Can't-Wait Wednesday: Daphne by Josh Malerman, A Map for the Missing by Belinda Huijuan Tang, & Tomorrow in Shanghai: Stories by May-lee Chai

   

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: 

Daphne by Josh Malerman
Publication: August 23rd, 2022
Del Rey Books
Hardcover. 352 pages.
Pre-order: Amazon | Bookshop.org

From Goodreads:
"It’s the last summer for Kit Lamb: The last summer before college. The last summer with her high school basketball team, and with Dana, her best friend. The last summer before her life begins. 

But the night before the big game, one of the players tells a ghost story about Daphne, a girl who went to their school many years ago and died under mysterious circumstances. Some say she was murdered, others that she died by her own hand. And some say that Daphne is a murderer herself. They also say that Daphne is still out there, obsessed with revenge, and will appear to kill again anytime someone thinks about her. 

After Kit hears the story, her teammates vanish, one by one, and Kit begins to suspect that the stories about Daphne are real . . . and to fear that her own mind is conjuring the killer. Now it’s a race against time as Kit searches for the truth behind the legend and learns to face her own fears—before the summer of her life becomes the last summer of her life. 

Mixing a nostalgic coming-of-age story and an instantly iconic female villain with an innovative new vision of classic horror, Daphne is an unforgettable thriller as only Josh Malerman could imagine it."

Josh Malerman's books can be so hit or miss for me, haha, but when I like his books, I really like them, so I'm hoping this one will be a win. It sounds very classic horror in a sense, but also like it will bring something fresh. I'm looking forward to checking it out!

and...

A Map for the Missing by Belinda Huijuan Tang
Publication: August 9th, 2022
Penguin Books
Hardcover. 400 pages.
Pre-order: Amazon | Bookshop.org

From Goodreads:

"An epic, mesmerizing debut novel set against a rapidly changing post-Cultural Revolution China, A Map for the Missing reckons with the costs of pursuing one's dreams and the lives we leave behind 

Tang Yitian has been living in America for almost a decade when he receives an urgent phone call from his mother: his father has disappeared from the family's rural village in China. Though they have been estranged for years, Yitian promises to come home. 

When Yitian attempts to piece together what may have happened, he struggles to navigate China's impenetrable bureaucracy as an outsider, and his mother's evasiveness only deepens the mystery. So he seeks out a childhood friend who may be in a position to help: Tian Hanwen, the only other person who shared Yitian's desire to pursue a life of knowledge. As a teenager, Hanwen was "sent down" from Shanghai to Yitian's village as part of the country's rustication campaign. Young and in love, they dreamed of attending university in the city together. But when their plans resulted in a terrible tragedy, their paths diverged, and while Yitian ended up a professor in America, Hanwen was left behind, resigned to life as a midlevel bureaucrat's wealthy housewife. 

Reuniting for the first time as adults, Yitian and Hanwen embark on the search for Yitian's father, all the while grappling with the past--who Yitian's father really was, and what might have been. Spanning the late 1970s to 1990s and moving effortlessly between rural provinces and big cities, A Map for the Missing is a deeply felt examination of family and forgiveness, and the meaning of home."

This has a very epic family story feel to it, and I really do enjoy those sorts of stories so I'm really looking forward to having the opportunity to check this one out sometime!

and...

Tomorrow in Shanghai: Stories by May-lee Chai
Publication: August 30th, 2022
Blair
Paperback. 166 pages.
Pre-order: Amazon | Bookshop.org

From Goodreads:

"A short story collection exploring cultural complexities in China, the Chinese diaspora in America, and the world at large.

In a vibrant and illuminating follow-up to her award-winning story collection, Useful Phrases for Immigrants, May-lee Chai's latest collection Tomorrow in Shanghai explores multicultural complexities through lenses of class, wealth, age, gender, and sexuality--always tracking the nuanced, knotty, and intricate exchanges of interpersonal and institutional power. These stories transport the reader, variously: to rural China, where a city doctor harvests organs to fund a wedding and a future for his family; on a vacation to France, where a white mother and her biracial daughter cannot escape their fraught relationship; inside the unexpected romance of two Chinese-American women living abroad in China; and finally, to a future Chinese colony on Mars, where an aging working-class woman lands a job as a nanny. Chai's stories are essential reading for an increasingly globalized world."

As I've mentioned a couple times, short story collections have been starting to work for me lately, and I think this collection sounds like it will have some really great stories and commentary to explore. 

What do you think about these upcoming releases? What are your anticipated upcoming releases?