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5 gifts that will shoot to the top of any reader’s TBR

Feature by Julie Hale

Book Nooks

The question of how best to set up a personal library has confounded many a book collector. When it comes time to arrange them, all those wonderful volumes can seem like the pieces of an unsolvable puzzle. The literature lover who’s searching for solutions will welcome Book Nooks: Inspired Ideas for Cozy Reading Corners and Stylish Book Displays by Vanessa Dina and Claire Gilhuly.

Packed with easy-to-execute design schemes and Antonis Achilleos’ fabulous photographs, Book Nooks offers tips on how to group books according to color and size, as well as strategies for using personal effects in an arrangement. For establishing a comfy reading area, there are options to suit every style, space and taste. The book also addresses the art of stacking (Yes, it can be a creative act!), suggests methods for bringing plants into the picture, organizing those prize cookbooks and integrating analog reading material into a teen’s room. With reading recs from noted authors and a look at Little Free Libraries, Book Nooks is a bibliophile’s best friend.

Hidden Libraries

DC Helmuth’s Hidden Libraries: The World’s Most Unusual Book Depositories is a perfectly on-point present for any reader, but especially one who loves to travel. This wide-ranging title profiles 50 remarkable libraries in locations across the globe. Staff stories, fascinating facts, spectacular imagery and a foreword from critic and librarian Nancy Pearl make it a winning tribute to the mission of libraries everywhere.

Hidden Libraries surveys a range of amazing physical spaces. The Kurkku Fields’ Underground Library in Kisarazu, Japan, is a book-lined grotto covered in grass, while the cocoon-shaped Heydar Aliyev International Airport Library near Baku, Azerbaijan, projects sheer architectural awesomeness. Examples of inspired resourcefulness regarding book circulation abound: In China, the Shenzhen library system distributes titles via vending machine. And Helmuth doesn’t dismiss even the most miniature of libraries. A handsome wooden cabinet filled with colorful books, the Little Free Library at the South Pole—startling against Antarctica’s unrelieved whiteness—seems to defy its frozen surroundings. Big or small, grand or humble, each library serves as a singular point of enrichment and connection, and Helmuth’s stirring volume honors these efforts.

The Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge

With its quick-witted heroine Rory Gilmore, a voracious reader with dreams of attending Harvard, Gilmore Girls could very well be classified as a TV show for bookworms. The series, which aired from 2000 to 2007, made numerous allusions (339, to be exact) to books of all genres—titles favored by Rory and her friends. In The Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge: The Official Guide to All the Books, Erika Berlin explores the novels, plays and poetry cited on the show, providing episode information and details on who read what. 

Inspired by Buzzfeed’s 2014 list of all the books mentioned in Gilmore Girls, Berlin’s breezy volume takes a nostalgic look back at Rory’s world while sharing reading recommendations (Frankenstein, The Poems of Emily Dickinson, One Hundred Years of Solitude, the list goes on) and invaluable book-related advice, including approaches for becoming a more focused reader and easy ways to impose order on a chaotic book collection. Filled with photos from the show, this book is a sunny retrospective and a buoyant tribute to the reading life.

Buried Deep and Other Stories

For the fantasy fan, there’s no better gift than Buried Deep and Other Stories by Naomi Novik, bestselling author of the Scholomance trilogy, Uprooted and Spinning Silver. As this collection proves, Novik is a natural conjurer whose stories—rich with allusion and detail—feel effortlessly authentic. Each provides an escape into an alternative world that’s wholly realized. 

“Dragons & Decorum”—a fantastical recasting of Pride and Prejudice, set in the Regency England of Novik’s Temeraire series—finds Elizabeth Bennet riding a winged dragon named Wollstonecraft. In “The Long Way Round,” Novik offers a taste of her next work (tentatively titled Folly) and introduces spirited protagonist Intessa Roh. “Vici,” another Temeraire tale, but this time set in ancient Rome, chronicles the unexpected camaraderie that arises between Marc Antony and a valiant dragon. Introductions from Novik accompany the anthology’s 13 stories, and readers will relish the context they give to her work. This is a transportive collection from an author who maps her narrative milieus with extraordinary precision.

The Man in Black and Other Stories

Crime fiction maven Elly Griffiths is known as a prolific writer, having penned the Ruth Galloway, Harbinder Kaur and Brighton mysteries series. But did anyone suspect she was writing short stories on the side? That’s right—Griffiths has long played around with short-form work, and her intriguing new volume, The Man in Black and Other Stories, spotlights this aspect of her artistry. 

The atmospheric anthology brings together 19 pieces, in which, fans will be delighted to learn, Griffiths expands the backstories of some of her most popular characters. The volume’s eponymous story is a spooky sketch set just before Halloween that features Ruth Galloway. “Harbinger” tracks Harbinder Kaur’s all-too-eventful first day at Shoreham Criminal Investigation Department. And in “Ruth Galloway and the Ghost of Max Mephisto,” all three of Griffiths’ sleuths converge, as it were. Ingeniously plotted and leavened with humor, the pieces are brief but satisfying. From sinister tales to twisty whodunits, Griffith’s short stories deliver as much spellbinding suspense as a full-blown novel.

Got a serious bibliophile on your list? Tick that box with one of these titles.
RomanceRomantic SuspenseParanormal RomanceContemporary Romance

Long live the amnesia plot

Feature by Christie Ridgway

★ The Woodsmoke Women’s Book of Spells

With The Woodsmoke Women’s Book of Spells, Rachel Greenlaw offers a haunting romantic fantasy. After a decade away, English artist Carrie Morgan returns to her hometown of Woodsmoke. She had reasons to run, including her family’s witchy reputation. But her grandmother left Carrie her cottage, and she decides to refurbish it before selling the property and leaving again. The lure of the mountain town is almost as irresistible as Matthieu, a handsome stranger who offers his help with the renovation. However, Carrie’s Great-Aunt Cora, the keeper of the family’s book of spells, is convinced Carrie is headed for heartbreak: Morgan lore tells of magical, beautiful strangers who appear out of the mountains as winter begins, but disappear with the spring. Told in alternating viewpoints, the story follows Carrie, Cora and Carrie’s best friend, Ivy, as they confront their pasts and find love. Readers will lose themselves in this engrossing, atmospheric and emotional tale.

Pictures of You

Twenty-nine-year-old Evie Hudson awakens in a hospital with no memories past the age of 16 in Pictures of You by Emma Grey. Evie’s youthful voice lends a Freaky Friday/13 Going on 30 vibe to the beginning of the novel, but the can’t-look-away plot is ultimately much more serious, and the tone soon changes to match. Evie struggles to integrate what she learns of her recent past with her teenage vision of who she would become. Then an old friend, Drew, reluctantly steps in to help her discover why she broke ties with her family and best friend. Grey jumps back in time to fill in gaps for the reader, and Evie’s tale becomes darker and ever more riveting as layers are peeled back and sacrifices revealed. There’s nonstop drama and surprise after surprise in this twisty tearjerker.

Perfect Fit

A couple re-meets-cute in Perfect Fit by Clare Gilmore. Josephine Davis runs her own clothing company in Austin, Texas, and is shocked when her largest investor hires business consultant Will Grant. Not only is Will the twin brother of Jo’s ex-best friend, but the pair also made out as teenagers. Can they work together even though they haven’t spoken in nine years? Gilmore writes in a fresh, modern voice, and fills the world around Josie and Will with cool friends with cool jobs and cool attitudes who support their burgeoning romance. It seems impossible for them not to end up together . . . if only they can overcome their insecurities and act like the adults they are now. Fun food, fun drinks and fun parties put this squarely in the rom-com lane, with an added coming-of-age element thanks to Josie’s first-person perspective.

Emma Grey’s Pictures of You highlights everything that’s great about one of romance’s most soapy tropes.
Mystery & SuspenseMysteryHistorical MysteryCozy Mystery

Inspector Gamache, John Rebus and Bruno Courrèges are back—and they’re all in top form

Feature by Bruce Tierney

A Grave in the Woods

The typically unflappable Bruno Courrèges is annoyed. While he was on medical leave, his position as chief of police was taken over by an overbearing new hire, and she has no intention of vacating it until he has been cleared to return to service. Moreover, she has lectured him regarding his general untidiness and inept record-keeping. For the time being, it is better for everyone concerned if Bruno beats a hasty retreat to somewhere else, anywhere else. So, for A Grave in the Woods, Martin Walker’s 17th installment in the popular series, Bruno is tasked with investigating (wait for it . . .) a grave in the woods. Three bodies are in the grave, all dating back to World War II: two German women and one man, an Italian submarine captain, oddly distant from his expected undersea context. Oh, and while we are on the topic of water, Bruno’s hometown of St. Denis—a sadly fictional village in the Périgord region of France—is bracing for an epic, climate change-fueled flood. The dams have held thus far, but it’s getting dicey. As Bruno digs deeper into the grave situation (sorry), questions dating back some 80 years are unearthed. Thus, there is perhaps more history than mystery in this episode of Bruno’s adventures, but there is nothing wrong with that. There is plenty of what readers come to St. Denis for: the food and wine; the camaraderie; and of course, Balzac the basset hound, surely one of the most engaging four-legged supporting characters ever to grace the pages of a mystery novel.

Midnight and Blue

Wow, you miss one book in a series, and the protagonist transforms from the number one cop in Scotland to a prison inmate. As Ian Rankin’s latest mystery, Midnight and Blue, opens, John Rebus is cooling his heels in the slammer. His crime: attempted murder, which is under appeal, but the wheels of justice are turning slowly. At first, he is incarcerated in the relatively safe Separation and Reintegration unit, where prisoners in danger (such as ex-cops) are assigned, but he is soon to be rehoused in the general prison population, in part thanks to a safe-passage guarantee from Edinburgh’s reigning crime lord, who credits Rebus for his ascent to the underworld throne. When a murder takes place in a nearby two-person cell, Rebus’ detecting instincts bubble to the surface, although he must be somewhat more circumspect than if he was out on the streets. In a parallel narrative, Rebus’ onetime colleague Detective Inspector Siobhan Clarke is investigating the disappearance of a teenage girl, a case that will come to have a tangential—or perhaps more than tangential—connection with the aforementioned prison murder. Author Rankin is in top form as he reinvents his flawed hero by having him navigate an equally flawed milieu, in what must be one of the most original locked-room mysteries ever.

Murder Takes the Stage

One of my favorite plot devices for a mystery—or really any sort of novel—is the revisiting of a familiar tale through the perspective of a different character, such as Gregory Maguire’s retelling of the Cinderella story, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister. Colleen Cambridge has mined this vein exceptionally well with her series featuring Phyllida Bright, housekeeper to Agatha Christie. This time out, the Christie entourage moves to London for Murder Takes the Stage, in which one of the author’s stories has been made into a West End play. Unfortunately, however, an actor whose surname began with the letter A turns up dead at a theater beginning with the letter A. Then, the body of an actor playing Benvolio is discovered at a theater beginning with a B. You can see where this is going, right? It’s a clever and delicious spin on one of Christie’s better known works, The A.B.C. Murders. Exactly one year ago, I opined that Cambridge’s previous installment in the series, Murder by Invitation Only, “straddles the line between historical fiction and intricate, Christie-esque suspense quite well, without the cloying cutesiness that can sometimes plague mysteries on the cozier side of things. And Phyllida Bright is simply a gem.” I stand by that assertion 100%.

★ The Grey Wolf 

An old legend tells of two wolves that battle inside each of us: a black wolf that represents anger, greed, arrogance, resentment, envy and ego; and a gray wolf that represents kindness, generosity, compassion, empathy, love and hope. Which one will win, you may ask? The answer is simple, yet profound: The one you feed. The Grey Wolf also serves as the title of Louise Penny’s 19th entry in her critically acclaimed series featuring Chief Inspector Gamache of the Sureté du Québec. The Grey Wolf is far and away Penny’s most ambitious novel to date, landing Gamache and his team squarely into the middle of ecoterrorism on a scale hitherto unimaginable in typically tranquil Canada. But as data begins to trickle in, it becomes apparent that the plot’s tentacles are farther reaching than anyone could reasonably have predicted, involving an order of Québécois monks who have taken a vow of silence, the highest levels of the Canadian federal government and even the Vatican. Equally troubling is evidence suggesting that key members of the Sureté may have been compromised, leaving the core team of Gamache, Beauvoir and Lacoste twisting in the wind as the stopwatch ticks away the minutes. The Grey Wolf is 432 pages long, and I read it in one sitting, because I could not put it down.

Plus, Colleen Cambridge gifts readers with another clever mystery starring Phyllida Bright, housekeeper to none other than Agatha Christie.
NonfictionFood & DrinkCookbooks

4 cookbooks sure to inspire creative moves in the kitchen

Feature by Becky Libourel Diamond
STARRED REVIEW
November 1, 2024

4 cookbooks sure to inspire creative moves in the kitchen

Cookbooks are among the most treasured gifts for anyone who loves to cook, bake, grill or simply learn about food and culture. Many food aficionados enjoy reading cookbooks cover to cover, while others hunt and peck for recipes that will hit the spot. Our four picks offer gorgeous photography, mouthwatering recipe descriptions, enlightening social context and inspiring ways to make the most of the food in your larder. But proceed with caution: You may decide to roll up your sleeves and make some of the recipes, as I did, before you can gift wrap the book!

Feature by Becky Libourel Diamond
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NonfictionFood & DrinkCookbooks

Breaking Bao

Review by Becky Libourel Diamond

Breaking Bao: 88 Bakes and Snacks From Asia and Beyond by award-winning pastry chef Clarice Lam is a striking collection of thoughtfully crafted baked goods, highlighting her “love for Asian flavors while simultaneously connecting the dots between cultures.” Recalling her diverse background (her mother is from Hong Kong and her father from the Philippines) and experiences (the family lived and traveled all over the world), Lam explains how food was her solace during times when she felt like an outsider. On her path to becoming a chef, she gained knowledge and appreciation of the “interwoven food histories” that sustained her when the rest of the world shut her out. Organized into three main sections—Bao, Cakes and Desserts, and Snacks—Lam’s highly detailed instructions accompanied by texturally rich close-up photos will help assist even the most inexperienced pastry chef, as many of the recipes can be rather complicated and span several pages. Detailed chapters on ingredients, tools and equipment helpfully describe how and why they are used and where to get them. Dishes range from traditional Asian recipes such as shokupan (Japanese milk bread—one of the most common recipes in Asian baking) and chili crisp (a staple oil in every Chinese household), to dishes with an Asian-inspired twist, such as matcha-azuki Mont Blanc and pandan-lime meringue pie. This beautiful, informative cookbook is the perfect gift for anyone who enjoys being creative in the kitchen, and might even inspire home bakers to invent their own confectionary delights. 

Clarice Lam’s Breaking Bao is a striking collection of thoughtfully crafted baked goods that highlights the inventive pastry chef’s love of Asian flavors.
NonfictionFood & DrinkCookbooks

Every Last Bite

Review by Becky Libourel Diamond

With the goal of sharing simple, delicious recipes filled with constructive tips to reduce waste, save time and cut costs, Every Last Bite: Save Money, Time and Waste With 70 Recipes That Make the Most of Mealtimes by British chef and writer Rosie Sykes (The Kitchen Revolution) is a delightful mix of global recipes reflecting her background and experiences as a chef and former London pub owner. Featuring eight chapters with cheeky titles such as “Quick as a wink and not too filling,” “Goings-on in the oven” and “Blueprints for leftovers,” Sykes has crafted an accessible, practical resource that will be welcomed by anyone looking to rein in their food budget and avoid excess waste and energy usage. The recipes are a wide-ranging mix of cultural dishes, from Catalan-style beans and chorizo, pea and potato pav bhaji, and bacon and egg pie. Each is accompanied by a helpful symbol indicating alternate serving suggestions, ways to use up leftovers, ingredient hacks, storage tips, budget helpers and low/no-waste ideas. For example, the simple, delicious cauliflower farfalle, which combines roasted cauliflower, red onions and bow-tie pasta dressed in a simple walnut pesto, features a tip to store nuts in the refrigerator to prevent spoiling. The recipes and instructions are clearly laid out (including conversions to American measurements), and will appeal to both beginning and advanced cooks.

Every Last Bite is an accessible, practical cookbook that will be welcomed by anyone looking to rein in their food budget and avoid excess waste and energy usage.
NonfictionFood & DrinkCookbooks

Our South

Review by Becky Libourel Diamond

The recipes in the lavishly presented Our South: Black Food Through My Lens feature a fascinating blend of ingredients, flavors and techniques. Acclaimed chef Ashleigh Shanti, a queer Black woman from Appalachia, shares the region’s history and her own backstory to show how she developed a love of all things culinary. Recalling past meals rich in bacon, lard, butter and country ham, Shanti includes an abundance of regional dishes, such as Virginia Brunswick stew, and black pepper quail and leather britches, a southern Appalachian specialty dish of dried green beans and smoky seasoned meat. I made the gingered shrimp, watermelon and peach skewers—like eating summer on a plate—and the cucumber and celery heart salad, which is bathed in zesty, pickled goodness and tasted even better the second day. Shanti notes that her book is meant to “amplify your understanding of the complexities of Black food” and “dispel the myths of what America thinks Black cooking is and is not.” Our South is a perfect gift for anyone curious about the intersections of food and culture.

Ashleigh Shanti’s excellent, lavishly presented Our South twines the recipes and culture of Black Appalachia with the chef’s own culinary journey.
NonfictionFood & DrinkCookbooks

The Artful Way to Plant-Based Cooking

Review by Becky Libourel Diamond

Sure to inspire leisurely, locally crafted meals paired with excellent conversation and luscious wine, The Artful Way to Plant-Based Cooking: Nourishing Recipes and Heartfelt Moments is a breathtaking cookbook created by mother-daughter team Trudy Crane (a ceramic artist) and Chloé Crane-Leroux (a New York City-based food and lifestyle photographer) that could do double duty as an attractive coffee table display. Blending artistry with plant-based dishes, the duo makes enticing connections between food, taste and presentation, proving vegetables can be colorful works of art. With stunning photographs taken in Spain, the book highlights the shared love of travel that has always been a “deeply meaningful connection” between the mother and daughter. Divided into six sections of appetizers, date night dishes, friends for dinner, weekday favorites, solo suppers, and slow mornings and brunch favorites, a wide range of recipe types and flavor combinations are represented, among them crumbed artichokes with cashew aioli, a ricotta and squash galette, a traditional Greek salad and savory chickpea pancakes. I made the shawarma spice tofu skewers with hummus and wilted spinach, which proved to be a delicious blend of flavors and textures.

In their breathtaking new cookbook, mother-daughter team Trudy Crane and Chloé Crane-Leroux prove that vegetables can be colorful works of art.

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Mouthwatering recipes, gorgeous photography and enlightening social context make Our South, Breaking Bao and more cookbooks worthy of a spot on your kitchen shelf.
NonfictionSelf-HelpBody, Mind & Spirit

4 modern takes on the eternal quest for self-improvement

Feature by Arlene McKanic

Tiny Pep Talks

Reading Paula Skaggs and Josh Linden’s humorous and often snarky Tiny Pep Talks: Bite-Size Encouragement for Life’s Annoying, Stressful, and Flat-Out Lousy Moments is much like an afternoon spent with your favorite vodka aunty who’s always had your best interest at heart. After a lighthearted introduction, their advice covers sticky situations that range from the utterly trivial to the somewhat deep. It starts out, for example, with “For When It’s Time to Get Off the Couch and Go to Bed.” Other offers of comfort include “For When Your Clothes Don’t Fit,” and, inevitably, “For When You Just Got Ghosted: A Spooky Tale.” There’s also advice for if you’ve been walking around with spinach between your teeth, when your battery’s down to 5% and when you can’t stand your friend’s significant other (Skaggs and Linden specify that this means a significant other who’s simply annoying, as opposed to one who’s abusive and dangerous. That’s for a “more serious book.”)

Even weighty  stuff like grief is handled with a touch of sass. Grief, they write, “is like a toddler. At any given moment, it might be messy, it might kick and punch you in the gut, and it might refuse to go to bed when all you want is to go to sleep.” But as Scarlett O’Hara said, tomorrow is another day. You’ll be okay.

Good People

Gabriel Reilich and Lucia Knell’s lovely, open-hearted Good People comforts through example. It tells the stories of all kinds of ordinary folk who’ve gone through stuff and come out the other side, sometimes battered, like the narrator of “Invictus,” but unbowed.

In the very first story, we follow Amy B. as she happily moves from Washington, D.C., to attend law school in New York City, only to be poleaxed by a family tragedy. New Yorkers are notorious for ignoring people who break down and cry on subways or airport terminals, but in Amy’s case, someone notices and helps her. She never learned his name and doesn’t even know if she’d recognize him if she saw him again, but his brief presence permanently changed her life for the better. Good People is full of stories where an “angel” shows up at a moment of crisis. Wherever you land in this book, you’ll be comforted by the fact that despite the insanity of the times we live in, most people are indeed, good.

Life Audit

Ximena Vengoechea’s Life Audit: A Step-by-Step Guide to Discovering Your Goals and Building the Life You Want is one inspirational book where you’ll need to do some work. As the title says, it asks you to do an audit of your life, but the process is led by pages of delightful bar graphs, mind maps, drawings and Venn diagrams in cool pastel colors. In other words, it’s much more fun than an IRS audit of your taxes.

Auditing your life is a worthwhile pursuit when you don’t quite know what you want to do, or if you’re in a rut. Vengoechea breaks down the process into small but revealing steps. At the beginning you’re encouraged to write down every single one of your wishes, no matter how trivial, on 100 sticky notes in the space of an hour. Though labor-intensive, this helps you prioritize your wishes, identify your core values, use your time wisely and pick the people (five of them, the author suggests) who are eager to offer you support. Vengoechea also shows you how to avoid folks who would drag you down and shares motivational tricks, such as getting an ice cream cone or putting on a party dress after you’ve turned in your manuscript. Life Audit is a lovely book to keep on your bedside table.

Not Sure Who Needs to Hear This, But . . .

Though this book is over 200 pages long, you can easily read Willie Greene’s Not Sure Who Needs to Hear This, But . . . in a few hours. Indeed, its layout allows you to just jump in anywhere, for every page holds something pithy. Greene, the founder of WE THE URBAN, which launched as a Tumblr account that dispenses similar advice, divides his book into six chapters: Peace; Love; Learning, Unlearning, Relearning; Creativity; Well-being and Affirmations. The first few pages of each chapter posit the virtue, followed by sections, none more than a couple of paragraphs long, that tell you how to achieve it. After that comes pithy adages, often framed by colorful boxes that recall sticky notes. Included are: “Forgive yourself every night before going to sleep”; “Act. Even if fear is present” and “Delete the Ex-files.” (This one, I believe, means to move right along after you’ve been dumped or subjected to that even worse 21st-century atrocity of “ghosting.”) There are dozens of these little pep pills for the soul. Who needs to hear them? We do!

 

 

Humans have been trying to improve themselves since they discovered they had selves that needed improving. As the search for spiritual, mental and physical health continues ever on, four new books are here to help.
FictionLiterary FictionHistorical FictionComing of Age

4 can’t-miss book club picks

Feature by Julie Hale

In Amanda Peters’ The Berry Pickers, Ruthie, a 4-year-old Mi’kmaq child, disappears from a farm in Maine where her migrant family is employed during the summer. Set in 1962, the novel is narrated by Ruthie’s brother, Joe, and by Norma, a girl whose remote, unapproachable parents seem to be harboring secrets. Spanning five tumultuous decades, the novel brings these parallel narratives to a surprising climax. Peters’ sensitive depiction of family members learning to live with loss is unforgettable. Themes of loyalty, memory and guilt will spark lively conversation among readers.

Inspired by historical events, Tan Twan Eng’s atmospheric novel The House of Doors is about writer W. Somerset Maugham, who, with waning health and a declining reputation, goes to Penang in 1921 in search of material for a new book. He finds what he’s looking for after reconnecting with his friend Robert Hamlyn. Robert’s wife, Lesley, shares information with Maugham about her murky past, including her links to Chinese revolutionaries and a murder—perfect fodder for a novel. Writing with wonderful detail, Eng delivers a smart, suspenseful narrative that sheds fresh light on a fascinating era in history.

Rio and Gibraltar, a successful Black couple, leave behind the world of Boston academia to build a new life in Gabriel Bump’s electrifying book The New Naturals. With the backing of a rich patron, they start an experimental community founded on tolerance and trust. The community—based in a bunker-like space under a hill—draws a variety of wayward souls, but friction soon arises, and the couple’s dream of an ideal society is threatened. Grief, social justice and the nature of community are a few of the novel’s engaging discussion topics.

Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver’s genius reenvisioning of Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield, has been hailed as one of the best books of the century. Demon, the narrator of the novel, lives in a trailer in Lee County, Virginia, with his mother, a drug addict. He’s creative and smart, but faces enormous challenges when his mother’s death lands him in foster care. Kingsolver portrays Demon’s difficult coming-of-age with vividness and immediacy. Featuring a sprawling plot and expansive cast of characters, the novel is an epic for our times and a modern book club classic.

Choose one of these buzzed-about novels for your book club and get set for a great meeting.
Mystery & SuspenseSuspenseMysteryHistorical Mystery

Andy Mills is back—with a case set in the world of 1950s queer booksellers.

Feature by Bruce Tierney

The Seventh Floor

In David McCloskey’s latest thriller, The Seventh Floor, the CIA team dedicated to eradicating moles is hilariously referred to as the “Dermatologists.” (I will never be able to unthink that.) There is no gentle introduction in this book, no setting of scene, no lulling the reader into a false sense of security. By the end of page six, a Russian agent is dead, having bitten down on his poison-filled Montblanc pen scant seconds before a team breaks into his office. A bit later, American agent Sam Joseph hangs upside down in a Russian black-ops site, pleading ignorance to a group of unbelieving interrogators. The heart of the matter seems to be that there is an extremely high-placed Russian mole in the CIA, with one team of facilitators dedicated to seeing that said mole remains securely in place, and a second team equally dedicated to ferreting them out. But this is the world of espionage, after all, and alliances are fluid at best and downright lethal at worst, with no handy brochure that lists true affiliations. The two main characters are Sam and Artemis Procter, the latter a no-nonsense CIA operational chief who irritates most people simply by walking into a room. Together, these two must navigate the minefields and expose the mole, or very likely die in the attempt. The Seventh Floor is not really about these heroes as much as it is about the process of flushing out a traitor, but it proves remarkably difficult to put down either way. PS, McCloskey knows whereof he speaks: He is a former CIA analyst who delivered classified briefings to congressional oversight committees, and he regularly wrote for the President’s Daily Brief, the top secret intelligence summary that appears on the desk in the Oval Office every morning. It shows.

Rough Pages

Lev AC Rosen’s Rough Pages is the third installment in his historical mystery series featuring gay detective Evander “Andy” Mills, a former San Francisco police officer who was outed and fired, and has now launched a private investigation firm serving the queer community in the City by the Bay. These postwar noir novels are set in the 1950s, when gay bashing was not only tolerated, but encouraged, even—or especially—by those sworn to “protect and serve.” Andy is drawn into a case involving the disappearance of Howard Salzberger, a bookstore owner who supplies a select clientele with queer books by subscription, and who may have run afoul of postal regulations prohibiting the distribution of “obscene materials.” At the center of the case is Howard’s missing notebook, which lists his subscribers: If the government gets hold of that, there will be hell to pay. The Mafia is also interested in obtaining the notebook, and among the mobsters, there is perhaps even less tolerance of queerness than there is by the government or general public. Rosen’s Evander Mills books are unsettling to read; like Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlins series, they unflinchingly depict historical—and in some ways, ongoing—discrimination against minorities. And like Mosley, Rosen takes his shots at the establishment by simply telling the day-to-day stories of marginalized people, the people who those in power tried to shove off into the shadows, but who persisted in living vibrant lives all the same.

Death by Misadventure

To begin with, a small confession: While reading Tasha Alexander’s latest Lady Emily mystery, Death by Misadventure, I happened upon the word “snarky.” As her novels are written in the vernacular of the time (in this case, 1906), “snarky” seemed to me to be very out of place. So I Googled the word, only to discover that its first recorded usage was in the year (wait for it . . .) 1906. I should have known better than to doubt Alexander. Lady Emily relates the story in the first person: A high-society murder takes place in the shadow of Neuschwanstein Castle, a killing that has roots dating back a generation, to the days of the castle’s creator, Bavaria’s Mad King Ludwig. Death by Misadventure is an Agatha Christie-esque locked-room mystery, with the victim and the cast of potential perpetrators snowbound after an Alpine storm renders the roads impassable. Lady Emily will investigate the murder, as she has done in the 17 previous novels; she easily rivals Jessica Fletcher of Murder, She Wrote in terms of acquaintances lost to untimely and violent demise. As is typically the case with locked-room mysteries, there are secrets and motives galore, but good luck figuring out “whodunit” before the big reveal. I certainly did not.

★ The Drowned

In the 1950s, in a field adjacent to the rocky Irish coast, a Mercedes SL sits idling. The driver’s door is open, but no driver is in sight. A local outcast happens upon the car while walking his dog, and is in turn happened upon by the car owner’s distraught husband, who cries out that his wife has thrown herself into the sea. Thus begins John Banville’s atmospheric mystery novel The Drowned. The local constable, a lout and a drunkard with no love for the aforementioned outcast, is first to investigate, but the situation requires an altogether more delicate and thorough touch. So Detective Inspector St. John (pronounced “sin-jun”) Strafford is called in from Dublin to preside over the case. And where Strafford goes, it is pretty much a foregone conclusion that his colleague/adversary, pathologist and medical examiner Quirke, will not be far behind. As the investigation moves forward, Stafford and Quirke expose some troubling connections to an earlier case, a case that everyone thought had been solved, but now seems to have a few loose threads that require pulling. This is a book that deserves to be read slowly, not simply for the plotting and the characters (which are quite good in their own right), but for the sheer richness of the prose. The Drowned is genre fiction that rises to the level of full-on, capital L literature.

Lev AC Rosen’s critically acclaimed series has another win, plus new reads from Tasha Alexander and John Bancroft in this month’s Whodunit column.
RomanceRomantic SuspenseHistorical RomanceContemporary Romance

Is romantic suspense back?

Feature by Christie Ridgway

★ I Did Something Bad

Set in Yangon, Myanmar, I Did Something Bad by Pyae Moe Thet War combines kisses-only romance and suspense. Freelance journalist Khin Haymar has two months of access to movie star Tyler Tun in order to write an in-depth exposé. It’s the chance of a lifetime and, even though she’s known for more serious articles, such as one featuring an underground abortion clinic, Khin is recently divorced and needs a boost.,. When Khin and Tyler meet, they’re immediately drawn to each other, but journalistic ethics rule out a relationship between a writer and subject. Still, Tyler is handsome and sexy, and one night he steps in to save Khin from danger . . . How could she not be tempted? As they work together to investigate the threat, love blossoms. With swoony moments and some serious ones regarding the importance of journalism, this sweet yet thoroughly modern story satisfies.

The Highlander’s Return

The Highlander’s Return by Lynsay Sands hits all the classic notes of a satisfying historical romance: a marriage of convenience, a strong-but-silent hero and a feisty heroine who’s very deserving of her Happily Ever After. Six years ago, Annella Gunn’s husband, William, went missing the day after their wedding. After his younger brother, brawny warrior Graeme, returns home and delivers the news that William has died, Annella is a widow with an unknown future ahead of her. Graeme knows almost instantly what the beautiful Annella should do: Marry him. As he assumes his brother’s position of laird of the Gunn clan, Graeme also takes on the task of convincing Annella to become his bride. Their mutual passion works in his favor, but after the vows are exchanged, Annella and Graeme still have much to learn about each other—and a hidden danger lurks within the castle walls. Filled with excitement in and out of the bedchamber, this romance is a sizzling addition to Sands’ Highland Brides series.

Showmance

Tony Award-nominated playwright Chad Beguelin offers up a truly entertaining debut romance in Showmance. When playwright Noah Adams’ Broadway musical closes after one night, he returns to his Illinois hometown to look in on his ailing dad and lick his own wounds. The community’s local theater was his refuge as a gay teen, and when the group asks him to stage the same musical that just flopped, Noah can’t say no—even though Luke, his hunky high school nemesis/bully, is involved. Told in Noah’s first-person perspective, with well-drawn characters and bouncy dialogue, Showmance includes touching scenes between Noah and his undemonstrative father, as well as some of Noah’s old tormentors. As it turns out, hunky Luke likes guys, too, and his and Noah’s smoking chemistry leads to a happy ending that readers—especially those who catch all the musical references—will grin over.

Pyae Moe Thet War makes a convincing argument for the subgenre with her thrilling debut, plus Lynsay Sands’ latest Highland Brides romance.
NonfictionWomen's HistoryNatureHistory

Immerse your book club in the wonders of the natural world with 4 inspiring stories

Feature by Julie Hale

In Wild Girls: How the Outdoors Shaped the Women Who Challenged a Nation, Tiya Miles explores the lives of a group of remarkable women. As she tells the stories of Louisa May Alcott, Harriet Tubman, Pocahontas and other notable female figures, Miles looks at the ways in which the great outdoors impacted their personal development and understanding of the world. Her narrative is a beautifully observed testament to the importance of place. Reading groups will find a range of discussion topics, including women’s empowerment and the influence of nature.

What an Owl Knows: The New Science of the World’s Most Enigmatic Birds by Jennifer Ackerman offers fresh perspectives on the nocturnal predator. Over the centuries, the owl has been portrayed as intelligent, vigilant and enlightened while remaining strangely inscrutable. Ackerman penetrates the bird’s unique mystique as she teams up with ornithologists and other experts to find out how owls connect with each other, acquire food and migrate. Blending the latest research with her own discerning impressions, Ackerman delivers an exceptional scientific study that’s revealing and accessible.

In Bicycling With Butterflies: My 10,201-Mile Journey Following the Monarch Migration, Sara Dykman shares the story of the remarkable odyssey she undertook in 2017. Beginning in Mexico and traveling on a ramshackle bike, Dykman followed the migration course of the eastern monarch butterfly to draw attention to the vulnerability of the species. In a tale that’s funny, insightful and poetic, Dykman reflects on the fragility of nature and the challenges of bike travel, and acquaints readers with the majestic monarch. Themes of ecology, exploration and solitude make this a rewarding book club pick.

Melissa L. Sevigny chronicles the journey of two mavericks in Brave the Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon. The hazards of the Colorado River did not deter botanists Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter, who navigated the treacherous waterway in 1938 in order to index the Grand Canyon’s plant species. Aided by a small team, the duo traveled for 43 days. Sevigny brings their expedition to vivid life in a narrative that’s at once a rip-roaring adventure story and a thoughtful account of the natural world.

Fall is a terrific time to connect with nature. Grab one of these books, gather your friends and get outside!
Science Fiction & FantasyNonfictionFictionSocial ScienceLiterary FictionLifestylesHorrorHistoryHistorical FictionGraphic Novels & ComicsFantasyCultural HistoryCultural CriticismArts & Culture

What to read this Halloween, based on your ideal spooky activity

Feature by the editors of BookPage
Model Home by Rivers Solomon book jacket

Model Home

Read if your Halloween plans are: A horror movie marathon, specifically A24 horror movies

Ezri Maxwell doesn’t know whether their childhood home had ghosts, exactly, but they do know that it was haunted and determined to maim, traumatize and scare them and their Black family into leaving their mostly white Dallas suburb. Desperate to distance themselves from a childhood of constant dread, Ezri and their sisters fled the former model home as soon as they were old enough. Their parents, however, stayed where they were—right until the day they died under mysterious circumstances. At its core, Rivers Solomon’s Model Home is a study of the interior landscape of someone trying to make sense of their life in the wake of extreme tragedy. Ezri’s head is cluttered with the detritus of trauma, from their mother’s ambivalence toward them as a child to the repercussions of living with mental health issues for years, (“a host of diagnoses—which change with whatever clinician I see”). A disturbing tale that explores self-doubt, family drama and childhood trauma, Model Home is a powerful and gut-wrenching addition to the haunted house pantheon.

—Laura Hubbard

Djinnology by Seema Yasminis book jacket

Djinnology 

Read if your Halloween plans are: Exploring potentially haunted places—abandoned strip malls, creaky old houses, creepy caves … you get the idea.

If you’re in the mood for some spine-tingling stories, cozy up to Djinnology: An Illuminated Compendium of Spirits and Stories From the Muslim World, a fictitious (or is it?) compendium that is both fascinating and creepy, and made all the more so by Pulitzer Prize-winner Fahmida Azim’s striking illustrations. Seema Yasmin, a journalist, professor and physician, has created a fictional narrator named Dr. N, a taxonomist and ontologist who has traveled the world to investigate the sometimes benevolent, sometimes malevolent djinn. Djinn, Dr. N writes, have been “haunting humanity since pre-Islamic times.” He submits the fruits of his research to his academic committee to explain his long and unexplained absence from class, in this volume of stories from around the world that capture the long history and great variety of djinn. Many of these stories are related to human events, such as one concerning a ghostlike horseman who allegedly appeared in Cairo’s Tahrir Square at the height of the Arab Spring. Another terrifying tale of more dubious origins takes place in London, when a woman delivering her husband’s specimen to an IVF clinic spots what she thinks is an abandoned baby in the middle of the road. She stops, of course, but things do not go as she expects. Djinnology is beautifully designed, with maps, English and Arabic inscriptions and more, gamely selling a high-octane, between-two-worlds vibe. Most of all, Azim’s haunting illustrations in smoky colors perfectly portray this menagerie of spirits. Readers will find themselves looking over their shoulders.

—Alice Cary

We Love the Nightlife by Rachel Koller Croft book jacket

We Love the Nightlife

Read if your Halloween plans are: A bar crawl in a tiny costume, weather be damned

Quite often in fiction, the figure of the vampire has represented loneliness, but we’ve arguably never seen that sense of yearning quite the way Rachel Koller Croft portrays it in her new novel, We Love the Nightlife. Croft’s protagonist, Amber, is frozen in her party girl prime, turned in the waning days of the 1970s by her maker, the beautiful and manipulative Nicola. Decades later, Amber begins to imagine what life might be like without Nicola, and considers an escape plan. But Nicola’s influence is powerful, her ambitions are vast and her appetite for control deeper than Amber ever imagined. Despite her vampiric nature, Amber feels like one of us. This is mainly due to Croft’s skill; her conversational, warm and relatable prose depicts Amber not as a lonely monster, but as a person longing for freedom in a savage world covered in glitter and awash with pulsing music. We also get to see Nicola’s side of the story and her own brand of yearning, giving the book an antagonist who’s not just remarkably well-developed, but human in her own twisted way. These dueling perspectives, coupled with memorable side characters and a beautifully paced plot, make We Love the Nightlife an engrossing, darkly funny, twisted breakup story that’s perfect for vampire fiction lovers and fans of relationship drama alike.

—Matthew Jackson

American Scary by Jeremy Dauber book jacket

★ American Scary

Read if your Halloween plans are: Watching a brainy horror documentary, or peeking at spooky clips on YouTube

Any horror writer doing their job knows how to tap into the fears that plague us most. Jeremy Dauber’s American Scary: A History of Horror, from Salem to Stephen King and Beyond provides a robust account of how art has reflected American dread for centuries. As it turns out, our history is rife with foundational fear, making it prime territory for some scary storytelling. Dauber starts his “tour of American fear” with our country’s bloody beginnings and proclivity for blaming the devil for everything from bad weather to miscarriage (hello, Salem!). He then passes through slavery, the Industrial Revolution, the Civil War and beyond to more contemporary paranoias reflected in film: murderous technology (The Terminator), individual indifference (the Final Destination series) and surveillance (Paranormal Activity), to name a few. Dauber’s attention to the details of myriad cultural touchstones, both famous and obscure, will entice those who care to tiptoe deeper into the darkest of the dark. American Scary’s greatest success is making readers consider what art may be born of our late-night anxieties. Spooky stuff, huh?

—Amanda Haggard

The Village Library Demon-Hunting Society by C.M. Waggoner book jacket

The Village Library Demon-Hunting Society

Read if your Halloween plans are: Curling up in a chair at home, reading a lightly spooky book or one of the more gothic Agatha Christies

Librarian Sherry Pinkwhistle resides in a quiet hamlet in upstate New York. The only out of the ordinary detail about Ms. Pinkwhistle is that she loves to solve a good murder mystery—not only those in the books she protects and enjoys at work, but also the real-life, grisly deaths in the otherwise sleepy little town of Winesap. But when a string of local murders hits a little too close to home, Sherry realizes that she can no longer remain an unattached bystander. A demon, or several, might be at the heart of these ever-increasing deaths, and Sherry will need the help of her skeptical friends and her possibly-possessed cat to root out the evil in Winesap. C.M. Waggoner’s The Village Library Demon-Hunting Society is a stunning blend of genres, a dark supernatural adventure masquerading as a cozy mystery—and by the time readers realize this, they, like Sherry, are too deeply entrenched in the case to let it go. Waggoner infuses the pages with darkly humorous scenes and snappy dialogue, as well as unexpected magical touches that hearken back to the author’s previous fantasy novels, a combination that’s perfect for fans of horror tropes as well as lovers of mystery. Sherry Pinkwhistle is a sleuth to be reckoned with, and beneath her frumpy and soft exterior lies a pleasant surprise: a clever, determined heroine who will stop at nothing to protect the place she calls home and the people who live there. 

—Stephanie Cohen-Perez

Eerie Legends by Ricardo Diseño book jacket

Eerie Legends 

Read if your Halloween plans are: Circling up with friends and family for a night of scary stories

Eerie Legends: An Illustrated Exploration of Creepy Creatures, the Paranormal, and Folklore From Around the World arrives like Halloween candy, just in time for the spookiest season of the year. Austin, Texas-based artist Ricardo Diseño’s bold, offbeat illustrations don’t simply complement these spine-tingling stories, they lead the way. Each chapter blends elements of fiction and nonfiction, and includes a corresponding full-page illustration that stands on its own as a fully realized piece of art. The horror elements here are plenty scary, but skew toward the creature-feature end of the spectrum—think Universal Studio monsters, or even Troma’s The Toxic Avenger. The chapter on Krampus details the yuletide terror’s appearance with frightening specificity: “Part man, part goat, and part devil. . . . His tongue is red, forked, creepy, and always whipping around.” Diseño’s hoofed monster, straight out of the Blumhouse cinematic universe, is shown in the midst of abducting a child. Each chapter ends with a campfire-style tale about the designated monster, written with Lovecraftian zeal by Steve Mockus. As an added incentive, the cover glows in the dark—a feature I hadn’t noticed until after I fell asleep with it on my bedside table. Talk about eerie.

—Laura Hutson Hunter

The Empusium by Olga Tokarczuk book jacket

★ The Empusium

Read if your Halloween plans are: A hike contemplating the macabre beauty of seasonal decay—be sure to leave the woods before dark!

Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk’s fabulous novel, The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story, opens in 1913, when Polish 24-year-old Mieczyslaw Wojnicz arrives in the village of Görbersdorf, Germany, to be treated for tuberculosis. Tokarczuk is known for her penchant for the mythical and her deft, dark satirical wit, and as the subtitle, “A Health Resort Horror Story,” would lead readers to hope, the forests above the village whisper and echo with eerie sounds. The narration seems to come from ghostly entities who at times “vacate the house via the chimney or the chinks between the slate roof tiles—and then gaze from afar, from above.” A cemetery in a nearby town discloses evidence of a ritual killing every November. It is September, and the clock is ticking. Translated from Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, The Empusium is about the rigid patriarchal world of pre-WWI Europe, and the tension between rationality and emotion. It is also about a young person coming of age—like Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, from which it draws inspiration. Facing a threat he does not understand, Mieczyslaw responds to the mysteries around him with curiosity and seeks his own way forward. Tokarczuk also favors a new path and, as usual, casts her enthralling spell.

—Alden Mudge

Whether you’re a homebody or a thrill-hunter, we’ve got a seasonal, spine-tingling read for you.
NonfictionNatureMemoirEnvironmentCrafts, Hobbies & Home

4 gift books for nature lovers

Feature by the editors of BookPage
Night Magic book jacket by Leigh Ann Henion

Night Magic

Leigh Ann Henion is the bestselling author of Phenomenal: A Hesitant Adventurer’s Search for Wonder in the Natural World (2015), a lyrical memoir of seeking a fulfilling life. Her second book, Night Magic: Adventures Among Glowworms, Moon Gardens, and Other Marvels of the Dark, is just as personal and personable, this time focusing on the wisdom she has found in darkness. 

We are, unfortunately, obsessed with illuminating the night. Henion explains that 99% of people in the U.S. live under the influence of “skyglow—diffuse, artificial brightening of the night sky,” and she shares data about how light pollution causes health problems for humans and destroys ecosystems and the migratory patterns of birds. “Darkness is often presented as a void of doom rather than a force of nature that nourishes lives, including our own,” she writes.

Henion’s nocturnal investigation takes her to Appalachia for synchronous lightning bugs, Ohio for a moth festival and soggy, foggy Grandfather Mountain for glowworms. She hunts for migrating salamanders with a professor and his class, and she describes the harm that streetlights cause to owl habitats. She meets with specialists and scientists, and in her cheerful, thoughtful style, she shares all she learns about bats, bioluminescent mushrooms and more.

Readers who choose to follow Night Magic into the dark may find the courage to turn off that backyard floodlight, allow their eyes to adjust and see something spectacular.

—Cat Acree

Book jacket image for The Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tan

★ The Backyard Bird Chronicles

It’s been over a decade since Amy Tan published her last novel, but there’s a good reason for that. In 2016, while hard at work on her next literary endeavor, Tan found her psyche and creative drive overwhelmed by the political turmoil consuming the country. When writing fiction failed to provide refuge, Tan sought it elsewhere: Making good on a long-held promise to learn to draw, she began taking nature journaling classes and found herself captivated by the birds she observed. Soon, the hobby turned into a full-on obsession, leading Tan to transform her backyard into an ideal sanctuary for local birds so she could document and sketch the fauna that visited her yard.

Written in her hallmark heartfelt and lively prose, The Backyard Bird Chronicles curates excerpts from Tan’s personal birding journals from 2017 to 2022, sharing anecdotes about her hunt for the perfect squirrel-proof seeds and feeders, the awe she felt sighting her first great horned owl, and the comedy of baby birds learning to feed. Each entry is complemented with Tan’s own drawings. 

Tan’s childlike wonder at the birds she observes is contagious, but the book goes beyond a compendium of avian observations: You’ll also find introspection and rumination on universal questions about mortality, empathy, racism and our connection (and responsibility) to nature. Because her journals were written without any intention of publication, there is something truly exhilarating about the candor of Tan’s thoughts; her unguarded presence on the page sparkles with cleverness and compassion. It is the rare reader who will be immune to her unbridled enthusiasm and her message that sometimes life’s sweetest pleasures are its simplest.

The Backyard Bird Chronicles showcases a master novelist in a new light. These pages will be a buoyant balm to the soul for inquisitive readers. 

—Stephenie Harrison

Read our interview with Amy Tan about The Backyard Bird Chronicles.

Book jacket of Atlas Obscura: Wild Life by Cara Giamo and Joshua Foer

Atlas Obscura: Wild Life

Atlas Obscura got its start as a community-driven website about the weirdest destinations around the globe, but it has expanded into a podcast and books such as the bestselling Atlas Obscura and Gastro Obscura. The latest book, Atlas Obscura: Wild Life: An Explorer’s Guide to the World’s Living Wonders by Cara Giaimo and Joshua Foer, is a monumental tour through the world’s most interesting organisms, with heaping piles of facts, stories, photographs and illustrations.

Divided into chapters based on habitat, the book begins with a section on humans that emphasizes the positive aspects of our relationship with Earth. “We are of course bound to [plants, animals and organisms] with every breath of air and every bite of food. But we also learn from the species around us, using our observations of them to build new understandings of how life on Earth has been, is, and could be,” the authors write. This sets a curious and optimistic tone for the book, which is true to the overall Atlas Obscura vibe.

Wild Life is for people who say things like “Nature is metal!” when a lion kills a gazelle and are thrilled about the fact that platypuses glow under black light. Did you know that slime molds were able to replicate the Tokyo railway system? Did you know that moss balls travel as a pack in the Eurasian tundra, and no one knows why?

Along with facts about more than 500 organisms, the book also includes Q&As with such people as a grass weaver, a walrus watcher and “a crow-human conflict mediator,” suggesting that our own lives can be almost as wild as those of these incredible creatures.

—Cat Acree

Book jacket of Leaf, Cloud, Crow by Margaret Renkl

Leaf, Cloud, Crow

In Margaret Renkl’s The Comfort of Crows (2023), the third book from the bestselling author, Tennessee naturalist and New York Times contributing writer, readers were invited into a weekly communion in her Nashville backyard, with 52 essays coinciding with brilliantly colorful collages by her brother, Billy Renkl. With her new guided journal, Leaf, Cloud, Crow: A Weekly Backyard Journal, Renkl extends her invitation further, drawing us into a yearlong commitment to seeing the world more clearly and, in doing so, knitting ourselves closer to it.

In her introduction to Leaf, Cloud, Crow, Renkl explains that her praxis of observation is one that she has cultivated for three decades, but even now, “It isn’t always easy to give myself over to the timeless beauty outside my window.” To help get you into the right mindset, she offers her essay “How to Pay Attention,” a clear and declarative list of things to do and be as a backyard naturalist. “Silence and stillness are your greatest tools,” she writes. “Take care not to frighten anybody. Sit quietly and let the world come to you.”

From there, Renkl puts your powers of observation and evaluation to work. Organized by seasons, the journal begins in winter, during the week of December 21-27, when the user is encouraged to go find something in the natural world—a dead leaf will do—and then make a metaphor from it. From there we learn about birding, the pain and glory of seasonal changes, the willingness to be completely perplexed by something we’ve seen, and so on, each prompt coinciding with an excerpt from The Comfort of Crows.

If you despair at the loss of ecosystems and the damage that we have done to the wild world, Renkl’s words and the lessons she imparts are a balm. For those who wish to do better, see better and (of course) write better, it’s an excellent gift.

—Cat Acree

Looking for a holiday gift for a birder, tree-hugger or civilian scientist? We’ve got just the thing.
RomanceHistorical RomanceFantasy RomanceContemporary Romance

Alexis Hall does fantasy romance as only he can

Feature by Christie Ridgway

You’re the Problem, It’s You

Emma R. Alban adds a second book to her Mischief & Matchmaking series with You’re the Problem, It’s You. It’s the start of a new season in Victorian London, and second son Bobby Mason is finding his role as the spare particularly unrewarding. Everyone seems busy: his older brother and his uncle with Parliament; his cousin, Gwen, and her lover, Beth, with each other and their newfound happiness. But then James, the new Viscount Demeroven, appears on the scene. Bobby is sure of their mutual attraction, so the other man’s rejection of him galls. It takes time for Bobby to fully understand that James is dealing with severe anxiety, and fears that his sexuality might alienate him from society and tarnish his family name. But when blackmail threatens the two men, can a mutual enemy turn them into forever lovers? Alban skillfully captures James’ emotions, including his absolute yearning for Bobby, in this wonderful depiction of found families and their power to heal.

No One Does It Like You

Happily ever after gets a second chance at success in No One Does It Like You by Katie Shepard. In a terrifying moment during a hurricane, Broadway actor Tom Wilczewski leaves a voicemail for Rose Kelly, the ex-wife he hasn’t seen in 10 years. He loves her, he always has and he hopes he lives to make it up to her for all that went wrong between them. Tom survives, Rose gets the message and, seeing as she’s in a tough spot of her own, she begs him to help her restore her aunt’s inn on Martha’s Vineyard. Several amusing weeks of property rehab commence while Shepard examines how young lovers can make wrong assumptions and decisions. Rose is a fixer and Tom relied on her for too much: Can they love again while not falling into old habits? A cast of entertaining characters tramp through the plot of this sweet yet realistic love story.

Confounding Oaths

The fairy world intersects with Regency London in Alexis Hall’s Confounding Oaths. Loaded with clever banter and fascinating characters, the story follows John Caesar as he tries to help his sister Mary navigate society after she makes an ill-advised deal with a malicious fairy godmother. John’s quest to save Mary brings him to dashing Captain Orestes James, a war hero whose skills and rapscallion friends become necessary to rescue the girl. Shakespeare’s Puck serves as narrator, and the snarky, world-weary hobgoblin’s amusing asides contribute to the sexy fun. (Although Puck’s disinterest in mortal lovemaking means that he’s light on any intimate details.) But it’s not all laughs, as issues of class, race and sexuality are also addressed in this imaginative and interesting addition to Hall’s oeuvre.

The author’s latest, Confounding Oaths, comes complete with an evil fairy godmother, plus sweet new releases from Emma R. Alban and Katie Shepard in this month’s romance column.
Mystery & SuspenseMystery

Fiona Barton blows the police procedural wide open

Feature by Bruce Tierney

The Dark Wives

I’m a latecomer to the Vera Stanhope series: I’m not a total newbie, but I definitely have some back catalog to catch up on, especially as author Ann Cleeves’ latest, The Dark Wives, is a crackerjack mystery. Rosebank Home is a halfway house for troubled teens. At the moment, it is also the center of an investigation into the disappearance of one of the aforementioned troubled teens, Chloe Spence, as well as the site of the grisly murder of staff member Josh Woodburn. The question at hand is whether Chloe committed the deed and then made good her escape, or if she witnessed the murder and has now gone into hiding. Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope would like to believe option number two, not least because the girl’s diary strongly suggested that she had quite the crush on Josh. Vera’s colleagues on the force are somewhat less persuaded. And then another corpse is discovered, and there’s still no sign of Chloe. Matters come to a head during the annual pseudo-pagan Witch Hunt, an enormous game of hide-and-seek which takes place in the dead of night next to the titular Dark Wives, a Stonehenge-like rock formation in northern England. Cleeves’ opinion on for-profit children’s facilities and their potential to harm society’s more vulnerable members is clear, but whichever side of the political fence you occupy, The Dark Wives is a hell of a good story.

Spirit Crossing

You would think from his name that Cork O’Connor was Irish: You’d be half-right. But he’s also Ojibwe, and the ex-sheriff and ex-PI is deeply steeped in the traditions of his mother’s northern Minnesota tribe. Spirit Crossing is number 20 in William Kent Krueger’s long-running series, and it draws heavily upon Ojibwe legends of the recently deceased who have become lost on the Path of Souls. While foraging for wild blueberries, Cork’s grandson, Waaboo, happens upon a makeshift grave site and experiences a vision of one such lost soul. Two young women, one of them Ojibwe, the other the daughter of a state senator, have recently gone missing. The investigations could not be more different: The senator’s daughter is high priority; the Ojibwe girl, not so much. But Waaboo is adamant that the lost soul is neither of those girls. So, of course, the powers that be are happy to turn the less headline-grabbing investigation over to the Lake Ojibwe Tribal Police. The supernatural element is subdued, similar to how Tony and then Anne Hillerman treat such matters in the Leaphorn, Chee & Manuelito series; it’s simply a part of the narrative, and the reader can decide for themselves whether Waaboo’s insights contribute materially to the solving of the case, or are just superstition. It’s a fine line to walk, but Krueger does it rather seamlessly, in my estimation.

Death at the Sanatorium

Icelandic author Ragnar Jónasson can always be counted upon for fast-paced, cleverly plotted mysteries, and his latest, Death at the Sanatorium, is no exception. The 1983 murder of hospital nurse Yrsa was never exactly solved, but when her employer apparently died by suicide shortly afterward, the investigation fizzled out, with most assuming that he had taken his own life in atonement for taking the life of another. Before that happened, the hospital’s caretaker was a prime suspect; he was a strange character, the odd man out in a facility that employed mostly well-educated professional staff. Fast-forward 30-odd years, and a new character is added to the mix: Helgi Reykdal, a master’s degree candidate studying the deaths at the hospital (which was once a sanatorium, hence the title) and the investigation that followed for his thesis. Helgi intends to critique the initial investigation methodology, not reopen the case. He’s under pressure both from his partner and his potential employer to accept a position with the Reykjavik police, but the more he delves into the 1983 crime, the more Helgi suspects there was some malfeasance at play . . . and some of the players are still alive and influential. Death at the Sanatorium is a solid addition to Jónasson’s already impressive body of work, with a final-pages surprise that I totally did not see coming.

★ Talking to Strangers

This month’s star goes to Fiona Barton’s Talking to Strangers, a police procedural like no police procedural you have ever read. The story centers around two murders in Knapton Wood, England: one well over a decade old, one in the present day. The three protagonists have little in common except for their dogged determination to get at the truth: Lead detective Elise King, who is slowly recovering from breast cancer surgery; Kiki Nunn, a gifted investigative reporter trying to make a name for herself, but stuck in a dead-end gig; and Annie Curtis, the mother of the first murder victim who is seeking answers about her young son’s death and its possible connection to the current case. Barton jumps back and forth, chapter by chapter, among her protagonists, with Elise’s and Annie’s sections recounted in third person, while Kiki’s are told in first. As evidence begins to mount that the latest murder may involve a group of anonymous social media predators, Kiki decides to go undercover to investigate. Not to give too much away, but this decision will be exceptionally costly, even as it brings the case closer to a solution. Elise, Kiki and Annie pursue their separate lines of inquiry, each drawing on information not available to the others, sometimes stepping on one another’s toes along the way, all moving relentlessly toward the deeply satisfying and surprising “Perry Mason Moment” of a denouement.

Plus, the latest from Ann Cleeves, William Kent Krueger and Ragnar Jónasson round out this month’s Whodunit column.

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