Wish List Wednesday (2)

YAY!!!! Back on track -- Are you ready!? Welcome back to Wish list Wednesday!

I've decided to start my own weekly meme!  

It is called Wish list Wednesday, and the rules are simple.

- Post a list of books you've been wanting to read (new or old releases), but here's the kicker -- you can't already own them.

- Make sure to comment with the link of your post so we can all see what you're dying to get your hands on!

Here goes!

I've gotten all my books from the NY Times Best Sellers List (again)!

From the author of the smash-hit bestseller Firefly Lane and True Colors comes a powerful, heartbreaking novel that illuminates the intricate mother-daughter bond and explores the links between the present and the past.

Meredith and Nina Whitson are as different as sisters can be.  One stayed at home to raise her children and manage the family apple orchard: the other followed a dream and traveled the world to become a famous photojournalist.  But when their beloved father falls ill, Meredith and Nina find themselves together again, standing alongside their fold, disapproving mother, Anya, who even now, offers no comfort to her daughters.  As children, the only connection between them was the Russian fairy tale Anya sometimes told the girls at night.  On his deathbed, their father extracts a promise from the women in his life: the fairy tale will be told one last time - and all the way to the end.  Thus begins an unexpected journey into the truth of Anya's life in war-torn Leningrad, more than five decades ago.  Alternating between the past and present, Meredith and Nina will finally hear the singular, harrowing story of their mother's life, and what they learn is a secret so terrible and terrifying that it will shake the very foundation of their family and change who they believe they are.

Patty and Walter Berglund were the new pioneers of old St. Paul -- the gentrifiers, the hands-on parents, the avant-garde of the Whole Foods generation.  Patty was the ideal sort of neighbor, who could tell you where to recycle your batteries and how to get the local cops to actually do their job.  She was an enviably perfect mother and wife of Walter's dreams.  Together with Walter - environmental lawyer, commuter cyclist, total family man - she was doing her small part to build a better world.

But now, in the new millennium, the Berglunds have become a mystery.  Why has their teenage son moved in with the aggressively Republican family next door?  Why has Walter taken a job working at Big Coal?  What exactly is Richard Katz - outrageous rocker and Walter's college best friend and rival - still doing in the picture?  Most of all, what has happened to Patty?  Why has the bright start of Barrier Street become "a very different kind of neighbor", an implacable Fury coming unhinged before the street's attentive eyes?

In his first novel since The Corrections, Johnathan Franzen has given us an epic of contemporary love and marriage.  Freedom comically and tragically captures the temptations and burdens of liberty: the thrills of teenage lust, the shaken compromises of middle age, the wages of suburban sprawl, the heavy weight of empire.  In charting the mistakes and joys of Freedom's characters as they struggle to learn how to live in an ever more confusing world, Franzen has produced an indelible and deeply moving portrait of our time.

Sixteen-year-old Nora Lindell is missing.  And the neighborhood boys she's 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 novel 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 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 may someday become.  

Enzo know she is different from other dogs: a philosopher with a nearly human soul (and an obsession with imposable thumbs), he has educated himself by watching television extensively, and by listening very closely to the words of his master, Denny Swift, and up-and-coming race car driver.  Through Denny, Enzo has gained tremendous insight into the human condition, and sees that life, like racing, isn't simply about going fast.  Using the techniques needed on the race track, one can successfully navigate all of life's ordeals.

On the eve of his death, Enzo takes stock of his life, recalling all that he and his family have been through.  In the end, despite what he sees as his own limitations, Enzo comes through heroically to preserve the Swift family, holding in his heart the dream that Denny will become a racing champion with Zoe at his side.

A heart-wrenching but deeply funny and ultimately uplifting story of family, love, loyalty, and hope, The Art of Racing in the Rain is a beautifully crafted and captivating look at the wonders and absurdities of human life . . . as only a dog could tell it.  (The Art of Racing in the Rain - Garth Stein)

He knows everything about you - including the first place you'll hide.

On a warm summer night in one of Boston's working-class neighborhoods, an unthinkable crime has been committed: Four members of a family have been brutally murdered.  The father - and possible suspect - now lies clinging to live in the ICU.  Murder-suicide?  Or something worse?  Veteran police detective D. D. Warren is certain of only one thing: There's more to this case than meets the eye.

Danielle Burton is a survivor, a dedicated nurse whose passion is to help children at a locked-down pediatric psych ward.  But she remains haunted by a family tragedy that shattered her life nearly twenty-five years ago.  The dark anniversary is approaching, and when D. D. Warren and her partner show up at the facility, Danielle immediately realizes: It has started again.

A devoted mother, Victoria Oliver has a hard time remembering what normalcy is like.  But she will do anything to ensure that her troubled son has some semblance of a childhood.  She will love him no matter what.  Nurture him.  Keep him safe.  Protect him.  Even when the threat comes from within her own house. // In the New York Times bestselling author Lisa Gardner's most compelling work of suspense to date, the lives of these three women unfold and connect in unexpected ways, as sins from the past emerge - and stunning secrets reveal just how tightly blood ties can be.  Sometimes the most devastating crimes are the ones closest to home.  (Live to Tell - Lisa Gardner)

Michael Palmer's latest novel pits a flawed doctor against a ruthless psychopath, who has made murder his art form.  Dr. Nick Garrity, a vet suffering from PTSD - post traumatic stress disorder - spends his days and nights dispensing medical treatment from a mobile clinic to the homeless and disenfranchised in D.C. and Baltimore.  In addition, he is constantly on the lookout for his war buddy Umberto Vasquez, who was plucked from the streets by the military four years ago for a secret mission and has not been seen since.

Pysch nurse Gillian Coates wants to find her sister's killer.  She does not believe that Belle Coates, an ICU nurse, took her own life, even though every bit of evidence indicates that she did - every bit save one.  Belle has left Gillian a subtle clue that connects her with Nick Garrity.

Together, Nick and Gillian determine that one-by-one, each of those in the operating room for a fatally botched case is dying.  Their discoveries pit them against genius Franz Koller -- the highly-paid master of the "non-kill" - the art of murder that does not look like murder.  As Doctor and nurse move closer to finding the terrifying secret behind these killings, Koller has been given a new directive: his mission will not be complete until Gillian Coates and Garrity, the last surgeon, are dead.  

Happy Reading!