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Our Picks for December, 2025 |
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House of Day, House of Night
by Olga Tokarczuk
Bewitching ... Tokarczuk is an excellent storyteller. --The New York Times A novel about the rich stories of small places, from the Nobel Prize-winning, New York Times bestselling author of The Books of Jacob and Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead A woman settles in a remote Polish village where she knows no one. It has few inhabitants, but it teems with the stories of the living and the dead. There's the drunk Marek Marek, who discovers that he shares his body with a bird, and Franz Frost, whose nightmares come to him from a newly discovered planet. There's the man whose death - with one leg on the Polish side, one on the Czech--was an international incident. And there are the Germans who still haunt a region that not long ago they called their own. From the founding of the town to the lives of its saints, these shards piece together not only a history, but a cosmology. Another brilliant constellation novel in the mode of Tokarczuk's International Booker Prize-winning Flights, House of Day, House of Night reminds us that the story of any place, no matter how humble, is boundless.
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Before I Forget
by Tory Henwood Hoen
A funny, heartfelt, late coming-of-age story that examines the role of memory in holding us back--and in moving us forward--for fans of The Collected Regrets of Clover and Maame.
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Snake-Eater
by T. Kingfisher
With only a few dollars to her name and her beloved dog Copper by her side, Selena flees her past in the city to claim her late aunt's house in the desert town of Quartz Creek. The scorpions and spiders are better than what she left behind. Because in Quartz Creek, there's a strange beauty to everything, from the landscape to new friends, and more blue sky than Selena's ever seen. But something lurks beneath the surface--like the desert gods and spirits lingering outside Selena's house at night, keeping watch. Mostly benevolent, says her neighbor Grandma Billy. That doesn't ease the prickly sense that one of them watches too closely and wants something from Selena she can't begin to imagine--
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The Heir Apparent
by Rebecca Armitage
It's New Year's Day in Tasmania and the life Lexi Villiers has carefully built is working out nicely: she's in the second year of her medical residency, she lives on a beautiful farm with her two best friends Finn and Jack--and she's about to finally become more-than-friendly with Jack--when a helicopter abruptly lands. Out steps her grandmother's right-hand-man, with the tragic news that her father and older brother have been killed in a skiing accident. Lexi's grandmother happens to be the Queen of England, and in addition to the shock and grief, Lexi must now accept the reality that she is suddenly next in line for the throne--a role she has publicly disavowed--
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The Award
by Matthew Pearl
David Trent is an aspiring novelist in Cambridge, Massachusetts, trying to navigate his ambitions in a place that has writers around every corner. He lives in an apartment above a Very Famous Author named Silas Hale who, beneath his celebrated image, is a bombastic, vindictive monster who refuses to allow his new neighbor even to make eye contact with him--until young David wins a prestigious award for his new book. Suddenly Silas is interested--if intensely spiteful. But soon, the administrator of the award comes to David with alarming news, forcing the writer into a desperate set of choices--
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Cape Fever
by Nadia Davids
It's a stunner. --Publishers Weekly (starred review) From award-winning South African author Nadia Davids comes a gothic psychological thriller set in the 1920s, where a young maid finds herself entangled with the spirits of a decaying manor and the secrets of its enigmatic owner. I come highly recommended to Mrs. Hattingh through sentences I tell her I cannot read. The year is 1920, in a small, unnamed city in a colonial empire. Soraya Matas believes she has found the ideal job as a personal maid to the eccentric Mrs. Hattingh, whose beautiful, decaying home is not far from The Muslim Quarter where Soraya lives with her parents. As Soraya settles into her new role, she discovers that the house is alive with spirits. While Mrs. Hattingh eagerly awaits her son's visit from London, she offers to help Soraya stay in touch with her fiancé Nour by writing him letters on her behalf. So begins a strange weekly meeting where Soraya dictates and Mrs. Hattingh writes--a ritual that binds the two women to one another and eventually threatens the sanity of both. Cape Fever is a masterful blend of gothic themes, folk-tales, and psychological suspense, reminiscent of works by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Daphne du Maurier, and Soraya Matas is an unforgettable narrator, whose story of love and grief, is also a chilling exploration of class and the long reach of history.
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Daughter of Genoa
by Kat Devereaux
Enthralling and eloquently bittersweet--a vivid historical portrait of the pivotal yet overlooked struggle to save Italian Jews in WWII, and how one unforgettable woman risks everything for love. Devereaux writes with great authority and masterfully blends imagination and history. A deeply affective novel that captivated me from the first page. -- Shelly Sanders, bestselling author of Daughters of The Occupation and The Night SparrowBased on a true story, The Daughter of Genoa is a moving and inspiring story, revealing the hope, humanity, and quiet heroism of ordinary people in their extraordinary efforts to help others. A powerful journey of heartbreak, love, and bravery, this is a book that will stay with readers for a long time. -- Madeline Martin, New York Times bestselling author of The Booklover's Library The author of Escape to Florence returns with a thrilling adventure set in the war-torn 1940s and inspired by true events, about a young woman who risks everything to help Jewish Italians flee the fascists, and falls in love with the brave aviator behind a daring secret rescue operation.Anna's family fled to America years ago, to escape the Fascist regime, but Anna had stayed behind. Alone and terrified of discovery, Anna meets Father Vittorio, a Jesuit priest who takes her to shopkeepers Bernardo and Silvia, an older couple who offer shelter and safety without question. But when Anna discovers that this kind, quiet couple is part of a network of ordinary people daring to help Father Vittorio smuggle Jewish citizens, stripped of their status and rights, out of Italy, she is determined to help.Anna offers skills essential to the cause: she has a deft hand at ledgers and forgery, talents she learned at the high-powered job she held before the Racial Laws were passed--a past she conceals. Working in secrecy, not knowing others' real names or sharing her own, Anna begins producing fake identity cards and soon meets another member of the operation: a man known as Mr. X., whom she recognizes instantly as the wealthy aviator Massimo Teglio. And suddenly, without warning--despite the threat of imprisonment, torture, and death--Anna finds herself taking the most dangerous of risk of all: falling in love. And she's not the only one.Based on the true story of the DELASEM--the Delegation for the Assistance of Jewish Emigrants, an organization of brave volunteers working tirelessly to save innocent lives from the concentration camps--Daughter of Genoa is a poignant look at those who loved and lost yet continued to risk everything to create a better world.
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The Red Scare Murders
by Con Lehane
This wry, big-hearted noir brings 1950s New York to life, from the tenements of Hell's Kitchen to the mansions of Riverdale, from Sing Sing to City Hall, with a gripping murder mystery laying bare the explosive conflicts between its big wheels, its working stiffs, its gangsters, and its dreamers. July 1950: Mick Mulligan has just hung out his shingle as a private investigator in New York's sweaty Hell's Kitchen. A former Hollywood cartoonist who was blacklisted during a communist witch hunt, Mick is broke, divorced, and in need of a paying gig to make his child support payments. But maybe not this gig. First off, it's impossible. Worse, it's liable to get him killed. Last year, universally reviled cab company owner Irwin Johnson was murdered. One of his drivers, an African American Communist Party member named Harold Williams, was arrested, tried, and found guilty, despite scant evidence. Now his execution date is two weeks away. New York City labor leader Duke Rogowski asks Mick to find fresh evidence that might buy Harold a stay of execution. Lots of people might have wanted Irwin Johnson dead--anyone from his betrayed wife to his jilted mistresses' jealous husbands to the mafiosi he was stealing business from. But no one has any reason to help Mick exonerate Harold Williams, and some of Irwin's former associates are happy to take a blunt object to the head of anyone asking awkward questions. Yet Mick can't abandon a potentially innocent man to the electric chair. Can he pull off a miracle?
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Song of Ancient Lovers
by Laura Restrepo
Award-winning Colombian author Laura Restrepo weaves contemporary themes and ancient myth in this story of star-crossed lovers in a world on the brink of collapse-- Provided by publisher.
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The List of Suspicious Things
by Jennie Godfrey
We'll make a list. A list of all the people and things we see that are suspicious. And then... we'll investigate them. Miv is panicking. Life hasn't been amazing since her mom got sick, but now her dad is talking about wanting to move their family away from the town Miv has lived in her whole life. Because of the murders. But leaving Yorkshire and her best friend Sharon simply isn't an option, no matter the dangers lurking round their way; or the strangeness at home that started the day Miv's mum stopped talking. Perhaps if she could solve the case of the disappearing women, they could stay after all? So, Miv and Sharon decide to make a list: a list of all the suspicious people and things on their street. People they know. People they don't. But their search for the truth reveals more secrets in their neighborhood, within their families-and between each other-than they ever thought possible. What if the real mystery Miv needs to solve is the one that lies much closer to home?--
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