New Releases!

I love checking the internet/my local book stores for new releases and upcoming releases. It gets me pumped for new reads and gives me something to look forward to (and save my money for!). I thought it would be fun to start sharing a few new releases every week. Today I picked 3 books I found at Amazon.com that I really want to read (and am hoping are as good as they look).

Jan's Story: Love Lost to the Long Goodbye of Alzheimer's by Barry Petersen

Here is the Amazon.com synopsis of this new release (it was out June 15th):

"Imagine hearing these words: "She has Alzheimer's." Now imagine that "she" is vibrant, active, loving, healthy...and just 55. Acclaimed CBS News reporter Barry Petersen, writes about hearing the unimaginable: what it meant, what it still means, what he did--and didn't do--and how this beautiful love story needs to be read by the thousands of families who have already heard that same devastating diagnosis...EARLY ONSET ALZHEIMER'S. Jan's Story is a full, rich story of two people--and thousands like them--for whom "forever" suddenly and terrifyingly has an expiration date. Barry Petersen is a long-time, award-winning TV journalist who has covered wars, the devastating Asian tsunami, the historic confrontation at Tiananmen Square, the unspeakable deaths in Rwanda, and so much more...but was not even slightly prepared for what happened to his darling wife, Jan. "

I am really hoping to get this book soon because it looks like it will be really good. Alzheimer's runs in my family (my great-grandma and my grandpa both had it) so it's something I've always been interested in. The fact that this was written by the husband of someone with early-onset Alzheimer's makes it even more intriguing to me. I know what it's like to lose a grandparent to it, but I can't even begin to imagine what it must be like to lose your life-long partner to it.

Father of the Rain: A Novel by Lily King


The plot (from Amazon):
"Amazon Best Books of the Month, July 2010: There's an emotional heft to Father of the Rain that comes not in the form of high drama, but in the feel of its characters. Daley Amory is an acute and attentive witness to her parents' divorce, which coincides with the larger dissolution of Nixon's presidency--itself a particularly appropriate historical counterpoint for a novel that explores how fiercely parents and children can polarize. Daley's father, Gardiner, is a jovial but capricious blue-blood New Englander, an alcoholic whose behavior is increasingly erratic and punishing to the point that Daley finally breaks away--in spite of how much she loves him--for much of her adult life. She is resilient, a woman you can respect but also challenge, and her love is (ultimately, amazingly) uncomplicated and true. The award-winning author of two previous novels, Lily King has long been admired for her deft, graceful characterization, and in no novel is this more evident than Father of the Rain. She takes on difficult characters but never vilifies them, choosing instead to seek out the feelings they shield, raise them up, and set them free. --Anne Bartholomew"

This was released on July 6th and might be the most anticipated new release for me at the moment. It just looks like a really awesome read!


And my last anticipated new release:
The Cookbook Collector: A Novel by Allegra Goodman

This book was also released on July 6th, and here is the plot summary (again from Amazon.com):
"If any contemporary author deserves to wear the mantel of Jane Austen, it's Goodman, whose subtle, astute social comedies perfectly capture the quirks of human nature. This dazzling novel is Austen updated for the dot-com era, played out between 1999 and 2001 among a group of brilliant risk takers and truth seekers. Still in her 20s, Emily Bach is the CEO of Veritech, a Web-based data-storage startup in trendy Berkeley. Her boyfriend, charismatic Jonathan Tilghman, is in a race to catch up at his data-security company, ISIS, in Cambridge, Mass. Emily is low-key, pragmatic, kind, serene—the polar opposite of her beloved younger sister, Jess, a crazed postgrad who works at an antiquarian bookstore owned by a retired Microsoft millionaire. When Emily confides her company's new secret project to Jonathan as a proof of her love, the stage is set for issues of loyalty and trust, greed, and the allure of power. What is actually valuable, Goodman's characters ponder: a company's stock, a person's promise, a forest of redwoods, a collection of rare cookbooks? Goodman creates a bubble of suspense as both Veritech and ISIS issue IPOs, career paths collide, social values clash, ironies multiply, and misjudgments threaten to destroy romantic desire."

Just the mention of Jane Austen in the review pretty much won me over. She's one of my fave authors ever, so I'm hoping that Goodman lives up to that comparison. The plot of this book looks really interesting and I think it would be a great summer read.

Any other new releases you are looking forward to?