The Lilac People: A Novel

Set in alternating timelines between 1930s Berlin and the final days of WWII, The Lilac People is a powerful testament to trans lives and history. Beautifully written and thoroughly researched, this is one of my favorite debuts of the year so far.

My Friends: A Novel

Fredrik Backman

One of my favorite books of the year. A story of 4 teenagers, the painting that showcases their friendship, and an aspiring young artist, years later, determined to know the story of the painting and the figures in it.

Also loved by Rachel and Jordan!

Audition: A Novel

Written in Kitamura’s characteristically crafted prose, Audition takes place in two parts where a character divides between herself and her other possible reality. Who are we in the paths left untread? What happens when we walk those same paths once thought lost to us? Evocative and compelling, Kitamura does it again in this thoughtful take on what is real.

Also loved by Rachel and Jake!

Heartwood: A Novel

A young woman hiking the Appalachian Trail goes missing. This is told in various documents, reports and letters from the people involved in the search, ratcheting up the suspense level so you won’t be able to put it down.

The Director: A Novel

Having escaped to Hollywood, Austrian expatriate and film director G.W. Pabst returns to his homeland just as the Nazis seize power. With no way out, Pabst begins directing films under the watchful eye of the Third Reich. The resulting novel is a stunning look at art under fascism and the easy path to succumbing to the temptation of power and complicity of evil. This is the great anti-fascist novel of the year.

Sky Daddy: A Novel

Dear reader, Have you ever had a thought or habit so shameful, so plainly weird, you could never dream of speaking it out loud? Trust me, reader, our main character Linda has you beat. Follow along on this absurdly salacious story of a woman whose erotic obsession with planes is derailing her whole life. You will gasp, you will gawk, but I believe if you let yourself, you will also see seeds of your own reflection.

Also loved by Jordan!

Fun for the Whole Family: A Novel

Estranged siblings – the famous actress, the novelist who has made the rest of the family angry, the soccer player, and the one who held them together – reunite in a semblance of the road trips the Extraordinary Endicotts took as children. But why did their famous sister call them together, and can they be friends again? This is a wonderful story about family and forgiveness.

The Correspondent: A Novel

This novel flows with the correspondence of an older woman’s life. It reveals mistakes, joys, grief and reconciliation. The letters are carefully crafted and she even receives replies from famous authors including a famous Nashville one. But are these wonderful letters a replacement for closeness? You may not think you enjoy epistolary novels, but surprise yourself with this one.

Also loved by Kathy and Paige!

Biggest book in the series. Not size. Content. Molly the maid is loveable. You want a rags to riches story for her and she just might… Alternating between present – Molly trying to solve a theft involving a Faberge egg – and past – her gran’s journal revealing how she went from only child of wealthy parents to maid. Molly and her friends work to piece past with present to solve it. I cried. A lot.

Cherry knows her mom was half of the famous duo, The Griffin Sisters. She doesn’t know why they broke up and never spoke to each other again. Cherry runs away to chase her dream of becoming a professional musician against her mother’s wishes. Her unspoken wish is to bring the Griffin Sisters back together, but she has no idea what secrets she may uncover.

Kaleidoscopic and claustrophobic, bursting with nightmares supernatural and all-too-human – this is more than just a horror story about teens getting lost in the woods. Trapped in a maze of terrors, are your friends still your friends? Are your fears really your fears? Come for the haunted house, stay for the lingering unease.

Also loved by Rachel!

Oh, my heart! This book! Seán Hewitt’s debut novel is queer coming of age as only a poet could pull it off–I took my sweet time with the 224 pages because every sentence is stunning. Open, Heaven is a perfectly weighted balance of nostalgia and disquiet, the liminal spaces between youth and adulthood. To all my fellow yearners: this one’s for you.

This debut mystery checks the boxes. New Year’s house party. Murder mystery game. What Abigail planned as a birthday celebration for her brother turns into murder. In walks the detective — a combination of Benoit Blanc and Hercule Poirot. He has to figure out who’s who, whose secrets led to murder, and how murder occurred in a locked room. The multiple endings reminded me of the movie Clue.

Also loved by Jake!

1950’s housewives have the perfect life according to magazines and TV. They re-evaluate once they read The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan, forming a book club named The Betties. By reading and discussing other writers they start thinking for themselves. They are united, liberated and educated.

No Ordinary Love is no ordinary romance. This one is for the readers who love their love a little old school, who sway their hips whenever classic 90s R&B comes on, and who rooted hard for Mariah and Derek long before Taylor and Travis. Miles and and Ella are a sexy second chance romance you would be foolish to miss out on.

This is possibly my favorite book in the Rebel Blue Ranch series! Cam finds herself all alone at the local bar in her wedding dress after her soon-to-be-husband left her at their wedding. In walks Dusty, her high school ex-boyfriend who she hasn’t talked to in years. I love how this book goes back and forth between present Cam and Dusty and their high school selves. I also love the friendships and family dynamics.

Move over, J.B. Fletcher! Blanche, Sophia, Dorothy, and Rose are detectives. Rose’s niece moves her wedding from St. Olaf to Miami. Feuding families. A body in the walk-in fridge. Four ladies in ridiculous costumes getting to the bottom of things. The best part? How perfectly each Golden Girl is depicted. I giggled at the St. Olaf stories while waiting for the murderer to be revealed.

Delusional, narcissistic, and a full-blown danger to society, Jessamyn is THE unreliable narrator. She’s desperate for her big break and nothing will keep her from starring as Maria in her regional theater’s production of The Sound of Music—whether she gets the role or not. If you’ve watched and enjoyed Pearl (the 2022 horror film), please pick this up. She’s a Lamb! is a trainwreck you can’t look away from.

Margot knows that happily-ever-afters only exist in works of fiction. As a romance author, she uses these false promises to spin the perfect love stories. But when her cynical views become public, Margot retreats to the Alaskan wilderness to write her first mystery novel. It is there that Margot begins experiencing first hand all the cringey tropes she despises. But her heart is too smart to fall for that…right?

Cozy and dark at the same time, Modern Divination is a witchy take on dark academia with five-star prose. The most atmospheric read of the year.

Set in Amsterdam, this second chance romance turned marriage of convenience between high school sweethearts is just about the best thing since fresh stroopwafel. RLS is one of my favorite contemporary romance authors, and I always look forward to a new release from her.

McGowan’s writing captures the chaos of a day behind the scenes at the fictitious New York City Museum as they host their annual fundraiser. Director Diane and a wide variety of characters juggle their duties and personal dramas, while trying to please donors and coax loans of personal collections. Witty and dark, with a surprising turn.

After calling off her engagement to her college boyfriend, a young woman brings her nonbinary best friend on the honeymoon her ex had planned for her. Spicy hijinks ensue, leaving the pair to decide what this means for their friendship.

Ashley N. Roth has a knack for creating deeply flawed characters and then making you love them anyway. This is the story of the unspoken foundational problems in Artie and Gloria’s 50 “picture-perfect” years of marriage. No book has made me both laugh out loud and weep openly like this before!

An excellent collection of short essays, acclaimed playwright Sarah Ruhl examines the many teachers, both in school and long after graduation, in our lives and their never-ending impact. Ruhl’s writing is eloquent and precise and does a superb job of distilling why these life lessons have stuck with her. As the child of educators, I think Lessons from My Teachers is a must-read for anyone with a favorite teacher.

Inspired by the famous words of Audre Lorde, “Poetry is not a luxury,” this powerful anthology focuses on accessible poems for everyone, whether you’re a new or seasoned poetry reader. Organized by seasons, this collection takes you through a year of reflection and inspiration. I started by marking all of my favorite poems, but had to stop, because almost every poem fit the bill.

Dear Author, Thank you for taking me along on your road trip. You were so brave to drive solo, following the tire tracks of the same trek you took with your complicated mother when you were young, but 20 years after her death. I enjoyed the places you took me on the 10. There were nail biting moments, lots of quotes to underline, and I was sorry to see it end.

This is exactly what I needed to read right now. Paige Desorbo and Hannah Berner have created a celebration of cherishing female friendships, being your authentic self in the pursuit of happiness, and never taking life to seriously. Grab your bestie for a buddy-read and get ready to giggle!

I love this book! Sanchez offers classic, inside-Hollywood stories that shine with warmth and exceptional comedic timing, which is perhaps no surprise given that she’s also married to New Girl star Max Greenfield. (Speaking of which, their love story?! It’s what movies are made of.) A career casting executive, wife, mother, daughter, and so much more, Sanchez explores each of these roles with great depth and heart.

Part deux of my ongoing fixation avec Mme. Child. We grew up watching her whack jars open on the counters, now we get a behind-the-scenes view at her iconic kitchen–pegboards replete with copper crockery and all. Fun fact: Paul, her husband, custom-built everything in the room to perfectly fit her 6’2 frame. Bon Appétit!

This book is an important reminder that since the dawn of time, people have been like, “Hey, you want to see a cool dog?” And yes, yes we do.

Renowned food critic and former Editor-in-Chief of Gourmet Magazine, Ruth Reichl is one of my favorite non-fiction writers. Her fame forced her to get creative in order to stay anonymous, so she created a cast of characters to move through the food scene undetected. Garlic and Sapphires is a hilarious peek into Rechl’s different personas as well as a collection of some of her most well loved reviews.

Before he created The Wire, David Simon followed the homicide division of the Baltimore police department for an entire year. The resulting book is a pulpy, propulsive, and fascinating journalistic account of a world most of us can’t even imagine. Taking in the brief highs and many lows of life on the street, Homicide is a relentlessly compelling book that will leave you shaken to your core and unable to look away.

One of my new year’s resolutions was to cook much more, and naturally, I overestimated my own skills and leapt to Mme. Child’s recipes. This book chronicles her life in France with her husband, Paul, in a France still reeling from two world wars, and how she fell in love with cooking. Forewarning, your stomach will growl at least once per chapter.

Fast paced, funny, and full of twists. Quicksilver pulled me out of my post-Onyx Storm reading slump with its lovable characters and steamy romance.

First Editions Club: May Selection

Our buyer at Parnassus, the wonderful author Lindsay Lynch (see: FEC pick Do Tell) loves nothing more than a poet writing a novel. I was never sure. It seemed a fairly small subset to get excited about. But then I read Kaveh Akbar (see: FEC pick Martyr!) and I understood her point. It’s not just the beauty of the language and the precise and jolting insights into human nature, it’s the freedom with which the whole idea of “novel” is approached. Novelists, nearly all of us, are burdened by ideas about how novels should be written, but the poets? They could care less what we think. The poets are flying.

Again and again, Ocean Vuong’s The Emperor of Gladness knocked me to the floor, so much joy and pain existing peaceably side by side.

Take this idea for example: that a boy beside a boy could form an island called “okayness.” “‘With him,’ he said, ‘it wasn’t that I was happy—but that I was okay. And okay was even better than happy because I thought it had a better chance of lasting.’ He turned and was startled to find her staring right at him. ‘Okay is underrated. You know what underrated means, right?’

‘More than what the Lord planned.’ she said.”

I sat with that one for a long time.

One of the main things we look for when we make our choices of the First Editions Club is to find a book you’ll want to keep, a book that, someday in the future, you won’t be able to believe you have a signed first edition of. That’s what you’re holding in your hands now.

Enjoy.

Ann Patchett

More about our First Editions Club: Every member receives a first edition of the selected book of the month, signed by the author. Books are carefully chosen by our staff of readers, and our picks have gone on to earn major recognition including the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the PEN/Faulkner Award. Plus, there’s no membership fee or premium charge for these books. Build a treasured library of signed first editions and always have something great to read! Makes a FABULOUS gift, too.

Love, Parnassus: May Selection