"Waiting On" Wednesday: Cleaning Nabokov's House

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted here, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:

Cleaning Nabokov's House

By Leslie Daniels
Publication Date: March 1

From Library Journal:

Barb Barrett left her husband because they couldn’t agree on how to load the dishwasher. In the divorce, he got the kids, the house, and the car, and she got her freedom. But she finds that freedom without her children is not all it’s cracked up to be. To begin the process of getting them back, she buys a house once occupied by Vladimir Nabokov. While cleaning the house she finds a baseball/love story written on index cards. Could Nabokov have been the author? Could she turn this find into financial stability?

What's your "waiting on" pick this week?

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"Waiting On" Wednesday: Big Girl Small

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted here, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:

Big Girl Small

By Rachel DeWoskin
Publication Date: March 29

From Amazon:

Judy Lohden is your above-average sixteen-year-old—sarcastic and vulnerable, talented and uncertain, full of big dreams for a big future. With a singing voice that can shake an auditorium, she should be the star of Darcy Academy, the local performing arts high school. So why is a girl this promising hiding out in a seedy motel room on the edge of town?

The fact that the national media is on her trail after a controversy that might bring down the whole school could have something to do with it. And that scandal has something—but not everything—to do with the fact that Judy is three feet nine inches tall.

What's your "waiting on" pick this week?

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"Waiting On" Wednesday: In Office Hours

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted here, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:

In Office Hours

By Lucy Kellaway
Publication Date: February 7

From Amazon:

IN OFFICE HOURS is the story of Stella and Bella, two intelligent working women who each fall for impossible lovers--at work. Kellaway's keen observations on the way in which affairs move from state to state are a sort of masterclass in office love, bringing to life both the excitement of illicit romance and the ridiculousness of business behavior and language with a sharp sense of humor. IN OFFICE HOURS is intelligent, funny, moving and agonizing, but it's also so painfully reconizable to any woman who has ever worked in an office or ever been in love.

What's your "waiting on" pick this week?

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"Waiting On" Wednesday: Learning to Swim

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted here, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:

Learning to Swim

By Sara J. Henry
Publication Date: February 22

From author's website:

The opening lines of Sara J. Henry’s moving and disturbing novel plunge us directly into the action, along with our narrator, Troy Chance. It is a child she’s seen thrown overboard. Harrowing minutes later, Troy and a terrified little boy emerge shivering from the spring chill of Vermont’s Lake Champlain. Troy is a freelance writer living in Lake Placid, New York, with no responsibilities to speak of and just a few close friends. Suddenly, little Paul is in her life. Her fierce protective feelings stun her. Who could even think of doing such a thing to a child? She’s repulsed and determined to find out in equal measure. Her search will take her into a world of great wealth—a world in which horrible things are all too imaginable, a world in which she’ll either sink or swim. And along the way, she’ll come to discover that it is amazing what you can do if you don’t stop to think.

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"Waiting On" Wednesday: Save As Draft

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted here, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:

Save As Draft

By Cavanaugh Lee
Publication Date: February 1

From the author:

A broken engagement, a broken heart, and endless drafts of unsent emails. A love triangle unfolding in the electronic age illustrates all that can go wrong (and right) by this new form of miscommunication. Told in “electro-epistolary” form, the novel unfolds entirely through emails and text messages. What do these tools of technology mean for love? What happens when age-old courtship rituals fall prey to the ever-changing sensibilities of how we share not only information, but our own hearts?



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"Waiting On" Wednesday: The Other Life

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted here, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:

The Other Life

By Ellen Meister
Publication Date: February 17

From Amazon:

What if you could return to the road not taken?

Happily married with a young son and another child on the way, Quinn Braverman has the perfect life. She also has an ominous secret. Every time she makes a major life decision, she knows an alternative reality exists in which she made the opposite choice--not only that, she knows how to cross over. But even in her darkest moments, like her mother's suicide, Quinn hasn't been tempted to visit...until she receives shattering news about the baby she's carrying.

Desperate to escape her grief, Quinn slips through the portal that leads to her other life: the life in which she stayed with her exciting but neurotic ex-boyfriend, and is childless. The life in which, as she is amazed to discover, her mother is still very much alive.

What's your "waiting on" pick this week?

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"Waiting On" Wednesday: The Silver Boat

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted here, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:

The Silver Boat
By Luanne Rice
Publication Date: April 19

From Amazon:

From the beloved New York Times bestselling Luanne Rice comes a heartwarming yet heart-wrenching portrait of three far-flung sisters who come home to Martha's Vineyard one last time. Their mother's beach house is the only place any of them ever found true happiness and they need to begin the difficult process of letting go. Memories of their grandmother, mother, and their Irish father, who sailed away the year Dar turned twelve, rise up and expose the fine cracks in their family myth-especially when a cache of old letters reveals enough truth to send them back to their ancestral homeland.

What's your "waiting on" pick this week?

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"Waiting On" Wednesday: The Bird Sisters

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted here, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:

The Bird Sisters

By Rebecca Rasmussen

Publication Date: April 12

From Amazon:

Love is timeless. So too is heartbreak. Whenever a bird flies into a window in Spring Green, Wisconsin, sisters Milly and Twiss get a visit. Twiss listens to the birds' heartbeats, assessing what she can fix and what she can't, while Milly listens to the heartaches of the people who've brought them. The two sisters have spent their lives nursing people and birds back to health.

What's your "waiting on" pick this week?

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"Waiting On" Wednesday: The Uncoupling

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted here, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:

The Uncoupling

By Meg Wolitzer
Publication Date: April 5

From Amazon:

When the elliptical new drama teacher at Stellar Plains High School chooses for the school play Lysistrata--the comedy by Aristophanes in which women stop having sex with men in order to end a war--a strange spell seems to be cast over the school. Or, at least, over the women. One by one throughout the high school community, perfectly healthy, normal women and teenage girls turn away from their husbands and boyfriends in the bedroom, for reasons they don't really understand. As the women worry over their loss of passion, and the men become by turns unhappy, offended, and above all, confused, both sides are forced to look at their shared history, and at their sexual selves in a new light.
What's your "waiting on" pick this week?

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"Waiting On" Wednesday: Three Stages of Amazement

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted here, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:

Three Stages of Amazement

By Carol Edgarian

Publication Date: March 8

From Amazon:

Many love stories end in marriage; rare is the love story that begins with one—already promised, already worn. Set in San Francisco during the first year of Obama’s presidency, Three Stages of Amazement deftly charts the struggles and triumphs of Lena Rusch and her husband Charlie Pepper, still believe they can have it all--sex, love, marriage, children, career, brilliance. But life delivers surprises and tests--a stillborn child, an economic crash, a ruthless business rival and the attentions of an old lover. Touched by tragedy and by ordinary hopes unmet, Lena and Charlie must face, for the first time in their lives, real limitation.
What's your "waiting on" pick this week?

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"Waiting On" Wednesday: The Weird Sisters

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted here, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:

The Weird Sisters

By Eleanor Brown

Publication Date: February 17

From Amazon:

The Andreas family is one of readers. Their father, a renowned Shakespeare professor who speaks almost entirely in verse, has named his three daughters after famous Shakespearean women. When the sisters return to their childhood home, ostensibly to care for their ailing mother, but really to lick their wounds and bury their secrets, they are horrified to find the others there. But the sisters soon discover that everything they've been running from--one another, their small hometown, and themselves--might offer more than they ever expected.

What's your "waiting on" pick this week?

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"Waiting On" Wednesday: Emily, Alone

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted here, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:

Emily, Alone

By Stewart O'Nan

Publication Date: March 17

From Amazon:

A sequel to the bestselling, much-beloved Wish You Were Here, Stewart O'Nan's intimate new novel follows Emily Maxwell, a widow whose grown children have long moved away. She dreams of vists by her grandchildren while mourning the turnover of her quiet Pittsburgh neighborhood, but when her sole companion and sister-in-law Arlene faints at their favorite breakfast buffet, Emily's days change. As she grapples with her new independence, she discovers a hidden strength and realizes that life always offers new possibilities.

What's your "waiting on" pick this week?

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"Waiting On" Wednesday: The View From Here

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted here, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:

The View From Here
By Deborah McKinlay

Publication Date: February 1

From Amazon:

When Frances was twenty-two, she was drifting, scraping by giving English lessons in Mexico, when she met up with a glamorous group of vacationing Americans staying in a mansion on a private beach. Two decades later in rural England, she discovers a love letter from a younger woman addressed to her husband almost at the same time as she learns that she’s facing a life-threatening illness. As her contented existence begins to unravel and she tries to decide how and if she will confront her husband about his infidelity, Frances finds herself haunted by the memory of her heady desert encounter with the charmed circle of the Severance family.
What's your "waiting on" pick this week?

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"Waiting On" Wednesday: Georgia Bottoms

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted here, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:

Georgia Bottoms

By Mark Childress

Publication Date: February 23

From Amazon:

Georgia Bottoms is known in her small community of Six Points, Alabama, as a beautiful, well-to-do, and devoutly Baptist Southern belle. Nobody realizes that the family fortune has long since disappeared, and a determinedly single woman like Georgia needs an alternative, and discreet, means of income. In Georgia's case it is six well-heeled lovers, one for each day of the week, with Mondays off, none of whom knows about the others. But when the married preacher who has been coming to call (Saturdays) decides to confess their affair in front of the whole congregation, Georgia must take drastic measures to stop him.

What's your "waiting on" pick this week?

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"Waiting On" Wednesday: A Cup of Friendship

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted here, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:

A Cup of Friendship

By Deborah Rodriguez
Publication Date: January 25

Sunny is an energetic American living in Kabul, whose pride and joy is the coffee shop she runs for expats--and their stories that filter through her daily life. Yazmina is a young woman from a remote village; when she's kidnapped and left on a city street, pregnant and alone, Sunny gives her a home--but all Yazmina wants is to find a way to rescue her sister from the same fate. Into the coffee shop--and Yazmina's and Sunny's lives--come Candace, a wealthy American looking for a way to help but who ends up needing help herself; Isabel, a determined journalist whose past secret might keep her from the biggest story of her life; and Halajan, the den mother whose long-hidden love affair breaks all the rules--and threatens to turn her own son against her. As these women gather together and discover that there's more to one another than meets the eye, they'll form a bond that will change not only their lives, but the lives of an entire country.

What's your "waiting on" pick this week?

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"Waiting On" Wednesday: Being Polite to Hitler

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted here, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:

Being Polite to Hitler

By Robb Forman Dew

Publication Date: January 6

From Amazon:

After teaching and raising her family for most of her life, Agnes Scofield realizes she is truly weary of her routine. But how, at 51, to establish a separate identity?
Her newfound freedom may not sit so well with the rest of the Scofields, who operate strictly within the confines of polite Midwestern values. They'd be polite to Hitler if need be. But underneath the façade, private triumphs and tragedies---including struggles with alcoholism and illicit affairs-simmer, and Agnes finds herself becoming even more entangled in the family web.
Being Polite to Hitler is a richly wrought portrait of a woman coming into her own in the middle of her life and a family that experiences passions, joys, and grief against the backdrop of the post-WWII era.

What's your "waiting on" pick this week?

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"Waiting On" Wednesday: The Lake of Dreams

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted here, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:

The Lake of Dreams

By Kim Edwards
Publication Date: January 4

From Amazon:

At a crossroads in her life, Lucy Jarrett returns home from Japan, only to find herself haunted by her father's unresolved death a decade ago. Old longings stirred up by Keegan Fall, a local glass artist who was once her passionate first love, lead her into the unexpected. Late one night, as she paces the hallways of her family's rambling lakeside house, she discovers, locked in a window seat, a collection of objects that first appear to be useless curiosities, but soon reveal a deeper and more complex family past. As Lucy discovers and explores the traces of her lineage, from an heirloom tapestry and dusty political tracts to a web of allusions depicted in stained-glass windows throughout upstate New York, the family story she has always known is shattered, Lucy's quest for the truth reconfigures her family's history, links her to a unique slice of the suffragette movement, and yields dramatic insights that embolden her to live freely.

What's your "waiting on" pick this week?

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"Waiting On" Wednesday: Solomon's Oak

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted here, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:

Solomon's Oak

By Jo-Ann Mapson

Publication Date: October 12

From Amazon:

A year after the untimely death of her husband, Dan, Glory Solomon is adrift, in financial trouble, and unable to find much meaning in a world without her mate. But when she opens a wedding chapel on her historic California ranch (known for its ancient oak tree), she attracts a variety of couples in search of unconventional nuptials--and two lost souls. Juniper McGuire, an angry teenage girl, is still reeling from the tragedy that put her into the foster care system. And a former crime scene photographer, Joseph Vigil, suffers chronic pain from an on-the-job accident. Together, the three grievers form a tentative support system that could--if they'll let it--be called love.

What's your "waiting on" pick this week?

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"Waiting On" Wednesday: Separate Beds

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted here, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:


Separate Beds

By Elizabeth Buchan

Publication Date: January 24

From the author's Web site:

Tom and Annie's children have grown up, the mortgage is doable and they're about to get kitchen make-over. Life is good-or so it seems. Beneath the veneer of professional success and domestic security, their marriage is crumbling, eaten away by years of resentment, loneliness, and misunderstandings, and they've settled into simply being two strangers living under the same roof. Until the economy falls apart, and suddenly their lives are upended when Tom loses his job. As their world shrinks, Tom and Annie are forced closer together. For the first time in years, their home is filled with people, conversation, tears - and laughter. Is it possible, they ask themselves, to start again?

What's your "waiting on" pick this week?

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Weekend Cooking: FOUR New Southern Cookbooks!

Weekend Cooking is hosted by Beth Fish Reads.

Ninety percent of my sizable cookbook collection is Southern, ranging from local church cookbooks to ones penned by culinary icons. So, I was understandably excited to see four new Southern cookbooks coming out this fall, including this first one, by one of my favorite food bloggers:

Southern Plate: Classic Comfort Food That Makes Everyone Feel Like Family
By Christy Jordan
October 5
"You won't find fancy food or new fangled recipes in this cookbook; just easy, no fuss Southern favorites because at the end of the day most folks want to come home to a meal just like Mama used to make, prepared by someone who loves them."

Second Helpings
By Johnnie Gabriel
October 19
"In this follow-up to Cooking in the South, Gabriel serves up Second Helpings of more than 150 delectable Southern recipes."

My Southern Food: A Celebration of the Flavors of the South\
By Devon O'Day
November 2
"My Southern Food will take readers and cooks on a mouthwatering journey with photographs, stories, and 200 recipes that make this much more than a traditional cookbook."

The Complete Southern Cookbook: More than 800 of the Most Delicious, Down-Home Recipes
By Tammy Algood
September 28
"With more than 800 delicious Southern recipes for over 85 different ingredients, there are plenty of options when your garden is plentiful and your freezer is stocked."

"Waiting On" Wednesday: The Marriage Artist

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted here, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:

The Marriage Artist

By Andrew Winer

Publication Date: October 26

From Amazon:

When the wife of renowned art critic Daniel Lichtmann plunges to her death, she is not alone. Lying next to her is her suspected lover, Benjamin Wind, the very artist Daniel most championed. Tormented by questions about the circumstances of their deaths, Daniel dedicates himself to uncovering the secrets of their relationship and the inspiration behind Wind's dazzling final exhibition.

What Daniel discovers is a web of mysteries leading back to pre-World War II Vienna and the magnificent life of Josef Pick, a forgotten artist who may have been the twentieth century's greatest painter of love. But the most astonishing discoveryis what connects these two artists acrosshalf a century: a remarkable woman whose response to the tragedy of her generation offers Daniel answers to the questions he never knew to ask.

What's your "waiting on" pick this week?

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"Waiting on" Wednesday: Great House

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted here, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:

Great House

By Nicole Krauss

Publication Date: October 12

From Books a Million:

For twenty-five years, a solitary American novelist has been writing at the desk she inherited from a young poet who disappeared at the hands of Pinochet's secret police; one day a girl claiming to be his daughter arrives to take it away, sending her life reeling. Across the ocean in London, a man discovers a terrifying secret about his wife of almost fifty years. In Jerusalem, an antiques dealer is slowly reassembling his father's Budapest study, plundered by the Nazis in 1944. These worlds are anchored by a desk of enormous dimension and many drawers that exerts a power over those who possess it or give it away. In the minds of those it has belonged to, the desk comes to stand for all that has disappeared in the chaos of the world-children, parents, whole peoples and civilizations.

What's your "waiting on" pick this week?

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"Waiting On" Wednesday: Compass Rose

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted here, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:

Compass Rose

By John Casey

Publication Date: October 19

From Amazon:

Rose is spunky with an inborn talent for theatrics, but being slightly overweight and unpopular at the fancy new school where she’s a scholarship student is bad enough. It doesn’t help that her single mother is at war with her; her fisherman father lives practically next door with his own wife and kids; and the whole of their insular, gossipy community knows she’s an illegitimate child. On the other hand, maybe it isn’t so bad being related to half the town and unofficially adopted by everyone.

John Casey’s magnificent new novel follows Rose and the complex constellation of family, friends, and foes that circle around her as the years go by, working their slow but irreversible changes on one another and on the rugged, magical landscape they inhabit, with its salt marshes, its creeks and rivers, and the ever-present ocean, whose rhythms and moods shape and reshape the lives of the men and women of Rhode Island.

What's your "waiting on" pick this week?


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