Waiting On Wednesday #155 - Yesternight

Waiting On Wednesday, where we put the spotlight on upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating, is hosted by Jill at Breaking The Spine.

This week's choice is -

Yesternight - Cat Winters 

ISBN - 9780062440860

Publisher - William Morrow

Release date - October 4 2016

Find - Goodreads | Book Depository

From the author of The Uninvited comes a haunting historical novel with a compelling mystery at its core.  A young child psychologist steps off a train, her destination a foggy seaside town. There, she begins a journey causing her to question everything she believes about life, death, memories, and reincarnation.

In 1925, Alice Lind steps off a train in the rain-soaked coastal hamlet of Gordon Bay, Oregon. There, she expects to do nothing more difficult than administer IQ tests to a group of rural schoolchildren. A trained psychologist, Alice believes mysteries of the mind can be unlocked scientifically, but now her views are about to be challenged by one curious child.

Seven-year-old Janie O’Daire is a mathematical genius, which is surprising. But what is disturbing are the stories she tells: that her name was once Violet, she grew up in Kansas decades earlier, and she drowned at age nineteen. Alice delves into these stories, at first believing they’re no more than the product of the girl’s vast imagination.  But, slowly, Alice comes to the realization that Janie might indeed be telling a strange truth.

Alice knows the investigation may endanger her already shaky professional reputation, and as a woman in a field dominated by men she has no room for mistakes. But she is unprepared for the ways it will illuminate terrifying mysteries within her own past, and in the process, irrevocably change her life.

Apart from loving the cover and all of Cat Winters' previous books this was a bit of a no-brainer for me. Historical fiction with a maybe supernatural twist? Yes please! It also sounds vaguely reminiscent of a film starring Rebecca Hall, called The Awakening, about a psychic debunker who goes to a school to prove it's not haunted. Anyone else seen it? 

Waiting On Wednesday #139 - Medusa's Web

Waiting On Wednesday, where we put the spotlight on upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating, is hosted by Jill at Breaking The Spine.

This week's choice is -

Medusa's Web - Tim Powers

ISBN - 9780062262455

Publisher - William Morrow

Release date - January 19 2016

Find - Goodreads 

From the award-winning author of Hide Me Among the Graves, Last Call, Declare, and Three Days to Never, a phantasmagoric, thrilling, mind-bending tale of speculative fiction in which one man must uncover occult secrets of 1920s Hollywood to save his family.

In the wake of their Aunt Amity’s suicide, Scott and Madeline Madden are summoned to Caveat, the eerie, decaying mansion in the Hollywood hills in which they were raised. But their decadent and reclusive cousins, the malicious wheelchair-bound Claimayne and his sister, Ariel, do not welcome Scott and Madeline’s return to the childhood home they once shared. While Scott desperately wants to go back to their shabby South-of-Sunset lives, he cannot pry his sister away from this haunted “House of Usher in the Hollywood Hills” that is a conduit for the supernatural.

Decorated by bits salvaged from old hotels and movie sets, Caveat hides a dark family secret that stretches back to the golden days of Rudolph Valentino and the silent film stars. A collection of hypnotic eight-limbed abstract images inked on paper allows the Maddens to briefly fragment and flatten time - to transport themselves into the past and future in visions that are both puzzling and terrifying. Though their cousins know little about these ancient “spiders” which provoke unpredictable temporal dislocations, Ariel and Claimayne have been using for years - an addiction that has brought Claimayne to the brink of selfish destruction.

As Madeline falls more completely under Caveat’s spell, Scott discovers that to protect her, he must use the perilous spiders himself. But will he unravel the mystery of the Madden family’s past and finally free them. . . or be pulled deeper into their deadly web?

I'm a huge fan of Tim Powers, The Anubis Gates and The Drawing of the Dark are just two of his books that I love. Medusa's Web sounds delightfully creepy and it's a shame it's not out until January as it would be a perfect Halloween read. It is out a couple of days before my birthday though so an excellent excuse to buy a copy!

Waiting on Wednesday #101 - Wildalone

Waiting On Wednesday, where we put the spotlight on upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating, is hosted by Jill at Breaking The Spine.

This week's choice is -

Wildalone - Krassi Zourkova

ISBN - 9780062328021

Publisher - William Morrow

Expected release date - January 6 2015

Find - Goodreads | Book Depository

In this darkly imaginative debut novel full of myth, magic, romance, and mystery, a Princeton freshman is drawn into a love triangle with two enigmatic brothers, and discovers terrifying secrets about her family and herself - a bewitching blend of Twilight, The Secret History, Jane Eyre, and A Discovery of Witches.

'Arriving at Princeton for her freshman year, Thea Slavin finds herself alone, a stranger in a strange land. Away from her family and her Eastern European homeland for the first time, she struggles to adapt to unfamiliar American ways and the challenges of college life - including an enigmatic young man whose brooding good looks and murky past intrigue her. Drawn to the elusive Rhys and his equally handsome and mysterious brother, Jake, she ventures into a sensual mythic underworld as irresistible as it is dangerous.

In this shadow world that seems to mimic Greek mythology and the Bulgarian legends of the samodivi or “wildalones” - forest witches who beguile and entrap men - Thea will discover a family secret bound to transform her forever... if she can accept that dead doesn't always mean gone, and love doesn't always distinguish between the two.'

Mesmerizing and addictive, Wildalone is a thrilling blend of the modern and the fantastic. Krassi Zourkova creates an atmospheric world filled with rich characters as compelling as those of Diana Gabaldon, Deborah Harkness, and Stephenie Meyer. - Goodreads

Not much of a wait for this one as it's available in two weeks but aside from the Twilight/Stephenie Meyer mentions this sounds like it has the potential to be really good. Greek mythology, Bulgarian legends and forest witches sound like my cup of tea so this just might be my book purchase of January!