Wishing to Read Wednesday: Old & New (#2)

Can't-Wait Wednesday is a weekly meme, hosted by Tressa at Wishful Endings to spotlight and discuss the books we're excited about that we have yet to read. Generally they're books that have yet to be released. (Based on Waiting on Wednesday, hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine.)

Number One Chinese Restaurant by Lillian Li
Release Date: June 19, 2018 by Henry Holt & Company

An exuberant and wise multigenerational debut novel about the complicated lives and loves of people working in everyone’s favorite Chinese restaurant.

The Beijing Duck House in Rockville, Maryland, is not only a beloved go-to setting for hunger pangs and celebrations; it is its own world, inhabited by waiters and kitchen staff who have been fighting, loving, and aging within its walls for decades. When disaster strikes, this working family’s controlled chaos is set loose, forcing each character to confront the conflicts that fast-paced restaurant life has kept at bay.

Owner Jimmy Han hopes to leave his late father’s homespun establishment for a fancier one. Jimmy’s older brother, Johnny, and Johnny’s daughter, Annie, ache to return to a time before a father’s absence and a teenager’s silence pushed them apart. Nan and Ah-Jack, longtime Duck House employees, are tempted to turn their thirty-year friendship into something else, even as Nan’s son, Pat, struggles to stay out of trouble. And when Pat and Annie, caught in a mix of youthful lust and boredom, find themselves in a dangerous game that implicates them in the Duck House tragedy, their families must decide how much they are willing to sacrifice to help their children.

Generous in spirit, unaffected in its intelligence, multi-voiced, poignant, and darkly funny, Number One Chinese Restaurant looks beyond red tablecloths and silkscreen murals to share an unforgettable story about youth and aging, parents and children, and all the ways that our families destroy us while also keeping us grounded and alive. [Goodreads Summary]

Why I want to read this one: This one may appeal to the foodies out there, but for me it is more about the multi-generational family, about the individual stories of each character as well as that of the family as a whole. I am anxious to read this one!

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Harry's Trees by Jon Cohen
Release Date: June 12, 2018 by Mira

The first thing you learn when you climb a tree is to hold on. Now it’s time for Harry to learn to let go…

Thirty-four-year-old Harry Crane, lifelong lover of trees, works as an analyst in a treeless US Forest Service office. When his wife dies in a freak accident, devastated, he makes his way to the remote woods of northeastern Pennsylvania’s Endless Mountains, intent on losing himself. But fate intervenes in the form of a fiercely determined young girl named Oriana. She, too, has lost someone—her father. And in the magical, willful world of her reckoning, Oriana believes that Harry is the key to finding her way back to him.

As Harry agrees to help the young girl, the unlikeliest of elements—a tree house, a Wolf, a small-town librarian and a book called The Grum’s Ledger—come together to create the biggest sensation ever to descend upon the Endless Mountains…a golden adventure that will fulfill Oriana’s wildest dreams and open the door to a new life for Harry. [Goodreads Summary]

Why I want to read this one: This novel has been compared to A Man Called Ove and The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, which were great reads. Harry Crane sounds like a man I want to get to know--and especially Oriana. Besides, there's mention of a small-town librarian. This sounds too good to pass up!

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The Spook in the Stacks (Lighthouse Library Mystery #4) by Eva Gates
Release Date: June 12, 2018 by Crooked Lane Press

Halloween in North Carolina’s Outer Banks becomes seriously tricky when librarian Lucy Richardson stumbles across something extra unusual in the rare books section: a dead body.

Wealthy businessman Jay Ruddle is considering donating his extensive collection of North Carolina historical documents to the Bodie Island Lighthouse Library, but the competition for the collection is fierce. Unfortunately, while the library is hosting a lecture on ghostly legends, Jay becomes one of the dearly departed in the rare books section. Now, it’s up to Lucy Richardson and her fellow librarians to bone up on their detective skills and discover who is responsible for this wicked Halloween homicide.

Meanwhile, very strange things are happening at the library—haunted horses are materializing in the marsh, the lights seem to have an eerie life of their own, and the tiny crew of a model ship appears to move around when no one is watching. Is Lucy at her wit’s end? Or can it be that the Bodie Island Lighthouse really is haunted?

With The Legend of Sleepy Hollow on everyone’s minds and ghoulish gossip on everyone’s lips, Lucy will need to separate the clues from the boos if she wants to crack this case without losing her head in The Spook in the Stacks, the delightful fourth in national bestseller Eva Gates’ Lighthouse Library mysteries. [Goodreads Summary]

Why I want to read this: While Halloween is still a few months away, I couldn't resist adding this seasonal cozy to my wish list. After all, who can resist a cozy mystery set in a library?

Do these sound like books you want to read?
What upcoming releases are you looking forward to reading?

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If I am going to draw attention to the upcoming releases I long to add to my TBR pile, why not also give some love to those unread books already sitting on my shelves?

Books from the Back is a weekly meme, hosted by the wonderful Carole of&nnahnbsp;Carole's Random Life in Books to spotlight and discuss the neglected books sitting on our shelves still waiting to be read.. 

A Bad Day For Sorry (#1) by Sophie Littlefield
Minotaur Books, 2009

Stella Hardesty, our salty, unlikely heroine, runs a sewing shop in rural Missouri. She also has a side business helping battered women with their abusive boyfriends and husbands. When Chrissy Shaw asks Stella for help, it seems like a straightforward case, until Chrissy’s no-good husband disappears with her two-year-old son. Now Stella finds herself in a battle against a more formidable enemy as she risks her own life to recover the boy. [Goodreads Summary]

Why I want to read it: I bought an autographed copy of A Bad Day For Sorry at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books in 2010, after attending a panel of crime fiction authors, which included the author Sophie Littlefield. I was intrigued by the premise of this book, and still am.

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The Wasted Vigil by Nadeem Aslam 
Knopf, 2008

In The Wasted Vigil, Nadeem Aslam, the award-winning author of Maps for Lost Lovers, brilliantly knits together five seemingly unconnected lives to create a luminous story set in contemporary Afghanistan. There’s Marcus, an English expat who was married to an outspoken Afghani doctor; David, a former American spy; Lara, from St. Petersburg, looking for traces of her brother, a Russian soldier who disappeared years before; Casa, a young Afghani whose hatred of the Americans has plunged him into the blinding depths of zealotry; and James, an American Special Forces soldier. Aslam reveals the intertwining paths that these characters have traveled, constructing a timely and intimate portrait of the complex ties that bind us and the wars that continue to tear us apart. [Goodreads Summary]

Why I want to read it: The cover is what first caught my attention when I saw this book, and after reading the synopsis, I knew I had to read it. The Wasted Vigil has been sitting on my bookshelf since 2010, waiting for me to finally pick it up. I imagine this will be an emotional and thought provoking book--just the kind I like--just as relevant then as it is now.

Have you read either of these? Do you recommend them?

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