Books & Bites: January 2022

"[Owusu] dispatches all of this heartache with blistering honesty, but does so with prose light enough that it never feels too much to bear." -Entertainment Weekly

"A stunning biography....Donner’s research is impeccable, and her fluid prose and vivid character sketches keep the pages turning....This standout history isn’t to be missed.” -Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Darkly nostalgic....Miranda takes a risk by telling the story backward, but it pays off with an undroppable thriller, plenty of romantic suspense, and a fresh take on the decades-old teenage-murder theme." -Booklist

"Janelle Brown expertly takes the social temperature of those gated communities exclusive to new money and finds a chill that inhabits the growth of family life...a beauty of a book" -New York Daily News

“Beautiful World, Where Are You contains enough innovation―stylistic playfulness, a new, more cerebral mode, a variation in perspective―to signal that she is trying new things." -The Wall Street Journal

“Cosby never misses a note in this high-energy read...A superb work of crime fiction, uncompromisingly noir but deeply human, too, much like Lou Berney's November Road (2018).” -Booklist,

"A keen view of families, southern-discomfort style, with an edge and a wryness that surpass anything Edgar-winner Julie Smith ever dreamed up. A fine start to a promising new series." -Kirkus Reviews

“A heartful memoir....McCarthy is clear-eyed and unsparing about Hollywood but takes the emotional intensity of the actor’s craft and life seriously. The result is a riveting portrait of the artist as a young man.” -Publishers Weekly

"The Christmas Bookshop is literary hot chocolate with a bourbon shot: hot, sweet but with a surprising emotional kick. Colgan has woven together the ingredients for a fiendishly addictive festive romantic comedy." -The Times

"Damnation Spring joins Richard Powers’s Overstory and Annie Proulx’s Barkskins in a growing collection of epic novels about our interactions with trees." -The Washington Post

"Monumental....This episode in history gets a top-notch treatment by Kline, one of our foremost historical novelists. This fascinating 19th-century take on Orange Is the New Black is subtle, intelligent, and thrillingly melodramatic." -Kirkus Reviews

“Brilliant...Incredibly suspenseful....With abundantly human characters, natural dialogue, and a plot that unleashes one surprise after another, this could be the novel that everyone is talking about this summer.” -Booklist

“Funny and smart, twisty and surprising, Finlay Donovan is a character to root for. This suspenseful romp made me laugh but also kept me on the edge of my seat with its many surprises. I can’t wait for the next book!” -Megan Mirand

"Unforgettable characters, nail-biting drama and deep emotion that endures long after the final words are forgotten...The Forest of Vanishing Stars is a story that will touch, educate, transform and uplift." -Santa Montefiore

"The Four Winds seems eerily prescient in 2021....Its message is galvanizing and hopeful: We are a nation of scrappy survivors. We’ve been in dire straits before; we will be again. Hold your people close.” -The New York Times

"A hilarious and insightful novel about a complicated friendship between two very different women....When their differences are revealed, a betrayal takes place with devastating consequences." -SheReads

"What makes a good marriage – in fact and fiction? Kimberly McCreight takes a gimlet-eyed attempt at answering that question in the irresistible domestic drama, A Good Marriage." -Washington Post

“Highly recommended intricately designed, with a compelling cast of characters. As Hadley learns some of Marian’s secrets, readers will wonder how much we can truly know anyone.” -Library Journal

“Rowley’s third book explores the bond between Guncles and their nieces (and nephews) with astute, heartwarming observations, while illustrating how the term 'parent' expands beyond traditional mom and dad roles.” -PrideSource

“Enthralling, cinematic…Whitehead's evocation of early 1960s Harlem — strewn with double-crosses and double standards, broken glass and broken dreams — is irresistible...a valentine to a time and place.” -Minneapolis Star-Tribune

“By turns whimsical and heartbreaking, Boyne’s sprawling novel treads Dickensian territory across seven decades of Irish history, ending with a redemption for both a country and a native son.” -People

“Quinn delivers a suspenseful WWII tale of murder and revenge. This exciting thriller vividly reveals how people face adversity and sacrifice while chasing justice and retribution.” -Publishers Weekly

“Interior Chinatown is comedic. It’s literary. It’s weird and experimental, a kind of a George Saundersesque alternate reality. It’s all of those things, but maybe mostly, it’s allegory. The details meticulously crafted, render a universe that feels complete to the touch.” -Los Angeles Review of Books

“The past is not all glossy nostalgia; Beverly-Whittemore illuminates the conflicts roiling under a smooth, socially acceptable surface....Fans of Hollywood, then and now, will find this dramatic story line appealing.” -Library Journal

“What stays with you in ‘Klara and the Sun’ is the haunting narrative voice. A genuinely innocent, egoless perspective on the strange behavior of humans obsessed and wounded by power, status and fear.” -Booker Prize committee

“Lippman tells a classic mystery through the prism of many characters, all feeling the reverberations of dawning feminism and racial tension in civil-rights-era Baltimore...Lady in the Lake is aching, thoughtful, and compulsively readable.” -Vanity Fair

“Laura Dave is a master story-teller. Gripping, big-hearted and twisty, The Last Thing He Told Me grabs readers from the very first page and never lets go.” -Greer Hendricks, New York Times best-selling co-author

"The Maidens is an intricately plotted, mystery-thriller for the discerning reader. It’s an atmospheric story set on Cambridge University’s campus merging cliff-hanging twists with artful suspense." -The New York Journal of Books

“A compulsively readable story about the bonds between family members and the power of breaking free.” -Kirkus Reviews

"Blau’s intelligent, witty novel captures the essence of the ’70s with humor and immensely appealing characters. Highly recommended." -Library Journal

“Transcendent prose and vividly described settings bring to life historic events, from the Crusades to the papal interdict of 1208. Groff has outdone herself with an accomplishment as radiant as Marie’s visions.” -Publishers Weekly

“As in Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, the pleasure lies in giving in to well-wrought illusions, and the result is a beach read with meat on its bones - perfect for the Labor Day transition from play to work.” -New York magazine

“The book’s publication in the United States by Amazon Crossing announces a writer whose absorbing yet accessible prose and gift for sprinkling the mystical into a deeply human narrative is sure to draw comparisons to Latin American greats, such as Isabel Allende.” -The Washington Post

“A fantastic foray into what we know—and what we do not—about those closest to us. Intricately plotted, fascinating characters—I loved it!” -Heather Graham, New York Times bestselling author of Fade to Black

“Expertly intertwines history and matters of the heart - love, loyalty and choosing what is right, no matter the consequences.” -Heather Gudenkauf

“The miraculous quality of Strout’s fiction is the way she opens up depths with the simplest of touches, and this novel ends with the assurance that the source of love lies less in understanding than in recognition, although it may take a lifetime to learn the difference.” -The Guardian

“True and affecting, elegiac and imminent...filled with suspense and surprises, parceled out so tantalizingly that it took disciplined willpower to keep from skipping down each page to see what happens.” -The Washington Post

“The novel’s strengths abound. It upends clichés, pieties and commonplaces while also noticing salient details of the lockdown.” -The New York Times Book Review

"Williams has a sure hand in this deceptively quiet novel, told from the perspective of three different women. She expertly shifts between family drama and a suspenseful espionage plot, and makes every word and note count." -Library Journal

"Tightly woven and immediate, The Paper Palace takes us deep into a vivid summer landscape, a family, and a private, longstanding love story, and holds us there from start to finish." -Meg Wolitzer

“Told in rotating points of view, this Tilt-A-Whirl of a novel brims with jangly tension – an undeniably engrossing guessing game.” -Vogue

“It’s Dynasty meets Patricia Highsmith...Duplicity abounds when two messed-up clans collide, and Brown’s final multiple twists are doozies.” -The Washington Post

“You’ll keep flipping pages, discover new complex characters, see the mysterious situation from different points of view and you’ll be surprised at each well-plotted turn.” -Katie Yee, Literary Hub

"This sweeping tale is about an aging Hollywood starlet and the rookie magazine reporter she hires to pen her breathtaking (and scandalous) life story. Trust us: You’ll be swooning over the twist for months." -Brit & Co.

“Alex Michaelides has written one of the best psychological thrillers I have ever read. The Silent Patient is a swarming, paranoid nightmare of a novel with an ending that is destined to go down as one of the most shocking, mind-blowing twists in recent memory.” -Blake Crouch

"Sparkling...Spielman brings Tuscany to vivid life and offers more than a few surprises along the way. Fans of An Affair to Remember, Under the Tuscan Sun, and the like will be enthralled." -Publishers Weekly

"When are we too old for ghost stories? As long as they are as taut and twisty as Simone St. James' latest novel, make that never....Readers of this thoroughly entertaining thriller won't be disappointed." -Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Jane Harper creates an impressive landscape that serves to illustrate how the experience of place inevitably shapes the lives of those who live there.” -Sydney Morning Herald

"In this gloriously learned page-turner, both biography and intellectual history, Harvard Shakespearean scholar Greenblatt turns his attention to the front end of the Renaissance as the origin of Western culture's foundation: the free questioning of truth." -Publishers Weekly

"A wild adventure, a sharp critique of our cultural norms, both past, and present, and a wickedly funny and powerful exploration of the power of words and stories. The Ten Thousand Doors of January is a triumphant debut!" -Los Angeles Public Library

"Psychological thrillers don’t get any better than B.A. Paris’ scorching The Therapist, one of those books that make you want to draw the blinds to make sure nobody’s peeking inside." -Providence Journal

"To read this collection is to be invited into that sacred space where a writer steps out from behind the page to say Hello; let’s really get to know each other. Stoic, kindhearted, fierce, funny, brainy, Patchett’s essays honor what matters most 'in this precarious and precious life.' -Oprah Daily

"Alternating between Claudia’s and Jeremy’s perspectives, Brown proves adept at fully inhabiting both male and female characters in her sympathetic portrait of a troubled marriage. At once playful and heartbreaking, this novel never feels less than wholly true." -Booklist

"In An Unortho­dox Match, as the title implies, a lit­tle rebel­lion goes a long way. Whether love or the law pre­vails, her nov­el and its con­clu­sion is a wor­thy study in the rich­ness and vari­ety of our endur­ing people.” -Jewish Book Council

“Inspired by a true story, Unspeakable Things crackles with authenticity, humanity, and humor. The novel reminded me of To Kill A Mockingbird, highly recommended.” -Mark Sullivan

“Fascinating, forthright, philosophical, and inspiring, these mother-and-son musings on family, life, death, forgiveness, fame, and perseverance are at once uniquely personal and deeply human.” -Booklist

“Here, in her sensitive, elegant prose, [Bennett] evokes both the strife of racism, and what it does to a person even if they can evade some of its elements.” -Vogue

"Depending on the light, it’s either a very funny serious story or a very serious funny story. But no matter how you turn it, The Vixen offers an illuminating reflection on the slippery nature of truth in America, then and now." -Washington Post

"I devoured Watch Me Disappear in one sitting. Brown deftly peels away the layers of a loving marriage to reveal a haunting mystery and a devastating truth: that no matter how much you love someone, you can never truly know them." -Laura McHugh

"A beautifully written mystery, packed with unforgettable characters. An intricately woven portrait of small-town intrigue where old and new sins collide." -Jane Harper

“A page-turning thriller about two best friends whose annual reunion trip goes wrong—one of them may or may not have ‘accidentally’ killed a fellow backpacker!—transforming their friendship as they once knew it.” -Marie Claire

“Dugoni tackles the transition from boyhood into manhood in a heartfelt, poignant, and somber manner. It’s heartbreaking and hope filled...Raw, honest, and beautifully haunting.” -Book Review Crew