Hello Beautiful

Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano is centered around the four Padavano sisters in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago. 

William Waters grew up in a house without love. His parents barely looked at him. The only time he had any happiness was when he was playing basketball. When William earns a scholarship, he chooses a school away from his parents. He meets Julia Padavano during his freshman year.

Julia comes with her family. The four sisters are inseparable. As William become part of the Padavano circle, he has his first experiences of a loving family. The house is always full of love and chaos.

Napolitano writes characters whom you would want in your own life. Her stories will stay with you for long after you have stayed up all night to finish her books. 

Napolitano, Ann. (2023). Hello Beautiful. New York: The Dial Press.  

Lessons in Chemistry

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus is one of the most delightful books I have read this year. 

Elizabeth Zott is a chemist. In the early 1960s there are not many women who have braved the gauntlet required to get an advanced degree. Now she works at the Hastings Research Institute. And Hastings is where she meets Calvin Evans - a man who sees her like no one else has. 

Filled with amazing characters and laugh-out-loud scenes, but also containing the realities of the time, the struggle to be taken seriously and one of the best dogs ever written. 

Read this book. I have listened to the audiobook and am now reading it - back to back. 

Garmus, Bonnie. (2022). Lessons in Chemistry. New York: Doubleday. 

Zeitoun

Zeitoun by Dave Eggers is the true story of one family's experiences in and around Hurricane Katrina.

Nola residents Kathy and Abdulrahman Zeitoun own and run a construction and painting company. They are known as good neighbors and loving parts of Syrian Muslim community. 

When the news starts talking of a storm headed toward New Orleans, Kathy decides to take the children to a relative's house farther inland. Zeitoun stays to watch the house and be available for their customers' needs. 

After weathering the storm with some leaks, water starts slowly flooding in. Zeitoun moves everything he can upstairs to keep it dry. He takes a used canoe out of the garage and ties it to the from porch. 

After the flooding, Zeitoun uses his canoe to search for people who need help. He finds one of their buildings that still have phone services and keeps in touch with Kathy. 

Then random police from all over the country arrive, volunteering to "protect the city" from looters. Zeitoun, his building tenant, an acquaintance from their mosque, and a stranger are all arrested. Having identification showing that be belongs has no effect. 

What follows is one of the failures of FEMA and law enforcement. Read this book. It is important to see what really goes on in times of chaos. 

Eggers, Dave. (2009). Zeitoun. New York: McSweeny's Books.

Patience is a Subtle Thief

Patience is a Subtle Thief by Abi Ishola-Ayodeji

Hope and circumstance define a young woman’s life in this heartbreaking tale of lost innocence, set in politically volatile 1990s Nigeria, from an exciting and fresh voice in global literature. 

For as long as she can remember, Patience Adewale, the eldest daughter of Chief Kolade Adewale, has been waiting for confirmation that she is loved, that there is a place where she truly belongs. Patience lives a sheltered life within the secure walls of the family’s mansion in Ibadan, but finds no comfort from her distant father and stepmother Modupe. Her only ally is her younger sister, yet even Margaret’s love and support cannot overcome Patience’s insecurity and uncertainty.

More than anything, Patience wants to know why her father and uncle banished her mother from their compound years ago—and whether her mother is even alive. Determined to discover the truth, Patience embarks on a desperate search to find her mother. Answers begin to surface when she moves to Lagos for university and unexpectedly reconnects with her cousin Kash.

Kash and his friend Emeka are petty thieves with an opportunity to make a big score. To pull it off they need help—and enlist Patience and Emeka’s straight-arrow brother, Chike, to become partners in their scheme. The thieves’ plan is to quit after this job. But unforeseen events lead to unexpected consequences—and demand a price from Patience that may be too steep to pay.

Suspenseful and evoking the subtleties of Nigerian life in an fresh and unexpected way, Patience Is a Subtle Thief is a heart-wrenching story of one young woman’s precarious journey to adulthood, and the risks and sacrifices it takes to follow her heart.

[from Harper Collins]

Ishola-Ayodeji, Abi. (2022). Patience is a Subtle Thief. New York: Harper Collins.

The Ends of the World: Volcanic Apocalypses, Lethal Oceans, and Our Earth's Past Mass Extinctions

The Ends of the World: Volcanic Apocalypses, Lethal Oceans, and Our Earth's Past Mass Extinctions by Peter Brannen tells the history of our planet from the End-Ordovician to the present, exploring the causes of the five mass extinctions that have occurred on Earth.

This book is a fascinating look at the life on our planet from the beginning. With each extinction event, different species developed or sometimes grew exponentially in size. From single celled organisms to life in the oceans and on land, to the dinosaurs to humans, this is a great books. Both filled with information and easy to read. 

If you live on this planet, this book is for you. 

Brannen, Peter. (2017). The Ends of the World: Volcanic Apocalypses, Lethal Oceans, and Our Earth's Past Mass Extinctions. New York: Ecco.

Behind You is the Sea

Behind You is the Sea by Susan Muaddi Darraj is an collection of connected short stories about Palestinian Americans who live in Baltimore. Darraj is a beautiful writer.

From Harper Collins:

An exciting debut novel that gives voice to the diverse residents of a Palestinian American community in Baltimore—from young activists in conflict with their traditional parents to the poor who clean for the rich—lives which intersect across divides of class, generation, and religion.

Funny and touching, Behind You Is the Sea brings us into the homes and lives of three main families—the Baladis, the Salamehs, and the Ammars—Palestinian immigrants who’ve all found a different welcome in America.

Their various fates and struggles cause their community dynamic to sizzle and sometimes explode: The wealthy Ammar family employs young Maysoon Baladi, whose own family struggles financially, to clean up after their spoiled teenagers. Meanwhile, Marcus Salameh confronts his father in an effort to protect his younger sister for “dishonoring” their name. Only a trip to Palestine, where Marcus experiences an unexpected and dramatic transformation, can bridge this seemingly unbridgeable divide between the two generations.

Behind You Is the Sea faces stereotypes about Palestinian culture head-on and, shifting perspectives to weave a complex social fabric replete with weddings, funerals, broken hearts, and devastating secrets.

Darraj, Susan Muaddi. (2024). Behind You is the Sea. New York: Harpervia.

Daughter of the Merciful Deep

Daughter of the Merciful Deep by Leslye Penelope is the author's second book that deals with a hard subject in our history beautifully. 

Jane Edwards lives in Awenasa, a Black town in the South. Awenasa is along a river that is to be dammed, which will cause the town to be underwater by winter. 

Government officials come to town and interview home owners, offering a small amount of money to relocate. Many in the town rent from the town's founder who set up the town as a haven for formerly enslaved folks and their families. 

Jane, who has not spoken since she was about ten years old,  spots a stranger - a man who looks exactly like her sister's former boyfriend who was lynched in their old town. 

Can he be the key to saving Awenasa? Or is he a ghost from the past come to collect what she owes him?

Leslye Penelope is a brilliant storyteller. She weaves magical realism into historically accurate portrayals Black American's lives in our history. If you live in the States, read her books.

Penelope, Leslye. (2024). Daughter of the Merciful Deep. New York: Redhook.

City of Laughter

 

City of Laughter by Temim Fruchter is a family saga through four generations of women.

A rich and riveting debut spanning four generations of Eastern European Jewish women bound by blood, half-hidden secrets and the fantastical visitation of a shapeshifting stranger over the course of 100 years.

City of Laughter follows a young queer woman stuck in a thicket of generational secrets back to her family's origins, where ancestral clues begin to reveal a lineage both haunted and shaped by desire.

Ropshitz, Poland, was once known as the City of Laughter. As this story opens, an 18th-century badchan, a holy jester whose job is to make wedding guests laugh, receives a visitation from a mysterious stranger - bringing the laughter the people of Ropshitz desperately need, and triggering a sequence of events that will reverberate across the coming century.

In the present day, Shiva Margolin, recovering from the heartbreak of her first big queer love and grieving the death of her beloved father, struggles to connect with her guarded mother, who spends most of her time at the local funeral home. A student of Jewish folklore, Shiva seizes an opportunity to visit Poland, hoping her family's mysteries will make more sense if she walks in the footsteps of her great-grandmother, Mira, about whom no one speaks.

What she finds will make her question not only her past and her future, but also her present. Electric and sharply intimate, City of Laughter zigzags between our universe and a tapestry of real and invented Jewish folklore, asking how far we can travel from the stories that have raised us without leaving them behind. [from fantastic fiction]

Fruchter, Temim. (2024). City of Laughter. New York: Grove Press.

A Death in Cornwall (Gabriel Allon #24)

A Death in Cornwall by Daniel Silva is the 24th book in the Gabriel Allon series - following the life of an art restorer and now-retired Mossad agent. 

Art restorer and legendary spy Gabriel Allon has slipped quietly into London to attend a reception at the Courtauld Gallery celebrating the return of a stolen self-portrait by Vincent van Gogh. But when an old friend from the Devon and Cornwall Police seeks his help with a baffling murder investigation, he finds himself pursuing a powerful and dangerous new adversary.

This is my favorite thriller/mystery/espionage series. Gabriel Allon is a great character. Daniel Silva is an amazing writer. If you like books, check out this series.

Silva, Daniel. (2024). A Death in Cornwall. New York: Harper.

Thieves' Gambit (Book #1)

Thieves' Gambit by Kayvion Lewis is the first book in an adventure series about a group of teen thieves. 

Ross Quest is the latest generation of her family of thieves. Somehow, along with pulling of heists around the world, Ross has little freedom. She is considering running away to a camp to see what other people's lives are like.

With an extra escape plan in place, Ross is read to go to the airport once she and her mom clear the yacht they have been hired to break into. But something goes wrong.

Now her only option is to join the Gambit - a contest among young thieves whose prize is the granting of one wish. A wish Ross can use to save her mother.

Lewis, Kayvion. (2023). Thieves' Gambit. New York: Nancy Paulsen Books.

Icebreaker

Icebreaker by A.L. Graziadei is a sports romance set on a college ice hockey team.

Mickey James III was born for hockey. At times he feels like that is all his father and grandfather care about. Both of them were pick as first pick in the NHL draft in their days. Mickey is at school for one year, until the draft. He is listed as likely to go number one, but on his heels is his new classmate, Jaysen Caulfield.

Jaysen Caulfield is the first person in his family to play ice hockey. He does it for the love of the game. He plans on being picked in the next draft, but will be getting a degree before stating in the NHL. 

This is a great sports book, but also so much more. A sensitive look at depression. I listened to the audiobook. The reader is great and I was sucked in right away.

Graziadei, A.L. (2002). Icebreaker. New York: Macmillian.

Into the Planet: My Life as a Cave Diver

Into the Planet: My Life as a Cave Diver by Jill Heinerth is a spooky exploration into the most dangerous thing you can do on Earth!

I have always been equal parts fascinated and scared of caves. Imaging exploring on underwater!

From Penguin Random House:

As one of the most celebrated cave divers in the world, Jill Heinerth has seen the planet in a way almost no one has. In a workday, she might swim below your home, through conduits in volcanoes or cracks in the world's largest iceberg. She's an explorer, a scientist's eyes and hands underwater—discovering new species and examining our finite freshwater reserves—and a filmmaker documenting the wonders of underwater life. Often the lone woman in a male-dominated domain, she tests the limits of human endurance at every tight turn, risking her life with each mission. To not only survive in this world but excel, Jill has had to learn how to master self-doubt like no other.

Heinerth, Jill. (2019). Into the Planet: My Life as a Cave Diver. New York: Ecco. 

The Thirty Names of Night

The Thirty Names of Night by Zeyn Joukhadar is a story set in the Syrian American community in lower Manhattan and Brooklyn. This is a beautifully told story.

Five years after a suspicious fire killed his ornithologist mother, a closeted Syrian American trans boy sheds his birth name and searches for a new one. He has been unable to paint since his mother’s ghost has begun to visit him each evening. As his grandmother’s sole caretaker, he spends his days cooped up in their apartment, avoiding his neighborhood masjid, his estranged sister, and even his best friend (who also happens to be his longtime crush). The only time he feels truly free is when he slips out at night to paint murals on buildings in the once-thriving Manhattan neighborhood known as Little Syria.

One night, he enters the abandoned community house and finds the tattered journal of a Syrian American artist named Laila Z, who dedicated her career to painting the birds of North America. She famously and mysteriously disappeared more than sixty years before, but her journal contains proof that both his mother and Laila Z encountered the same rare bird before their deaths. In fact, Laila Z’s past is intimately tied to his mother’s—and his grandmother’s—in ways he never could have expected. Even more surprising, Laila Z’s story reveals the histories of queer and transgender people within his own community that he never knew. Realizing that he isn’t and has never been alone, he has the courage to officially claim a new name: Nadir, an Arabic name meaning rare.

As unprecedented numbers of birds are mysteriously drawn to the New York City skies, Nadir enlists the help of his family and friends to unravel what happened to Laila Z and the rare bird his mother died trying to save. Following his mother’s ghost, he uncovers the silences kept in the name of survival by his own community, his own family, and within himself, and discovers the family that was there all along. [from Fantastic Fiction]

Joukhadar, Zeyn. (2020). The Thirty Names of Night. New York: Atria Books.

The Safekeep

 

The Safekeep by Yael Van der Woulden is an historical fiction novel that packs a punch. 

1961, Dutch province of Overijssel. 

Isabel lives by herself in her mother's house. She spends her time maintaining the house and garden, and managing the maid who comes in the daytime. By all accounts she is lonely and closed off.

When she is coaxed to have dinner with her two brothers in the city, her brother Louis arrives with his latest girlfriend. Eva is the opposite of Isabel, and Isabel dislikes her on sight. 

A few weeks later, when Louis have to travel for work, he show up at the house (which he technically owns) with Eva in tow. Eva is to stay with Isabel for a few weeks. 

What follows is a rough push and pull as they get to know more about each other. Using flashbacks, Van der Wouden explores what happened to each of their families in the war - an how they are tied together.

The Safekeep is on the long list for the 2024 Man Booker Prize, quite deservedly. If the only book you have read about the Dutch in WWII is the Diary of Anne Frank, this will be a surprise! Read it today.

Van der Wouden, Yael. (2024). The Safekeep. New York: Avid Reader Press.

The Brides of High Hill (Singing Hills Cycle #4)

The Brides of High Hill by Nghi Vo is the fourth book in the Singing Hills Cycle series of fantasy novellas that read like folklore. 

After a break at the Singing Hills Monastery, Cleric Chih is back on the road exploring, gathering tales to be kept in the oral history. 

Chih wakes up and cannot remember how they got on a palanquin. They are traveling with a young woman to meet her betrothed. It is a blessing to have a cleric in such an instance, even though that is not what Singing Hills focuses on.

This is all I will say! Read these amazing books! You can finish one in an hour, or savor it for days. 

Vo, Nghi. (2024). The Brides of High Hill. New York: Tordotcom.

Wanderers (Wanderers #1)

Wanderers by Chuck Wendig is the first of two books dealing with a plague and its aftermath. 

Something is causing an illness that makes people lose all sense of themselves. The illness causes a white fungus to form on their faces giving it the name White Mask. 

At the same time, something else strange is happening to a small group of people. Shana's sister Nessie is sleepwalking and cannot be awoken. Shana follows her and as they go, more sleepwalkers are joining her. They cannot be stopped or communicated with. Soon there are sleepwalkers and their loved ones heading across the country. 

Set is a familiar-feeling time politically, society begins to collapse. Terror and violence are rampant. The CDC assigns it best investigator to follow the sleepwalkers while others search for the origin of White Mask. 

Wendig has written a compelling series. It is gripping, haunting and realistic. Book two takes place about five years after the onset of the disease, in the time after the illness has run its course. I HIGHLY recommend this two-book series. It is one of the best I have read this decade!

Wendig, Chuck. (2019). Wanderers. New York: Del Rey. 

The Glass Hotel

The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel is a wonderful genre blending story.

The Hotel Caiette is on the northern edge of Vancouver Island. Vincent is working at the hotel the night someone carves a message into the front window, the same night a very wealthy man is due to arrive. 

What follows is a story hinted at in Mandel's novel Sea of Tranquility, the story of Vincent and the life she lives with the very wealthy Jonathan Alkaitis. 

This is a story of crisis and survival, greed and guilt, unintended consequences, and the search for meaning. Emily St. John Mandel is one of the great writers of our time. Read all of her books!

Mandel, Emily St. John. (2020). The Glass Hotel. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 

We Deserve Monuments

We Deserve Monuments by Jas Hammonds.

Mama Letty is very ill in the late stages of cancer. Though Zora left the second she was old enough, and has an unspoken of, decades old, conflict with her mother, she and her family are moving to Bardell, Georgia to help.

Avery know little of her grandmother. She and her mom visited once when she was five, but all she remembers of the visit is yelling. Now, at the beginning of her senior year of high school, she is leaving D.C. and her two best friends, moving to a town that looks tiny and run-down. 

Luckily, right away Avery meets Simone and them Jade. Finding two new friends is a blessing. But what Avery doesn't know is the history between their three families. The layers of secrets, racism and town history will slowly be revealed.

As friendships grow closer and time is spent in Bardell, stories are revealed that will both bring Avery closer to her mother and grandmother as well as reveal how racial violence can ripple through generations. 

Hammonds has written a story about family relationships set in a small town with big secrets. This is a beautifully written novel of our history as well as current day country. 

Hammonds, Jas. (2022). We Deserve Monuments. New York: Roaring Brook Press.

Sea of Tranquility

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel is a story with a mystery that spans 489 years.

Edwin St. Andrew is a second son in England at the beginning of the 20th century. As he is not going to inherit his father's house and wealth, he is sent to Canada to make a life for himself. In 1912 he has made it across the continent to Vancouver island. Walking in the forest toward a maple tree he experiences disorientation - seeing a terminal with a man playing the violin.

Olive Llewellyn is on a world tour for her pandemic novel as it is about to become a movie. In 2203 while walking through an airship terminal, passing a man playing the violin, she suddenly sees trees in a forest. 

In 2401 in a colony on the moon, Gaspery Roberts is hired by the Time Institute to investigate an anomaly in North America. He will travel back in time to interview four people in different times, all connected to an airship terminal in Oklahoma City.

Mandel has created a compelling puzzle of a story. This is a fun book. Read it now!

Mandel, Emily St. John. (2022). Sea of Tranquility. New York: Alfred A Knopf. 

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Story by James McBride is one of the best books I read this year, or any year. Set in the 1920s and 30s in Pottstown, Pennsylvania's neighborhood of Chicken Hill, a mixed Black and Jewish part of town. 

Chona is the daughter of a store owner. She has a limp from Polio as a child. She married Moshe, a Romanian Jewish immigrant who owns a dance hall. As Chona was raised in Chicken Hill she convinces Moshe to bring Black musicians and bands along with the Yiddish he has already planned.

Though they don't need the money, and actually lose money on it, Chona keeps running the grocery. She allows anyone to shop there and extends credit to her Black neighbors. 

When a young boy is in need of hiding from the state agent who wants to take him to a home because he is deaf, Chona takes him in. 

McBride is one of the great writers of our time. Read all of his books, but start here!

McBride, James. (2023). The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store. New York: Riverhead Books. 

How the Sea Came to Be: And All the Creatures In It

How the Sea Came to Be: And All the Creatures In It by Jennifer Berne, illustrated by Amanda Hall, is a gorgeous nonfiction picture book about how the Earth and life began.

Information and illustrations from before the Earth cooled to our current ocean dwellers, the science book is a delight. 

How the Sea Came to Be is the perfect introduction to Earth Science. Plus you will want to recreate the drawings as wallpaper!

Berne, Jennifer. (2023). How the Sea Came to Be: And All the Creatures in It. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Books for Young Readers.

Bunny & Tree

Bunny & Rabbit by Balint Zsako is a stunning wordless picture book. As soon as Bunny and Tree meet they are destined to become family. 

This is gorgeous. Put it at the top of your list for gifts for children, artists or gardeners in your life. 

Amazing!

Zsako, Balint. (2023). Bunny & Rabbit. New York: Enchanted Lion Books.

Iron Flame (Empyrean #2)

Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros is the second book in the Empyrean fantasy series. 

Violet has made it through year one at Basgaith War College - most people would not have bet on that outcome. What the final test revealed to her is that the college (including her mother) are lying about the state of things. Still, she needs the training provided by Basgaith.

Year two is where the real training begins. Now that she is in fighting shape and bonded to not one, but two, dragons. She will need all of her smarts to survive the new teacher who seems to have it out for her. 

Yarros has created a well-crafted fantasy world filled with dragons, magic and more. Great series for all fantasy fans and particularly fans of writers like Sarah Maas. 

Yarros, Rebecca. (2023). Iron Flame. New York: Red Tower Books.