WAITING ON WEDNESDAY

A Quiet Belief In Angels by R.J. Ellory
This title is due to be released September 8, 2009

From Amazon.com:
Product Description
From rural Georgia to New York City, a harrowing, evocative, and mesmerizing tale of murder and redemption

1939. In the small, rural community of Augusta Falls, Georgia, twelve-year-old Joseph Vaughan learns of the brutal assault and murder of a young girl, the first in a series of killings that will plague the community over the next decade. Joseph and his friends are determined to protect the town from the evil in their midst and they form "The Guardians" to watch over the community. But the murderer evades them and they watch helplessly as one child after another is taken. Even when the killings cease, a shadow of fear follows Joseph for the rest of his life. The past won't stay buried and, fifty years later, Joseph must confront the nightmare that has overshadowed his entire life...

• Hardcover: 396 pages
• Publisher: Overlook Hardcover (September 8, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590202503

"Answer At Once": Letters of Mountain Families in Shenandoah National Park, 1934-1938 by Professor Katrina M. Powell, PhD
This title is due to be released September 9, 2009.

From Amazon.com:

With the Commonwealth of Virginia's Public Park Condemnation Act of 1928, the state surveyed for and acquired three thousand tracts of land that would become Shenandoah National Park. The Commonwealth condemned the homes of five hundred families so that their land could be "donated" to the federal government and placed under the auspices of the National Park Service. Prompted by the condemnation of their land, the residents began writing letters to National Park and other government officials to negotiate their rights and to request various services, property, and harvests. Typically represented in the popular media as lawless, illiterate, and incompetent, these mountaineers prove themselves otherwise in this poignant collection of letters. The history told by the residents themselves both adds to and counters the story that is generally accepted about them.

These letters are housed in the Shenandoah National Park archives in Luray, Virginia, which was opened briefly to the public from 2000 to 2002, but then closed due to lack of funding. This selection of roughly 150 of these letters, in their entirety, makes these documents available again not only to the public but also to scholars, researchers, and others interested in the region's history, in the politics of the park, and in the genealogy of the families. Supplementing the letters are introductory text, photographs, annotation, and oral histories that further document the lives of these individuals.

About the Author

Katrina M. Powell is Associate Professor of English at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and the author of The Anguish of Displacement: The Politics of Literacy in the Letters of Mountain Families in Shenandoah National Park (Virginia).

What books are YOU waiting on?