Premier Book Group Suggestions Summer 2021
←
→
Page content transcription
If your browser does not render page correctly, please read the page content below
Premier Book Group Suggestions
Summer 2021
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
2008. 288 pages
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE • The beloved first novel featuring Olive Kitteridge,
from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Oprah’s Book Club pick Olive,
Again
At times stern, at other times patient, at times perceptive, at other times in sad denial,
Olive Kitteridge, a retired schoolteacher, deplores the changes in her little town of Crosby, Maine, and in
the world at large, but she doesn’t always recognize the changes in those around her: a lounge musician
haunted by a past romance; a former student who has lost the will to live; Olive’s own adult child, who
feels tyrannized by her irrational sensitivities; and her husband, Henry, who finds his loyalty to his
marriage both a blessing and a curse.
As the townspeople grapple with their problems, mild and dire, Olive is brought to a deeper
understanding of herself and her life—sometimes painfully, but always with ruthless honesty. Olive
Kitteridge offers profound insights into the human condition—its conflicts, its tragedies and joys, and
the endurance it requires.
Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World
by Simon Winchester
2021. 464 pages
Land—whether meadow or mountainside, desert or peat bog, parkland or pasture,
suburb or city—is central to our existence. It quite literally underlies and underpins
everything. Employing the keen intellect, insatiable curiosity, and narrative verve that
are the foundations of his previous bestselling works, Simon Winchester examines what we human
beings are doing—and have done—with the billions of acres that together make up the solid surface of
our planet.
Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World examines in depth how we acquire
land, how we steward it, how and why we fight over it, and finally, how we can, and on occasion do,
come to share it. Ultimately, Winchester confronts the essential question: who actually owns the
world’s land—and why does it matter?
1
The Time Keeper by Mitch Albom
2012. 240 pages
In Mitch Albom's exceptional work of fiction, the inventor of the world's first clock is
punished for trying to measure God's greatest gift. He is banished to a cave for
centuries and forced to listen to the voices of all who come after him seeking more
days, more years.
Eventually, with his soul nearly broken, Father Time is granted his freedom, along with a magical
hourglass and a mission: a chance to redeem himself by teaching two earthly people the true meaning
of time.
He returns to our world--now dominated by the hour-counting he so innocently began--and commences
a journey with two unlikely partners: one a teenage girl who is about to give up on life, the other a
wealthy old businessman who wants to live forever. To save himself, he must save them both. And stop
the world to do so.
Told in Albom's signature spare, evocative prose, this remarkably original tale will inspire readers
everywhere to reconsider their own notions of time, how they spend it, and how precious it truly is.
The Four Winds by Kristen Hannah
2021. 464 pages
From the number-one bestselling author of The Nightingale and The Great
Alone comes a powerful American epic about love and heroism and hope, set during
the Great Depression, a time when the country was in crisis and at war with itself,
when millions were out of work and even the land seemed to have turned against
them.
Texas, 1921. A time of abundance. The Great War is over, the bounty of the land is plentiful, and
America is on the brink of a new and optimistic era. But for Elsa Wolcott, deemed too old to marry in a
time when marriage is a woman’s only option, the future seems bleak. Until the night she meets Rafe
Martinelli and decides to change the direction of her life. With her reputation in ruin, there is only one
respectable choice: marriage to a man she barely knows.
By 1934, the world has changed; millions are out of work and drought has devastated the Great Plains.
Farmers are fighting to keep their land and their livelihoods as crops fail and water dries up and the
earth cracks open. Dust storms roll relentlessly across the plains. Everything on the Martinelli farm is
dying, including Elsa’s tenuous marriage; each day is a desperate battle against nature and a fight to
keep her children alive.
In this uncertain and perilous time, Elsa―like so many of her neighbors―must make an agonizing
choice: fight for the land she loves or leave it behind and go west, to California, in search of a better life
2
for her family.
The Four Winds is a rich, sweeping novel that stunningly brings to life the Great Depression and the
people who lived through it―the harsh realities that divided us as a nation and the enduring battle
between the haves and the have-nots. A testament to hope, resilience, and the strength of the human
spirit to survive adversity, The Four Winds is an indelible portrait of America and the American dream, as
seen through the eyes of one indomitable woman whose courage and sacrifice will come to define a
generation.
Circe by Madeline Miller
2018. 400 pages
In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born.
But Circe is a strange child -- not powerful, like her father, nor viciously alluring like her
mother. Turning to the world of mortals for companionship, she discovers that she
does possess power -- the power of witchcraft, which can transform rivals into
monsters and menace the gods themselves.
Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, tames wild beasts
and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur,
Daedalus and his doomed son Icarus, the murderous Medea, and, of course, wily Odysseus.
But there is danger, too, for a woman who stands alone, and Circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both
men and gods, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the
Olympians. To protect what she loves most, Circe must summon all her strength and choose, once and
for all, whether she belongs with the gods she is born from, or the mortals she has come to love.
With unforgettably vivid characters, mesmerizing language, and page-turning suspense, Circe is a
triumph of storytelling, an intoxicating epic of family rivalry, palace intrigue, love and loss, as well as a
celebration of indomitable female strength in a man's world.
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
2012. 416 pages
A tale of gods, kings, immortal fame, and the human heart, The Song of Achilles is a
dazzling literary feat that brilliantly reimagines Homer’s enduring masterwork, The
Iliad. An action-packed adventure, an epic love story, a marvelously conceived and
executed page-turner, Miller’s monumental debut novel has already earned
resounding acclaim from some of contemporary fiction’s brightest lights—and fans of
Mary Renault, Bernard Cornwell, Steven Pressfield, and Colleen McCullough’s Masters of Rome series
will delight in this unforgettable journey back to ancient Greece in the Age of Heroes.
3
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
1851. 284 pages
Moby-Dick; or, The Whale (1851) is a novel by Herman Melville considered an
outstanding work of Romanticism and the American Renaissance. Ishmael narrates the
monomaniacal quest of Ahab, captain of the whaler Pequod, for revenge on Moby
Dick, a white whale which on a previous voyage destroyed Ahab's ship and severed his
leg at the knee. Although the novel was a commercial failure and out of print at the time of the author's
death in 1891, its reputation as a Great American Novel grew during the twentieth century. William
Faulkner confessed he wished he had written it himself, and D. H. Lawrence called it "one of the
strangest and most wonderful books in the world", and "the greatest book of the sea ever written". "Call
me Ishmael" is one of world literature's most famous opening sentences. The product of a year and a
half of writing, the book is dedicated to Nathaniel Hawthorne, "in token of my admiration for his
genius", and draws on Melville's experience at sea, on his reading in whaling literature, and on literary
inspirations such as Shakespeare and the Bible. The detailed and realistic descriptions of whale hunting
and of extracting whale oil, as well as life aboard ship among a culturally diverse crew, are mixed with
exploration of class and social status, good and evil, and the existence of God. In addition to narrative
prose, Melville uses styles and literary devices ranging from songs, poetry and catalogs to
Shakespearean stage directions, soliloquies and asides.
Phantom Tollbooth by Norman Juster
1961. 288 pages
With almost 5 million copies sold 60 years after its original publication, generations of
readers have now journeyed with Milo to the Lands Beyond in this beloved classic.
Enriched by Jules Feiffer’s splendid illustrations, the wit, wisdom, and wordplay of
Norton Juster’s offbeat fantasy are as beguiling as ever.
For Milo, everything’s a bore. When a tollbooth mysteriously appears in his room, he drives through
only because he’s got nothing better to do. But on the other side, things seem different. Milo visits the
Island of Conclusions (you get there by jumping), learns about time from a ticking watchdog named
Tock, and even embarks on a quest to rescue Rhyme and Reason. Somewhere along the way, Milo
realizes something astonishing. Life is far from dull. In fact, it’s exciting beyond his wildest dreams!
Reading age 8-12 years.
4
Grounded by Jon Tester
2020. 416 pages
Senator Jon Tester is a rare voice in Congress. He is the only United States senator
who manages a full-time job outside of the Senate—as a farmer. But what has really
come to distinguish Tester in the Senate is his commitment to accountability, his
ability to stand up to Donald Trump, and his success in, time and again, winning red
state voters back to the Democratic Party.
In Grounded, Tester shares his early life, his rise in the Democratic party, his vision for helping rural
America, and his strategies for reaching red state voters. Leaning deeply into lessons on the value of
authenticity and hard work that he learned growing up on his family’s 1,800-acre farm near the small
town of Big Sandy, Montana—the same farm he continues to work today with his wife, Sharla—Tester
has made his political career a testament to crossing the divides of class and geography. The media and
Democrats too often discount rural people as Trump supporters; Tester knows better. His voice is vital
to the public discourse as we seek to understand the issues that are important to rural and working-class
America in not just the 2020 election but also for years to come.
A heartfelt and inspiring memoir from a courageous voice, Grounded shows us that the biggest threat to
our democracy isn’t a president who has no moral compass. It’s politicians who don’t understand the
value of accountability and hard work. Tester demonstrates that if American democracy is to survive, we
must put our trust in the values that keep us grounded.
A Promised Land by Barack Obama
2020. 768 pages
In the stirring, highly anticipated first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack
Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his
identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his
political education and the landmark moments of the first term of his historic
presidency—a time of dramatic transformation and turmoil.
Obama takes readers on a compelling journey from his earliest political aspirations to the pivotal Iowa
caucus victory that demonstrated the power of grassroots activism to the watershed night of November
4, 2008, when he was elected 44th president of the United States, becoming the first African American
to hold the nation’s highest office.
Reflecting on the presidency, he offers a unique and thoughtful exploration of both the awesome reach
and the limits of presidential power, as well as singular insights into the dynamics of U.S. partisan
politics and international diplomacy. Obama brings readers inside the Oval Office and the White House
Situation Room, and to Moscow, Cairo, Beijing, and points beyond. We are privy to his thoughts as he
assembles his cabinet, wrestles with a global financial crisis, takes the measure of Vladimir Putin,
overcomes seemingly insurmountable odds to secure passage of the Affordable Care Act, clashes with
generals about U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, tackles Wall Street reform, responds to the
devastating Deepwater Horizon blowout, and authorizes Operation Neptune’s Spear, which leads to the
5death of Osama bin Laden.
A Promised Land is extraordinarily intimate and introspective—the story of one man’s bet with history,
the faith of a community organizer tested on the world stage. Obama is candid about the balancing act
of running for office as a Black American, bearing the expectations of a generation buoyed by messages
of “hope and change,” and meeting the moral challenges of high-stakes decision-making. He is frank
about the forces that opposed him at home and abroad, open about how living in the White House
affected his wife and daughters, and unafraid to reveal self-doubt and disappointment. Yet he never
wavers from his belief that inside the great, ongoing American experiment, progress is always possible.
This beautifully written and powerful book captures Barack Obama’s conviction that democracy is not a
gift from on high but something founded on empathy and common understanding and built together,
day by day.
The Answer Is…Reflections on My Life by Alex Trebek
2020. 304 pages
Since debuting as the host of Jeopardy! in 1984, Alex Trebek has been something like
a family member to millions of television viewers, bringing entertainment and
education into their homes five nights a week. Last year, he made the stunning
announcement that he had been diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer. What
followed was an incredible outpouring of love and kindness. Social media was flooded with messages of
support, and the Jeopardy! studio received boxes of cards and letters offering guidance,
encouragement, and prayers.
For over three decades, Trebek had resisted countless appeals to write a book about his life. Yet he was
moved so much by all the goodwill, he felt compelled to finally share his story. “I want people to know a
little more about the person they have been cheering on for the past year,” he writes in The Answer Is…:
Reflections on My Life.
The book combines illuminating personal anecdotes with Trebek’s thoughts on a range of topics,
including marriage, parenthood, education, success, spirituality, and philanthropy. Trebek also
addresses the questions he gets asked most often by Jeopardy! fans, such as what prompted him to
shave his signature mustache, his insights on legendary players like Ken Jennings and James Holzhauer,
and his opinion of Will Ferrell’s Saturday Night Live impersonation. The book uses a novel structure
inspired by Jeopardy!, with each chapter title in the form of a question, and features dozens of never-
before-seen photos that candidly capture Trebek over the years.
This wise, charming, and inspiring book is further evidence why Trebek has long been considered one of
the most beloved and respected figures in entertainment.
6The Daughters of Yalta: The Churchills, Roosevelts, and Harrimans:
A Story of Love and War by Catherine Grace Katz
2020. 416 pages
Tensions during the Yalta Conference in February 1945 threatened to tear apart the
wartime alliance among Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin just
as victory was close at hand. Catherine Grace Katz uncovers the dramatic story of the
three young women who were chosen by their fathers to travel with them to Yalta,
each bound by fierce family loyalty, political savvy, and intertwined romances that powerfully colored
these crucial days.
Kathleen Harriman was a champion skier, war correspondent, and daughter of U.S. Ambassador to the
Soviet Union Averell Harriman. Sarah Churchill, an actress-turned-RAF officer, was devoted to her
brilliant father, who depended on her astute political mind. Roosevelt’s only daughter, Anna, chosen
instead of her mother Eleanor to accompany the president to Yalta, arrived there as keeper of her
father’s most damaging secrets. Situated in the political maelstrom that marked the transition to a post-
war world, The Daughters of Yalta is a remarkable story of fathers and daughters whose relationships
were tested and strengthened by the history they witnessed and the future they crafted together.
The Sum of Us by Heather McGhee
2021. 448 pages
Heather McGhee’s specialty is the American economy—and the mystery of why it so
often fails the American public. From the financial crisis to rising student debt to
collapsing public infrastructure, she found a common root problem: racism. But not
just in the most obvious indignities for people of color. Racism has costs for white
people, too. It is the common denominator of our most vexing public problems, the core dysfunction of
our democracy and constitutive of the spiritual and moral crises that grip us all. But how did this
happen? And is there a way out?
McGhee embarks on a deeply personal journey across the country from Maine to Mississippi to
California, tallying what we lose when we buy into the zero-sum paradigm—the idea that progress for
some of us must come at the expense of others. Along the way, she meets white people who confide in
her about losing their homes, their dreams, and their shot at better jobs to the toxic mix of American
racism and greed. This is the story of how public goods in this country—from parks and pools to
functioning schools—have become private luxuries; of how unions collapsed, wages stagnated, and
inequality increased; and of how this country, unique among the world’s advanced economies, has
thwarted universal healthcare.
But in unlikely places of worship and work, McGhee finds proof of what she calls the Solidarity Dividend:
gains that come when people come together across race, to accomplish what we simply can’t do on our
own.
The Sum of Us is a brilliant analysis of how we arrived here: divided and self-destructing, materially rich
7but spiritually starved and vastly unequal. McGhee marshals economic and sociological research to paint
an irrefutable story of racism’s costs, but at the heart of the book are the humble stories of people
yearning to be part of a better America, including white supremacy’s collateral victims: white people
themselves. With startling empathy, this heartfelt message from a Black woman to a multiracial America
leaves us with a new vision for a future in which we finally realize that life can be more than a zero-sum
game.
The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich
2020. 464 pages
Thomas Wazhashk is the night watchman at the jewel bearing plant, the first factory
located near the Turtle Mountain Reservation in rural North Dakota. He is also a
Chippewa Council member who is trying to understand the consequences of a new
“emancipation” bill on its way to the floor of the United States Congress. It is 1953
and he and the other council members know the bill isn’t about freedom; Congress is
fed up with Indians. The bill is a “termination” that threatens the rights of Native Americans to their land
and their very identity. How can the government abandon treaties made in good faith with Native
Americans “for as long as the grasses shall grow, and the rivers run”?
Since graduating high school, Pixie Paranteau has insisted that everyone call her Patrice. Unlike most of
the girls on the reservation, Patrice, the class valedictorian, has no desire to wear herself down with a
husband and kids. She makes jewel bearings at the plant, a job that barely pays her enough to support
her mother and brother. Patrice’s shameful alcoholic father returns home sporadically to terrorize his
wife and children and bully her for money. But Patrice needs every penny to follow her beloved older
sister, Vera, who moved to the big city of Minneapolis. Vera may have disappeared; she hasn’t been in
touch in months, and is rumored to have had a baby. Determined to find Vera and her child, Patrice
makes a fateful trip to Minnesota that introduces her to unexpected forms of exploitation and violence,
and endangers her life.
Thomas and Patrice live in this impoverished reservation community along with young Chippewa boxer
Wood Mountain and his mother Juggie Blue, her niece and Patrice’s best friend Valentine, and Stack
Barnes, the white high school math teacher and boxing coach who is hopelessly in love with Patrice.
In the Night Watchman, Louise Erdrich creates a fictional world populated with memorable characters
who are forced to grapple with the worst and best impulses of human nature. Illuminating the loves and
lives, the desires and ambitions of these characters with compassion, wit, and intelligence, The Night
Watchman is a majestic work of fiction from this revered cultural treasure.
8What the Dog Knows: Scent, Science, and the Amazing Ways Dogs
Perceive the World by Cat Warren
2013. 352 pages
A firsthand exploration of the extraordinary abilities and surprising, sometimes life-
saving talents of “working dogs”—pups who can sniff out drugs, find explosives, even
locate the dead—as told through the experiences of a journalist and her intrepid
canine companion, which The New York Times calls “a fascinating, deeply reported journey into
the…amazing things dogs can do with their noses.”
There are thousands of working dogs all over the US and beyond with incredible abilities—they can find
missing people, detect drugs and bombs, pinpoint unmarked graves of Civil War soldiers, or even find
drowning victims more than two hundred feet below the surface of a lake. These abilities may seem
magical or mysterious, but author Cat Warren shows the science, the rigorous training, and the skilled
handling that underlie these creatures’ amazing abilities.
Cat Warren is a university professor and journalist who had tried everything she could think of to
harness her dog Solo’s boundless energy and enthusiasm…until a behavior coach suggested she try
training him to be a “working dog.” What started out as a hobby soon became a calling, as Warren was
introduced to the hidden universe of dogs who do this essential work and the handlers who train them.
Her dog Solo has a fine nose and knows how to use it, but he’s only one of many astounding dogs in a
varied field. Warren interviews cognitive psychologists, historians, medical examiners, epidemiologists,
and forensic anthropologists, as well as the breeders, trainers, and handlers who work with and rely on
these intelligent and adaptable animals daily. Along the way, Warren discovers story after story that
prove the capabilities—as well as the very real limits—of working dogs and their human partners. Clear-
eyed and unsentimental, Warren explains why our partnership with working dogs is woven into the
fabric of society, and why we keep finding new uses for the wonderful noses of our four-legged friends.
The Mission House by Carys Davies
2021. 272 pages
Fleeing his demons and the dark undercurrents of contemporary life in the UK, Hilary
Byrd takes refuge in a former British hill station in South India. Charmed by the
foreignness of his new surroundings and by the familiarity of everything the British
have left behind, he finds solace in life’s simple pleasures, travelling by rickshaw
around the small town with his driver Jamshed and staying in a mission house beside
the local presbytery where the Padre and his adoptive daughter Priscilla have taken Hilary under their
wing.
The Padre is concerned for Priscilla’s future, and as Hilary’s friendship with the young woman grows, he
begins to wonder whether his purpose lies in this new relationship. But religious tensions are brewing
9and the mission house may not be the safe haven it seems.
The Mission House boldly and imaginatively explores post-colonial ideas in a world fractured between
faith and non-belief, young and old, imperial past and nationalistic present. Tenderly subversive and
meticulously crafted, it is a deeply human story of the wonders and terrors of connection in a modern
world.
The Removed by Brandon Hobson
2021. 288 pages
In the fifteen years since their teenage son, Ray-Ray, was killed in a police shooting,
the Echota family has been suspended in private grief. The mother, Maria, increasingly
struggles to manage the onset of Alzheimer’s in her husband, Ernest. Their adult
daughter, Sonja, leads a life of solitude, punctuated only by spells of dizzying romantic
obsession. And their son, Edgar, fled home long ago, turning to drugs to mute his
feelings of alienation.
With the family’s annual bonfire approaching—an occasion marking both the Cherokee National Holiday
and Ray-Ray’s death, and a rare moment in which they openly talk about his memory—Maria attempts
to call the family together from their physical and emotional distances once more. But as the bonfire
draws near, each of them feels a strange blurring of the boundary between normal life and the spirit
world. Maria and Ernest take in a foster child who seems to almost miraculously keep Ernest’s mental
fog at bay. Sonja becomes dangerously fixated on a man named Vin, despite—or perhaps because of—
his ties to tragedy in her lifetime and lifetimes before. And in the wake of a suicide attempt, Edgar finds
himself in the mysterious Darkening Land: a place between the living and the dead, where old atrocities
echo.
Drawing deeply on Cherokee folklore, The Removed seamlessly blends the real and spiritual to excavate
the deep reverberations of trauma—a meditation on family, grief, home, and the power of stories on
both a personal and ancestral level.
The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future
of the Human Race by Walter Isaacson
2021. 560 pages
When Jennifer Doudna was in sixth grade, she came home one day to find that her dad
had left a paperback titled The Double Helix on her bed. She put it aside, thinking it was
one of those detective tales she loved. When she read it on a rainy Saturday, she
discovered she was right, in a way. As she sped through the pages, she became enthralled by the intense
drama behind the competition to discover the code of life. Even though her high school counselor told
her girls didn’t become scientists, she decided she would.
10Driven by a passion to understand how nature works and to turn discoveries into inventions, she would
help to make what the book’s author, James Watson, told her was the most important biological
advance since his co-discovery of the structure of DNA. She and her collaborators turned a curiosity of
nature into an invention that will transform the human race: an easy-to-use tool that can edit DNA.
Known as CRISPR, it opened a brave new world of medical miracles and moral questions.
The development of CRISPR and the race to create vaccines for coronavirus will hasten our transition to
the next great innovation revolution. The past half-century has been a digital age, based on the
microchip, computer, and internet. Now we are entering a life-science revolution. Children who study
digital coding will be joined by those who study genetic code.
Should we use our new evolution-hacking powers to make us less susceptible to viruses? What a
wonderful boon that would be! And what about preventing depression? Hmmm…Should we allow
parents, if they can afford it, to enhance the height or muscles or IQ of their kids?
After helping to discover CRISPR, Doudna became a leader in wrestling with these moral issues and, with
her collaborator Emmanuelle Charpentier, won the Nobel Prize in 2020. Her story is a thrilling detective
tale that involves the most profound wonders of nature, from the origins of life to the future of our
species.
Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
2021. 320 pages
Klara and the Sun, the first novel by Kazuo Ishiguro since he was awarded the Nobel
Prize in Literature, tells the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding
observational qualities, who, from her place in the store, watches carefully the
behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street
outside. She remains hopeful that a customer will soon choose her.
Klara and the Sun is a thrilling book that offers a look at our changing world through the eyes of an
unforgettable narrator, and one that explores the fundamental question: what does it mean to love?
Infinite Country by Patricia Engel
2021. 208 pages
Talia is being held at a correctional facility for adolescent girls in the forested
mountains of Colombia after committing an impulsive act of violence that may or may
not have been warranted. She urgently needs to get out and get back home to Bogotá,
where her father and a plane ticket to the United States are waiting for her. If she
misses her flight, she might also miss her chance to finally be reunited with her family
in the north.
11How this family came to occupy two different countries, two different worlds, comes into focus like
twists of a kaleidoscope. We see Talia’s parents, Mauro and Elena, fall in love in a market stall as
teenagers against a backdrop of civil war and social unrest. We see them leave Bogotá with their
firstborn, Karina, in pursuit of safety and opportunity in the United States on a temporary visa, and we
see the births of two more children, Nando and Talia, on American soil. We witness the decisions and
indecisions that lead to Mauro’s deportation and the family’s splintering—the costs they’ve all been
living with ever since.
Award-winning, internationally acclaimed author Patricia Engel, herself a dual citizen and the daughter
of Colombian immigrants, gives voice to all five family members as they navigate the particulars of their
respective circumstances. And all the while, the metronome ticks: Will Talia make it to Bogotá in time?
And if she does, can she bring herself to trade the solid facts of her father and life in Colombia for the
distant vision of her mother and siblings in America?
Rich with Bogotá urban life, steeped in Andean myth, and tense with the daily reality of the
undocumented in America, Infinite Country is the story of two countries and one mixed-status family—
for whom every triumph is stitched with regret, and every dream pursued bears the weight of a dream
deferred.
Ridgeline by Michael Punke
2021. 384 pages
In 1866, with the country barely recovered from the Civil War, new war breaks out on
the western frontier―a clash of cultures between a young, ambitious nation and the
Native tribes who have lived on the land for centuries. Colonel Henry Carrington
arrives in Wyoming’s Powder River Valley to lead the US Army in defending the
opening of a new road for gold miners and settlers. Carrington intends to build a fort in the middle of
critical hunting grounds, the home of the Lakota. Red Cloud, one of the Lakota’s most respected chiefs,
and Crazy Horse, a young but visionary warrior, understand full well the implications of this invasion. For
the Lakota, the stakes are their home, their culture, their lives.
As fall bleeds into winter, Crazy Horse leads a small war party that confronts Colonel Carrington’s
soldiers with near constant attacks. Red Cloud, meanwhile, seeks to build the tribal alliances that he
knows will be necessary to defeat the soldiers. Colonel Carrington seeks to hold together a US Army
beset with internal discord. Carrington’s officers are skeptical of their commander’s strategy, none more
so than Lieutenant George Washington Grummond, who longs to fight a foe he dismisses as inferior in
all ways. The rank-and-file soldiers, meanwhile, are still divided by the residue of civil war, and tempted
to desertion by the nearby goldfields.
Throughout this taut saga―based on real people and events―Michael Punke brings the same
immersive, vivid storytelling and historical insight that made his breakthrough debut so memorable.
As Ridgeline builds to its epic conclusion, it grapples with essential questions of conquest and justice
that still echo today.
12Tomorrow They Won’t Dare to Murder Us by Joseph Andras, trans.
by Simon Leser
2021. 144 pages.
Winner of the Prix Goncourt for first novel, one of the most prestigious literary awards
in France.
A young revolutionary plants a bomb in a factory on the outskirts of Algiers during the
Algerian War. The bomb is timed to explode after work hours, so no one will be hurt. But the authorities
have been watching. He is caught, the bomb is defused, and he is tortured, tried in a day, condemned to
death, and thrown into a cell to await the guillotine. A routine event, perhaps, in a brutal conflict that
ended the lives of more than a million Muslim Algerians.
But what if the militant is a “pied-noir”? What if his lover was a member of the French Resistance? What
happens to a “European” who chooses the side of anti-colonialism?
By turns lyrical, meditative, and heart-stoppingly suspenseful, this novel by Joseph Andras, based on a
true story, was a literary and political sensation in France, winning the Prix Goncourt for First Novel and
being acclaimed by Le Monde as “vibrantly lyrical and somber” and by the journal La Croix as a
“masterpiece”.
The Cave Dwellers by Christina McDowell
2021. 352 pages
They are the families considered worthy of a listing in the exclusive Green Book—a
discriminative diary created by the niece of Edith Roosevelt’s social secretary. Their
aristocratic bloodlines are woven into the very fabric of Washington—generation
after generation. Their old money and manner lurk through the cobblestone streets
of Georgetown, Kalorama, and Capitol Hill. They only socialize within their inner
circle, turning a blind eye to those who come and go on the political merry-go-round. These parents and
their children live in gilded existences of power and privilege.
But what they have failed to understand is that the world is changing. And when the family of one of
their own is held hostage and brutally murdered, everything about their legacy is called into question.
They’re called The Cave Dwellers.
13Hype by Gabrielle Bluestone
2021. 352 pages
We live in an age where scams are the new normal. A charismatic entrepreneur sells
thousands of tickets to a festival that never happened. Respected investors pour
millions into a start-up centered around fake blood tests. Reviewers and celebrities
flock to London’s top-rated restaurant that’s little more than a backyard shed. These
unsettling stories of today’s viral grifters have risen to fame and hit the front-page
headlines, yet the curious conundrum remains: Why do these scams happen?
Drawing from scientific research, marketing campaigns, and exclusive documents and interviews, former
Vice reporter Gabrielle Bluestone delves into the irresistible hype that fuels our social media ecosystem,
whether it’s from the trusted influencers that peddled Fyre or the consumer reviews that sold Juicero. A
cultural examination that is as revelatory as it is relevant, Hype pulls back the curtain on the
manipulation game behind the never-ending scam season—and how we as consumers can stop getting
played.
The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot by Marianne Cronin
2021. 352 pages
Seventeen-year-old Lenni Pettersson lives on the Terminal Ward at the Glasgow
Princess Royal Hospital. Though the teenager has been told she’s dying, she still has
plenty of living to do. Joining the hospital’s arts and crafts class, she meets the
magnificent Margot, an 83-year-old, purple-pajama-wearing, fruitcake-eating rebel,
who transforms Lenni in ways she never imagined.
As their friendship blooms, a world of stories opens for these unlikely companions who, between them,
have been alive for one hundred years. Though their days are dwindling, both are determined to leave
their mark on the world. With the help of Lenni’s doting palliative care nurse and Father Arthur, the
hospital’s patient chaplain, Lenni and Margot devise a plan to create one hundred paintings showcasing
the stories of the century they have lived—stories of love and loss, of courage and kindness, of
unexpected tenderness and pure joy.
Though the end is near, life isn’t quite done with these unforgettable women just yet.
Delightfully funny and bittersweet, heartbreaking yet ultimately uplifting, The One Hundred Years of
Lenni and Margot reminds us of the preciousness of life as it considers the legacy we choose to leave,
how we influence the lives of others even after we’re gone, and the wonder of a friendship that
transcends time.
14Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead
2021. 336 pages
To his customers and neighbors on 125th street, Carney is an upstanding salesman of
reasonably priced furniture, making a decent life for himself and his family. He and his
wife Elizabeth are expecting their second child, and if her parents on Striver's Row
don't approve of him or their cramped apartment across from the subway tracks, it's
still home.
Few people know he descends from a line of uptown hoods and crooks, and that his façade of normalcy
has more than a few cracks in it. Cracks that are getting bigger all the time.
Cash is tight, especially with all those installment-plan sofas, so if his cousin Freddie occasionally drops
off the odd ring or necklace, Ray doesn't ask where it comes from. He knows a discreet jeweler
downtown who doesn't ask questions, either.
Then Freddie falls in with a crew who plan to rob the Hotel Theresa—the "Waldorf of Harlem"—and
volunteers Ray's services as the fence. The heist doesn't go as planned; they rarely do. Now Ray has a
new clientele, one made up of shady cops, vicious local gangsters, two-bit pornographers, and other
assorted Harlem lowlifes.
Thus begins the internal tussle between Ray the striver and Ray the crook. As Ray navigates this double
life, he begins to see who actually pulls the strings in Harlem. Can Ray avoid getting killed, save his
cousin, and grab his share of the big score, all while maintaining his reputation as the go-to source for all
your quality home furniture needs?
Harlem Shuffle's ingenious story plays out in a beautifully recreated New York City of the early 1960s. It's
a family saga masquerading as a crime novel, a hilarious morality play, a social novel about race and
power, and ultimately a love letter to Harlem.
But mostly, it's a joy to read, another dazzling novel from the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-
winning Colson Whitehead.
Everything Inside: Stories by Edwidge Danticat
2019, 240 pages
Set in locales from Miami and Port-au-Prince to a small unnamed country in the
Caribbean and beyond, here are eight emotionally absorbing stories, rich with hard-
won wisdom and humanity. Winner of the National Book Critics Circle
Award, Everything Inside explores with quiet power and elegance the forces that pull
us together or drive us apart, sometimes in the same searing instant.
15A romance unexpectedly sparks between two wounded friends. A marriage ends for what seem like
noble reasons, but with irreparable consequences. A young woman holds on to an impossible dream
even as she fights for her survival. Two lovers reunite after unimaginable tragedy, both for their country
and in their lives. A baby’s christening brings three generations of a family to a precarious dance
between old and new. A man falls to his death in slow motion, reliving the defining moments of the life
he is about to lose.
Set in locales from Miami and Port-au-Prince to a small unnamed country in the Caribbean and beyond,
here are eight emotionally absorbing stories, rich with hard-won wisdom and humanity. At once wide in
scope and intimate, Everything Inside explores with quiet power and elegance the forces that pull us
together or drive us apart, sometimes in the same searing instant.
A Song for a New Day by Sarah Pinsker
2019. 384 pages.
(Science Fiction) Winner of the Nebula Award, A Song for a New Day follows a global
pandemic that makes public gatherings illegal and concerts impossible, except for
those willing to break the law for the love of music—and for one chance at human
connection.
In the Before, when the government didn't prohibit large public gatherings, Luce Cannon was on top of
the world. One of her songs had just taken off and she was on her way to becoming a star. Now, in the
After, terror attacks and deadly viruses have led the government to ban concerts, and Luce's connection
to the world--her music, her purpose—is closed off forever. She does what she has to do: she performs
in illegal concerts to a small but passionate community, always evading the law.
Rosemary Laws barely remembers the Before times. She spends her days in Hoodspace, helping
customers order all of their goods online for drone delivery—no physical contact with humans needed.
By lucky chance, she finds a new job and a new calling: discover amazing musicians and bring their
concerts to everyone via virtual reality. The only catch is that she'll have to do something she's never
done before and go out in public. Find the illegal concerts and bring musicians into the limelight they
deserve. But when she sees how the world could actually be, that won’t be enough.
Ghost Forest by Pik-Shuen Fung
2021. 272 pages
How do you grieve, if your family doesn’t talk about feelings?
This is the question the unnamed protagonist of Ghost Forest considers after her
father dies. One of the many Hong Kong “astronaut” fathers, he stays there to work,
while the rest of the family immigrated to Canada before the 1997 Handover, when
16the British returned sovereignty over Hong Kong to China.
As she revisits memories of her father through the years, she struggles with unresolved questions and
misunderstandings. Turning to her mother and grandmother for answers, she discovers her own life
refracted brightly in theirs.
Buoyant, heartbreaking, and unexpectedly funny, Ghost Forest is a slim novel that envelops the reader
in joy and sorrow. Fung writes with a poetic and haunting voice, layering detail and abstraction, weaving
memory and oral history to paint a moving portrait of a Chinese-Canadian astronaut family.
Highway Blue by Ailsa McFarlane
2021. 192 pages
In the lonely, beat-up town of San Padua, Anne Marie can never get the sound of the
ocean out of her head. And it’s here—dog-walking by day, working bars by night—
where she tries to forget about her ex-husband, Cal: both their brief marriage and
their long estrangement.
But when Cal shows up on Anne Marie’s doorstep one day, he upends her world once again. A gun goes
off in a violent accident, hurling the two of them on the road in escape.
Through sweaty motel rooms and dark parking lots full of whiskey-soaked souls and fair-weather
friends, Anne Marie sifts through the consequences of their crime. But this is also her search for love, in
all its broken forms, and how the pursuit of love is, in turn, a kind of redemption.
Written in spare, shimmering prose, Highway Blue is a novel of being lost and found across a vast,
mythical American landscape, and a moving look at life on society’s margins. With all the grace of a
latter-day Denis Johnson, it introduces an electrifyingly singular and brilliant new voice.
Olympus, Texas by Stacey Swann
2021. 336 pages
The Briscoe family is once again the talk of their small town when March returns to
East Texas two years after he was caught having an affair with his brother's wife. His
mother, June, hardly welcomes him back with open arms. Her husband's own past
affairs have made her tired of being the long-suffering spouse. Is it, perhaps, time for
a change? Within days of March's arrival, someone is dead, marriages are upended,
and even the strongest of alliances are shattered. In the end, the ties that hold them together might be
exactly what drag them all down.
17An expansive tour de force, Olympus, Texas cleverly weaves elements of classical mythology into a
thoroughly modern family saga, rich in drama and psychological complexity. After all, at some point,
don't we all wonder: What good is this destructive force we call love?
A Play for the End of the World by Jai Chakrabarti
2021. 304 pages
NEW YORK CITY, 1972. Jaryk Smith, a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto, and Lucy
Gardener, a southerner, newly arrived in the city, are in the first bloom of love when
they receive word that Jaryk's oldest friend has died under mysterious circumstances
in a rural village in eastern India. Travelling there alone to collect his friends' ashes,
Jaryk soon finds himself enmeshed in the chaos of local politics and efforts to stage a
play in protest against the government--the same play that he performed as a child in Warsaw as an act
of resistance against the Nazis. Torn between the survivor's guilt he has carried for decades and his
feelings for Lucy (who, unbeknownst to him, is pregnant with his child), Jaryk must decide how to honor
both the past and the present, and how to accept a happiness he is not sure he deserves. An
unforgettable love story, a provocative exploration of the role of art in times of political upheaval, and a
deeply moving reminder of the power of the past to shape the present, A Play for the End of the World is
a remarkable debut from an exciting new voice in fiction.
Good Eggs by Rebecca Hardiman
2021. 336 pages
When Kevin Gogarty’s irrepressible eighty-three-year-old mother, Millie, is caught
shoplifting yet again, he has no choice but to hire a caretaker to keep an eye on her.
Kevin, recently unemployed, is already at his wits’ end tending to a full house while
his wife travels to exotic locales for work, leaving him solo with his sulky, misbehaved
teenaged daughter, Aideen, whose troubles escalate when she befriends the campus
rebel at her new boarding school.
Into the Gogarty fray steps Sylvia, Millie’s upbeat home aide, who appears at first to be their saving
grace—until she catapults the Gogarty clan into their greatest crisis yet.
With charm, humor, and pathos to spare, Good Eggs is a delightful study in self-determination; the
notion that it’s never too late to start living; and the unique redemption that family, despite its
maddening flaws, can offer.
18Of Women and Salt by Gabriela Garcia
2021. 224 pages
In present-day Miami, Jeanette is battling addiction. Daughter of Carmen, a Cuban
immigrant, she is determined to learn more about her family history from her reticent
mother and makes the snap decision to take in the daughter of a neighbor detained
by ICE. Carmen, still wrestling with the trauma of displacement, must process her
difficult relationship with her own mother while trying to raise a wayward Jeanette.
Steadfast in her quest for understanding, Jeanette travels to Cuba to see her grandmother and reckon
with secrets from the past destined to erupt.
From 19th-century cigar factories to present-day detention centers, from Cuba to Mexico, Gabriela
Garcia's Of Women and Salt is a kaleidoscopic portrait of betrayals―personal and political, self-inflicted
and those done by others―that have shaped the lives of these extraordinary women. A haunting
meditation on the choices of mothers, the legacy of the memories they carry, and the tenacity of
women who choose to tell their stories despite those who wish to silence them, this is more than a
diaspora story; it is a story of America’s most tangled, honest, human roots.
Zorrie by Laird Hunt
2021. 176 pages
As a girl, Zorrie Underwood's modest and hardscrabble home county was the only
constant in her young life. After losing both her parents, Zorrie moved in with her
aunt, whose own death orphaned Zorrie all over again, casting her off into the
perilous realities and sublime landscapes of rural, Depression-era Indiana. Drifting
west, Zorrie survived on odd jobs, sleeping in barns and under the stars, before finding a position at a
radium processing plant. At the end of each day, the girls at her factory glowed from the radioactive
material.
But when Indiana calls Zorrie home, she finally finds the love and community that have eluded her in
and around the small town of Hillisburg. And yet, even as she tries to build a new life, Zorrie discovers
that her trials have only begun.
Spanning an entire lifetime, a life convulsed and transformed by the events of the 20th century, Laird
Hunt's extraordinary novel offers a profound and intimate portrait of the dreams that propel one
tenacious woman onward and the losses that she cannot outrun. Set against a harsh, gorgeous,
quintessentially American landscape, this is a deeply empathetic and poetic novel that belongs on a
shelf with the classics of Willa Cather, Marilynne Robinson, and Elizabeth Strout.
19Peaces by Helen Oyeyemi
2021. 272 pages
When Otto and Xavier Shin declare their love, an aunt gifts them a trip on a sleeper
train to mark their new commitment—and to get them out of her house. Setting off
with their pet mongoose, Otto and Xavier arrive at their sleepy local train station, but
quickly deduce that The Lucky Day is no ordinary locomotive. Their trip on this former
tea-smuggling train has been curated beyond their wildest imaginations, complete with mysterious and
welcoming touches, like ingredients for their favorite breakfast. They seem to be the only people
onboard, until Otto discovers a secretive woman who issues a surprising message. As further clues and
questions pile up, and the trip upends everything they thought they knew, Otto and Xavier begin to see
connections to their own pasts, connections that now bind them together.
A spellbinding tale from a star author, Peaces is about what it means to be seen by another person—
whether it’s your lover or a stranger on a train—and what happens when things you thought were firmly
in the past turn out to be right beside you.
The Final Revival of Opal & Nev by Dawnie Walton
2021. 368 pages
Opal is a fiercely independent young woman pushing against the grain in her style and
attitude, Afro-punk before that term existed. Coming of age in Detroit, she can’t
imagine settling for a 9-to-5 job—despite her unusual looks, Opal believes she can be
a star. So when the aspiring British singer/songwriter Neville Charles discovers her at a
bar’s amateur night, she takes him up on his offer to make rock music together for the
fledgling Rivington Records.
In early seventies New York City, just as she’s finding her niche as part of a flamboyant and funky
creative scene, a rival band signed to her label brandishes a Confederate flag at a promotional concert.
Opal’s bold protest and the violence that ensues set off a chain of events that will not only change the
lives of those she loves, but also be a deadly reminder that repercussions are always harsher for women,
especially black women, who dare to speak their truth.
Decades later, as Opal considers a 2016 reunion with Nev, music journalist S. Sunny Shelton seizes the
chance to curate an oral history about her idols. Sunny thought she knew most of the stories leading up
to the cult duo’s most politicized chapter. But as her interviews dig deeper, a nasty new allegation from
an unexpected source threatens to blow up everything.
Provocative and chilling, The Final Revival of Opal & Nev features a backup chorus of unforgettable
voices, a heroine the likes of which we’ve not seen in storytelling, and a daring structure, and introduces
a bold new voice in contemporary fiction.
20You can also read
