On My Wishlist #6

On My Wishlist is a fun weekly event hosted by Book Chick City and runs every Saturday. It's where you can list all the books that you desperately want but haven't actually bought yet. They can be old, new or forthcoming.

Yay! It's Saturday and it's time to let everyone know what's on your Wishlist! Here are some that I am waiting for:

Egret Cove by Margaret Nava:

At sixty-something years old Angela Dunn has given up on finding much excitement in her life. She's got her half-blind dog, Gizmo, a crummy retail job, a tiny house, and no close friends or family to call on in her Kokomo, Indiana hometown. But when her brother, Tony, calls from Florida with a house-sitting offer, Angela has to gear up all her courage to accept. What about the bugs? The alligators? Her fear of hurricanes? Not knowing what else to do, she sells her few belongings, loads the dog into her SUV, and soon, there she is: living in a cute-as-a-bug house trailer, being romanced by a handsome, gray-haired Italian, making friends with wild women, and trying very hard to let go of the past and find the joy in life once more.


Mealy LaBauve by Ken Wells:

Fifteen-year-old Meely LaBauve is growing up on Catahoula Bayou and living by his wits. Not since Huck Finn rafted down the Mississippi has there been a coming-of-age story like this, told in such an utterly authentic unlettered American voice. From a charming encounter with first love in the Canciennes' corn patch to an adventurous paddle through wild and timeless places little explored, Ken Wells has cooked up a zesty gumbo of a book--rich, poignant, and often hilarious.

* An American Library Association/YALSA best book of the year


The Fires: A Novel by Rene Steinke:

"Once I tried to burn an old toy--a mechanical duck. When I'd found it at the bottom of a drawer, it reminded me of the groggy sunrise Easter service and the hunt for eggs in the graveyard. After I set the match to its tail, it started walking pitifully on its metal legs, and it knocked around the room singeing the walls and linoleum until it burned down to its metal frame and folded with a crackle and small battery explosion. It is less dangerous to burn things than to save them."

Ella, 22, is a trapped young woman limited to the flickers of release she finds in pyromania. Having abandoned college, she is stuck in her small, Midwestern hometown, suffocated by the silence of her repressed mother and grandmother and physically encased in ropy scars from the fire in which she was severely burned as a child. In this mesmerizing first novel, we follow her incendiary trail as Ella tries to cope with many losses: her father to cancer; her grandfather to suicide; her favorite aunt, whose whereabouts are unknown; and, finally, her sense of herself--both apart from and as one with the shocking scars that bind her skin. Ella pokes nervously at smoldering truths, but in her family the lies come as quick and fast as the deaths--and each new deceit sparks the impulse to inflame. Fire is made of grief, Ella believes, and she witnesses plenty of both in a story as entrancing and powerful as the lick and curl of a flame.


What's on YOUR wishlist this week?