“Storytelling is a landscape, and tragedy is comedy is drama. It simply depends on how you frame what you’re seeing.” – Lauren Groff, Fates and Furies
And Now, Back to You by B.K. Borison ★
fiction / romance / comedy.
Jackson Clark and Delilah Stewart have had their fair share of run-ins over the years, often ending in disaster. While Jackson thrives on routine and organization from the comfort of his radio booth, Delilah loves the spontaneity and adventure out in the field. When they’re partnered against their will to cover a historic snowstorm, they find themselves scrambling to figure out how to work together.
Eager to be taken seriously as a journalist, Delilah offers Jackson a deal: If he can help her ace this assignment, she’ll help him rediscover his long-lost fun side. With unexplored chemistry burning beneath their clashes, the unlikely partnership quickly tumbles into an easy and surprising friendship.
But when other feelings start to enter the equation, can Jackson and Delilah withstand the storm? Or does what happens in the mountains stay in the mountains?
“B. K. Borison totally nails it again!… Enjoyable and super entertaining!” – Michelle Whittaker, The Indie Next List, #1 PICK
“Fans of Borison’s previous outings will be excited to delve into this warm winter-hug of a novel.” – Kristine Huntley, Booklist
“The snowy setting, the endearing protagonists’ grumpy/sunshine dynamic, and their slow-burn romance make for a wonderfully cozy and sexy read… a delightful romance to get wrapped up in…” – Melissa DeWild, Library Journal, STARRED REVIEW
“…sweet and sassy… The opposites-attract pair balance each other well, with spontaneous Delilah bringing out regimented Jackson’s fun side, and as their barbed banter becomes more flirtatious, it serves as a delightful prelude to scintillating romance. This charms.” – Publishers Weekly
Brawler: Stories by Lauren Groff ★
fiction / short stories.
Read alone, each story in Lauren Groff’s electric collection is an individual triumph, bold, agile, and packed with power. Read together, they hum in exhilarating resonance. Ranging from the 1950s to the present day and moving across age, class, and region — from New England to Florida to California — these nine stories reflect and expand upon a shared theme: the ceaseless battle between humans’ dark and light angels.
“In every human there is both an animal and a god wrestling unto death,“ one character tells us. Among those we see caught in this match are a young woman suddenly responsible for her disabled sibling, a hot-tempered high school swimmer in need of an adult, a mother blinded by the loss of her family, and a banking scion endowed with a different kind of inheritance. Motivated by love, impeded by the double edges of other peoples’ good intentions, they try to do the right thing for as long as they can.
Precise, surprising, and provocative, anchored by profound insight into human nature, Brawler reveals the repeated, sometimes heartbreaking turning points between love and fear, compassion and violence, reason and instinct, altruism and what it takes to survive.
“This collection of nine tales showcases the author’s skill in portraying slices of life with color, depth and meaning.” – Christina Ianzito, AARP
“‘Under the Wave’ is the best short story I’ve ever read.” – Kat, The Southern Bookseller Review
“This audacious collection surprises readers with the vivid lives few of us notice.” – Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW
“Thrillingly complex, wickedly strong girls and women populate the worlds of Groff’s third story collection… In total command of her characters’ nuances and the gray space they find themselves in, Groff shares brief, cryptic yet revealing notes about each story at book’s end as the cherry on top.” – Annie Bostrom, Booklist, STARRED REVIEW
Fashioning the Crown: A Story of Power, Conflict, and Couture by Justine Picardie
nonfiction / history / fashion / biography.
Fashioning the Crown tells the story of a tumultuous half-century of British history through the lens of royal fashion and image-making. Informed by Justine Picardie’s entirely original research in the Royal Archives, as well her own interactions with Elizabeth II and her family, it will reveal how, from the outbreak of the First World War to 1960, the soft power of clothing played a crucial role in helping the Royal Family, and the nation, to navigate seismic changes and challenges.
Justine will take us behind the glamor and mystique of the Crown, introducing us afresh to three generations of royals, including the glamorous Queen Mary; the Chanel-wearing young flapper who would become the Queen Mother; and the little Princess Lillibet, already setting fashion trends at the age of three. Justine will reveal the crucial importance of image-making in an era of abdications and assassinations, and amidst the rise of revolutions and fascism. She will also uncover the fascinating, little-known lives of the couturiers behind the clothes.
Figures like Hardy Amies, Edward Molyneux and Norman Hartnell had secrets that they kept in the shadows—from their sexuality, to their work in espionage—even as they dressed some of the most recognizable figures in the world. Fashioning the Crown will present a secretive institution in a captivating new light.
“…takes a thorough look at the 20th-century British royal family through the lens of high fashion and public image… enlivened by its primary source material, including arch observations from couturiers and aristocrats… Royal watchers will find much of interest.” – Publishers Weekly
“Three generations of the family are examined to discern how and why style was used as a political tool, and secrets of the Crown and its might are revealed thanks to an expert understanding of the true power of fashion.” – Town & Country
The Irish Goodbye: Micro-Memoirs by Beth Ann Fennelly
nonfiction / memoir / essays.
What can we learn from an ordinary life observed with extraordinary skill? In The Irish Goodbye, Beth Ann Fennelly writes of the small moments that shape a life, whether moving or perplexing or troubling or gladdening, in the process dignifying the diminutive through the act of attention. Fennelly explores her roles as a friend, wife, mother, and daughter, documenting a brush with an old flame or the devastating death of her sister in crystalline, precise sentences.
The longer essays concern Fennelly’s relationships―with a beloved mother-in-law, a decades-long friendship between five former college roommates, an artist who paints a series of nude portraits in Fennelly’s town, for which she poses. Interspersed between these longer memoirs are sections of flash nonfiction, a form Fennelly innovated in the genre-defying Heating & Cooling. With dazzling verve and wit, they capture the interstitial interactions―encounters with strangers, quirky observations, unexpected flights of fancy―that make up a richly lived life.
The Irish Goodbye offers a rare pleasure: intimacy. With emotional clarity and nimble prose, Fennelly invites readers to share her affirming worldview―one in which even our smallest interactions are rife with possibility.
“Micro-memoir is my new favorite genre. Imagine the gut-punch and juicily crafted lines of poetry as the guiding template for the intimate disclosure of memoir. All I wanted to do with this book was savor it.” – Mallory Moyer, The Indie Next List
“The Poet Laureate of Mississippi, she writes with lyricism that makes her sad stories all the more devastating and her humorous anecdotes even more charming. This book is a quick and easy read, but its content will stay with the reader long afterwards.” – Elizabeth Reiser, Booklist
“…modestly profound… transforms the mundane into the metaphysical under the heat of her gaze. With a poet’s knack for concision and a novelist’s deep well of empathy, Fennelly makes everyday moments worthy of close reading.” – Publishers Weekly
The Iron Garden Sutra by A.D. Sui
fiction / science fiction / horror / mystery / fantasy.
Vessel Iris has devoted himself to the Starlit Order, performing funeral rites for the dead across the galaxy, guiding souls back into the Infinite Light. Despite the meaning he finds in his work and the comfort of AI companionship, his relationships with the living leave him longing for deeper connection.
The spaceship Counsel of Nicaea has been lost for more than a thousand years, its passengers reduced to dust and bone. A relic of Earth’s dying past, its sudden appearance has attracted a team of academics eager to investigate its archeological history. And Iris has been assigned to bring peace to the crew’s long departed souls.
Carpeted in moss and intertwined with vines, Nicaea is more forest than ship. Iris’s religious rituals are met with bemusement by the scientists—and outright hostility by engineer Yan Fukui.
But the plant life isn’t the only sentience to have survived in the past millennia. Something onboard is stalking the explorers one by one. And Iris with his AI enhancement may be their only hope for survival…
“…darkly fascinating…” – Natalie Zutter, Literary Hub
“…Sui skillfully balances the cerebral, the spiritual, and the terrifying.” – Publishers Weekly
“Sui’s elaborate novel takes a locked-room murder mystery into outer space. Exploring themes of faith and philosophy, evolution and self-awareness, Sui creates a beautifully crafted world, sprinkled with a bit of horror and romance.” – Kristi Chadwick, Library Journal, STARRED REVIEW
I Told You So!: Scientists Who Were Ridiculed, Exiled, and Imprisoned for Being Right by Matt Kaplan
nonfiction / history / science / biography.
For two decades, Matt Kaplan has covered science for The Economist. He’s seen breakthroughs often occur in spite of, rather than because of, the behavior of the research community, and how support can be withheld for those who don’t conform or have the right connections. In this passionately argued and entertaining book, Kaplan narrates the history of the 19th century Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis, who realized that Childbed fever―a devastating infection that only struck women who had recently given birth―was spread by doctors not washing their hands. Semmelweis was met with overwhelming hostility by those offended at the notion that doctors were at fault, and is a prime example of how the scientific community often fights new ideas, even when the facts are staring them in the face.
In entertaining prose, Kaplan reveals scientific cases past and present to make his case. Some are familiar, like Galileo being threatened with torture and Nobel laureate Katalin Karikó being fired when on the brink of discovering how to wield mRNA–a finding that proved pivotal for the creation of the Covid-19 vaccine. Others less so, like researchers silenced for raising safety concerns about new drugs, and biologists ridiculed for revealing major flaws in the way rodent research is conducted. Kaplan shows how the scientific community can work faster and better by making reasonably small changes to the forces that shape it.
“…enlightening… a timely and important call for change.” – Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
“Through these narratives, the author sheds light on the systemic barriers faced by visionary researchers.” – Lucy Roehrig, Booklist
“An eloquent plea for reforming research funding and reducing bias in grant awards and peer review journals.” – Kirkus Reviews
Kin by Tayari Jones ★
fiction / historical fiction.
Vernice and Annie, two motherless daughters raised in Honeysuckle, Louisiana, have been best friends and neighbors since earliest childhood but are fated to live starkly different lives. Raised by a fierce aunt determined to give her a stable home in the wake of her mother’s death, Vernice leaves Honeysuckle at eighteen for Spelman College, where she joins a sisterhood of powerfully connected Black women and discovers a world of affluence, manners, aspiration, and inequality. Annie, abandoned by her mother as a child and fixated on the idea of finding her and filling the bottomless hole left by her absence, sets off on a journey that will take her into a world of peril and adversity, as well as love and adventure, culminating in a battle for her life.
A novel about mothers and daughters, friendship and sisterhood, and the complexities of being a woman in the American South, Kin is an exuberant, emotionally rich, unforgettable work from one of the brightest and most irresistible voices in contemporary fiction.
“…extraordinary… I was absolutely captivated by this stirring novel about found family… There’s no doubt Kin will be one of the most popular and well-reviewed books of 2026. It deserves all the praise and more.” – Heather Caliendo, Book Club Chat
“…quietly devastating novel… both ambitious and deeply accessible, an emotional exploration of friendship, sisterhood, and the complexities of womanhood in the American South. Kin is already a top 10 book for me in 2026, and one I expect will appear on countless book club must-read lists.” – Katie Urban, Larchmont Chronicle
“Jones’s knack for creating fully realized characters is in top form here… Jones’s bittersweet ode to Black women’s friendships will have readers talking long after the last page.” – Anjelica Rufus, Library Journal, STARRED REVIEW
“…triumphant… Throughout, Jones tells her protagonists’ stories with grace, humor, and pathos. It’s a tour de force.” – Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
More Than Enough by Anna Quindlen
fiction.
No one knows you like your book club.
High school English teacher Polly Goodman can talk about everything and anything with the women in her book club, which is why they’ve become her closest friends and, along with her veterinarian husband, the bedrock of her life. Her students, her fraught relationship with her mother, her struggles with IVF—Polly’s book club friends have heard about it all.
But when they give Polly an ancestry test kit as a joke, the results match her with a stranger. It is clear to Polly that this match is a mistake, but still she cannot help but comb through her family history for answers. Then, when it seems that the book club circle of four will become three, Polly learns how friendships can change your life in the most profound ways.
Written with Anna Quindlen’s trademark warmth, humor, and insight into the power of love and hope, More Than Enough explores how we find ourselves again and again through the relationships that define us.
“…poignant… Quindlen charms… The author’s fans will find much to admire.” – Publishers Weekly
“Quindlen is the queen of domestic fiction, and she never disappoints. This is a beautifully written, compassionate story of the ties that bind us and the secrets that untie them.” – Shelley, The Book Review Crew
“In this story about relationships, familial and chosen, warm and difficult, the characters are rendered tenderly but realistically. Quindlen’s writing makes the plot flow smoothly.” – Kristen Stewart, Library Journal, STARRED REVIEW
One of Us by Elizabeth Day
fiction / mystery.
When Fliss, the eccentric grown daughter of the powerful Fitzmaurice clan, is found dead on a beach in Bali, what seems like a tragic accident stirs more suspicion than closure for those who’ve traded favors with—and within—her family for decades.
There is Ben, Fliss’s brother, eager to minimize his sister’s passing, since it’s suddenly clear he’s next in line to be Prime Minister. And Martin—Ben’s erstwhile best friend—who is just happy that Fliss’s memorial gives him the chance to re-enter the Fitzmaurice orbit, seeking revenge and acceptance. He can’t help but notice that Ben’s wife, Serena, seems to have discovered in middle age that her privileged existence is more like a gilded cage. Or that Ben and Serena’s daughter Cosima has become an environmental activist fighting against everything her parents seem to stand for—a pivot her late aunt would’ve applauded. Where does Richard Take—Ben’s disgraced colleague, determined to make his big comeback, fit in? And circling them all is Andrew Jarvis and his money: Has he been their loyal hero, or the one who has thrown his weight around just to keep them all in check?
Delivering incisive commentary on the hypocrisies of the elite, this juicy ensemble drama about old friends and dazzling wealth perfectly captures the uneasy balance between personal ambition and collective responsibility. One of Us is a page-turner with teeth, a mash-up of The Wedding People and Succession—darkly comic and cutting, as well as unexpectedly hopeful.
“Elizabeth’s wit and her keen sense of observations about life’s moral complexities will absolutely delight.” – Zibby Owens, Katie Couric Media
“[A] scorching drama of class, family, and politics… a satisfying tale of revenge and redemption and the messy means to achieve them.” – Publishers Weekly
“Elizabeth Day is the right person to write a state-of-the-nation novel about our society at a point when so many are convinced it’s failing… The novel is wilfully big-boned, mixing levity and real substance… It’s the language of our moment, and Day’s project is in part to show that there is more energy and potential in our moment than we might fear.” – Lara Feigel, The Guardian
The Reservation by Rebecca Kauffman
fiction.
On the morning of the most important booking in the long history of the celebrated restaurant, Aunt Orsa’s erupts into chaos with the discovery that twenty-two rib eye steaks have been stolen. Hers is the most august of fine-dining establishments in this Midwestern college town, and tonight Orsa is set to host a large party honoring a very special guest–a bestselling author of national renown.
And what’s up with the recent spate of online reviews, from insulting to frankly terrible? Is Orsa, who wants only to be loved, being sabotaged on several fronts? No one is above suspicion, not the Mennonite baker nor the tattooed hard-ass chef de cuisine. Could the culprit be among the servers, or even the inexperienced undergrad working as hostess?
Who aside from Rebecca Kauffman–with her talent for portraying such abundant and sympathetic characters–could write with the wit and energy needed to launch all these various individuals whirling through their days with such complex and interactive choreography?
Like the works of the mystery guest, The Reservation is a dynamic and captivating story that shows us what it takes to get a beautiful meal to the table.
“A book that proves light touches can leave lasting impressions.” – Kirkus Reviews
“Rebecca Kauffman does an incredible job in bringing this restaurant and all its employees to life on the page, and the result is a madcap mystery that makes The Bear seem calm and collected. This utterly delightful novel is a full feast for readers.” – Michael Welch, Chicago Review of Books
“As the day progresses and Grisham’s arrival looms, the stressed-out staff begins to better understand each other’s motivations, and the story develops into a profound meditation on what it means to be connected, which Kauffman elucidates with a light touch when a bar guest reflects on the nature of storytelling: ‘The story of one man was never about just one man.’ It’s a pitch-perfect mash-up of Clue and The Bear.” – Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
The Silent Period by Francesca Manfredi; translated by Ekin Oklap
fiction.
Cristina Martino is twenty-eight and adrift. Underemployed at a university library in Turin, Italy, she still lives at home with her parents, in the shadow of her successful, married elder sister, Elena. One night, listlessly scrolling through Instagram, Cristina decides to delete her social media profiles.
What is at first a digital detox becomes an act of self-effacement: Cristina deprives herself of words, then gestures, then disappears altogether, sparking a growing “silent revolution.” When Elena tries to find her, she discovers a world much quieter and stranger than anyone ever imagined. A slender novel of big ideas, The Silent Period probes at solitude―whether chosen or suffered, salvific or fatal―and our need for genuine connection.
“Despite the outward detachment of its protagonist, the novel is full of humor, compassion, and longing; similarly, though its primary narrator may mistrust words, this novel is a pleasure to read. Wry, and as uncompromising as its heroine.” – Kirkus Reviews
“…elegant and witty… Cristina’s voice is arrestingly raw, and Manfredi sketches a convincing character portrait that builds to an intriguing inquiry into the nature of human connections and self-expression. This leaves readers with much to chew on.” – Publishers Weekly
“In this novel, words are never just words: they bruise, bind, misrepresent, and sometimes dissolve completely. Manfredi’s prose is measured but magnetic. She writes with a precision that feels almost surgical, revealing how desire, shame, longing, and memory accumulate inside a person. A psychologically rich and deeply resonant work, this novel will appeal to readers drawn to Elena Ferrante’s emotional acuity and Han Kang’s cool, penetrating explorations of the self.” – Emily Park, Booklist
Twilight of Camelot: The Short Life and Long Legacy of Patrick Bouvier Kennedy by Steven Levingston
nonfiction / biography / history.
In April 1963, the White House announced that Jackie was pregnant with a sibling for Caroline and John Jr.—joyful news after years of miscarriages and a stillbirth in 1956. But on August 7th, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy was born six weeks premature and died less than two days later.
In this probing, soulful account of the struggle to save Patrick, Steven Levingston takes us inside the long-troubled relationship of Jack and Jackie as they faced one of the most difficult experiences of their marriage. With a “perceptive and eloquent” (The Christian Science Monitor) voice, Levingston reveals how Patrick’s death, tragic as it was, ultimately brought the couple closer together and set the President on a trajectory to be a better husband and father in the months leading up to their fateful campaign trip to Dallas.
In a parallel storyline, Levingston reveals the largely unknown role President Kennedy played in modernizing an important corner of American health care. After Patrick’s death, he ordered studies into the primitive state of premature care and drummed up millions of dollars in government funding, igniting a revolution in treatments that over the decades have saved millions of infants thanks to the invention of baby ventilators, new drugs, and modern neonatal intensive care units.
For his definitive account of Patrick’s brief but influential life, Levingston draws on first-ever interviews with doctors who treated Jackie and Patrick, in-depth revelations of the Secret Service agent in whose speeding car Jackie nearly gave birth prematurely, and on new archival documents. Twilight of Camelot is a fresh and humanizing portrait of one of the most famous and complicated couples of the 20th century, and a pulsating drama that illuminates one of the least-known periods in Kennedy family history.
“The book offers a bird’s-eye view that affords sympathy for the family and presents JFK as a changed man, both personally and professionally.” – Jeffrey Aubuchon, Library Journal, STARRED REVIEW
“A poignant contribution to Kennedy lore.” – Kirkus Reviews
“…emotionally probing… Levingston fleshes out his chronicle of the couple’s reconciliation in soap-operatic prose. It makes for an affecting if occasionally maudlin addition to the Camelot saga.” – Publishers Weekly
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Sean,This is not about the new books but a recent one. I was reading The Island of Missing Trees for my small book club. I thought I would get the audiobook to speed things along. Aval