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FICTION |
Recommended by Karen
The reason my book group always chooses to read a new book from Kate Atkinson is that she never disappoints. In shifting time periods, this novel tells the story of Juliet, who was an 18-year-old MI5 spy during World War II — and who finds that mystery follows her into her later life. |
Recommended by Karen
A portrait painter finds himself unable to put brush to canvas after his life is upended by his wife asking for a divorce. He finds himself living in a secluded mountain home full of secrets that start revealing themselves to him. As he gets to know his neighbors, he starts painting again, but in a completely different way. Once again, Murakami takes us on a satisfying, surreal ride. |
Recommended by Kathy
A group of childhood friends whose lives are forever changed by World War I must learn to navigate the changing world of Europe in the 1920s and ’30s. This is Downton Abbey with more depth — and it might be my favorite book of 2018 so far. |
Recommended by Rae Ann
A New Orleans mob boss evading a hit man in the aftermath of the JFK assassination. A woman fleeing an abusive relationship with two daughters in tow. The two parties meet. Is their meeting the perfect cover story for one another or a death sentence for both? This is a page-turning literary mystery. |
Recommended by Rae Ann
Based on the lives of Joy Davidman and C. S. Lewis, strangers who became friends through their letters, this is a thoroughly researched story of two writers whose work influenced each other — and a love story of opposites. |
Recommended by Katherine
Curling up with a Tana French crime novel is like being whisked away to Ireland for a hot cup of tea. Her newest standalone mystery combines her trademark elegant prose with an evocative sense of place that puts you right into the story and doesn’t let you go. Spooky and witty, The Witch Elm is a book I looked forward to reading night after night and missed when it was over. |
Recommended by Katherine
This is one of the creepiest, most intriguing books I’ve read in a long time. I picked it up because I loved Reid’s first book, I’m Thinking of Ending Things; but Foe is even better. Set in the near future, the story begins when a traveling salesman-like government figure makes a cosmic offer to a couple on an isolated farm. What unravels their comfortable, domestic life on Earth will send a chill up your spine. |
Recommended by Steve
Sea Prayer takes its inspiration from Alan Kurdi, the Syrian toddler who drowned while his family attempted to reach Greece. A beautiful and heartrending tribute, it is a story of our time but has the timelessness of prayer or song. |
Recommended by Steve
The story here is rich and far-reaching — it begins on a brutal Barbados slave plantation, soars into the sky on an unlikely contraption, crosses oceans, and veers into the wilds of the Arctic and desert alike. But on top of that, the writing absolutely sings. Teeming landscapes practically jump to life in sentences that are so often just startling and perfect. |
Recommended by Sissy
All she wanted was to be the best heavy metal guitarist of all time. This horror novel describes what went wrong. It’s hilarious and moving and scary, just as My Best Friend’s Exorcism was. |
Recommended by Catherine
Have you been searching for a tense novel with a *possibly* unreliable narrator, set in an English countryside manor house in disrepair? Look no further! |
Recommended by River
Dubus is a master of the tragic landscape of the soul and in powerful prose renders characters that draw our empathy forward in spite of their sins. |
Recommended by Devin
This modern classic made it into the Great American Read — the PBS list of America’s favorite novels — for good reason. It begins with Celie as a teenager and follows her through the early 1900s as she breaks out of the barriers meant to confine her. A story about female friendship and empowerment, finding the Something larger than us, and making a stand, this is a book I will forever come back to. |
Recommended by Joy
The extraordinary success of these four pseudonymous novels means an HBO adaptation — the network’s first foreign-language original series — comes out in November. Let this be the reason you read (or re-read) them. No other place and no other friendship between two women has been evoked so brilliantly in literature as the friendship between Lila and Lenu, two girls from a rough neighborhood in 1950s Naples. |
Recommended by Niki
I finally picked this up after seeing it EVERYWHERE, and I’m really glad I did. It’s quirky and funny and moving and tender. Perfect for readers of Where’d You Go, Bernadette and The Rosie Project. |
Recommended by Betsy
Recently, I had a craving for verbose language and an ordinary story that sweeps across years of relationships. I wasn’t even aware of my craving until four people in the same week (including fellow bookseller John) told me to read this classic I’d somehow never read before. Two couples meet in their twenties. They grow up together. It’s so much more than that. I will return to this story for the rest of my life. |
Recommended by Rae Ann
My favorite audiobook this month. You know the question: Who are the five people, living or dead, you would invite to dinner? Sabrina arrives at her 30th birthday dinner to find her five people (living AND dead, including Audrey Hepburn) waiting to celebrate with her.
(Also available in hardcover, of course.) |
NONFICTION |
Recommended by Ann
Trust me on this one: these tiny vignettes about people who have died are the literary equivalent of a fabulous box of chocolates. Winik is so tender and insightful you’ll just want more and more. |
Recommended by Ann
Feeling nostalgic for a time when leaders were brave visionaries who moved the country towards what was moral and just? Read this book. It gave me great solace and was a great read. |
Recommended by River
A gorgeous collection from best-selling authors and personal friends sharing their most intimate stories of one of America’s greatest writers, Pat Conroy. A perfect gift! |
Recommended by Jenn
Part memoir, part homage to 13 unforgettable creatures, Sy Montgomery’s book inspires tears, laughter, and nostalgia — while Rebecca Green’s beautiful and whimsical illustrations bring these endearing creatures to life. Each narrative delicately emotes wonder, enthusiasm, and gratitude. We humans have much to learn from the beautiful diversities found in all species, including how to be a good creature. |
Recommended by Mary Laura
As I read this book, my phone filled up with pictures of text. Page after page, paragraph after paragraph — I kept photographing Johnson’s words so I could remember and carry them with me. Her essays about justice, anger, and resilience in the face of callousness and cruelty couldn’t possibly be more timely. “More than anything else, what I want is a reckoning,” Johnson writes. Read this, please. |
Recommended by Mary Laura
YES. This book feels like a revelation! Advice columnist, cultural critic, and all-around observant human being Heather Havrilesky writes entertainingly about our inability to be satisfied — and how we might shift our thinking to be happier how we are. I want everyone I know to read it. |
Recommended by Mary Laura
I read this book on a train and it made me say, “WHAAAAT?” so loudly, my fellow train-riders all looked at me funny. Think you know the origins of the Meyers-Briggs? I bet you didn’t know all this about the women who created it — and why they did. |
Recommended by Steve
When Nicole Chung decided to search out her birth parents, she didn’t know what she’d find, or whose lives she might upend. She writes about the experience beautifully and with such compassion — turning this very personal story into something more than just a memoir: a deeply resonant and poignant exploration of what it means to be a family. |
Recommended by Joy
An extensively researched and annotated narrative of the true story that inspired Nabokov’s classic, this book is an academic treatise that reads like a crime novel. I was fascinated by the mostly unknown real-life case that Weinman convincingly argues inspired the novel: the abduction of Sally Horner in 1948. I will never read Lolita in the same way again. |
Recommended by Betsy
Part memoir, part journalism, Pure explores the evangelical Christian purity movement — plus its crossover with politics and education and its shaming impact on millions of young women from the 1980s into the early 2000s. I’ve been waiting for this research to come together for a long time. Absolutely necessary if you’re building a feminist library.
(Meet the author on October 19 here at Parnassus!) |
Recommended by Andy
In A Spy Among Friends, Macintyre told of Kim Philby’s defection from Britain to the Soviet Union. This time out, Oleg Gordievsky — the highest-ranking KGB agent in London — defects to the West, secretly sharing Russian information with the English during the twilight of the Cold War. This powerful work of narrative nonfiction delivers an ending as exciting as any spy novel. |
Recommended by Keltie
We throw around the phrase “working poor” casually, in service to political punditry and lazy categorization. This is an inspiring, wrenching story of what it means to hustle to put bread on the table while living in the “breadbasket of the world.” Writing love letters to the imaginary child she never had, Smarsh tells us how she left the life she knew to find the life she imagined. A Hillbilly Elegy of the plains. |
Recommended by Catherine
When Robert McFarlane found out that a UK children’s dictionary was omitting a slew of words related to the natural world in favor of ones relating to technology, he decided that was too much and created this book with Jackie Morris. Each word in it is one of the words removed from the dictionary, and it’s a fantastic tribute to nature for readers young and old. |
Recommended by Joy
If, like me, you refuse to let apathy and indifference win, this book is for you. It is not your average poli-sci reader, but then neither are Pussy Riot your average “call your senator” activists. Advice like “make your government shit its pants,” “commit an art crime,” and “break out from prison” will have you laughing, crying, and resisting all at the same time. |
Recommended by Kevin
Spinning diverse pop culture references and illustrative personal anecdotes, Dark makes the case that practicing religion is unavoidable. It’s in the stories we tell, the values we profess, the relationships we form, the world we create. Sobering and hopeful, this book is for you. |
Recommended by Ben
In these thoughtful, conversational essays, a formerly religious Midwesterner explores the spiritual and cultural landscape around her. With equal parts irony and longing, she—true to the title—gets at the heart of things in our country and within herself. |
Recommended by Keltie
This year marks the 50th anniversary of Neil Armstrong’s moonwalk. I went to Space Camp with my eight-year old this summer and loved watching him become inspired by the cowboy bravery of the Apollo 11 astronauts. When I read Endurance, I, too, became inspired — by Mark Kelly’s story, which shows just how much of that spirit lives in the men and women who still seek the next frontier. |
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