Waiting On Wednesday: Penguin Winter 2014 Catalog

Waiting On Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Jill of Breaking The Spine in which upcoming, eagerly anticipated releases are highlighted on the blog.

This week, I've chosen to feature a few picks from the Penguin Winter 2014 Catalog:

The Impossible Knife of Memory by Laurie Halse Anderson
Date: January 7, 2014

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For the past five years, Hayley Kincaid and her father, Andy, have been on the road, never staying long in one place as he struggles to escape the demons that have tortured him since his return from Iraq. Now they are back in the town where he grew up so Hayley can attend school. Perhaps, for the first time, Hayley can have a normal life, put aside her own painful memories, even have a relationship with Finn, the hot guy who obviously likes her but is hiding secrets of his own.
Will being back home help Andy’s PTSD, or will his terrible memories drag him to the edge of hell, and drugs push him over? The Impossible Knife of Memory is Laurie Halse Anderson at her finest: compelling, surprising, and impossible to put down.

Laurie Halse Anderson is one of those authors that I have been meaning to read for a long time, but I have been putting off because I need to be in a very particular mood to read her intense issue books. The Impossible Knife of Memory is the latest issue book of Anderson's and it promises to be a good one.

A Mad, Wicked Folly by Sharon Biggs Waller
Date: January 23, 2014

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Welcome to the world of the fabulously wealthy in London, 1909, where dresses and houses are overwhelmingly opulent, social class means everything, and women are taught to be nothing more than wives and mothers. Into this world comes seventeen-year-old Victoria Darling, who wants only to be an artist—a nearly impossible dream for a girl.
After Vicky poses nude for her illicit art class, she is expelled from her French finishing school. Shamed and scandalized, her parents try to marry her off to the wealthy Edmund Carrick-Humphrey. But Vicky has other things on her mind: her clandestine application to the Royal College of Art; her participation in the suffragette movement; and her growing attraction to a working-class boy who may be her muse—or may be the love of her life. As the world of debutante balls, corsets, and high society obligations closes in around her, Vicky must figure out: just how much is she willing to sacrifice to pursue her dreams?

I have been obsessed with the early 1900s ever since blowing through the first few seasons of Downton Abbey this summer. A Mad, Wicked Folly sounds like it would satisfy my hunger for early 1900s historical fiction. And with quite the scandalous premise, too!

Minders by Michele Jaffe
Date: January 30, 2014

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Q: If the boy you love commits a crime, would you turn him in?
Sadie Ames is a type-A teenager from the wealthy suburbs. She's been accepted to the prestigious Mind Corps Fellowship program, where she'll spend six weeks as an observer inside the head of Ford, a troubled boy with a passion for the crumbling architecture of the inner city. There's just one problem: Sadie's fallen in love with him.

Q: What if the crime is murder?
Ford Winters is haunted by the murder of his older brother, James. As Sadie falls deeper into his world, dazzled by the shimmering pinpricks of color that form images in his mind, she begins to think she knows him. Then Ford does something unthinkable.

Q: What if you saw it happen from inside his mind?
Back in her own body, Sadie is faced with the ultimate dilemma. With Ford's life in her hands, she must decide what is right and what is wrong. And how well she can really ever know someone, even someone she loves.

There's a lot to love about Minders: first, the cool cover; second, the cool premise written up in a creative blurb. I only hope the romance doesn't end up being as insta-love-y as it comes across in the synopsis!

Tsarina by J. Nelle Patrick
Date: March 4, 2014

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Natalya knows a secret.

A magical Faberge egg glows within the walls of Russia's Winter Palace.

It holds a power rooted in the land and stolen from the mystics.

A power that promises a life of love for her and Alexei Romanov.

Power, that, in the right hands, can save her way of life.

But it's not in the right hands.

Absolutely gorgeous cover. J. Nelle Patrick is a pseudonym for Jackson Pierce, an author I have never read, but have always wanted to. And out of all her novels, I'm probably most eager to read the incredibly intriguing Tsarina!


How about you? Are you waiting on any of these Penguin Winter 2014 reads? Are there any upcoming books from the Penguin Winter 2014 Catalog that I didn't include here that you feel I should add to my list?