“Don’t sabotage yourself. There are plenty of other people willing to do that for free.” – Jenny Lawson, Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things
The Curse of Hester Gardens by Tamika Thompson ★
fiction / horror / suspense.
Nona McKinley raised three boys in the Hester Gardens section of Medford, Michigan, an impoverished community divided by those who follow their faith in God and those who turn to crime to survive. With her drug dealer husband behind bars and her eldest son shot to death at eighteen, Nona has devoted herself to ensuring her other children escape their brother’s fate.
Her second son Marcus is on the right path. He’s a valedictorian heading to an Ivy League school. He can get out.
But then, strange things start happening to Nona and other residents: mysterious footsteps are heard when she’s alone, people have phantom encounters in the streets, unattended appliances go off at all hours. Even more concerning is the state of Nona’s living sons. Her youngest, Lance, is hanging around with a bad crowd, and Marcus becomes moody and secretive. Sometimes he even seems to act like a different person entirely.
Nona has her secrets too. Her affair with the married church pastor has been weighing on her conscience, but that’s not the only guilt haunting her. She fears that someone—or something— is seeking revenge for an act she made in a moment of weakness to protect her family. And now everyone in Hester Gardens must pay the price…
“This novel rings with lyricism and suspense… so real and relatable that horror and non-horror readers alike will read this novel with bated breath.” – Tananarive Due, People
“Bleak, beautiful, and not to be missed.” – Molly Odintz, CrimeReads
“…brings the gothic to a public housing project… A stunningly written, viscerally scary, and deeply emotive novel… the horror is largely systemic and infrastructural, ergo, far closer to reality, and thus, far scarier… a visceral read, that immerses you fully in the everyday unpleasantry of the project, which serves almost as a microcosm for a lot that is wrong in today’s America. This novel is gruelling, all consuming, and really nothing short of phenomenal.” – George Dunn, FanFiAddict
“The Curse of Hester Gardens is a novel about America… vivid and well-realized; for those of us who didn’t grow up in an impoverished housing project, we’ll find it immersive in a way that won’t feel voyeuristic… Thompson does character and emotion so well that you can’t help but be moved… Like all the best horror, The Curse of Hester Gardens is a hard book to read for all the right reasons. An important novel, and a must-read.” – Elizabeth Broadbent, Cemetery Dance
Game On by Navessa Allen
fiction / romance.
I hate that woman.
Tyler Neumann has spent years looking for his father, and not because he wants to meet the man. No, he wants to destroy him. And he’ll manipulate whoever he can to exact his revenge.
Including Stella McCormick. She’s everything Tyler hates. Her wealth and privilege have protected her for her entire life, and Tyler thinks it’s time she finally paid the price. Whether she’s ready to or not.
I hate that man.
Stella might not believe in love at first sight, but loathing at first sight—no question. From the moment she sets eyes on Tyler in her tattoo parlor, she knows he’s the devil planning to make her life hell.
Forced to play the part of his girlfriend and invite him into her family’s glittering circles, Stella quickly clocks Tyler’s ulterior motives. But love and hate are two sides of the same coin, and soon she doesn’t know which is worse: being blackmailed by a man who wants to ruin her, or that they can’t seem to keep their hands off each other.
“…expect more of Allen’s signature banter in this enemies-to-lovers saga, lots of will-they, won’t-they and, of course scorching scenes.” – Lizz Schumer, People
How to Be Okay When Nothing Is Okay: Tips and Tricks That Kept Me Alive, Happy, and Creative in Spite of Myself by Jenny Lawson
nonfiction / self-help / memoir / comedy.
Jenny Lawson is full of contradictions. She’s a celebrated author but battles self-doubt, paralysis, and anxiety. She’s an award-winning humorist but struggles with treatment-resistant depression. The questions people most often ask her are, “How do you do it? How do you keep going even when it feels impossible? How do you keep creating?” This book is her answer.
In How to Be Okay When Nothing Is Okay, Jenny shares more than one hundred humorous, heartfelt, and genuine tools and tricks that she relies on to keep her going even when her brain isn’t working properly due to depression, anxiety, and ADHD. She also offers tips to stay passionate and focused on creative endeavors, especially when everything around you is saying to give up.
With chapters like “Wash Your Brain More Than You Wash Your Bra” (sleep, you beautiful human), “Working on Easy Mode Is Still Working” (asking for accommodations is okay!), “Celebrate Good Times, Come On!” (make it a habit to celebrate the good things), and many more, How to Be Okay When Nothing Is Okay is a balm and companion, reminding us all that we are not alone. It’s for anyone who struggles with self-doubt, guilt, motivation, and mental blocks and wants to rekindle their passion for creating. Funny, simple, empathetic, and full of hope, it will encourage you not to just survive but to find and curate joy in the face of difficult times.
“[An] an irreverent, idiosyncratic grab bag of tactics for getting through tough mental health days.” – Publishers Weekly
“Uplifting, encouraging and incredibly inspiring… Thanks to Lawson’s humor, frankness, and insight, her book ends up being much more than just another standard self-help guide. Lawson’s words will likely bring comfort and aid to readers with anxiety, chronic illness, ADHD, and depression in the times when they might be struggling the most.” – Shannon O’Connor, Library Journal, STARRED REVIEW
The Keeper by Tana French ★
fiction / mystery / suspense.
On a cold night in the remote Irish village of Ardnakelty, a girl goes missing. Sweet, loving Rachel Holohan was about to be engaged to the son of the local big shot. Instead, she’s dead in the river.
In a close-knit small town, a death like this isn’t simple. It comes wrapped in generations-old grudges and power struggles, and it splits the townland in two. Retired Chicago detective Cal Hooper has friends here now, and he owes them loyalty, but his fiancée Lena wants nothing to do with Ardnakelty’s tangles. As the feud becomes more vicious, their settled peace starts to crack apart. And when they uncover a scheme that casts a new light on Rachel’s death and threatens the whole village, they find themselves in the firing line.
“One of the greatest crime novelists writing today” (Vox) crafts a masterwork of atmospheric suspense that brings the story of one of her most beloved characters to a spellbinding conclusion.
“Great crime fiction.” – Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW
“…unputdownable… a mystery for the ages.” – Jodé Millman, BookTrib
“The patron saint of moody, literary crime is closing out her wildly popular Cal Hooper trilogy, and we aren’t quite ready to say goodbye… Nobody writes communal paranoia and private guilt like French does…” – Charley Burlock, Oprah Daily
“French’s prose, ability to capture emotions and sense of place are as superb as ever. The book is gorgeously written and engaging from start to end. I’m jealous of those who haven’t read the series yet and can immediately jump from one book to the next and savor the character development and bonds that stretch across all three novels!” – Melissa D’Agnese, Woman’s World
The Moonshine Women by Michelle Collins Anderson
fiction / historical fiction.
Every batch of Strong moonshine has its own special flavor, thanks to the secret ingredients that matriarch Lidy Strong adds to the barrels of fermenting corn mash. Whether a bucketful of golden peaches, a ripe melon or juicy, jewel-toned berries, that extra “something something” is what makes the Strong “shine” so prized—and allows the family to survive after crop prices plummeted in the wake of the Great War.
Each of the Strong sisters, too, is distinct. The stoic and steadfast eldest, Rebecca, finds more comfort in nature than with people… until she finds a new home in the love she discovers for the woman who restores her health after a near-devastating accident. Middle sister Elsie is kind, beautiful—and itching for a life more thrilling than the farm can offer. And Jace, the bold and wild-hearted youngest, is known far and wide as “Shine,” a name that suits her fiery personality and flaming red hair as much as her innate skill with a still.
Their father, Hiram, has been drowning himself in grief and liquor ever since his wife died. But the moonshine business is unforgiving, especially with Prohibition agents turning up in every creek and holler. When tragedy strikes, it falls to the Strong women to keep the still running, the family together, and hope burning on the horizon.
From the Ozark mountains edged in oak and pine, to the outlaw paradise of Hot Springs, Arkansas—where gangsters like Al Capone line the bar at the Southern Club—the sisters’ quests for vengeance, healing, and love will drive them forward, in search of a future as transformative and powerful as the purest Strong moonshine.
“[A] compelling story about resilience, sisterhood, and survival.” – Shelley, The Book Review Crew
“Recommended for readers who enjoy novels about strong women characters and rural survival.” – Joyce Sparrow, Library Journal
“I love books about the strength, determination and devotion of women. This story of the incredible bonds and hardships of three sisters during Prohibition who will do what it takes to survive is all that and more.” – Jane Simons, The Indie Next List
The News from Dublin: Stories by Colm Tóibín
fiction / short stories / historical fiction.
Celebrated as “his generation’s most gifted writer of love’s complicated, contradictory power” (Los Angeles Times), Colm Tóibín is a master of short fiction as well as the novel, able to summon an extraordinary intensity of emotion in a brief tale. These eleven stories transport readers across continents and eras.
In “The Journey to Galway,” a mother who has learned of the death of her son, a fighter pilot in World War I, travels to Galway to inform his wife and their three now fatherless children. “Sleep,” originally published in The New Yorker, explores the rift between two lovers as one of them cannot reckon with his grief and fear after the death of his brother. Death, again, is a central character in the title story, “The News from Dublin,” as Maurice Webster travels to Dublin to try to save his younger brother who is dying of tuberculosis. Maurice must petition the health minister for access to a new experimental drug, and this is the only hope.
Tóibín’s stories are rich with the complexities of family dynamics, the haunting pull of the past, and the quiet revelations that define our lives. His characters, whether navigating the aftermath of war, or forbidden love, or the desires of a girl in Catalan, or the quiet struggles mundane life, are rendered with illuminating, unforgettable empathy and insight.
The News from Dublin is an exquisite introduction to Tóibín’s short fiction for new readers who may have discovered Tóibín with the publication of Long Island, and a glorious new collection for longtime fans of this “achingly beautiful writer… with infinite compassion” (Miami Herald).
“The quiet humanity of Tóibín’s characters is as arresting as his knack for rendering relationships and place. This collection offers much to admire.” – Publishers Weekly
“Grief, betrayal and moral complication are rendered in calm, frictionless paragraphs; Tóibín lulls the reader into a kind of complicit attentiveness, so that the full force of what has happened only lands after the sentence, or the story, has finished… a [work] of profound, disquieting power.” – Sarah Crown, The Guardian
“Tóibín is a master of lucid, exacting prose; his finely calibrated sentences often move forward with a gentle inevitability while resisting ornament in favor of emotional accuracy. This style creates a tone that mirrors thought itself: hesitant, recursive, alert to contradiction. The disciplined calm of the prose adds to the stories’ suggestion that lives are most decisively altered not by dramatic announcements but by what is absorbed slowly, through attention and memory.” – Bill Kelly, Booklist
Son of Nobody by Yann Martel ★
fiction / historical fiction.
The Psoad is an Ancient Greek epic in free verse that follows a goatherd’s son, Psoas of Midea, who leaves his wife and family to fight with the Greeks at Troy. This commoner’s story was lost to time―until Harlow Donne, a Canadian academic who has left his own wife and daughter behind to study at Oxford, discovers its relics nearly thirty centuries later.
As sole translator and interpreter of The Psoad, Harlow dedicates the poem and its footnotes to his daughter, Helen. Under his gaze, a personal message to his beloved child appears in the ancient text, like a palimpsest. Despite the thousands of years and hundreds of miles that separate Psoas and Harlow, a thread hasn’t frayed: the universal song of homesickness and regret, of love, ambition, and grief.
Son of Nobody takes readers from the plains of Troy to the halls of Oxford, from the classical to the contemporary, from ancient verses to modern footnotes. It is a dazzling, masterful feat of myth, history, and domesticity that explores how stories become facts, the price we pay to share them, and how we live―then, now, always.
“Martel’s brilliant examination of how history is made and of who pays the price for all-consuming obsessions is original, thought-provoking, and utterly absorbing.” – Kristine Huntley, Booklist, STARRED REVIEW
“A stunningly imagined revisitation of an ancient past that is every bit as awful as the present.” – Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW
“…Yann Martel again flexes his extraordinary imagination… Son of Nobody joins other brilliant novels involving deranged scholars, including Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire.” – Heller McAlpin, The Christian Science Monitor
“[A] singular tour de force… Son of Nobody demands concentration from its readers. It asks us to slow down, to learn how to wait, how to observe, how to live. It is a work that owes so much to the history of storytelling but is fierce in its hope that stories will always sing our histories.” – Cheryl Pearl Sucher, New Zealand Listener
Tree Lore: Magic, Myth, and Wisdom from Root to Bough by Dawn Nelson; illustrated by Julia Asenbaum
nonfiction / nature / plants / spirituality / folklore.
Explore the vast and wondrous legends behind 35 of the world’s tree species and enjoy a new approach to nature–based spirituality.
In this nature connection and spiritual wellness tool, Dawn Nelson offers a new way of connecting with trees―and in turn the landscape and nature around us―through stories, lore, and sacred symbolism. Tales drawn from around the world (including North America, Africa, Oceana, Asia, South America, and Europe) reveal how these iconic trees have become so significant in human culture. Featuring Native American stories about the famous California redwoods, Norse myths about the mighty oak tree, Incan tales about palo santo, and Middle Eastern folklore about frankincense, Tree Lore covers many continents and cultures.
Stunning illustrations capture each tree’s unique properties, and an affirmation following each tree’s story encourages readers to pause and consider its message, and can be used as a daily meditation tool to find strength in the trees and their ancient wisdom.
“Beyond the branches, nature tells a story. This engrossing read explores the connection between nature and spirituality through various types of trees.” – B&N Reads
Upward Bound by Woody Brown ★
fiction.
Upward Bound is not a place anyone dreams of spending their days. The dreary adult daycare center for Los Angeles’s disabled community is, for many of its clients and staff, a place of last resort. This includes Carlos, a young aide who lost his mother as a boy and now works there alongside his beloved sister, Mariana; Jorge, the gentle nonspeaking giant whom Carlos seeks to befriend (and prevent from escaping); Tom, a beautiful young man with cerebral palsy who pines for Ann, the summer lifeguard at the center’s pool who feels out of her depth. Then there’s Dave, Upward Bound’s director, who came to L.A. to pursue an acting career but now channels his passion into staging an overly ambitious holiday show starring the center’s irrepressible clients. Framing these intertwined narratives—and connecting them in surprising, shattering ways—is the riveting and sometimes ironic testimony of Walter, a recent community college graduate who, after a family tragedy, must return to the company of his disabled peers.
In Upward Bound, Woody Brown has created an indelible, authentic, and profoundly moving group portrait of autism and other disabilities, all illuminated by his empathy, sly sense of humor, and enormous gifts as a novelist. With remarkable sophistication, insight, and creativity, Brown depicts a community too-often invisible in literature and society. Filled with characters you won’t soon forget, Upward Bound will inspire and touch you, teaching you as much about yourself as the tender, miraculous world behind the center’s doors.
“[A] singular debut novel.” – New York Times
“A debut novel that truly breaks new ground.” – Kirkus Reviews
“An interlocking, polyphonic portrait of a community often overlooked.. It’s a startlingly unique and fresh perspective on the world: we’re lucky to exist inside Brown’s creation, a deeply heartfelt exploration of humanity.” – Julia Hass, Literary Hub
“Brown’s compassionate debut delves with great insight into the lives and minds of the disabled residents of an adult day care center in Southern California… The author, who is nonspeaking and autistic, captures the humanity of his characters… This captivating work illuminates a world too often ignored.” – Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
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