“You will derive much satisfaction in later life simply by shooting looks at people.” – Gary Janetti, Do You Mind If I Cancel?
The Children on the Hill by Jennifer McMahon
Fiction / Suspense / Horror / Mystery.
1978: at her renowned treatment center in picturesque Vermont, the brilliant psychiatrist, Dr. Helen Hildreth, is acclaimed for her compassionate work with the mentally ill. But when she’s at home with her cherished grandchildren, Vi and Eric, she’s just Gran—teaching them how to take care of their pets, preparing them home-cooked meals, providing them with care and attention and love.
Then one day Gran brings home a child to stay with the family. Iris—silent, hollow-eyed, skittish, and feral—does not behave like a normal girl.
Still, Violet is thrilled to have a new playmate. She and Eric invite Iris to join their Monster Club, where they catalogue all kinds of monsters and dream up ways to defeat them. Before long, Iris begins to come out of her shell. She and Vi and Eric do everything together: ride their bicycles, go to the drive-in, meet at their clubhouse in secret to hunt monsters. Because, as Vi explains, monsters are everywhere.
2019: Lizzy Shelley, the host of the popular podcast Monsters Among Us, is traveling to Vermont, where a young girl has been abducted, and a monster sighting has the town in an uproar. She’s determined to hunt it down, because Lizzy knows better than anyone that monsters are real—and one of them is her very own sister.
The Children on the Hill takes us on a breathless journey to face the primal fears that lurk within us all.
Description from Goodreads.
“…stellar… McMahon keeps the reader wondering how much is real and how much is imagined. This is a must for psychological thriller fans.” – Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
“McMahon succeeds admirably in building real chills and a surprising twist, offering a satisfying addition to the Frankenstein-inspired oeuvre. Mary Shelley would give it two thumbs up.” – Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW
“In a tightrope’s walk of suspense, The Children on the Hill asks the reader to consider the precarious nature of memory and the definition of the word ‘monster.’” – WBUR ARTery
City On Fire by Don Winslow ★
Fiction / Suspense.
Two criminal empires together control all of New England.
Until a beautiful modern-day Helen of Troy comes between the Irish and the Italians, launching a war that will see them kill each other, destroy an alliance, and set a city on fire.
Danny Ryan yearns for a more “legit” life and a place in the sun. But as the bloody conflict stacks body on body and brother turns against brother, Danny has to rise above himself. To save the friends he loves like family and the family he has sworn to protect, he becomes a leader, a ruthless strategist, and a master of a treacherous game in which the winners live and the losers die.
From the gritty streets of Providence to the glittering screens of Hollywood to the golden casinos of Las Vegas, Danny Ryan will forge a dynasty.
Exploring the classic themes of loyalty, betrayal, and honor, City on Fire is a contemporary Iliad, a saga that spans generations–a towering achievement of storytelling genius from Don Winslow.
Description from Goodreads.
“[An] immersive and humane tale of fate, free will, loyalty and betrayal…” – The Guardian
“Stunning… Winslow delivers a fast-paced, intense, and brooding story. It’s perfect for readers of William Boyle, James Lee Burke, and Dennis Lehane.” – Library Journal, STARRED REVIEW
“A blistering novel filled with anger and bite… Plenty of pain for the characters, plenty of thrills for the reader.” – Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW
“As he did in the ‘Cartel’ trilogy, Winslow adeptly manages the comings and goings of a large cast of characters… [a] well-crafted, troubling epic…” – Los Angeles Times
The Fervor by Alma Katsu ★
Fiction / Horror / Historical Fiction.
1944: As World War II rages on, the threat has come to the home front. In a remote corner of Idaho, Meiko Briggs and her daughter, Aiko, are desperate to return home. Following Meiko’s husband’s enlistment as an air force pilot in the Pacific months prior, Meiko and Aiko were taken from their home in Seattle and sent to one of the internment camps in the Midwest. It didn’t matter that Aiko was American-born: They were Japanese, and therefore considered a threat by the American government.
Mother and daughter attempt to hold on to elements of their old life in the camp when a mysterious disease begins to spread among those interned. What starts as a minor cold quickly becomes spontaneous fits of violence and aggression, even death. And when a disconcerting team of doctors arrive, nearly more threatening than the illness itself, Meiko and her daughter team up with a newspaper reporter and widowed missionary to investigate, and it becomes clear to them that something more sinister is afoot, a demon from the stories of Meiko’s childhood, hell-bent on infiltrating their already strange world.
Inspired by the Japanese yokai and the jorogumo spider demon, The Fervor explores a supernatural threat beyond what anyone saw coming; the danger of demonization, a mysterious contagion, and the search to stop its spread before it’s too late.
Description from Goodreads.
“Katsu has no peer when it comes to atmospheric, detail-rich historical horror, but this volume is more unsettling than anything she’s written yet, because its demons attack readers uncomfortably close to home. A must-read for all, not just genre fans.” – Library Journal, STARRED REVIEW
“The action leaps off the page and has a cinematic quality. The Fervor is a stunning triumph and unfurls like a masterfully woven tapestry. It is suffused with secrets, pain, Japanese myths long thought forgotten, and above all the guilt that permeates throughout… The ghosts of this story will haunt readers long after they’re finished reading.” – Booklist, STARRED REVIEW
“Katsu weaves myriad perspectives into a powerful historical horror novel centered on the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII… The meticulous and compassionate portraiture, placed against the backdrop of what evils humans do to one another, creates a horror that renders even the creepiest spiders merely decorative in comparison. Horror readers looking for sharp social commentary should snap this up.” – Publishers Weekly
“The plot moves at a dizzying pace… a balance of incisive detail and steady progression… What appears to be a story of supernatural suspense mixed with historical fiction transforms into an important reminder of the United States’ short memory of its own atrocities and its long history of anti-Asian sentiment, violence, and racism… It’s enjoyable to experience the ambitious, weblike weaving of the book’s many elements.” – Kirkus Reviews
Finding Me by Viola Davis ★
Nonfiction / Memoir / Movies / Television / Theater.
In my book, you will meet a little girl named Viola who ran from her past until she made a life-changing decision to stop running forever.
This is my story, from a crumbling apartment in Central Falls, Rhode Island, to the stage in New York City, and beyond. This is the path I took to finding my purpose but also my voice in a world that didn’t always see me.
As I wrote Finding Me, my eyes were open to the truth of how our stories are often not given close examination. We are forced to reinvent them to fit into a crazy, competitive, judgmental world. So I wrote this for anyone running through life untethered, desperate and clawing their way through murky memories, trying to get to some form of self-love. For anyone who needs reminding that a life worth living can only be born from radical honesty and the courage to shed facades and be… you.
Finding Me is a deep reflection, a promise, and a love letter of sorts to self. My hope is that my story will inspire you to light up your own life with creative expression and rediscover who you were before the world put a label on you.
Description from Goodreads.
“Brimming with love, heartbreak, and hard-won wisdom.” – Bustle
“This book is a testament to resilience, hard work, and the power of owning your truth.” – Real Simple
“Reading her memoir, Finding Me… you understand where her ability comes from: Only someone who has already been dragged into the depths of emotion readily knows how to get back there.” – New York Times
“Davis gives readers hope, encouraging us to look back and embrace childhood dreams or failures, let go of shame, and move forward to become the best version of ourselves.” – Booklist
The Good Left Undone by Adriana Trigiani
Fiction / Historical Fiction.
Matelda, the Cabrelli family’s matriarch, has always been brusque and opinionated. Now, as she faces the end of her life, she is determined to share a long-held secret with her family about her own mother’s great love story: with her childhood friend, Silvio, and with dashing Scottish sea captain John Lawrie McVicars, the father Matelda never knew…
In the halcyon past, Domenica Cabrelli thrives in the coastal town of Viareggio until her beloved home becomes unsafe when Italy teeters on the brink of World War II. Her journey takes her from the rocky shores of Marseille to the mystical beauty of Scotland to the dangers of wartime Liverpool–where Italian Scots are imprisoned without cause–as Domenica experiences love, loss, and grief while she longs for home. A hundred years later, her daughter, Matelda, and her granddaughter, Anina, face the same big questions about life and their family’s legacy, while Matelda contemplates what is worth fighting for. But Matelda is running out of time, and the two timelines intersect and weave together in unexpected and heartbreaking ways that lead the family to shocking revelations and, ultimately, redemption.
Description from Goodreads.
“[A] sweeping epic… This saga of family and legacy is one to savor.” – Publishers Weekly
“The Good Left Undone is deliciously told, with fully explored characters, mouthwatering descriptions of Italian food, and charming yet quirky towns. What’s exceptional about the novel is how seamlessly she knits together different stories from many places and times, bringing it all together in one poignant and satisfying book. This is a gorgeously written story about intergenerational love and heartbreak, the futility of regret and the power of a life well lived. It’s also a love letter to Italy and its beautiful and painful history.” – BookPage, STARRED REVIEW
“The beauty of any book by Adriana Trigiani is her ability to interweave life and fiction. This book is immersive, but it will also have you pausing to consider your own ancestors… or to seek them out. It’s a testimony to the power of family and history, to the value of understanding where we came from. This epic tale is at once real and hopeful, filled with adventure, and yes… stories. Don’t miss your chance to take this unforgettable journey with the Cabrelli women!” – Book of the Month
I’ll Be You by Janelle Brown ★
Fiction / suspense / Mystery.
“You be me, and I’ll be you,” I whispered.
As children, Sam and Elli were two halves of a perfect whole: gorgeous identical twins whose parents sometimes couldn’t even tell them apart. They fell asleep to the sound of each other’s breath at night, holding hands in the dark. And once Hollywood discovered them, they became B-list child TV stars, often inhabiting the same role.
But as adults, their lives have splintered. After leaving acting, Elli reinvented herself as the perfect homemaker: married to a real estate lawyer, living in a house just blocks from the beach. Meanwhile, Sam has never recovered from her failed Hollywood career, or from her addiction to the pills and booze that have propped her up for the last fifteen years.
Sam hasn’t spoken to her sister since her destructive behavior finally drove a wedge between them. So when her father calls out of the blue, Sam is shocked to learn that Elli’s life has been in turmoil: her husband moved out, and Elli just adopted a two-year-old girl. Now she’s stopped answering her phone and checked in to a mysterious spa in Ojai. Is her sister just decompressing, or is she in trouble? Could she have possibly joined a cult? As Sam works to connect the dots left by Elli’s baffling disappearance, she realizes that the bond between her and her sister is more complicated than she ever knew.
I’ll Be You shows Janelle Brown at the top of her game: a story packed with surprising revelations and sharp insights about the choices that define our families and our lives—and could just as easily destroy them.
Description from Goodreads.
“A delicious work of intrigue and suspense… You won’t want to stop reading until you find out what’s happened.” – Kirkus Reviews
“[An] addictive thriller that will keep readers burning through pages… a sneakily hypnotic thriller…” – Los Angeles Times
“[Brown’s] twistiest and tightest work yet… a cleverly crafted and psychologically nuanced yin and yang, complete with crackling observations about celebrity, California cults, wellness culture, the fertility industry, and the undertow of addiction… Written in a voice that reads more like a juicy magazine feature than airport-thriller prose, and narrated by a pair of codependent protagonists whose versions of events stack up in wonderfully unexpected ways, the book calls to mind a tentpole of the genre, Gillian Flynn’s 2012 hit Gone Girl.” – Time
“Bestseller Brown infuses this twist-packed mystery with an intense story of creating one’s identity, rife with deep family trauma and a low-key, creepy depiction of the dark side of twin intimacy… The perfectly paced emotional reveals of the twins’ shared history pull the reader toward fierce investment in Elli’s safety and the sisters’ reconnection. Brown has upped her game with this one.” – Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
Kaikeyi by Vaishnavi Patel ★
Fiction / Fantasy / Historical Fiction.
“I was born on the full moon under an auspicious constellation, the holiest of positions—much good it did me.”
So begins Kaikeyi’s story. The only daughter of the kingdom of Kekaya, she is raised on tales about the might and benevolence of the gods: how they churned the vast ocean to obtain the nectar of immortality, how they vanquish evil and ensure the land of Bharat prospers, and how they offer powerful boons to the devout and the wise. Yet she watches as her father unceremoniously banishes her mother, listens as her own worth is reduced to how great a marriage alliance she can secure. And when she calls upon the gods for help, they never seem to hear.
Desperate for some measure of independence, she turns to the texts she once read with her mother and discovers a magic that is hers alone. With this power, Kaikeyi transforms herself from an overlooked princess into a warrior, diplomat, and most favored queen, determined to carve a better world for herself and the women around her.
But as the evil from her childhood stories threatens the cosmic order, the path she has forged clashes with the destiny the gods have chosen for her family. And Kaikeyi must decide if resistance is worth the destruction it will wreak—and what legacy she intends to leave behind.
Description from Goodreads.
“With spellbinding twists and turns, this is a political novel and very much a feminist one.” – Kirkus Reviews
“Palace intrigue and magic combine in this look into an untapped (at least in the West) realm of myth.” – Den of Geek
“Patel’s mesmerizing debut shines a brilliant light on the vilified queen from the Ramayana… Readers familiar with the source text will be wowed by Patel’s reimagining, while those new to the story will be won over by its powerful, multilayered heroine and epic scope. This easily earns its place on shelves alongside Madeline Miller’s Circe.” – Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
“The novel is compelling and rich, drawing on the source material while furnishing its characters with new complexity and motivations. Fans of Madeline Miller’s Circe will fall hard for this story about a woman determined to do what’s right for her kingdom and its women, walking the fine line between rebellion and convention.” – Booklist, STARRED REVIEW
The New Black West: Photographs from America’s Only Touring Black Rodeo by Gabriela Hasbun
Nonfiction / Photography / Sports.
A powerful symbol of self-reliance, strength, and determination, the Black cowboy is a figure commonly overlooked in the histories of the American West. Held annually in cities across the United States, the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo (BPIR) honors the historic accomplishments of Black cowboys and fosters a vibrant community dedicated to continuing that legacy. Bay Area photographer Gabriela Hasbun has spent more than a decade photographing this beloved event in the Oakland hills. Her images capture the joy and excitement of performers and audience members, showcasing the daring feats, spectacular outfits, and welcoming atmosphere that make the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo an unmissable experience. In addition to Hasbun’s photographs, The New Black West features quotes and stories from the cowboys themselves and a foreword from the Oakland rodeo’s regional manager, Jeff Douvel.
Description from Goodreads.
“Stirring images… this work never ceases to demand one’s attention.” – Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
“[An] incredible, decade-plus document of a community of Black cowboys and cowgirls, and the Oakland rodeo they compete in.” – InsideHook
“…beautiful… Photographer Gabriela Hasbun captures the joy, wonder, and beauty of Black cowboy and cowgirl culture at the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo.” – Wired
The Odyssey by Lara Williams
Fiction.
Ingrid works on a gargantuan luxury cruise liner where she spends her days reorganizing the gift shop shelves and waiting for long-term guests to drop dead in the aisles. On her days off, she disembarks from the ship, wasting the hours aimlessly following tourists around, drinking the local alcohol, and buying clothes she never intends to wear again. It’s not a bad life. At least, it distracts her from thinking about the other life–the other person–she left behind five years ago.
That is, until the day she is selected by the ship’s enigmatic captain and (ill-informed) wabi sabi devotee, Keith, for his mentorship program. Encouraging her to reflect on past mistakes and her desperation to remain lost at sea, Keith pushes Ingrid further than she ever thought possible. But as her friendships and professional life onboard steadily fall apart, Ingrid must ask herself: how do you know when you have gone too far?
Utterly original, mischievous, and thought-provoking, The Odyssey is a merciless takedown of consumer capitalism and our anxious, ill-fated quests to find something to believe in. It’s a voyage that will lead our heroine all the way home, though she will do almost anything to avoid getting there.
Description from Goodreads.
“This subversive satire on consumer capitalism and the millennial search for meaning is darkly comic existential fiction at its best.” – Culture Whisper
“A fever dream… Williams succeeds in satirising the seemingly unmockable: the overwhelming absurdities of modern life.” – Literary Review
“Big news: We already found your summer 2022 reading pick.” – Cosmopolitan
The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor – The Truth and the Turmoil by Tina Brown
Nonfiction / Biography / British Royalty.
“Never again,” became Queen Elizabeth II’s mantra shortly after Diana’s death. More specifically, there could never be “another Diana” – a member of the family whose global popularity upstaged, outshone, and posed an existential threat to the British monarchy. Picking up where The Diana Chronicles left off, The Palace Papers reveals how the royal family reinvented itself after the traumatic years when Diana’s blazing celebrity ripped through the House of Windsor like a comet.
Tina Brown takes readers on a tour de force journey that shows the Queen’s stoic resolve as she coped with the passing of Princess Margaret, the Queen Mother and her partner for seven decades, Prince Philip, and triumphed in her Jubilee years even as the family dramas raged around her. She explores Prince Charles’s determination to make Camilla his queen, the tension between William and Harry who are on “different paths”, the ascendance of the resolute Kate Middleton, the disturbing allegations surrounding Prince Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein, and Harry and Meghan’s stunning decision to “step back” as senior royals. Despite the fragile monarchy’s best efforts, “never again” seems fast approaching.
Full of powerful revelations, nuanced details, and searing insight, The Palace Papers will irrevocably change how the world perceives and understands the royal family.
Description from Goodreads.
“Jaw-dropping.” – PureWow
“Tina Brown’s royal revelations spare no one… addictively readable… Brown’s powers of royal observation remain exquisite. Her recounting of the first Sussex/Cambridge couples’ event is one of the book’s greatest joys, and an explanation in miniature of everything that subsequently went wrong.” – Washington Post
“Tina Brown’s sparkling prose and eye for detail enliven an entertaining exposé… if one must read royal gossip, let it be written by Tina… a rollicking ride through recent royal family history.” – The Guardian
Start Without Me: (I’ll Be There in a Minute) by Gary Janetti
Nonfiction / Memoir / Comedy.
Gary Janetti is bothered. By a lot of things. And thank God he’s here to tell us.
In Start Without Me, Gary returns with his acid tongue firmly in cheek to the moments and times that defined him. He takes us by the hand as we follow him through the summers he spends in his twenties, pursuing both the perfect tan and the perfect man to no avail and much regret. At his Catholic high school, he strikes up an unlikely friendship with a nun who shares Gary’s love of soap operas, which becomes a salvation to them both. And don’t get him started on how a bad hotel room can ruin even the best vacation. This laugh-out-loud collection of true-life stories from the man “behind his generation’s greatest comedy” (The New York Times) is for anyone who has felt the joy in holding a decade-long grudge.
Whether you are a new convert to Janetti or one of the million who follow him on social media for a daily laugh, Start Without Me will have you howling at Gary’s frustrations and nodding along in agreement at the outrages of life’s small slights. It’s the literary equivalent of a night out with your funniest friend that you wish would never end.
Description from Goodreads.
“Writer and producer Janetti briskly trots through the most memorable moments of his life in this hilarious outing. In vignettes packed with zingers, Janetti reveals how his refusal to live on any terms but his own took root early. Pithy and profane, this entertains from start to finish.” – Publishers Weekly
A Thousand Ways to Pay Attention: A Memoir of Coming Home to My Neurodivergent Mind by Rebecca Schiller
Nonfiction / Memoir / HEALTH / Nature.
It should have been Rebecca Schiller’s dream come true: moving her young family to the English countryside to raise goats and coax their own fruit and vegetables from the land. But, as she writes: The summer of striding out toward a life of open fields and sacks of corn, I brought a confused black hole of something pernicious but not yet acknowledged along for the ride.
Rebecca’s health begins to crumble, with bewildering symptoms: frequent falls, uncontrollable rages, and mysterious lapses in memory. As she fights to be seen by a succession of specialists, her fledgling homestead—and her family—hang by increasingly tenuous threads. And when her diagnosis finally comes, it is utterly unexpected: severe ADHD.
In her scramble for answers, Rebecca’s consciousness alternately sears with pinpoint focus and spirals with connections. Childhood memories resurface with new meaning, and her daily life entwines with the history of intrepid women who tended this land before her. Her family weathers their growing pains where generations of acorns have fallen to rise again as trees, where ancient wolves and lynx once stalked the shadows.
Written in unsparing, luminous prose, this is an all-absorbing memoir of one woman’s newfound neurodivergence—and a clarion call to overturn the narrative that says minds are either normal and good or different and broken.
Description from Goodreads.
“A courageous and luminously written memoir.” – The Bookseller
“Don’t miss A Thousand Ways to Pay Attention… [this memoir] provides a window into what it must be like to have her brain: exhausting, yes, but also compelling as we follow Schiller’s journey of self-discovery.” – Minneapolis Star Tribune
“In this exquisite and probing narrative, Schiller candidly charts her experience with ADHD while embarking on a quest to live off the land… Schiller refuses to let the ADHD label end her self-inquiry, instead using it to explore the wonders that arise from being different. By eschewing tidy resolutions, Schiller’s work offers a complex look into a beautiful mind.” – Publishers Weekly
Unmasked: My Life Solving America’s Cold Cases by Paul Holes
Nonfiction / Memoir / True crime.
I order another bourbon, neat. This is the drink that will flip the switch. I don’t even know how I got here, to this place, to this point. Something is happening to me lately. I’m drinking too much. My sheets are soaking wet when I wake up from nightmares of decaying corpses. I order another drink and swig it, trying to forget about the latest case I can’t shake.
Crime-solving for me is more complex than the challenge of the hunt, or the process of piecing together a scientific puzzle. The thought of good people suffering drives me, for better or worse, to the point of obsession.
People always ask how I am able to detach from the horrors of my work. Part of it is an innate capacity to compartmentalize; the rest is experience and exposure, and I’ve had plenty of both. But I had always taken pride in the fact that I can keep my feelings locked up to get the job done. It’s only been recently that it feels like all that suppressed darkness is beginning to seep out.
When I look back at my long career, there is a lot I am proud of. I have caught some of the most notorious killers of the twenty-first century and brought justice and closure for their victims and families. I want to tell you about a lifetime solving these cold cases, from Laci Peterson to Jaycee Dugard to the Pittsburg homicides to, yes, my twenty-year-long hunt for the Golden State Killer.
But a deeper question eats at me as I ask myself, at what cost? I have sacrificed relationships, joy—even fatherhood—because the pursuit of evil always came first. Did I make the right choice? It’s something I grapple with every day. Yet as I stand in the spot where a young girl took her last breath, as I look into the eyes of her family, I know that, for me, there has never been a choice. “I don’t know if I can solve your case,” I whisper. “But I promise I will do my best.”
It is a promise I know I can keep.
Description from Goodreads.
“Unmasked is a stunning, brutally honest memoir about a complex, highly gifted forensic scientist who sacrificed his own personal life, even his marriage and fatherhood, in his relentless pursuit of monsters.” – Mystery & Suspense
“An exceptional memoir… his unflinching look at the emotional toll the more than 27 years he spent working in Contra Costa County in the San Francisco Bay Area took on him and his family distinguishes this from similar true crime narratives.” – Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
“True-crime superstar Holes takes readers on a gripping journey into the mind of a cold-case detective… a thoughtful yet fast-paced and absorbing amalgamation of personal memoir and true-crime novel. Crime junkies and nonfiction fans will clamor to get their hands on this book.” – Booklist
Where the Children Take Us: How One Family Achieved the Unimaginable by Zain E. Asher
Nonfiction / Memoir.
Awaiting the return of her husband and young son from a road trip, Obiajulu Ejiofor receives shattering news. There’s been a fatal car crash, and one of them is dead.
In Where the Children Take Us, Obiajulu’s daughter, Zain E. Asher, tells the story of her mother’s harrowing fight to raise four children as a widowed immigrant in South London. There is tragedy in this tale, but it is not a tragedy. Drawing on tough-love parenting strategies, Obiajulu teaches her sons and daughters to overcome the daily pressures of poverty, crime and prejudice–and much more. With her relentless support, the children exceed all expectations–becoming a CNN anchor, an Oscar-nominated actor–Asher’s older brother Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave)–a medical doctor, and a thriving entrepreneur.
The generations-old Nigerian parenting techniques that lead to the family’s salvation were born in the village where young Obiajulu and Arinze meet with their country on the brink of war. Together, they emigrate to London in the 1970s to escape the violence, but soon confront a different set of challenges in the West.
When grief threatens to engulf her fractured family after the accident, Obiajulu, suddenly a single mother in a foreign land, refuses to accept defeat. As her children veer down the wrong path, she instills a family book club with Western literary classics, testing their resolve and challenging their deeper understanding. Desperate for inspiration, she plasters newspaper clippings of Black success stories on the walls and hunts for overachieving neighbors to serve as role models, all while running Shakespeare theatre lines with her son and finishing homework into the early morning with Zain. When distractions persist, she literally cuts the TV cord and installs a residential pay phone.
The story of a woman who survived genocide, famine, poverty, and crushing grief to rise from war torn Africa to the streets of South London and eventually the drawing rooms of Buckingham Palace, Where the Children Take Us is an unforgettable portrait of strength, tenacity, love, and perseverance embodied in one towering woman.
Description from Goodreads.
“Asher delivers a well-written chronicle of absolute determination and familial devotion. A wholly inspiring portrait of an extraordinary immigrant family.” – Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW
“At its heart, Where the Children Take Us is a love letter to the author’s mother, in all her strength and determination.” – Booklist
“An inspirational story of resilience that will appeal to readers interested in memoir, parenting, mid-20th century Nigerian and British history, and actor Chiwetel Ejiofor.” – Library Journal