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Mentioned in the Media July & August 2025 |
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Child of Earth and Starry Heaven
by L. Annette Binder
When L. Annette Binder's mother starts to forget things she's always known, Annette researches ways to keep her from losing touch with the world. They try supplements and exercise routines, light therapy and sound tracks with 40-Hertz clicks. Annette begins to speak German with her mother-something she'd resisted since immigrating to the United States with her parents years before. And when these therapies prove ineffective, Annette simply spends time with her mother. Hour upon hour in memory care, where Annette begins to see hints of a world almost invisible to outsiders, where residents might lose cognition but they remain capable of feeling and expressing love. Child of Earth and Starry Heaven is a story of motherhood, memory and memory loss. It looks to mythology, science, fiction, history and poetry to find meaning and beauty even as Helena's cognition fades. Sad and joyous, it is a powerful meditation on the things that make us human and that connect us in even our darkest moments.
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Medicine River: A Story of Survival and the Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools
by Mary Annette Pember
"A sweeping and trenchant exploration of the history of Native American boarding schools in the U.S., and the legacy of abuse wrought by systemic attempts to use education as a tool through which to destroy Native culture. From the mid-19th century to the late 1930s, tens of thousands of Native children were pulled from their families to attend boarding schools that claimed to help create opportunity for these children to pursue professions outside their communities and otherwise "assimilate" into American life. In reality, these boarding schools-sponsored by the US Government but often run by various religious orders with little to no regulation-were an insidious attempt to destroy tribes, break up families, and stamp out the traditions of generations of Native people. Children were beaten for speaking their native languages, forced to complete menial tasks in terrible conditions, and utterly deprived of love and affection. Ojibwe journalist Mary Pember's mother was forced to attend one of these institutions-a seminary in Wisconsin, and the impacts of her experience have cast a pall over Mary's own childhood, and her relationship with her mother. Highlighting both her mother's experience and the experiences of countless other students at such schools, their families, and their children, Medicine River paints a stark portrait of communities still reckoning with the legacy of acculturation that has affected generations of Native communities. Through searing interviews and assiduous historical reporting, Pember traces the evolution and continued rebirth of a culture whose country has been seemingly intent upon destroying it"
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Don't Forget Me, Little Bessie
by James Lee Burke
At the beginning of the twentieth century, as America grapples with forces of human and natural violence more powerful than humanity has ever seen, Bessie Holland yearns for the love that she has never known. Watching the vast Texas countryside being destroyed by an oil company and a menacing figure with a violent past, Bessie is prepared to defend her home and her family. But when she accidentally kills an unarmed man to defend her father Hackberry, she must flee to New York. There, her older brother introduces her to boys who will grow into gangsters, but as children admire and respect Bessie's spirit and fortitude as she is cast into a gangland that yearns for justice and mercy.
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King of Ashes
by S. A. Cosby
After returning to Jefferson Run, Virginia, and family business Carruthers Crematorium—with brother Dante in debt to criminals and sister Neveah exhausted from holding everything together—Roman discovers that his father's crash was no accident and Dante has placed them all in real danger.
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Nice Girls Don't Wind: How I Burned It All Down to Claim My Power
by Parvati Shallow
At twenty-five years old, Parvati Shallow was plunged into fame and fortune after becoming the $1 million winner of the reality television series Survivor. But despite her success, the ghosts of her traumatic past, coupled with the harsh glare of the public eye, kept her locked in a survival cycle of fear and shame that sabotaged her self-confidence and eroded her self-trust. It wasn’t until a series of painful life events, including the death of her younger brother and a challenging divorce, that she found herself on a path of healing that would awaken her true power and reset the course of her life. In Nice Girls Don't Win Shallow shares the stories that allowed her to transform her most difficult moments into potent catalysts for empowerment. From her childhood growing up in a Florida commune run by a tyrannical female guru, to her journey out of the South and inside the L.A. casting rooms that would eventually drop her into the lush but brutal landscapes of Survivor, Shallow shows readers what it took to build herself into the ultimate survivor—for better, and more often, for worse. And then she reveals what it took to rebuild herself into something much greater. As harrowing as it is healing, Shallow’s story is a testament to the profound lessons that can be found in radical self-acceptance and self-love.
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El Dorado Drive
by Megan Abbott
When Harper moves in with her sister Pam, she's surprised to find Pam doing so well financially after her messy divorce. After all, Pam's ex-husband wiped their bank accounts, even stole from their kids. But Pam managed to find her way back. Thanks to the Wheel. Twice a month, the women of the Wheel meet. New members bring cash to the party that is pooled together and then gifted to one lucky member. It's all about giving back. Lifting each other up. As women should. As they must. But when Harper is invited, with the promise of an end to her financial burdens, the sisters inadvertently unleash a darkness lurking within the group. If they're not careful, it might just get them killed.
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Fox
by Joyce Carol Oates
After the vehicle belonging to the enigmatic new teacher at a boarding school is discovered submerged in the woods near a dead body, the community begins to unravel.
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The Ghostwriter
by Julie Clark
In June 1975, the Taylor family is shattered when two teenage siblings are found dead, leaving Vincent as the only survivor and prime suspect. Decades later, Vincent becomes a famous horror writer, while his daughter, Olivia Dumont, hides her identity. Facing financial ruin, Olivia is offered a job to ghostwrite her father's last book, only to discover it's not a horror novel but the true story of what happened that night in 1975.
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I'll Be Right Here
by Amy Bloom
After immigrating to New York alone after World War II, Gazala builds an unbreakable bond with her brother and two spirited sisters, forming a fiercely loyal found family whose love, desires and unorthodox connections shape generations to come.
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Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil
by Victoria Schwab
A new genre-defying novel about immortality and hunger. This is a story about hunger, love, rage, and life - how it ends and how it starts
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Ecstasy
by Ivy Pochoda
Traveling to Naxos seeking freedom, the newly widowed Lena finds herself drawn to a mysterious group of women who live in tents on the beach, where she discovers her own dark desires and accidentally awakens ancient forces.
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Maggie Or, a Man and a Woman Walk into a Bar
by Katie Yee
A woman discovers her husband is having an affair with someone named Maggie. A short while after, her chest starts to ache, and it's not heartbreak - it's a tumor, which she calls Maggie. The narrator embarks on a journey of grief, healing, and reclamation, talking to and getting acquainted with Maggie (the tumor). She creates a "Guide to My Husband: A User's Manual" for Maggie (the other woman), and turns her children's bedtime stories into retellings of Chinese folklore passed down by her own mother, in an attempt to make them fall in love with their shared culture - and to maybe save herself in the process. A master class in transforming personal tragedy into a form of defiant comedy.
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Meet Me at the Crossroads
by Megan Giddings
A dazzling novel about two brilliant sisters and what happens to their undeniable bond when a mysterious and possibly perilous new world beckons.
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What Kind of Paradise
by Janelle Brown
Raised in isolation in a Montana cabin by her enigmatic father, Jane's world shatters when she discovers her unwitting role in a terrible crime, forcing her to flee to 1990s San Francisco, where she uncovers long-buried family secrets and confronts the dangers of the digital age.
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A Marriage at Sea
by Sophie Elmhirst
A couple seeking escape sells everything to sail the world, but after a whale sinks their boat, they endure months adrift in a raft, battling starvation, inner demons and the ultimate test of their relationship in this true-life survival struggle.
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How to Lose Your Mother: A Daughter's Memoir
by Molly Jong-Fast
A darkly funny and deeply honest memoir exploring a daughter's complex relationship with her famous, elusive mother, the impact of dementia, blending humor, heart and raw reflection on loss, family and identity.
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Murderland
by Caroline Fraser
From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Prairie Fires comes a terrifying true-crime history of serial killers in the Pacific Northwest and beyond—a gripping investigation of how a new strain of psychopath emerged out of a toxic landscape of deadly industrial violence.
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Endling
by Maria Reva
A surrealist novel that chronicles the travails of three Ukrainian women and one extremely endangered snail through the travails of capitalism, foreign invasion, romance, and survival.
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Room on the Sea
by Andrâe Aciman
Three lyrical short fictions circle questions of aging and loss, and explore both passion and amorous ambivalence.
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Make It Ours
by Robin Givhan
Virgil Abloh's appointment as head of menswear for Louis Vuitton in 2018 shocked the fashion inudstry, as he became the first Black designer to serve as artistic director in the brand's 164-year history. But as Pulitzer Prize–winning culture critic Robin Givhan reveals, Abloh's story encompasses so much more than his own journey. Givhan weaves a spellbinding tale of a young man's rise amid a cultural moment that would upend a century's worth of ideas about luxury and taste.
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Murder Takes a Vacation
by Laura Lippman
Former private investigator and middle-aged widow Muriel Blossom's vacation on a Parisian river cruise turns into a deadly international mystery… that only she can solve.
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Lincoln's Lady Spymaster
by Gerri Willis
A historical account of wealthy Southern belle Elizabeth Van Lew, whose espionage for Abraham Lincoln and the Union helped win the Civil War.
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On Muscle: The Stuff that Moves Us and Why It Matters
by Bonnie Tsui
The bestselling author of Why We Swim presents a mind-expanding exploration of muscle—from our ancient obsession with the ideal human form to the modern science of this amazing and adaptable tissue—that will change how you think about what moves us through the world.
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The Triumph of Economic Freedom: Debunking the Seven Great Myths of American Capitalism
by Phil Gramm
Since the Industrial Revolution, capitalism has unleashed unimaginable opportunity and prosperity. However, at key points, economic disruption has led to a greater role for government to protect against capitalism's excesses. Gramm and Boudreaux argue that government interference and policies pose the most significant threat to economic freedom.
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Bug Hollow
by Michelle Huneven
A family novel that follows the Samuelson clan over four decades as they hurt and heal one another.
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The Satisfaction Cafe
by Kathy Wang
An engrossing and original story about a woman who moves from Taiwan to California and builds an unexpected life there.
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Unworld
by Jayson Greene
In a near-future where digital and human consciousness blur, a grieving mother, a traumatized witness, an AI professor, and a rogue digital entity confront the mystery of a young man's death, unraveling questions of memory, identity, and what it means to be alive.
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