter braving the icy conditions of the
Minnesota woods gets much more than he bargained for
when he makes the grisly discovery of a young girl’s body. The
condition of the body is shocking: the girl had been pregnant,
but the fetus was removed from her womb and an inverted
pentagram was drawn on her forehead. After the girl is identified
as the daughter of a high-powered senator, the FBI is
called in to find the murderer—and the missing baby.

The case becomes increasingly complex as Bernadette and
Tony Garcia’s personal relationship heats up, and the investigation
is hampered by the many lies that lead them on a circuitous—
and deadly—route to the truth. Through dogged
police work and Bernadette’s unique power of second sight,
they close in on the killers on a frigid night in the snowy
woods, and try to save the tiniest victim of the toughest crime
they’ve ever solved.

And while you are here - don't forget to check out my giveaways in the sidebar!

Waiting on Wednesday: Deadlock

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

Deadlock by Robert Liparulo

(A John Hutchinson Novel)

Publisher: Thomas Nelson

Available March 31, 2009 (My Birthday!)

Product Description from Amazon:

Hutch's survival skills and ingenuity saved him once in the deep woods. Can they save him this time in the city?

John Hutchinson thinks it's no coincidence that Brendan Page runs this modern Praetorian Guard, and that the billionaire military industrialist must have had something to do with the atrocities his son Declan committed in Canada. The Canadian and U.S. Justice departments disagree, but Hutch has been digging for dirt ever since.

When Hutch discovers the secret of Page's success, Page decides to teach him a lesson. But the operation goes terribly wrong, and Hutch's son is kidnapped. While a lone man stands little chance against the best black op soldiers ever issued M-16s, Hutch manages to survive longer than Page anticipated.

As far as Hutch is concerned, high-tech helmets, machine guns, and hand grenades are nothing compared to a man determined to save his son. It's a lesson he sets out to teach Page-and one that he can only hope works as well in the real world as it does in his heart.

Waiting on Wednesday: The Last Child

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

The Last Child by John Hart

Publisher: St. Martin's Press (Macmillan)

Available May 12, 2009

Thirteen year-old Johnny Merrimon had the perfect life: a warm home and loving parents; a twin sister, Alyssa, with whom he shared an irreplaceable bond. He knew nothing of loss, until the day Alyssa vanished from the side of a lonely street. Now, a year later, Johnny finds himself isolated and alone, failed by the people he’d been taught since birth to trust. No one else believes that Alyssa is still alive, but Johnny is certain that she is---confident in a way that he can never fully explain.

.

Determined to find his sister, Johnny risks everything to explore the dark side of his hometown. It is a desperate, terrifying search, but Johnny is not as alone as he might think. Detective Clyde Hunt has never stopped looking for Alyssa either, and he has a soft spot for Johnny. He watches over the boy and tries to keep him safe, but when Johnny uncovers a dangerous lead and vows to follow it, Hunt has no choice but to intervene.

Then a second child goes missing . . .

Undeterred by Hunt’s threats or his mother’s pleas, Johnny enlists the help of his last friend, and together they plunge into the wild, to a forgotten place with a history of violence that goes back more than a hundred years. There, they meet a giant of a man, an escaped convict on his own tragic quest. What they learn from him will shatter every notion Johnny had about the fate of his sister; it will lead them to another far place, to a truth that will test both boys to the limit.