The Haunting of Charity Delafield, by Ian Beck (Waiting on Wednesday)

Over at Breaking the Spine, Jill hosts a meme called "Waiting on Wednesday," where bloggers share the books that they are looking forward to. Here's my pick for this week, a book that comes out in the UK in November, and which might well end up on my Christmas list (even though the Book Depository offers free shipping from the UK, does anyone else have a residual feeling that it is somehow decedant to order new books from overseas just for one's own reading pleasure?)

The Haunting of Charity Delafield, by Ian Beck. I have en-bolded the things that made me want it!

"A magical, enchanting tale, with stunning illustrations that will transport you into another world.

Flame-haired Charity Delafield has grown up in a vast, isolated house - most of which she is forbidden to explore - with her fiercely strict father. With only her kindly nurse, Rose, and her cat Mr Tompkins for company, she knows very little of the outside world - or of her own family's shadowy past. What she does know is that she is NEVER to go outside unsupervised. And she is NEVER to over-excite herself, because of the mysterious 'condition' that she has been told she suffers from.

But Charity has a secret. All her life, she has had the same strange dream - a dream of a dark corridor, hidden somewhere in the house. Then, one day, Charity stumbles across the corridor. It leads to a door . . . and suddenly she realises things are not quite what they seem."

Sounds good, yes? I realize that wanting a book because it has a "flame-haired" main character is a bit shallow, but there it is. Especially after reading Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover books, I have wanted to be flame-haired myself....or at least burnished chestnut...