Can't Wait Wednesday - Beyond the Pale by Clare O'Donohue

Linking up with Wishful Endings today :)

Every week, I skim through the "Coming Soon" list at Barnes and Noble for the following week.  

I love looking at the covers and selecting finalists for my upcoming favorites.
Yes, I'm a book nerd.

If I find a cover that interests me, then I open it up and read the blurb.

There are way too many books to read for me to waste one more second, so a book has to grab me...where I am...in that moment.
Most of the time, I can't even predict what that moment looks like.
It's up to the book really ;)

I force myself to stop at 1 choice.  Once I find it, I stop looking...until next week :)

Without further adieu, here's my Can't Wait choice among the "Coming Soon" selections on Barnes and Noble for the week of May 7, 2018:

Beyond the Pale by Clare O'Donohue

Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide, LTD

Publication Date: 05/08/2018

Series: A World of Spies Mystery Series, #1

Pages: 360

Here's the synopsis from Barnes and Noble: 

(I've highlighted in red the parts that yell at me loud and clear that I must read this book!)

“O’Donohue (the Someday Quilts series) supplies plenty of fun spy business, but the believability and chemistry of Hollis and Finn as a couple, as shown in their witty dialogue, is the main appeal.”—Publishers Weekly

"The relationship between Hollis and Finn is the hook in this smart debut. It's rare to find a contemporary mystery that makes the everyday challenge of honest communication between partners so compelling, but that's exactly the core of this entertaining mystery about a husband-wife team of crime solvers."—Booklist

"Armchair travelers will delight in the colorful descriptions of Ireland, while mystery buffs who enjoy charming sleuths will appreciate the quick-witted couple"—Library Journal

For college professors Hollis and Finn Larsson, a simple undercover errand becomes a deadly jaunt across Ireland in this edge-of-your-seat suspense novel from bestselling author Clare O’Donohue

It’s an easy, twenty-minute job. At least, that’s the pitch from Interpol to professors Hollis and Finn Larsson. Going undercover to procure a priceless rare book manuscript means an all-expenses paid trip abroad. A little danger thrown into the mix may even spice up their marriage.

Soon after landing in the Emerald Isle, they realize the job is anything but easy. Their contact is a no-show and they’re left with fifty thousand euros, a death threat, and some serious questions. Ducking and dodging their way across Ireland, Hollis and Finn must hunt down the priceless manuscript and a missing agent while trying to stay one step ahead of a dangerous and unknown enemy.

"O’Donohue knows her Irish literature and countryside, and weaves them beautifully into an action-filled story."—Sara Paretsky, author of the V.I. Warshawski series

"Clare O'Donohue may have invented a new category of crime fiction—the amateur spy novel—and I'm a big fan. At turns funny, real, and nail-biting, Beyond the Pale is a terrific read."— Lori Rader-Day, Anthony and Mary Higgins Clark Award-Winning author of The Black Hour, Little Pretty Things, and The Day I Died

"Excitement definitely comes into Hollis's life. But instead of something that could inject life into her marriage, she may just be facing someone who will end her and her husband's lives once and for all. This is Book 1 in the new World of Spies mystery series, and the author has created the perfect roller-coaster ride."—Suspense Magazine

About the Author

Clare O’Donohue is the author of the Kate Conway Mysteries and the Someday Quilts Mysteries. She was a producer for the HGTV show Simply Quilts, and has worked on shows for the History Channel, truTV, Food Network, A&E, Discovery, and TLC.

www.ClareODonohue.com

I'm excited about the possibilities of starting a brand new series right from the start.  Anybody else heard of this one?

Or read any of the other books by Clare O'Donohue?

Can't Wait Wednesday - Between Earth and Sky by Amanda Skenandore

Linking up with Wishful Endings today :)

Every week, I skim through the "Coming Soon" list at Barnes and Noble for the following week.  

I love looking at the covers and selecting finalists for my upcoming favorites.
Yes, I'm a book nerd.

If I find a cover that interests me, then I open it up and read the blurb.

There are way too many books to read for me to waste one more second, so a book has to grab me...where I am...in that moment.
Most of the time, I can't even predict what that moment looks like.
It's up to the book really ;)

I force myself to stop at 1 choice.  Once I find it, I stop looking...until next week :)

Without further adieu, here's my Can't Wait choice among the "Coming Soon" selections on Barnes and Noble for the week of April 23, 2018:

Between Earth and Sky by Amanda Skenandore

Publisher: Kensington

Publication Date: 4/24/2018

Pages: 336

Here's the synopsis from Barnes and Noble: 

(I've highlighted in red the parts that yell at me loud and clear that I must read this book!)

In Amanda Skenandore’s provocative and profoundly moving debut, set in the tragic intersection between white and Native American culture, a young girl learns about friendship, betrayal, and the sacrifices made in the name of belonging.

On a quiet Philadelphia morning in 1906, a newspaper headline catapults Alma Mitchell back to her past. A federal agent is dead, and the murder suspect is Alma’s childhood friend, Harry Muskrat. Harry—or Asku, as Alma knew him—was the most promising student at the “savage-taming” boarding school run by her father, where Alma was the only white pupil. Created in the wake of the Indian Wars, the Stover School was intended to assimilate the children of neighboring reservations. Instead, it robbed them of everything they’d known—language, customs, even their names—and left a heartbreaking legacy in its wake. 

The bright, courageous boy Alma knew could never have murdered anyone. But she barely recognizes the man Asku has become, cold and embittered at being an outcast in the white world and a ghost in his own. Her lawyer husband, Stewart, reluctantly agrees to help defend Asku for Alma’s sake. To do so, Alma must revisit the painful secrets she has kept hidden from everyone—especially Stewart.

Told in compelling narratives that alternate between Alma’s childhood and her present life, Between Earth and Sky is a haunting and complex story of love and loss, as a quest for justice becomes a journey toward understanding and, ultimately, atonement.

About the Author

Amanda Skenandore is a historical fiction writer and registered nurse. In writing Between Earth and Sky, she has drawn on the experiences of a close relative, a member of the Ojibwe Tribe, who survived an Indian mission school in the 1950s. Between Earth and Sky is Amanda’s first novel. She lives in Las Vegas, Nevada. Readers can visit her website at www.amandaskenandore.com.

I was a little nervous that Between Earth and Sky would be depressing, but the phrase "ultimate atonement" leads me to believe I won't be left bereft at the end of this complicated story.  Anybody else heard of this one?

Can't Wait Wednesday - Seven Days of Us

Linking up with Wishful Endings today :)

Every week, I skim through the "Coming Soon" list at Barnes and Noble for the following week.  

I love looking at the covers and selecting finalists for my upcoming favorites.
Yes, I'm a book nerd.

If I find a cover that interests me, then I open it up and read the blurb...there are way too many books to read for me to waste one more second, so a book has to grab me...where I am in that moment.
And most of the time I can't even predict what that moment looks like.
It's up to the book really ;)

I force myself to stop at 1 choice.
1
That's it.

Without further adieu, here's my Can't Wait choice among the "Coming Soon" selections on Barnes and Noble for the week of October 16, 2017:

The Seven Days of Us by Francesca Hornak

Here's the synopsis from Barnes and Noble: 

(I've highlighted in red the parts that yell at me loud and clear that I must read this book!)

A warm, wry, sharply observed debut novel about what happens when a family is forced to spend a week together in quarantine over the holidays...

It’s Christmas, and for the first time in years the entire Birch family will be under one roof. Even Emma and Andrew’s elder daughter—who is usually off saving the world—will be joining them at Weyfield Hall, their aging country estate. But Olivia, a doctor, is only coming home because she has to. Having just returned from treating an epidemic abroad, she’s been told she must stay in quarantine for a week…and so too should her family.

For the next seven days, the Birches are locked down, cut off from the rest of humanity—and even decent Wi-Fi—and forced into each other’s orbits. Younger, unabashedly frivolous daughter Phoebe is fixated on her upcoming wedding, while her older sister, Olivia, deals with the culture shock of being immersed in first-world problems. 

Their father, Andrew, sequesters himself in his study writing scathing restaurant reviews and remembering his glory days as a war correspondent. But his wife, Emma, is hiding a secret that will turn the whole family upside down.   

In close proximity, not much can stay hidden for long, and as revelations and long-held tensions come to light, nothing is more shocking than the unexpected guest who’s about to arrive…

Have you heard anything about this author or this particular title? 

What do you think?

Can't Wait Wednesday - The Captain's Daughter by Meg Mitchell Moore

Linking up with Wishful Endings today. 

Every week I skim through the "Coming Soon" list at Barnes and Noble for the following week.  

I love looking at the covers and selecting my upcoming favorites.  Yesterday, I picked 10 of those covers without looking at anything else for my Top Ten Tuesday list.  

Today, however, I skimmed the blurbs to see which ones I really couldn't wait for...and here it is:

The Captain's Daughter by Meg Mitchell Moore

Here's the synopsis and first remarks from Amazon: 

(I've highlighted in red the parts that yell at me loud and clear that I must read this book!)

For fans of Elin Hilderbrand and Emma Straub comes an emotionally gripping novel about a woman who returns to her hometown in coastal Maine and finds herself pondering the age-old question of what could have been

Growing up in Little Harbor, Maine, the daughter of a widowed lobsterman, Eliza Barnes could haul a trap and row a skiff with the best of them. But she always knew she'd leave that life behind. Now that she's married, with two kids and a cushy front-row seat to suburban country club gossip in an affluent Massachusetts town, she feels adrift.

When her father injures himself in a boating accident, Eliza pushes the pause button on her own life to come to his aid. But when she arrives in Maine, she discovers her father's situation is more dire than he let on. Eliza's homecoming is further complicated by the reemergence of her first love--and memories of their shared secret. Then Eliza meets Mary Brown, a seventeen-year-old local who is at her own crossroad, and Eliza can't help but wonder what her life would have been like if she'd stayed.

Filled with humor, insight, summer cocktails, and gorgeous sunsets, THE CAPTAIN'S DAUGHTER is a compassionate novel about the life-changing choices we make and the consequences we face in their aftermath.

Have you heard anything about this author or this particular title? 

What do you think?

Day 412 - Can't Wait Wednesday - The Almost Sisters by Joshilyn Jackson

I've picked up Joshilyn Jackson's books many times...but have always put them back down for one reason or another...I keep seeing this one though...early readers are saying it's the one to read...

The Almost Sisters by Joshilyn Jackson

Here's the synopsis and first remarks from Amazon: 

(I've highlighted in red the parts that yell at me loud and clear that I must read this book!)

With empathy, grace, humor, and piercing insight, the author of gods in Alabama pens a powerful, emotionally resonant novel of the South that confronts the truth about privilege, family, and the distinctions between perception and reality---the stories we tell ourselves about our origins and who we really are.

Superheroes have always been Leia Birch Briggs’ weakness. One tequila-soaked night at a comics convention, the usually level-headed graphic novelist is swept off her barstool by a handsome and anonymous Batman.

It turns out the caped crusader has left her with more than just a nice, fuzzy memory. She’s having a baby boy—an unexpected but not unhappy development in the thirty-eight year-old’s life. But before Leia can break the news of her impending single-motherhood (including the fact that her baby is biracial) to her conventional, Southern family, her step-sister Rachel’s marriage implodes. Worse, she learns her beloved ninety-year-old grandmother, Birchie, is losing her mind, and she’s been hiding her dementia with the help of Wattie, her best friend since girlhood.

Leia returns to Alabama to put her grandmother’s affairs in order, clean out the big Victorian that has been in the Birch family for generations, and tell her family that she’s pregnant. Yet just when Leia thinks she’s got it all under control, she learns that illness is not the only thing Birchie’s been hiding. Tucked in the attic is a dangerous secret with roots that reach all the way back to the Civil War. Its exposure threatens the family’s freedom and future, and it will change everything about how Leia sees herself and her sister, her son and his missing father, and the world she thinks she knows.

The Almost Sisters will be published on July 11...I'm not so excited about it that I will pay full price for it, but if I'm every going to give Joshilyn Jackson a try, I think this is most definitely the book!


What have you heard about The Almost Sisters?
Have you read any other Joshilyn Jackson?

"Can't Wait Wednesday" is hosted by Tressa @ Wishful Endings :)

Day 398 - Books I'm Waiting On Wednesday

I'm trying so hard to read what's already on my shelves, the specially priced items on Kindle and Nook websites, and my review books...

trying.

so.

hard.

And then, as I knew it would happen, the blogosphere shows me this beauty: 

The Right Side by Spencer Quinn

and

to make matters even more difficult...

the author, Spencer Quinn, is the author of the Chet and Bernie series I'm getting ready to start. 

How am I supposed to stay focused??

Here's the synopsis and first remarks from Amazon: 

(I've highlighted in red the parts that yell at me loud and clear that I must read this book!)

“Brilliant. Deeply felt, but totally under control. I loved it.” —Stephen King

“A great suspense novel, and so much more. You won’t forget the heroic LeAnne Hogan—and the same goes for her dog! Not to be missed. —Harlan Coben

In this riveting new novel by the New York Times bestselling author of the Chet and Bernie mystery series, a deeply damaged female soldier home from the war in Afghanistan becomes obsessed with finding a missing girl, gains an unlikely ally in a stray dog, and encounters new perils beyond the combat zone.

LeAnne Hogan went to Afghanistan as a rising star in the military, and came back a much lesser person, mentally and physically. Now missing an eye and with half her face badly scarred, she can barely remember the disastrous desert operation that almost killed her. She is confused, angry, and suspects the fault is hers, even though nobody will come out and say it.

Shattered by one last blow—the sudden death of her hospital roommate, Marci—LeAnne finds herself on a fateful drive across the country, reflecting on her past and seeing no future. Her native land is now unfamiliar, recast in shadow by her one good eye, her damaged psyche, and her weakened body. Arriving in the rain-soaked small town in Washington state that Marci had called home, she makes a troubling discovery: Marci’s eight-year-old daughter has vanished. When a stray dog—a powerful, dark, unreadable creature, no one’s idea of a pet—seems to adopt LeAnne, a surprising connection is formed and something shifts inside her. As she becomes obsessed with finding Marci’s daughter, LeAnne and her inscrutable canine companion are drawn into danger as dark and menacing as her last Afghan mission. This time she has a strange but loyal fellow traveler protecting her blind side.

Enthralling, suspenseful, and psychologically nuanced, The Right Side introduces one of the most unforgettable protagonists in modern fiction: isolated, broken, disillusioned—yet still seeking redemption and purpose—LeAnne takes hold of you and never lets go.

SEE!!! I TOLD YOU I NEED THIS BOOK!!!!!!!!