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Book Category: Featured

The Emperor Of Gladness by Ocean Vuong

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“One late summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to take another path. Bereft and out of options, he quickly becomes her caretaker. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond, one built on empathy, spiritual reckoning, and heartbreak, with the power to transform Hai’s relationship to himself, his family, and a community on the brink. Following the cycles of history, memory, and time, The Emperor of Gladness shows the profound ways in which love, labor, and loneliness form the bedrock of American life. At its heart is a brave epic about what it means to exist on the fringes of society and to reckon with the wounds that haunt our collective soul. Hallmarks of Ocean Vuong’s writing–formal innovation, syntactic dexterity, and the ability to twin grit with grace through tenderness–are on full display in this story of loss, hope, and how far we would go to possess one of life’s most fleeting mercies: a second chance.”

-Publisher’s Marketing

Speak To Me Of Home by Jeanine Cummins

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“On her wedding day in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1968, Rafaela Acuña y Daubón has mild misgivings, but she marries Peter Brennan Jr. anyway in a blaze of romantic optimism. She has no way of knowing how dramatically her life will change when she uproots her young family to start over in the American Midwest, unleashing a fleet of disappointments. In the 1980s, against the backdrop of her mother’s isolation in St. Louis, Missouri, Rafaela’s daughter, Ruth, wants only to belong. Eager to fit in, Ruth lets go of her language, habits, and childhood memories of Puerto Rico. It’s not until decades later when Ruth’s own daughter, Daisy, returns to San Juan that her mother and grandmother begin to truly reflect on the choices that have come to define their lives. When a hurricane ravages the island in 2023, leaving Daisy critically injured, Rafaela and Ruth return to the city where their story began. As they gather at Daisy’s bedside, we follow them back into the moments that brought them to this point: We watch as they come of age, fall in love, take risks, and contend with all the heartbreaks, triumphs, and reversals of fortune–both good and bad–that make up a meaningful life. As old memories come to light, so do buried secrets, leaving everyone in the family wondering exactly where it is that they belong. A striking, resonant examination of marriage, family, and identity, Speak to Me of Home is ultimately a story of mothers and daughters that asks: How can three women who share geography and genetics have such wildly different ideas of where they come from? And, more important, can they discover a common language to find their way back home?”

-Publisher’s Marketing

The Grey Wolf by Louise Penny

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The 19th mystery in the #1 New York Times-bestselling Armand Gamache series. Relentless phone calls interrupt the peace of a warm August morning in Three Pines. Though the tiny Quâebec village is impossible to find on any map, someone has managed to track down Armand Gamache, head of homicide at the Sãuretâe, as he sits with his wife in their back garden. Reine-Marie watches with increasing unease as her husband refuses to pick up, though he clearly knows who is on the other end. When he finally answers, his rage shatters the calm of their quiet Sunday morning. That’s only the first in a sequence of strange events that begin THE GREY WOLF, the nineteenth novel in Louise Penny’s #1 New York Times-bestselling series. A missing coat, an intruder alarm, a note for Gamache reading “this might interest you”, a puzzling scrap of paper with a mysterious list-and then a murder. All propel Chief Inspector Gamache and his team toward a terrible realization. Something much more sinister than any one murder or any one case is fast approaching. Armand Gamache, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, his son-in-law and second in command, and Inspector Isabelle Lacoste can only trust each other, as old friends begin to act like enemies, and long-time enemies appear to be friends. Determined to track down the threat before it becomes a reality, their pursuit takes them across Quâebec and across borders. Their hunt grows increasingly desperate, even frantic, as the enormity of the creature they’re chasing becomes clear. If they fail the devastating consequences would reach into the largest of cities and the smallest of villages. Including Three Pines”–

The God of The Woods by Liz Moore

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When Barbara Van Laar is discovered missing from her summer camp bunk one morning in August 1975, it triggers a panicked, terrified search. Losing a camper is a horrific tragedy under any circumstances, but Barbara isn’t just any camper, she’s the daughter of the wealthy family who owns the camp–as well as the opulent nearby estate, and most of the land in sight. And this isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared in this region: Barbara’s older brother also went missing 16 years earlier, never to be found. How could this have happened yet again? Out of this gripping beginning, Liz Moore weaves a richly textured drama, both emotionally nuanced and propelled by a double-barreled mystery. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded drama brings readers into the hearts of characters whose lives are forever changed by this eventful summer: Barbara’s wounded, grieving mother; the “townie” whose family makes a living off this land; the 13-year-old camper struggling to find her way; and the outsider tasked with seeing the bigger picture, and uncovering the truth.

Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent by Judi Dench

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For the very first time, Judi opens up about every Shakespearean role she has played throughout her seven-decade career, from Lady Macbeth and Titania to Ophelia and Cleopatra. In a series of intimate conversations with actor & director Brendan O’Hea, she guides us through Shakespeare’s plays with incisive clarity, revealing the secrets of her rehearsal process and inviting us to share in her triumphs, disasters, and backstage shenanigans.

The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War by Erik Larson

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The author of The Splendid and the Vile brings to life the pivotal five months between the election of Abraham Lincoln and the start of the Civil War–a simmering crisis that finally tore a deeply divided nation in two.

On November 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln became the fluky victor in a tight race for president. The country was bitterly at odds; Southern extremists were moving ever closer to destroying the Union, with one state after another seceding and Lincoln powerless to stop them. Slavery fueled the conflict, but somehow the passions of North and South came to focus on a lonely federal fortress in Charleston Harbor: Fort Sumter.

Master storyteller Erik Larson offers a gripping account of the chaotic months between Lincoln’s election and the Confederacy’s shelling of Sumter–a period marked by tragic errors and miscommunications, enflamed egos and craven ambitions, personal tragedies and betrayals. Lincoln himself wrote that the trials of these five months were “so great that, could I have anticipated them, I would not have believed it possible to survive them.”

Drawing on diaries, secret communiques, slave ledgers, and plantation records, Larson gives us a political horror story that captures the forces that led America to the brink–a dark reminder that we often don’t see a cataclysm coming until it’s too late.

The Book of Doors by Gareth Brown

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Cassie Andrews, a mild-mannered bookseller in New York City, inherits the mysterious eponymous volume from a deceased customer. Discovering its magical ability to transport her to any place she envisions, Cassie, accompanied by her spirited roommate, Izzy, embarks on an adventure. However, as they realize the perilous potential of the book, they find themselves entangled with an enigmatic man known as the Librarian, who protects a collection of similarly magical books, and pursued by malevolent forces seeking the power of the Book of Doors and all the other volumes like it. Recommended by Susan

The Women

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When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, Frankie joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path. As green and inexperienced as the men sent to Vietnam to fight, Frankie is over-whelmed by the chaos and destruction of war. Each day is a gamble of life and death, hope and betrayal; friendships run deep and can be shattered in an instant. In war, she meets―and becomes one of―the lucky, the brave, the broken, and the lost. But war is just the beginning for Frankie and her veteran friends. The real battle lies in coming home to a changed and divided America, to angry protesters, and to a country that wants to forget Vietnam.

From the celebrated author of The Nightingale and The Four Winds comes Kristin Hannah’s The Women―at once an intimate portrait of coming of age in a dangerous time and an epic tale of a nation divided.

Fup

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I read this little gem at least once every year to laugh at Jake’s moonshine antics and to revisit the strange and tear-inducing adventure of Tiny and his mysterious duck, Fup. Take your whiskey or tea out to the back porch on a quiet evening and sit for an hour or two to relish the wonder wrought by Jim Dodge in this short tale. – Meg

The Whalebone Theatre

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When we first meet Christabel Seagrave, we know three things: it is the end of WWI, she is 3 years old, and she is a force to be reckoned with. Orphaned yet living on her family’s estate, she is mostly left to her own devices as she grows up exploring the seaside around her home, along with the books in the estate’s extensive library. An eccentric cast of characters come and go: Rosalind, her champagne-loving stepmother; Myrtle, the wealthy American “Poetess;” Taras, the Russian-expat artist; the mysterious intelligence officer, General Pennington, among others. But it is this bohemian upbringing that later prepares the intrepid Christabel to be an undercover British agent in Occupied France. The Whalebone Theatre is a coming of age story at its best: old-fashioned storytelling filled with humor, heartbreak and adventure, brimming with a wonderful cast of characters who feel so real. – Diana

Young Queer America: Real Stories and Faces of LGBTQ+ Youth

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PRIDE MONTH PICK

Photographer and activist Maxwell Poth has traveled all over the United States, inviting LGBTQ+ youth to share their stories as part of Project Contrast, a nonprofit that amplifies these voices and connects kids and families with the resources they need to survive and thrive.

This book collects the stories and portraits of seventy-three queer kids and teenagers from fifteen different states. In their own words, these young people share the challenges they’ve faced coming out or coming to terms with their own identities; they write about their families, their schoolmates, their teachers, and the queer community they’ve found throughout their journeys; and they offer messages of love and support to their LGBTQ+ peers. Featuring a foreword by trans actress and model Isis King, this book sends a powerful message to the many LGBTQ+ kids growing up in small towns who feel isolated: We see you, we love you, you are not alone.

Page Boy

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PRIDE MONTH PICK

Full of intimate stories, from chasing down secret love affairs to battling body image and struggling with familial strife, Pageboy is a love letter to the power of being seen. With this evocative and lyrical debut, Oscar-nominated star Elliot Page captures the universal human experience of searching for ourselves and our place in this complicated world.

The Oscar-nominated star who captivated the world with his performance in Juno finally shares his story in a groundbreaking and inspiring memoir about love, family, fame ― and stepping into who we truly are with strength, joy and connection.