Can't-Wait Wednesday: Mislaid in Parts Half-Known by Seanan McGuire & My Friends by Hisham Matar

 

 Can't-Wait is a weekly meme hosted by Wishful Endings that spotlights exciting upcoming releases that we can't wait to be released! This meme is based off of Jill @ Breaking the Spine's Waiting on Wednesday meme.

This week's upcoming book spotlights are:

Mislaid in Parts Half-Known (Wayward Children #9) by Seanan McGuire
Publication: January 9th, 2024
Tordotcom
Hardcover. 160 pages.
Pre-order: Amazon | Bookshop.org

From Goodreads:
"Antsy is the latest student to pass through the doors at Eleanor West's School for Wayward Children.

When her fellow students realize that Antsy's talent for finding absolutely anything may extend to doors, she's forced to flee in the company of a small group of friends, looking for a way back to the Shop Where the Lost Things Go to be sure that Vineta and Hudson are keeping their promise.

Along the way, temptations are dangled, decisions are reinforced, and a departure to a world populated by dinosaurs brings untold dangers and one or two other surprises!

A story that reminds us that finding what you want doesn't always mean finding what you need."

I think I'm still one book behind in this series, but I'm hoping to catch up soon in time for the release of this latest installment. This series has its ups and downs, but I'm always drawn to them and have really loved the creativity from Seanan McGuire! Also, I'm always down for dinosaurs. 

My Friends by Hisham Matar
Publication: January 9th, 2024
Random House
Hardcover. 416 pages.
Pre-order: Amazon | Bookshop.org

From Goodreads:

"The trick time plays is to lull us into the belief that everything lasts forever, and although nothing does, we continue, inside our dream.

One evening, as a young boy growing up in Benghazi, Khaled hears a bizarre short story read aloud on the radio, about a man being eaten alive by a cat. Obsessed by the power of those words—and by their enigmatic author, Hosam Zowa—Khaled eventually embarks on a journey that will take him far from home, to pursue a life of the mind at the University of Edinburgh.

There, thrust into an open society that is light years away from the world he knew in Libya, Khaled begins to change. He attends a protest against the Qaddafi regime in London, only to watch it explode in tragedy. In a flash, Khaled finds himself injured, clinging to life, an exile, unable to leave England, much less return to the country of his birth. To even tell his mother and father back home what he has done, on tapped phone lines, would jeopardize their safety.

When a chance encounter in a hotel brings Khaled face to face with Hosam Zowa, the author of the fateful short story, he is subsumed into the deepest friendship of his life. It is a friendship that not only sustains him, but eventually forces him, as the Arab Spring erupts, to confront agonizing tensions between revolution and safety, family and exile, and how to define his own sense of self against those closest to him.

A devastating meditation on friendship and family, and the ways in which time tests—and frays—those bonds, My Friends is an achingly beautiful work of literature by an author at the peak of his powers."

Something about this book just really calls out to me and I'm really curious to check it out. It sounds like it'll hit on a lot of different topics and events, which should make for an interesting read.