In her early twenties, Josie Bordelon thought she had it
all: she was the runway darling of all the top fashion houses, until she got
pregnant. Not sure where to turn, she
found herself back at her aunt Viv’s in San Francisco; Viv raised Josie when
Josie’s mother dumped her on Viv’s door steps when Josie was four and Josie is
determined not to make the same mistakes with Etta her mother, completely
estranged from her sister and daughter, made wither. Josie is the director of admissions at the
most prestigious San Francisco private schools, Fairchild Country Day School
where Josie went: she made good grades, was a track star, and more importantly,
was black, making the Administration and Board of Trustees feel very diverse
and progressive. As admission season
begins, Etta is a senior in high school, and a high level ballerina who wants
nothing more than to go to Julliard; something Josie is dead set against,
afraid Etta will end up like Josie did, no college degree, on Aunt Viv’s
doorstep. Between juggling over 500
applications for 36 kindergarten spots, and navigating Etta’s college
applications, the last thing Josie has time for is a new relationship, but when
Aunt Viv has a heart attack, that’s just what she finds in a most unexpected
place. This breezy, smart, sassy story
is a new take on private school enrollment.
Josie and her best friend Lola dish every Tuesday in a no holds barred
gripe session. The women in this book
are strong and independent and want to instill that in the next
generation. Readers will be anxious to
read more about these characters.
Happy and You Know It by Laura Hankin
Claire was a musician on her way to stardom until her
band unceremoniously dumped her; now she finds herself a playgroup musician for
a group of Park Avenue elite infants.
Whitney, the alpha mommy and Instagram darling, is welcoming to Claire,
and often includes her in the groups’ outings.
While some of the mommies are hard to get to know, Claire is drawn to
Amara, a new-stay-at-home mommy who isn’t entirely comfortable in her new role;
and there’s Gwen who, as a second time mommy, is full of helpful hints. The closer Claire gets to the women, the more
their veneer starts to come off, and the more secrets she uncovers, soon
realizing these women’s lives are more than yoga, juice cleanses, and cute
selfies. Fun and breezy, with some
unexpected twists, this novel is a different take on being a privileged toddler
on the Upper East Side.
All My Mother’s Lovers by Ilana Masad
This assuredly written debut novel that explores love in all
its many forms: familial love, the love between a mother and daughter, a young
woman and her girlfriends, a mother, a woman, who finds the love missing from
her life in other, unexpected places.
Maggie Krause is finding her way with her new girlfriend when she
receives the news her mother has been killed in a car crash. Maggie travels from her home in St. Louis
back to California where she finds her brother and father unsure of what to do
next. Maggie is tasked with mailing
letters her mother Iris wanted mailed upon her death, but Maggie decides to
deliver the letters in person, curious about to whom they are written and
why. As she does, she learns about a
variety of relationships her mother had, learns more about her parents’
relationship, and tries to understand why, in light of what she learns on her
trip, her mother had a hard time accepting Maggie’s choices.
Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency by Olivia
Laing
This collection of essays is almost prophetic in its timely
quest to answer the question: is art of any use to anyone in dire
circumstances? Laing’s conclusion is,
yes. Her essays are short and to the
point, sometimes terse, but always keenly observed and aware, with carefully
chosen words, and descriptive language, she tends towards isolation and
solitude, favoring juxtaposing art with death, disease, and tragedy. She looks for the oddity in human nature and
society and connects it back to art, and to each person reading the essay with
an unerring eye and a fresh conclusion.
Hollywood Park by Mikel Jollett
This memoir tells the story of Jollett, the front man of the
indie band Airborne Toxic Event, who was born into the Church of Synanon cult and
who escapes with his mother and brother at a young age; what follows is the story of learning a new
world, meeting his grandparents, and living in an unfamiliar place and time. The
present tense gives the story an immediacy and authenticity, with a childhood
honesty that comes from living his first years sheltered from the world, as he
finds his way and an inner strength in life through music.
The Wife Stalker by Liv Constantine
Piper Reynard has arrived in Westport, Connecticut from the
West Coast, and has something to hide.
She has opened a wellness center and sets her sights on handsome
attorney Leo Drakos whose marriage is troubled.
Joanna has been in love with Leo for many years, has managed his house
and cared for his children, Evie and Stelli, yet she realizes he is not
returning her feelings, even after he emerges from a deep depression. When
Joanna realizes that Piper is the cause of Leo’s well-being, she becomes
determined to protect the family she has at all costs; Leo, however, is willing
to let everything go for his new love.
Joanna, cast to the side, begins to look into Piper’s past and realizes
that Leo and the children may be in real danger, but when she brings her
concerns to Leo he dismisses her as jealous, and even her therapist considers
Joanna on the brink of paranoia. Authors/sisters Lynne and Valerie, have laid
out a twisty domestic thriller, though not as compelling and without the impact
and well-developed characters as their first two novels.
The Catherine House by Elizabeth Thomas
This debut novel is a gothic tale of an elite college tucked
away in rural Pennsylvania. Incoming student Ines feels she has no place left
to go: she has burned all of her bridges and knows she will have serious
consequences if she returns home. Her
roommate Baby has come with a burning desire, bordering on obsession, to study
plasma, a specialty of this school. But
there is something more sinister within these walls, the labyrinths and labs
deep under the school, and the Restoration Center, a solitary confinement like
area where you are stripped naked and left with only a deck of cards and a few
books. Readers will find themselves frantically turning pages as they try to
learn the secrets of Catherine House. A
strong debut for fans of Paul Tremblay and Alex North.
The Guest List by Lucy Foley
Friends and family of reality
television star Will Slater and magazine publisher Julia Keegan gather on a
remote Irish island in the North Atlantic to celebrate Will and Julia’s
marriage. Theirs is to be the first
event at the recently purchased and restored Folly and every detail must be
perfect from the dress, to the flowers, to the food and alcohol, and the
guests. The bridal party includes four
of Will’s mates from school who are not as refined as Will would like them to
be; Julia’s best man at the wedding is her longtime friend Charlie who has
brought his wife Hannah; Julia’s lone official attendant is her waifish but
stunning half-sister Olivia. As the
alcohol begins to flow freely, so do the secrets and before the end of the
reception, someone is dead and almost everyone at the wedding has a motive or a
secret to wish this person dead. This
sophomore book by Foley (The Hunting
Party) once again features a remote location and a closed room murder, but
to much greater success this time: the characters are well drawn, their motives
seep slowly out as the weekend wears on, keeping tensions high, and by the end,
no one is really sure who did the final knife plunge, but many are relieved it
happened.
The Paris Hours by Alex George
1927, Paris between the war was the city of ex-patriots and
literary bohemians and literati, among them, Marcel Proust, who has told his
maid Camille to burn his notebooks, which she did, save one, but who has now
lost the surviving notebook and is desperate to find it. Souren is a refuge from Armenia who performs
unsettling puppet shows for children.
Artist Guillaume is at a lost for a muse, until he encounters Gertrude
Stein with unusual results; journalist Jean-Paul keeps his painful past hidden
by writing about the tragedies of others---when these four lives collide, the
results will change everything for each of them and for so many others in
surprising ways no one could expect. The
events unfold in the course of one single day, giving and immediacy, yet
dreamlike quality, to the narrative.
The Children's Bible by Lydia Millett
This allegorical climate novel finds a group of bohemian
adults renting a lakeside retreat one summer, bringing along a menagerie of
children ranging in age from tween to seventeen. Left to their own devices, the ringleader,
and eldest, Evie, and the children create their own fun and adventures: they
wait out a storm and flood in a farmhouse surrounded by animals as the group’s
ire to their parents’ concern for the environment and climate change rises like
the waters. Evie’s younger brother Jack
sees their escapades in terms of Biblical stories, in this narrative
reminiscent of The Lord of the Flies, offering an ending with little
hope, but much to think about and consider.
The Falling Woman by Richard Farrell
This debut novel tells the story of Erin, a cancer patient
who has plateaued, but will never be in remission, whose plane explodes over
Kansas while she is on the way to a cancer patient retreat; she is the only
survivor and decides to walk away from her life and die quietly, rather than
making her family grieve twice, they already think she is dead, and have them
watch her die. Charlie is the NTBS agent
who is assigned to find Erin, and when he does, he sees life, including his
own, from another perspective and makes difficult choices, ones that change
everything. Reading groups will find
much to discuss in this philosophical novel, what do we owe our families, what
do we owe ourselves, and how much control can we, and should we have over our
own lives and fate.
The Book of Rosy: A Mother’s Story of Separation at
the Border by Rosayra Pablo Cruz and Julie Schwietert Collazo
After she was shot in 2018 and her husband was murdered in
Guatemala, Rosy fled to the United States with her two sons. After a harrowing
eight-day trip in the back of a truck with other refugees, Rosy was separated
from her sons, aged five and fifteen, at the border, detained for eighty-one
days. While detained in Arizona, her two
sons were placed in foster care in the Bronx.
Schwietert Collazo, who started the Immigrant Families Together, to aid
families, with the ultimate goal of reuniting parents and their children, helps
Rosy tell not just her story, but the story of dozens of mothers separated from
their children. Ultimately, through much
prayer, and considerable fund-raising on Immigrant Families Together’s part,
Rosy was reunited with her children and is building a new life with them in
their new country.
A Good Marriage by Kimberly McCreight
Lizzie has just accepted a job with a high-powered Manhattan
law firm after her husband’s drinking problem caused an accident and resulted
in a settlement against him. Lizzie
isn’t sure what to do about Sam, she thinks he has hit rock bottom, yet he
continues to drink. She is near giving him an ultimatum when she receives a
phone call from her law school buddy Zach: Zach is in Riker’s Island, arrested
for assaulting an officer, but he believes being held more as a suspect in the
death of his wife Amanda, who was found at the bottom of the staircase in their
Park Slope brownstone. Lizzie can’t
believe Zach murdered his wife, but is not a criminal defense attorney, but her
law firm gives the go ahead and she finds herself looking into her friend’s
life, uncovering many secrets, all the while hiding her own as she tries to
save Zach, Sam, and herself. Fast-paced
and intertwined with a security breach at the Brooklyn County Day school most
of the neighborhood children attend, this twisty domestic drama examines
marriages from all sides with a sharply drawn protagonist.
My Life as a Villainess: Essays by Laura Lippman
A collection of republished personal essays takes on the
form of a memoir for Lippman, a best-selling crime fiction author. These mostly
short essays, though some are longer and subdivided, traverse through Lippman’s
childhood, her time as a newspaper reporter, as she beings her career as a
novelist, writing the Tess Monaghan series and then her stand-alones, mostly
set in Baltimore, all leading up to “Game of Crones” published previously
online with over 100,000 unique views.
Honest, and sometimes self-deprecating, these essays offer insight into
one of today’s most revered mystery authors. A tight little collection to be
dipped into time and time again.
Quick Picks for May
The Last Flight by Julie Clark
Two women, two plane tickets, two women with
secrets: Claire and Eve meet by chance
at an airport bar and decide at the last minute to switch tickets, Claire will
take Eve’s flight to Oakland, and Eve will travel to Puerto Rico on Claire’s
ticket. The plane to Puerto Rico crashes
leaving Claire with the chance to assume Eve’s identity and disappear from her
controlling husband forever…but what secrets was Eve hiding and what are the
consequence of her choice?
I, John Kennedy Toole by Kent Carroll
and Jodee Blanco
A fictionalized account of the making of Toole’s Pulitzer
Prize winning masterpiece A Confederacy
of Dunces, published after the author’s suicide.
Ghosts of Harvard by Francesca Serritella
A first novel by the daughter of author Lisa Scottoline
and co-authors of several best-selling essay collections featuring Cady, a
Harvard freshman who tries to acclimate to college life as she tries to
understand her brother’s suicide on the campus.
Eric suffered from schizophrenia and stopped taking his pills, spiraling
downward. As she further delves into
Eric’s life, Cady too begins to hear voices and wonders if she too is
schizophrenic or are the voices she is hearing ghosts and was Eric really as sick
as he was diagnosed?
The Tourist Attraction by Sarah
Morgenthaler
When Graham Barnett named his diner The Tourist Trap,
he never expected the Moose Springs,
Alaska spot to become just that: a popular tourist destination and Graham would
just rather not be bothered: until he meets Zoe Caldwell who save for over two
year to spend two weeks on an Alaskan adventure. Graham, immediately smitten, plays tour guide
to Zoey and the two embark on some zany adventures and antics as their
attraction to each other grows. Fans of Northern Exposure will eat this book up.
The Jane Austen Society by Natalie
Jenner
One hundred and fifty years ago, Chawton was the final home
of Jane Austen, one of England's finest novelists. Now it's home to a few
distant relatives and their diminishing estate. With the last bit of Austen's
legacy threatened, a group of disparate individuals come together to preserve
both Jane Austen's home and her legacy. These people—a laborer, a young widow,
the local doctor, a movie star, among others—could not be more different and
yet they are united in their love for the works and words of Austen. As each of
them endures their own quiet struggle with loss and trauma, some from losses
incurred in the recent war, some from more distant tragedies, they rally
together to create The Jane Austen Society. (From publisher)
All Adults Here by Emma Straub
When Astrid Strick witnesses a school bus accident in the
center of town, it jostles loose a repressed memory from her young parenting
days decades earlier. Suddenly, Astrid realizes she was not quite the parent
she thought she’d been to her three, now-grown children. But to what
consequence? Astrid’s youngest son is drifting and unfocused, making parenting
mistakes of his own. Her daughter is pregnant yet struggling to give up her own
adolescence. And her eldest seems to measure his adult life according to
standards no one else shares. But who gets to decide, so many years later,
which long-ago lapses were the ones that mattered? Who decides which apologies
really count? It might be that only Astrid’s thirteen-year-old granddaughter
and her new friend really understand the courage it takes to tell the truth to
the people you love the most. (from
publishers). For fans of Olive Kitteridge
Boys of Alabama by Genevieve Hudson
In this bewitching debut novel, a sensitive teen, newly
arrived in Alabama, falls in love, questions his faith, and navigates a strange
power. While his German parents don’t know what to make of a South pining for
the past, shy Max thrives in the thick heat. Taken in by the football team, he
learns how to catch a spiraling ball, how to point a gun, and how to hide his
innermost secrets. Max already expects some of the raucous
behavior of his new, American friends—like their insatiable hunger for the
fried and cheesy, and their locker room talk about girls. But he doesn’t expect
the comradery—or how quickly he would be welcomed into their world of basement
beer drinking. In his new canvas pants and thickening muscles, Max feels like
he’s “playing dress-up.” That is until he meets Pan, the school “witch,” in
Physics class: “Pan in his all black. Pan with his goth choker and the gel that
made his hair go straight up.” Suddenly, Max feels seen, and the pair embarks
on a consuming relationship: Max tells Pan about his supernatural powers, and
Pan tells Max about the snake poison initiations of the local church. The boys,
however, aren’t sure whose past is darker, and what is more frightening—their
true selves, or staying true in Alabama. (From publisher)
These Women by Ivy Pochaoda
In her masterful new novel, Ivy Pochoda creates a
kaleidoscope of loss, power, and hope featuring five very different women whose
lives are steeped in danger and anguish. They’re connected by one man and his
deadly obsession, though not all of them know that yet. There’s Dorian, still
adrift after her daughter’s murder remains unsolved; Julianna, a young dancer
nicknamed Jujubee, who lives hard and fast, resisting anyone trying to slow her
down; Essie, a brilliant vice cop who sees a crime pattern emerging where no
one else does; Marella, a daring performance artist whose work has long pushed
boundaries but now puts her in peril; and Anneke, a quiet woman who has turned
a willfully blind eye to those around her for far too long. The careful
existence they have built for themselves starts to crumble when two murders rock
their neighborhood.
Get Cozy with Kensington…
A Fatal Finale by Kathleen Marple Kalb
The first in a new series set in New York during the Gilded
Age features opera singer Ella Shane, who plays the “trouser roles”, male parts
played by females; both on and off the stage, Ella is assured and
dramatic. While she is playing the part
of Romeo, her Juliet drinks real poison during the final scene, a death that is
ruled a tragic accident, and Ella goes about her life until an English Duke
arrives in Greenwich Village insisting the young woman was murdered, refusing
to leave until he, with Ella’s help, learns the truth.
Pulp Friction by Julie Anne Lindsey
Winnie Mae Montgomery saved her Granny’s apple orchard by
building a cider shop and an event venue in Blossom Valley, Vest Virginia. One of her first events is a wedding
reception that doesn’t bode well for a happily ever after: the bride is
unhappy, the groom drunk, and arguing with Winnie’s ex Hank who was making out
with a bridesmaid. Before the happy
couple can leave in the honeymoon getaway truck, the groom is found dead, Hank
the main suspect, Sheriff Wise, with
whom Winnie has a burgeoning relationship, warns Winnie off the case, but
Winnie is certain she has an insider’s view and proceeds to follow the clues, no
matter where they lead, in this fun, breezy who-dunnit.
Murder Can Confuse Your Chihuahua by Rose Pressey
Celeste Cabot is a favorite painter on the craft fair
circuits, but she also has the uncanny knack of summoning ghosts with her
paintings. While looking for scenic
views to paint while at a craft fair in North Carolina, her Chihuahua Van
(after Van Gogh) leads her to the body of another vendor, Erica Miller, down by
the river. In spite of admonitions from
her would-be boyfriends, FBI Detective Pierce Meyer and TBI Detective Caleb
Ward, Celeste is certain she can solve the crime in much shorter order than the
two of them. The touch of supernatural
and Van add lighthearted touches to this fledgling series.