On My Wishlist #12

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.


A deeply moving story of one woman’s search for truth and meaning in the aftermath of her father's unsolved murder....

The Lost Night by Rachel Howard

On the night of June 22, 1986, ten-year-old Rachel Howard woke to a disturbing sight: pools of blood on the hallway carpet and a glimpse of her father clutching his stabbed throat. Stan Howard died minutes later, and his bizarre small-town murder was never solved. Rachel’s father was thirty-two, a laid-back, handsome man who loved the music of Rod Stewart and had no known enemies. Faced with her family’s shock, Rachel decided she would cope the only way she knew how: By keeping silent and trying to pretend the murder had never happened.

Now, seventeen years later and recently engaged, Rachel attempts to uncover for herself what happened that night. Finally reconnecting with her father’s family, she sorts through her relatives’ memories of his death and presses the less-than-helpful detectives. Still bewildered, she seeks the only other two people present at the murder: her former stepmother and stepbrother, neither of whom she has seen since her father’s funeral. The result is a tender portrait of a father and a keen investigation of memory, truth, and how a family moves on from a tragedy for which they may never find answers.

From the bestselling author of The Woman in the Fifth and The Pursuit of Happiness comes a devastating new novel....

Leaving The World by Douglas Kennedy

Years after vowing to herself and her parents to never marry, have children and lead the resentful life they chose, Jane, now a Harvard professor, falls unexpectedly pregnant. Resolved as she’s been to childlessness, she begins to warm to the idea of motherhood, even with a partner who is increasingly absent. But a devastating turn of events takes the decision out of her hands in a way she could never have predicted.

Her familiar world torn apart, Jane feels forced to leave her old life behind. She resigns from her job, cuts all ties with friends and family and moves to a place where no one will find her. Isolated, she feels she has finally succeeded in leaving her world.

Yet when a young girl disappears, prompting a high-profile police investigation, Jane is drawn in. Convinced that the person at the heart of the case is much closer to her new community than anyone realises, she has to make a decision to either stay hidden or bring to light a shocking truth.


In her most ambitious novel to date, Lily King sets her sharply insightful family drama in an upper-middle-class suburb where she traces a complex and explosive father-daughter relationship from the 1970s to the present day....

Father Of The Rain by Lily King

When eleven-year-old Daley’s parents separate, she is thrust into a chaotic adult world of competition, indulgence, and manipulation. Unable to place her allegiance, she gently toes the thickening line between her parents’ worlds: the liberal, socially committed realm of her mother, and the conservative, liquor-soaked life of her father. But without her mother there to keep him in line, Daley’s father’s basest impulses are unleashed, and Daley has to choose her own survival over the father she still loves.
As she grows into adulthood, Daley retreats from the New England country-club culture that nourished her father’s fears and addictions, attempting to live outside his influence. Until he hits rock bottom. Faced with the chance to free her father from sixty years of dependency, Daley must decide whether repairing their broken relationship is worth losing not only her professional dreams, but the love of her life, Jonathan, who represents so much of what Daley’s father claims to hate, and who has given her so much of what he could never provide.


What books are on YOUR wish list today?