~Waiting On Wednesday~

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Breaking The Spine.


The Summer I Learned to Fly by Dana Reinhardt:

Drew's a bit of a loner. She has a pet rat, her dead dad's Book of Lists, an encyclopedic knowledge of cheese from working at her mom's cheese shop, and a crush on Nick, the surf bum who works behind the counter. It's the summer before eighth grade and Drew's days seem like business as usual, until one night after closing time, when she meets a strange boy in the alley named Emmett Crane. Who he is, why he's there, where the cut on his cheek came from, and his bottomless knowledge of rats are all mysteries Drew will untangle as they are drawn closer together, and Drew enters into the first true friendship, and adventure, of her life.

Hardcover, 224 pages

Expected publication: July 12th 2011 by Wendy Lamb Books

more details...

ISBN

0385739540 (ISBN13: 9780385739542)

What are YOU waiting for?

What are YOU Waiting for Today??

Waiting On Wednesday is hosted by Jill at Breaking The Spine.


My Waiting On Wednesday pick for today is But I Love Him by Amanda Grace.

From Goodreads:

Tonight was so much worse than anything before it.
Tonight he didn't stop after the first slap.

At the beginning of senior year, Ann was a smiling, straight-A student and track star with friends and a future. Then she met a haunted young man named Connor. Only she can heal his emotional scars; only he could make her feel so loved-and needed. Ann can't recall the pivotal moment it all changed, when she surrendered everything to be with him, but by graduation, her life has become a dangerous high wire act. Just one mistake could trigger Connor's rage, a senseless storm of cruel words and violence damaging everything-and everyone-in its path.

This evocative slideshow of flashbacks reveals a heartbreaking story of love gone terribly wrong.

This title will be released on May 8, 2011.

What are YOU waiting for today????

~Waiting On Wednesday~

Waiting On Wednesday is hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine.

My pick today comes from a recommendation from Shellie at Layers Of Thought!

The Fates Will Find Their Way: A Novel by Hannah Pittard:

Sixteen year-old Nora Lindell is missing. And the neighborhood boys she left behind are caught forever in the heady current of her absence.

As the days and years pile up, the mystery of her disappearance grows kaleidoscopically. A collection of rumors, divergent suspicions, and tantalizing what ifs, Nora Lindell's story is a shadowy projection of teenage lust, friendship, reverence, and regret, captured magically in the disembodied plural voice of the boys who still long for her.

Told in haunting, percussive prose, Hannah Pittard's beautifully crafted story tracks the emotional progress of the sister Nora left behind, the other families in their leafy suburban enclave, and the individual fates of the boys in her thrall. Far more eager to imagine Nora's fate than to scrutinize their own, the boys sleepwalk into an adulthood of jobs, marriages, families, homes, and daughters of their own, all the while pining for a girl—and a life—that no longer exists, except in the imagination.

A masterful literary debut that shines a light into the dream-filled space between childhood and all that follows, The Fates Will Find their Way is a story about the stories we tell ourselves—of who we once were and might someday become.

Hardcover, 256 pages

Published February 1st 2011 by Ecco

more details...

ISBN

006199605X


What are YOU waiting for???

What are YOU waiting for?

Waiting On Wednesday is hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine.


My pick this week for Waiting on Wednesday is Pretty Little Things by Jilliane Hoffman:

Thirteen-year-old Lainey Emerson is the middle child in a household that police are already familiar with: her mother works too much and her step-father favors his own blood over another man’s problems—namely, Lainey and her wild older sister, Liza. So when Lainey does not come home from a Friday night out with her friends, it is dismissed by the Coral Springs Police Department as just another disillusioned South Florida teen running away from suburban drama and an unhappy home life.

But Special Agent Bobby Dees, who has headed up the department’s di4cult Crimes Against Children (CAC) Squad in Miami for more than a decade, is not quite so sure. Nicknamed “The Shepherd” by colleagues, he has an uncanny ability to find the missing and bring them back home—dead or alive. Haunted by the still unsolved disappearance of his own daughter, Bobby recognizes the all too familiar up-swell inside him, the gut feeling that Lainey Emerson is no runaway.

A search of Lainey’s computer and a talk with her best friend reveal Lainey was involved in a secret Internet relationship, spawned over a chat room, and nurtured through untraceable instant messages. Bobby fears she may be the victim of an on-line predator, and he fears she may not be the only one.

• Mass Market Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Vanguard Press (May 31, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1593156383
• ISBN-13: 978-1593156381

What Are YOU Waiting For?

Waiting On Wednesday is hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine.

The Last Ghost Dancer by Tony Bender

The Last Ghost Dancer is more than a coming-of-age fable, more than the wry memoirs of a spiritual search. It is the story of a remarkable summer in a remarkable west river town. It is a commentary on the depth and breadth of friendships forged, of lovers lost, and the realization that it is the journey that is of importance, and not so much the destination. Looking back, as old men do, it’s hard to imagine it really happened. But it did. One wise teacher, one perfect girl, one harrowing summer, can set the course of a lifetime. Meet Bones, the wry, funny, ever-observant, thoughtful and hapless narrator, a grease monkey at the only gas station in Pale Butte, whose most recent claim to fame is dropping an Edsel off the hoist. Now, some sixty years later, Bones, a dreamer of apocalyptic dreams, reflects on miracles small and large and his spiritual discovery that marked the summer of 1977.

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books (July 20, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312592302

Bitter in the Mouth by Monique Truong

Growing up in the small town of Boiling Springs, North Carolina, in the 70’s and 80’s, Linda believes that she is profoundly different from everyone else, including the members of her own family. “What I know about you, little girl, would break you in two” are the cruel, mysterious last words that Linda’s grandmother ever says to her. Now in her thirties, Linda looks back at her past when she navigated her way through life with the help of her great-uncle Harper, who loves her and loves to dance, and her best friend Kelly, with whom Linda exchanges almost daily letters. The truth about my family was that we disappointed one another. When I heard the word “disappoint,” I tasted toast, slightly burnt. For as long as she can remember, Linda has experienced a secret sense—she can “taste” words, which have the power to disrupt, dismay, or delight. She falls for names and what they evoke: Canned peaches. Dill. Orange sherbet. Parsnip (to her great regret). But with crushes comes awareness. As with all bodies, Linda’s is a mystery to her, in this and in other ways. Even as Linda makes her way north to Yale and New York City, she still does not know the truth about her past. Then, when a personal tragedy compels Linda to return to Boiling Springs, she gets to know a mother she never knew and uncovers a startling story of a life, a family. Revelation is when God tells us the truth. Confession is when we tell it to him. This astonishing novel questions many assumptions—about what it means to be a family and to be a friend, to be foreign and to be familiar, to be connected and to be disconnected—from others and from the past, our bodies, our histories, and ourselves.

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Random House (August 31, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400069084

What are YOU waiting for today?

What Are YOU Waiting For?

Waiting On Wednesday is hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine.

Left Neglected by Lisa Genova:

A poignant novel about a busy, vibrant woman in her 30s who has a car accident, leaving her to deal with a crippling disorder called left neglect.

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Gallery (January 4, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1439164630
• ISBN-13: 978-1439164631

Composed: A Memoir by Roseann Cash

A candid and moving memoir from the critically acclaimed singer and songwriter

For thirty years as a musician, Rosanne Cash has enjoyed both critical and commercial success, releasing a series of albums that are as notable for their lyrical intelligence as for their musical excellence.

Now, in her memoir, Cash writes compellingly about her upbringing in Southern California as the child of country legend Johnny Cash, and of her relationships with her mother and her famous stepmother, June Carter Cash. In her account of her development as an artist she shares memories of a hilarious stint as a twenty-year-old working for Columbia Records in London; recording her own first album on a German label; working her way to success; her marriage to Rodney Crowell, a union that made them Nashville's premier couple; her relationship with the country music establishment; taking a new direction in her music and leaving Nashville to move to New York; motherhood; dealing with the deaths of her parents, in part through music; the process of songwriting; and the fulfillment she has found with her current husband and musical collaborator, John Leventhal.

Cash has written an unconventional and compelling memoir that, in the tradition of M. F. K. Fisher's The Gastronomical Me and Frank Conroy's Stop-Time, is a series of linked pieces that combine to form a luminous and brilliant whole.

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult (August 10, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670021962
• ISBN-13: 978-0670021963

What are YOU waiting for today?

Waiting On Wednesday

Waiting On Wednesday is hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine.

I have started reading more YA novels lately and I'm finding that I really like them. I found this one while browsing on Goodreads:

Like Mandarin byKirsten Hubbard

It's hard to find beauty in the badlands of Washokey, Wyoming. Fourteen-year-old Grace Carpenter knows it's not her mother's pageant obsessions, or the cowboy dances and pickup trucks adored by her small-town classmates. True beauty is wild girl Mandarin Ramey: seventeen, shameless and utterly carefree. Grace would give ANYTHING to be like Mandarin. When the two misfits are united for a project, they embark on an unlikely, explosive friendship, packed with nights spent skinny-dipping in the canal, liberating the town's animal-head trophies, and constantly searching for someplace magic. Grace even plays along when Mandarin suggests they make a pact to run away together. Blame it on the crazy-making wildwinds that plague their badlands town. But all too soon, Grace discovers Mandarin's unique beauty hides a girl who's troubled, broken and even dangerous. And no matter how hard Grace fights to keep the magic, even the best friendships can't withstand betrayal.

March 2011 by Delacorte Press

what are YOU waiting for today?

What Are You Waiting For?

Waiting On Wednesday is hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine.

My WOW pick today is Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship by Gail Caldwell.

Product Description

“It’s an old, old story: I had a friend and we shared everything, and then she died and so we shared that, too.”

So begins this gorgeous memoir by Pulitzer Prize winner Gail Caldwell, a testament to the power of friendship, a story of how an extraordinary bond between two women can illuminate the loneliest, funniest, hardest moments in life, including the final and ultimate challenge.

They met over their dogs. Both writers, Gail Caldwell and Caroline Knapp became best friends, talking about everything from their shared struggle with alcohol to their love of books. They walked the woods of New England and rowed on the Charles River, and the miles they logged on land and water became a measure of the interior ground they covered. From disparate backgrounds but with striking emotional similarities, these two private, fiercely self-reliant women created an attachment more profound than either of them could ever have foreseen.

Rich with the joys of raising dogs and the rivalries of competitive sports, their friendship helped them define the ordinary moments of life as the ones worth cherishing. Then, several years into this remarkable connection, Knapp was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer.

With her signature exquisite prose, Caldwell mines the deepest levels of devotion and grief in this moving memoir about treasuring and losing a best friend, and about coming of age in midlife. Let’s Take the Long Way Home is a celebration of life and of the transformation that comes from intimate connection—and it affirms, once again, why Gail Caldwell is recognized as one of our bravest and most honest literary voices.

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Random House (August 10, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400067383
• ISBN-13: 978-1400067381

What are YOU waiting for today?

Waiting On Wednesday

After reading Department of Lost & Found and loving it, I am eager to read Allison Winn Scotch's new novel, The One That I Want!

What if you woke up one day to all your dreams coming true...but those dreams were more like nightmares?

Tilly Farmer is thirty-two years old and has the perfect life she always dreamed of: married to her high school sweetheart, working as a school guidance counselor, trying for a baby. Perfect.

But one sweltering afternoon at the local fair, everything changes. Tilly wanders into a fortune teller's tent and meets an old childhood friend, who offers her more than just a reading. "I'm giving you the gift of clarity," her friend says. "It's what I always through you needed." And soon enough, Tilly starts seeing things: her alcoholic father relapsing, staggering out of a bar with his car keys in hand; her husband uprooting their happy, stable life, a packed U-Haul in their driveway. And even more disturbing, these visions start coming true. Suddenly Tilly's perfect life, so meticulously mapped out, seems to be crumbling around her. And as she furiously races to keep up with - and hopefully change - her destiny, she faces the question: Which life does she want? The one she's carefully nursed for decades, or the one she never considered possible?

What if you could see into the future? Would you want to know what fate has in store?

Synopsis from: www.allisonwinnscotch.com

• Hardcover: 288 pages

• Publisher: Shaye Areheart Books (June 1, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307464504
• ISBN-13: 978-0307464507

What are YOU waiting for today?

Waiting On Wednesday

Waiting On Wednesday is hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine.

My pick for today's Waiting On Wednesday is The Tension of Opposites by Kristina McBride, due to be release on May 25, 2010.

From Goodreads:

It’s been two years since Noelle disappeared. Two years since her bike was discovered, sprawled on a sidewalk. Two years of silence, of worry, of fear.

For those two long years, her best friend Tessa has waited, living her own life in a state of suspended animation. Because how can she allow herself to enjoy a normal high school life if Noelle can’t? How dare she have other friends, go to dances, date boys, without knowing what happened to the girl she thought she would share everything with?

And then one day, someone calls Noelle’s house. She’s alive.

A haunting psychological thriller taken straight from the headlines, The Tension of Opposites is a striking debut that explores the emotional aftermath of a kidnapping on the victim, and on the people she left behind.

published

May 25th 2010 by EgmontUSA (first published 2010)
details

Hardcover, 288 pages

isbn

1606840851 (isbn13: 9781606840856)

What are YOU waiting for today?

Waiting on Wednesday

My pick today is Neverland by Douglas Clegg!


From Douglas Clegg, New York Times bestselling author of Isis, comes a southern gothic tale of family secrets and games of innocence turned to darkness.

For years, the Jackson family has vacationed at Rowena Wandigaux Lee's old Victorian house on Gull Island, a place of superstition and legend off the southern coast of the U.S. One particular summer, young Beau follows his cousin Sumter into a hidden shack in the woods—and christens this new clubhouse "Neverland."

Neverland has a secret history, unknown to the children...

The rundown shack in the woods is the key to an age-old mystery, a place forbidden to all. But Sumter and his cousins gather in its dusty shadows to escape the tensions at their grandmother's house. Neverland becomes the place where children begin to worship a creature of shadows, which Sumter calls "Lucy."

All gods demand sacrifice...

It begins with small sacrifices, little games, strange imaginings. While Sumter's games spiral out of control, twisting from the mysterious to the macabre, a nightmarish presence rises among the straggly trees beyond the bluffs overlooking the sea.

And when Neverland itself is threatened with destruction, the children's games take on a horrifying reality—and Gull Island becomes a place of unrelenting terror.

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Vanguard Press (April 13, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1593155417
• ISBN-13: 978-1593155414

What are YOU waiting for today?

My WOW Pick!

My Waiting On Wednesday pick for this week is:

The Improper Life of Bezellia Grove: A Novel

by
Susan Gregg Gilmore

An excerpt from the book from susangregggilmore.com

"Apparently among those who consider their social standing some measure of importance, I am to be admired, for I am one of few Nashvillians who can claim with infallible certainty that a blood relation has lived in this town since its inception. My mother, although a Grove by marriage, never tired of sharing this piece of family trivia at cocktail parties or morning coffees, convinced that it elevated her position far beyond what her birth parents could have guaranteed. And whether she did exaggerate the details in the hopes of impressing her peers, the truth remains that a poor Carolina farmer did pack his bags some two hundred and fifty years ago and set out to cross the Appalachian Mountains, heading west with his young bride determined to claim a few acres of his own and a better life for his family. He probably didn’t have a penny to his name by the time he got to Fort Nashboro begging for a hot meal and a place to sleep, but that doesn’t seem to matter to the Grove family anymore.

Legend has it that when the Chickamauga Indians attacked the Nashville settlement, they killed my ancestral father as he fought to protect his beloved wife. She grabbed the musket from her dead husband’s hands and continued the fight, killing three Indian warriors herself. Then she fell on top of her husband’s cold, bloody body and held him in her arms throughout the night.

Her name was Bezellia Louise, and for generations since, the first girl born to a Grove has been named in her memory. Although most official historians dispute any claims of her heroics, my father donated thousands of dollars to the Nashville Historical Society with the belief that eventually some fresh, young academic would see the past more according to my family’s advantage. But fact or fiction, I believed in her courage and passion and have always been proud to share her name.

Sadly, the Bezellias birthed before me never cared for this designation, preferring a monosyllabic moniker – like Bee, Zee or Zell – to their formal Christian name. My own mother disliked the name so much that for years she refused to let it cross her lips, calling me only sister, a generic substitution that summed up her distaste for my name and her inadequate affection for me. I, on the other hand, always wanted to hear my name in its entirety, never caring what others thought of it."

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Shaye Areheart Books (August 17, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307395030
• ISBN-13: 978-0307395030

What are YOU waiting for today?

~Oooh, this looks GOOD~

My Waiting On Wednesday pick for this week is:

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake: A Novel by Aimee Bender

Product Description

The wondrous Aimee Bender conjures the lush and moving story of a girl whose magical gift is really a devastating curse.

On the eve of her ninth birthday, unassuming Rose Edelstein, a girl at the periphery of schoolyard games and her distracted parents’ attention, bites into her mother’s homemade lemon-chocolate cake and discovers she has a magical gift: she can taste her mother’s emotions in the cake. She discovers this gift to her horror, for her mother—her cheerful, good-with-crafts, can-do mother—tastes of despair and desperation. Suddenly, and for the rest of her life, food becomes a peril and a threat to Rose.

The curse her gift has bestowed is the secret knowledge all families keep hidden—her mother’s life outside the home, her father’s detachment, her brother’s clash with the world. Yet as Rose grows up she learns to harness her gift and becomes aware that there are secrets even her taste buds cannot discern.

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake is a luminous tale about the enormous difficulty of loving someone fully when you know too much about them. It is heartbreaking and funny, wise and sad, and confirms Aimee Bender’s place as “a writer who makes you grateful for the very existence of language” (San Francisco Chronicle).

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday (June 1, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385501129
• ISBN-13: 978-0385501125

What are YOU waiting for today?????

Look! Another Animal Memoir - My Favorite!

As most of you know, I love memoirs....especially about animals. I am excited to see this memoir of Oscar, the nursing home cat, who somehow knows when the end is near, and offers comfort to those who are preparing for their spiritual journey from this world to the next......

Making Rounds with Oscar
The Extraordinary Gift of an Ordinary Cat
by David Dosa

Product Description

A remarkable cat. A special gift. A life-changing journey.

They thought he was just a cat.

When Oscar arrived at the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Rhode Island he was a cute little guy with attitude. He loved to stretch out in a puddle of sunlight and chase his tail until he was dizzy. Occasionally he consented to a scratch behind the ears, but only when it suited him. In other words, he was a typical cat. Or so it seemed. It wasn't long before Oscar had created something of a stir.

Apparently, this ordinary cat possesses an extraordinary gift: he knows instinctively when the end of life is near.

Oscar is a welcome distraction for the residents of Steere House, many of whom are living with Alzheimer's. But he never spends much time with them--until they are in their last hours. Then, as if this were his job, Oscar strides purposely into a patient's room, curls up on the bed, and begins his vigil. Oscar provides comfort and companionship when people need him most. And his presence lets caregivers and loved ones know that it's time to say good-bye.

Oscar's gift is a tender mercy. He teaches by example: embracing moments of life that so many of us shy away from.

Making Rounds with Oscar is the story of an unusual cat, the patients he serves, their caregivers, and of one doctor who learned how to listen. Heartfelt, inspiring, and full of humor and pathos, this book allows readers to take a walk into a world rarely seen from the outside, a world we often misunderstand.

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Hyperion (February 2, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1401323235
• ISBN-13: 978-1401323233

What are YOU waiting for today????

Waiting On Wednesday

The Scent of Rain and Lightning by Nancy Pickard

As a child, Nellie Burton dreamt of a terrible tornado just one week before a giant twister struck their tiny Kansas town of Rose. Perhaps that's why now, twenty-two years later, Nellie's friend Laurie Napier turns to her when she has a disturbing dream of murder. When this unsettling vision also comes horribly true, the town that prides itself in being one of the safest places on earth is scared and shaken. Adding to the drama is the disappearance of Belle Lindstrom, Nellie and Laurie's dear friend. Long-buried truths erupt like the gas fires suddenly and mysteriously igniting in the countryside around Rose. Amid unbridled greed and murderous conspiracies, three best friends must revisit the past, drawing ever nearer to a present day killer hiding in plain sight. Haunting and powerful, this is Nancy Pickard's finest achievement to date: a gripping novel of family secrets, crime and redemption.

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books (April 20, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345471016
• ISBN-13: 978-0345471017

What are YOU waiting for today?

~I Can't Wait for This One!~

Waiting On Wednesday is hosted by Jill at Breaking The Spine.

What I am waiting for this week:

The Walk by Richard Paul Evans!

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (April 6, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1439187312
• ISBN-13: 978-1439187319

What are YOU waiting for today???

Waiting On Wednesday

The Wild Zone by Joy Fielding

This is how it starts. With a joke.

Two brothers - Will and Jeff - and their friend Tom are out one night at their favorite South Beach bar when they decide to make a bet on who can be the first to seduce a mysterious-looking young woman drinking by herself. Pretty, dark-haired, blue-eyed Suzy has an innocent - almost ordinary - girl-next-door way about her. "Just waiting for Prince Charming to hit on her," Jeff says.

But Suzy isn't as naive as she seems. And she has an agenda of her own. Soon another challenge is born, only this one proves to be lethal.

Dark secrets, hidden passions and a story filled with intrigue, The Wild Zone will keep you in suspense until the very last page is turned.

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Atria (February 23, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 141658529X
• ISBN-13: 978-1416585299

What are YOU waiting for?