Waiting on Wednesday – July 21

Pub. date:  August 17, 2010

From Goodreads:

Are you living the life you imagined? Is there anything you’d have done differently if you could? Those are the questions asked in Kristina Riggle’s unforgettable new novel.

In high school, Cami and Anna were as close as they could be…now, years later, both have returned to their hometown to face the people they had once left behind.

Anna must confront her mother, still distraught over the abandonment of her husband, and come to terms with choices she had made years before. While Cami returns home to stay with her alcoholic father, she must face a secret that she thought was long-since buried.

This is a novel that digs deep and touches the heart of the issues so many women face-the quest for perfection, the hope of love, the value of family and importance of always striving for your dream.

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Waiting On Wednesday – July 14

St. Martin’s Press

August 31, 2010

From the publisher (not my review):

Andie Miller is ready to move on in life. She wants to marry her fiancee and leave behind everything in her past, especially her ex-husband, North Archer. But when Andie tries to gain closure with him, he asks one final favor of her before they go their separate ways forever. A very distant cousin of his has died and left North as the guardian of two orphans who have driven out three nannies already, and things are getting worse. He needs a very special person to take care of the situation and he knows Andie can handle anything.
When Andie meets the two children she quickly realizes things are much worse than she feared. The place is a mess, the children, Carter and Alice, aren’t your average delinquents, and the creepy old house where they live is being run by the worst housekeeper since Mrs. Danvers. What’s worse, Andie’s fiancee thinks this is all a plan by North to get Andie back, and he may be right. Andie’s dreams have been haunted by North since she arrived at the old house. And that’s not the only haunting.
What follows is a hilarious adventure in exorcism, including a self-doubting parapsychologist, an annoyed medium, her Tarot-card reading mother, an avenging ex-mother-in-law, and, of course, her jealous fiancee. And just when she thinks things couldn’t get more complicated, North shows up on the doorstep making her wonder if maybe this time things could be different between them.
If Andie can just get rid of all the guests and ghosts, she’s pretty sure she can save the kids, and herself, from the past. But fate might just have another thing in mind…

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Waiting On Wednesday – July 7

August 23, 2010

Publisher:  5 Spot

Shey Darcy, a 39-year-old former top model for Vogue and Sports Illustratedled a charmed life in New York City with a handsome photographer husband until the day he announced he’d fallen in love with someone else. Left to pick up the pieces of her once happy world, Shey decides to move back home to Texas with her three teenage sons. Life on the family ranch, however, brings with it a whole new host of dramas starting with differences of opinion with her staunch Southern Baptist mother, her rugged but overprotective brothers, and daily battles with her three sons who are also struggling to find themselves. Add to the mix Shey’s ex-crush, Dane Kelly, a national bullriding champ and she’s got her hands full. It doesn’t take long before Shey realizes that in order to reinvent herself, she must let go of an uncertain future and a broken past, to find happiness–and maybe love–in the present.

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Waiting on Wednesday – June 30

August 3, 2010 (Penguin Group, USA)

From Goodreads: For fans of Fannie Flagg – the acclaimed author of Heartbreak Cafe delivers a heartwarming, hilarious new novel.

Twenty-three years ago, beauty queen Peach Rondell left Mississippi and vowed never to return. Now she’s back, divorced and heartbroken, trying to figure out how her life went so terribly wrong. To escape her mama’s scrutinizing gaze, she spends her days in a little storefront diner called the Heartbreak Cafe, where, in the back booth, she scribbles away in her journal, waiting for enlightenment. Instead, Peach gets something even better: the unexpected friendship of an unlikely group of folks who show Peach that finding out where you’re going usually means embracing where you’re from.

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Waiting on Wednesday – June 23

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The Tower, The Zoo, and The Tortoise by Julia Stuart

Pub. date: Sept. 7, 2010 by Doubleday

Synopsis found at Goodreads (not my review):

Brimming with charm and whimsy, this exquisite novel set in the Tower of London has the transportive qualities and delightful magic of the contemporary classics Chocolat and Amélie.

Balthazar Jones has lived in the Tower of London with his loving wife, Hebe, and his 120-year-old pet tortoise for the past eight years. That’s right, he is a Beefeater (they really do live there). It’s no easy job living and working in the tourist attraction in present-day London.

Among the eccentric characters who call the Tower’s maze of ancient buildings and spiral staircases home are the Tower’s Rack & Ruin barmaid, Ruby Dore, who just found out she’s pregnant; portly Valerie Jennings, who is falling for ticket inspector Arthur Catnip; the lifelong bachelor Reverend Septimus Drew, who secretly pens a series of principled erot ica; and the philandering Ravenmaster, aiming to avenge the death of one of his insufferable ravens.

When Balthazar is tasked with setting up an elaborate menagerie within the Tower walls to house the many exotic animals gifted to the Queen, life at the Tower gets all the more interest ing. Penguins escape, giraffes are stolen, and the Komodo dragon sends innocent people running for their lives. Balthazar is in charge and things are not exactly running smoothly. Then Hebe decides to leave him and his beloved tortoise “runs” away.

Filled with the humor and heart that calls to mind the delight ful novels of Alexander McCall Smith, and the charm and beauty of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, The Tower, the Zoo, and the Tortoise is a magical, wholly origi nal novel whose irresistible characters will stay with you long after you turn the stunning last page.

Waiting On Wednesday – June 16

Waiting On Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted at Breaking The Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases.  This week’s pick is:

Pub. date: July 1, 2010

Penmark Publishing, LLC

Goodreads synopsis:

An older woman growing flowers, a younger woman caught up in the weeds, and the seasons of life.

Twenty years ago, Anna Hott thought she could control everything – her crumbling marriage, her demanding children, her hectic life – by quitting her high-paced job in New York City and moving her family to tranquil Sanibel Island, Florida. But she brought her untamed emotions, her rage toward her cheating husband, and her yearning to write a novel with her. When her husband and children left the house for a week, Anna thought at last she would get her household, her novel, and her mind in order. Instead, her elderly neighbor Fedelina Aurelio knocked on her door bearing flowers and homespun wisdom, and when Fedelina’s recently divorced son arrived, Anna had a test of passions and a test of truth. Now, at 56 with an empty nest, Anna Holt pulls out the incomplete manuscript she started that memorable week and – to find closure for her life and a conclusion for her novel – travels to Indiana to visit Fedelina who lives in a nursing home.

A novel framed within a novel, Sand in My Eyes is both a story about the tension between motherhood and personal dreams as well as a story about women across generations inspiring one another to let beauty persist despite ugly circumstances.

Waiting On Wednesday – June 9

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A young-at-heart 75-year-old gets her wish to be 29 again in this magical new novel from Adena Halpern, author of The Ten Best Days of My Life.

29: a novel

Pub. date:  June 15, 2010

Waiting On Wednesday – June 2

From the very first page of this stunning novel, readers are drawn into the lives of eight seemingly ordinary women who pass through Manhattan’s swanky Four Seasons Hotel. While offering sanctuary to some, solace to others, the hotel captures their darkest moments as they grapple with family, sex, power, love, and death.

Trish obsesses over her best friend’s wedding and dramatic weight loss. Robin wants revenge after a lifetime of abuse at the hands of her older sister. Anne is single, lonely, and suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder. Drug-addicted rock star Louise needs to dry out. Southerner turned wannabe Manhattanite Franny is envious of her neighbors’ lives. Sheila wants to punish her boyfriend for returning to his wife. Ellen so desperately wants children that she insists she’s pregnant to her disbelieving husband. And Morgan, the hotel manager—haunted by the memory of her dead sister—is the thread that weaves these women’s lives together. (not my review.  Synopsis from Goodreads)

Based Upon Availability by Alix Strauss

Pub. date: June 8, 2010

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Waiting On Wednesday – May 26

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“Waiting On” Wednesday is a weekly event, that spotlights upcoming releases that we’re eagerly anticipating.

This week’s pre-publication “can’t-wait-to-read” selection is:

Description from Amazon: Julia Juarez and Ime Benevides, two Mexican-American women from the barrio, have risen from humble beginnings to brisk, career-oriented lives in the San Fernando Valley. Inspired by their good-natured rivalry, Julia and Ime have never let anything come between them. Then enters Julia’s new coworker Ilario, who pulls both women’s heartstrings, disrupting their friendship and bringing Julia’s career to the brink of disaster. Looking for support, Julia turns to her other friends: a party-obsessed dance instructor named Concepcion; Nina, a timid but shrewd seamstress who’s not too taken with her fiance; and Marta, a divorced bar owner preoccupied with the details of a Hollywood murder case. When they involve Julia in a risky scheme, she must choose between her loyalty to her friends and a chance to live the life she’s worked so hard to achieve.

On sale:  June 22, 2010

Waiting On Wednesday – May 19

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“Waiting On” Wednesday is a weekly event, that spotlights upcoming releases that we’re eagerly anticipating.

This week’s pre-publication “can’t-wait-to-read” selection is:

July 20, 2010: Ballantine

Goodreads synopsis:

It is the year 1152 and a beautiful woman of thirty, attended by only a small armed escort, is riding like the wind southwards through what is now France, leaving behind her crown, her two young daughters and a shattered marriage to Louis of France, who had been more like a monk than a king, and certainly not much of a lover. This woman is Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine, and her sole purpose now is to return to her vast duchy and marry the man she loves, Henry Plantagenet, a man destined for greatness as King of England. Theirs is a union founded on lust which will create a great empire stretching from the wilds of Scotland to the Pyrenees. It will also create the devil’s brood of Plantagenets – including Richard C ur de Lion and King John – and the most notoriously vicious marriage in history. “The Eagle and the Lion” is a novel on the grand scale, an epic subject for Alison Weir. It tells of the making of nations, and of passionate conflicts: between Henry II and Thomas Becket, his closest friend who is murdered in Canterbury Cathedral on his orders; between Eleanor and Henry’s formidable mother Matilda; between father and sons, as Henry’s children take up arms against him; and finally between Henry and Eleanor herself.

Waiting On Wednesday – May 12

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May 25th 2010 by Picador

Goodreads:

At age seventy-two, Emma Hanley plans to escape small-town Palmetto, South Carolina, and travel the globe. But when her fickle husband dies in undignified circumstances, Emma finds herself juggling the needs of her adult children. Her once free-spirited daughter Dora turns to compulsive shopping and a controlling husband to forget her wayward past. Her son Bobby still lives with her, afflicted with an illness that robbed him of his childhood promise.

When Dora’s old flame Jake Cary returns to Palmetto with a broken heart and a gift for gardening, the town becomes filled with mysterious, potent botanicals and memories long forgotten. Soon enough, Jake and his ragtag group of helpers begin to unearth the secrets that have divided the Hanleys for decades.Written with the warmth of Lee Smith and the magical touch of Alice Hoffman, Secret Keepers is a beguiling second novel by the acclaimed author of The Garden Angel.

Waiting On Wednesday – April 28

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May 25th 2010 by Picador USA

Thomas Lynch, a disgraced, middle-aged art historian, goes in search of a lost masterpiece, a legendary Madonna by the Italian master Giovanni Bellini. Insinuating himself into the crumbling English manor house where the painting may be concealed, Lynch attempts to gull the eccentric and beautiful women who live there—though he himself seems to be the pawn in this elaborate game. A Victorian diary draws Robert Browning into the painting’s complicated provenance.

Interlaced with complex clues and hidden jokes, The Bellini Madonna reels from the lush English countryside to the sternly lovely hill towns of the Veneto, from the fifteenth century to the twenty-first.

Waiting On Wednesday – April 20

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From Library Thing:

In her page-turning fiction debut, neuropsychologist Kylie Ladd delivers a searing portrait of two marriages united and betrayed by friendship.

“I had been married three years when I fell in love,” begins Kate, a firecracker of a woman who thought she’d found the yin to her yang in Cary, her sensible and adoring husband. For their friend Luke—a charismatic copywriter who loves women and attention in equal measure, and preferably together—life has been more than sweet beside Cressida, the dutiful pediatric oncologist who stole his heart. But when a whimsical flirtation between Kate and Luke turns into something far more dangerous, the foursome will be irrevocably intertwined by more than just their shared history.

After the Fall by Kylie Ladd

Doubleday

On sale: June 15, 2010

Waiting On Wednesday – March 31

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Published March 30, 2010

(Product description found on Amazon)

New York Times bestselling author Karen Hawkins returns to Glory, North Carolina, for another delightful story of love and laughter.She thinks she’s Lois Lane . . .Susan Collins always wanted to be a hard-hitting reporter, but there’s not much call for her talents in sleepy Glory, North Carolina. Then the Murder Mystery Club—a trio of enterprising octogenarians—decides to open their own CSI lab at the assisted-living center. And when strange “accidents” begin to happen around town, Susan senses she could be on to the news story of her dreams.He doesn’t want to be her Superman . . .Mark Tremayne has returned to Glory to take over as CFO of The Glory Examiner.His job is to keep the newspaper profitable, which means covering the annual Baptist Church Bake-Off and selling ads for the county fair—not allowing his too-sexy-for-her-own-good reporter to hare off after a wild story that could alienate some of the townspeople.Together . . . they’re Kryptonite.Mark’s and Susan’s viewpoints could be from different planets, but their mutual attraction is in total alignment. Despite their arguments, the indomitable redhead and the hot accountant are a sexual explosion waiting to happen. And when it does, Glory had better watch out!

Waiting On Wednesday – March 17

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Welcome To Harmony

by Jodi Thomas

Publisher: Berkley – June 1, 2010

Sixteen-year-old runaway Reagan has always wanted a place to belong. She’s never had a real home of her own, but perhaps she could borrow someone else’s. Under an assumed name and identity, she moves to Harmony, Texas, but keeps her distance from the welcoming townsfolk. Until prairie fires threaten Harmony-and Reagan learns the true meaning of family, friends, and home.

Waiting On Wednesday – March 10

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Pub. Date: March 30, 2010 ~ Avon A

Sweet Lips, Tennessee . . . Toad Suck, Arkansas . . . Okay, Oklahoma . . . Truth or Consequences, New Mexico . . . Maeve Connelly’s epic road trip is taking her through every colorfully named tiny town in America on her way to the far less imaginatively named Los Angeles, California. With her foulmouthed cockatiel, Oliver, her only companion, Maeve’s heading way off the beaten track with little money and a load of painful baggage she wants to leave behind. But when her beloved rattletrap, “Elsie,” breaks down outside Unknown, Arizona, she finds herself taking a much longer rest stop than she anticipated.

The only mechanic in the vicinity is on an indefinite walkabout, so Maeve’s in for the long haul—and she’ll need to find two jobs to pay for Elsie’s eventual repair. But she’s starting to feel strangely at home among the quirky denizens of Unknown—especially around her new bookstore owner boss—so Maeve is seriously considering saying good-bye to Hollywood for good . . . if she can keep her past troubles from coming to light.

From Kerry Reichs, author of The Best Day of Someone Else’s Life, comes a poignant and very funny new novel about finding yourself after finding yourself in the middle of nowhere.

Waiting On Wednesday – March 3

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Pub. date: July 6, 2010

Goodreads:

Four women — a mother, her sister and their two grown daughters head to a tiny island off Nantucket for a retreat, hoping to escape their troubles. Instead, they find only drama, secrets and life-changing revelations.

I found another cover:

Waiting On Wednesday – Feb. 24

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Pub. Date: March 23, 2010

Ballantine Books

Goodreads synopsis:

In the wake of his wife’s murder, agent Grady Shields turned his back on the FBI—and everything else—to retreat into the vast solitude of Montana, grieve for his lost love, and forget the world. But after years in seclusion, his sister’s wedding draws him to St. Dennis, a peaceful town on the Chesapeake Bay. Though he swears he isn’t interested in finding love again, Grady can’t ignore the mutual sparks that fly when he meets Vanessa Keaton.

Although her past was marked by bad choices, Vanessa has found that coming to St. Dennis is the best decision she’s ever made. Bling, her trendy boutique, is a success with tourists as well as with the townspeople. She’s made friends, has a home she loves, and has established a life for herself far from the nightmare she left behind. The last thing she’s looking for is romance, but the hot new man in town is hard to resist. And when Vanessa’s past catches up with her, Grady finds that he’s unwilling to let her become a victim again. As together they fight her demons, Grady and Vanessa discover that life still holds some surprises and that love doesn’t always have to hurt.

Waiting On Wednesday – Feb. 17

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Pub. date: March 23, 2010

Penguin Group (USA)

Synopsis

The past is never over. It just gets dusty.
Lisa Shewmaker was a rising star in a prestigious law firm in Lexington, Kentucky; that is, until the firm went bankrupt and she lost her job. With an ailing mother to care for, Lisa takes the first position she can find: research assistant to District Attorney Scott Buchanan. Scott is as disagreeable as he is sexy, and Lisa suspects the only reason she got the job is because of her privileged upbringing as the daughter of a wealthy federal judge.

While reviewing cold cases in the Fayette County courthouse a particularly thick manila envelope draws Lisa’s attention. The details of the case are engrossing: An entire family – father, mother, and two children – disappeared more than twenty-eight years ago. Except that’s not all: The mother in the photo could have been Lisa’s twin, and the toddler in the picture bears an uncanny resemblance to Lisa herself. Before Lisa can learn more about her past a series of catastrophes strike close to home. Lisa confides in Scott, and their relationship develops into something completely different. Together Lisa and Scott unravel a terrifying web of criminal connections that could destroy the very fabric of Lisa’s life – if she lives long enough, that is.

Waiting on Wednesday – Feb. 3

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* * * * *

Pub. date: April 27, 2010

Ballantine Books

432 pages

Goodreads synopsis:

In this astonishing novel, a brilliant mélange of fact and fiction, Juliet Gael skillfully and stylishly captures the passions, hopes, dreams, and sorrows of literature’s most famous sisters—and imagines how love dramatically and most unexpectedly found Charlotte Brontë.

During the two years that she studied in Brussels, Charlotte had a taste of life’s splendors—travel, literature, and art. Now, back home in the Yorkshire moors, duty-bound to a blind father and an alcoholic brother, an ambitious Charlotte refuses to sink into hopelessness. With her sisters, Emily and Anne, Charlotte conceives a plan to earn money and pursue a dream: The Brontës will publish. In childhood the Brontë children created fantastical imaginary worlds; now the sisters craft novels quite unlike anything written before. Transforming her loneliness and personal sorrow into a triumph of literary art, Charlotte pens her 1847 masterpiece, Jane Eyre.

Charlotte’s novel becomes an overwhelming literary success, catapulting the shy and awkward young woman into the spotlight of London’s fashionable literary scene—and into the arms of her new publisher, George Smith, an irresistibly handsome young man whose interest in his fiercely intelligent and spirited new author seems to go beyond professional duty. But just as life begins to hold new promise, unspeakable tragedy descends on the Brontë household, throwing London and George into the background and leaving Charlotte to fear that the only romance she will ever find is at the tip of her pen.

But another man waits in the Brontës’ Haworth parsonage—the quiet but determined curate Arthur Nicholls. After secretly pining for Charlotte since he first came to work for her father, Arthur suddenly reveals his heart to her.

Romancing Miss Brontë is a fascinating portrayal of an extraordinary woman whose life and work articulated our deepest human longing: to love and be loved in return.