~Waiting On Wednesday~

Far From Home by Anne DeGrace

Description: When 19 year old Jo decides to leave school, her parents’ home, and everything she holds dear, she’s left with nothing to guide her and no way to get where she’s going. But due to the kindness of strangers, finds her way to Cass’s Roadside Café, a side-of-the-road dinner in the middle-of-nowhere. And on one extraordinary, windy day in 1977, she meets an old woman who, informed she only has a few weeks to live, tells everyone exactly what she thinks of them—and then doesn’t die; a water-witcher who has had to come to terms with his unusual talent; a hippie that travels wherever the wind takes him; a friendly trucker; and a cast of local characters whose pasts’ have taught them invaluable lessons, and whose stories’ give Jo the strength and courage to depart on her own journey, once again.

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Avon A (November 10, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061728802

The Things That Keep Us Here by Carla Buckley

Description: How far would you go to protect your family?

Ann Brooks never thought she’d have to answer that question. Then she found her limits tested by a crisis no one could prevent. Now, as her neighborhood descends into panic, she must make tough choices to protect everyone she loves from a threat she cannot even see. In this chillingly urgent novel, Carla Buckley confronts us with the terrifying decisions we are forced to make when ordinary life changes overnight.

A year ago, Ann and Peter Brooks were just another unhappily married couple trying–and failing–to keep their relationship together while they raised two young daughters. Now the world around them is about to be shaken as Peter, a university researcher, comes to a startling realization: A virulent pandemic has made the terrible leap across the ocean to America’s heartland.

And it is killing fifty out of every hundred people it touches.

As their town goes into lockdown, Peter is forced to return home–with his beautiful graduate assistant. But the Brookses’ safe suburban world is no longer the refuge it once was. Food grows scarce, and neighbor turns against neighbor in grocery stores and at gas pumps. And then a winter storm strikes, and the community is left huddling in the dark.

Trapped inside the house she once called home, Ann Brooks must make life-or-death decisions in an environment where opening a door to a neighbor could threaten all the things she holds dear.

Carla Buckley’s poignant debut raises important questions to which there are no easy answers, in an emotionally riveting tale of one family facing unimaginable stress.

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Delacorte Press (February 9, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0440245095

What are YOU waiting for today?