The Midnight News by Jo Baker
The Midnight News is unlike any other World War II era novel I’ve read. Part love story and part mystery, I found Jo Baker’s plot intriguing, her characters engrossing, and the twist at the end of the novel masterful. A riveting story about resiliency and survival.
Still Life at Eighty, The Next Best Thing by Abigail Thomas
You won’t find the secret of life buried here among the sentences and paragraphs, what you will find, however, will be transparency and authenticity – you’ll find a woman who has come to terms with being referred to as elderly … because, frankly, Abigail Thomas’s eighty is nothing you’ve experienced before.
Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club by J Ryan Stradal
SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE LAKESIDE SUPPER CLUB will feel like home to Midwesterners – grab a stool at the bar and settle in for a warm and witty read.
A Hundred Lives Since Then by Gail Rosenblum
Rosenblum’s collection of essays is a delightful way to end a day – with each essay encompassing a mere 2-3 pages, it’s the perfect nightcap to end a long day.
On the Savage Side by Tiffany McDaniel
McDaniel’s strength lies in her lyrical prose and character development. I cared for the twins and their ragtag family of friends, but I also despaired for their future, and raged at a world where the women were not considered victims, but somehow implicated in their own demise. Women in abusive relationships are often told they deserve to be mistreated and women who use drugs and prostitute themselves to make a living are told they are asking for it. ON THE SAVAGE SIDE is a testimony to missing women everywhere. Bravo to McDaniel for lifting up these silenced voices.
Brotherless Night by V. V. Ganeshananthan
BROTHERLESS NIGHTS is an engrossing and heartrending read, and Sashi is a heroine for the ages. Ganeshananthan writes brilliantly about a complex subject, casting a spotlight on the forgotten heroes and victims of war.
The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be by Shannon Gibney
Transracial adoption is never tidy, and cannot be encapsulated in an individual story, but Gibney does a masterful job of helping the reader understand the complexities of identity and the machinations of the adoption industrial complex. A writer with courage and heart, Gibney lays bare her experience for the benefit of us all.
Not the Camilla We Knew; One Woman's Path from Small-Town America to the Symbionese Liberation Army by Rachael Hanel
A shocking and well-researched portrait of a pastor’s daughter from St. Peter, Minnesota, whose life took a radical turn when she joined the Symbionese Liberation Army, ultimately dying in a shootout with the Los Angeles Police Department in 1974.
As Long As I Know You: The Mom Book by Anne-Marie Oomen
There are many moments in AS LONG AS I KNOW YOU, that will be familiar to anyone who has been a caregiver of an elderly parent – the power struggles, the heart-wrenching decision making, and the unabashed tenderness and expressions of love that are unbound as a loved one faces the end.
Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell
O’Farrell follows Agnes into the woods, into the field, and into the depths of her despair. Her writing is lyrical and layered, her characters are complex, and their relationships are complicated. There will be no easy passageway through this grief, and dear reader, you should be forewarned to have a tissue within reach, but you will be carried along by a mother’s love and a father’s remorse. “There will be no going back,” O’Farrell writes, “Time only runs in one direction.”
The Net Beneath Us by Carol Dunbar
Dunbar’s writing is evocative and as lush as the forest. Structured in four segments: Fall, Winter, Spring, and Summer, we watch Elsa flail and falter and then grow in strength and confidence as each season passes. THE NET BENEATH US is about the promises we make and keep – to ourselves and to others – and the profound work of grief – how it cleaves us in two and yet, we live, allowing the days and months and years that pass bind us back together, the two halves of a split trunk like the before times and the after times, joined in the middle by the heartwood.
The Other Einstein by Marie Benedict
THE OTHER EINSTEIN is a sad commentary on love and marriage in the early nineteenth century. In this age of two steps forward one step back in equal rights for women, THE OTHER EINSTEIN is a reminder of how quickly gains can become losses.
When Women were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill
WHEN WOMEN WERE DRAGONS is an evocative tale about gender, gender roles, and the politicization of history. Barnhill has written a cautionary tale about what happens when women are silenced and their human right to make their own choices is taken from them.
Seven Aunts by Staci Lola Drouillard
Reading SEVEN AUNTS, I was overwhelmed with gratitude for these women and the author’s commitment to truth telling. Drouillard writes with such integrity. I cared deeply about the aunties, and I didn’t want to leave them. Extraordinary women leading ordinary lives; they lived in a world that did not recognize their contributions, but the lessons of their lives changed the world for future generations.
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
Bonnie Garmus has created characters that mock convention. Elizabeth Zott defies authority, not on principal, but on practicality. She sees the world through safety goggles while her male counterparts just wish she’d put on the rose-colored glasses, form-fitting Donna-Reed dress, and sell the canned soup on Supper at Six. But everything in Elizabeth’s world boils down to science – including making her coffee at home with a Bunsen burner and turning her home kitchen into a lab. You’ll fall in love with her dog, Six-Thirty, one of the most astute and intelligent four-legged narrators in fiction today; Mad, her precocious daughter, who reads Nabokov at the age of five, and interrupts show and tell to ask her kindergarten teacher how she can join the Freedom Fighters in Nashville; and her friend and neighbor Harriet, whom after watching Elizabeth stand up to injustice, finds the courage to leave her alcoholic and abusive husband.
Emotional Inheritance: A Therapist, Her Patients, and the Legacy of Trauma by Galit Atlas
"We realize that trauma can be transmitted to the next generation but also that psychological work can alter and modify the biological effects of trauma."
Jordermoder: Poems of a Midwife by Ingrid Andersson
Andersson understands that life turns on passion, as much as breath. It is this capability, this lesson learned at her mother’s elbow and reinforced at the dovetail of delivery, that makes Andersson’s tender poems linger.
The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka
From the award-winning author of WHEN THE EMPEROR WAS DIVINE and THE BHUDDA IN THE ATTIC, comes a slim, powerhouse of a novel about loss of identity. In shifting points of view, Julie Otsuka gives us an intuitive look at what it means to lose someone you love to dementia. Brilliant, reflective, compressed, nuanced, empathetic, and global yet intimate, THE SWIMMERS tells the story of a group of obsessed recreational swimmers and what happens to them when a crack appears at the bottom of their local pool.
Reeling by Sarah Stonich
Stonich has a gift for revealing vulnerability in the most unlikely places. RayAnne’s first interview in New Zealand is with Ellie Mann, a tough-talking, tuna trawler captain who puts her to work throwing bait out the back of the boat. Donning a helmet with a visor to protect her from the fish frenzy that follows, RayAnne feels an unfamiliar squeamishness at reaching into a pail of live bait.
Somebody's Daughter, A Memoir by Ashley C. Ford
SOMEBODY'S DAUGHTER is a heartbreaking story about a girl growing up in poverty, famished for love and acceptance, searching for an identity outside of the broken family she’d grown up in. But rather than remaining a victim, Ashley C. Ford becomes the heroine of her story, and the only one she needed to save her, was herself.