Manage Your Reading List With More Summer Books
With the number of books available and new titles published each week, It can be difficult keeping track of what you would like to read. And have you ever started a book that seemed very familiar, like maybe you already read it? One of the best ways to maintain a current list, avoiding the unwarranted re-read, is to utilize the Goodreads app. I use it to flag books I am interested in reading, make note of when I start and finish a book, and write some thoughts about each completed book. Reviewing a book allows me to remember how I felt about it and serves as a good reference if I want to recommend it or read another by the same author. Connecting with others on Goodreads will generate recommendations and you can read other people’s thoughts about books as well. Here are a bunch of new titles, some of which you may want to add to your list! I’m very interested in reading Little Monsters by Adrienne Brodeur and Pageboy by Elliot Page.
The Little Italian Hotel by Phaedra Patrick (Fiction/Romance)
When a relationship expert’s own marriage falls apart, she invites four strangers to Italy for a vacation of healing and second chances in this uplifting new novel from the author of The Messy Lives of Book People .
Ginny Splinter, acclaimed radio host and advice expert, prides herself on knowing what’s best for others. So she’s sure her husband, Adrian, will love the special trip to Italy she’s planned for their thirtieth wedding anniversary. But when Ginny presents the gift to Adrian, he surprises her with his own very different plan—a divorce.
Beside herself with heartache, Ginny impulsively invites four heartbroken listeners to join her in Italy instead while live on air. From hiking the hills of Bologna to riding a gondola in Venice to sharing stories around the dining table of the little Italian hotel, Ginny and her newfound company embark on a vacation of healing.
However, when Adrian starts to rethink their relationship, Ginny must decide whether to commit to her marriage or start afresh, alone. And an unexpected stranger may hold the key to a very different future… Sunny, tender and brimming with charm, The Little Italian Hotel explores marriage, identity and reclaiming the present moment—even if it means leaving the past behind.
Look for Phaedra Patrick’s previous charming bestsellers! The Curious Charms of Arthur PepperRise and Shine, Benedict StoneThe Library of Lost and FoundThe Secrets of Love Story Bridge
The Messy Lives of Book People
Little Monsters by Adrienne Brodeur (Fiction)
From the author of the bestselling memoir Wild Game comes a riveting novel about Cape Cod, complicated families, and long-buried secrets—for fans of the New York Times bestsellers The Paper Palace and Ask Again, Yes .
Ken and Abby Gardner lost their mother when they were small and they have been haunted by her absence ever since. Their father, Adam, a brilliant oceanographer, raised them mostly on his own in his remote home on Cape Cod, where the attachment between Ken and Abby deepened into something complicated—and as adults their relationship is strained. Now, years later, the siblings’ lives are still deeply entwined. Ken is a successful businessman with political ambitions and a picture-perfect family and Abby is a talented visual artist who depends on her brother’s goodwill, in part because he owns the studio where she lives and works.
As the novel opens, Adam is approaching his seventieth birthday, staring down his mortality and fading relevance. He has always managed his bipolar disorder with medication, but he’s determined to make one last scientific breakthrough and so he has secretly stopped taking his pills, which he knows will infuriate his children. Meanwhile, Abby and Ken are both harboring secrets of their own, and there is a new person on the periphery of the family—Steph, who doesn’t make her connection known. As Adam grows more attuned to the frequencies of the deep sea and less so to the people around him, Ken and Abby each plan the elaborate gifts they will present to their father on his birthday, jostling for primacy in this small family unit.
Set in the fraught summer of 2016, and drawing on the biblical tale of Cain and Abel, Little Monsters is an absorbing, sharply observed family story by a writer who knows Cape Cod inside and out—its Edenic lushness and its snakes.
The Memory of Animals by Claire Fuller (Fiction/Dystopia)
From the award-winning author of Our Endless Numbered Days, Swimming Lessons, Bitter Orange, and Unsettled Ground comes a beautiful and searing novel of memory, love, survival―and octopuses.
In the face of a pandemic, an unprepared world scrambles to escape the mysterious disease’s devastating symptoms: sensory damage, memory loss, death. Neffy, a disgraced and desperately indebted twenty-seven-year-old marine biologist, registers for an experimental vaccine trial in London―perhaps humanity’s last hope for a cure. Though isolated from the chaos outside, she and the other volunteers―Rachel, Leon, Yahiko, and Piper―cannot hide from the mistakes that led them there.
As London descends into chaos outside the hospital windows, Neffy befriends Leon, who before the pandemic had been working on a controversial technology that allows users to revisit their memories. She withdraws into projections of her past―a childhood bisected by divorce; a recent love affair; her obsessive research with octopuses and the one mistake that ended her career. The lines between past, present, and future begin to blur, and Neffy is left with defining questions: Who can she trust? Why can’t she forgive herself? How should she live, if she survives?
The Memory of Animals is an ambitious, deeply imagined work of survival and suspense, grief and hope, consequences and connectedness, that asks what truly defines us―and the lengths we will go to rescue ourselves and those we love.
Golden Hills by Jennifer Weiner (Fiction/Short Stories)
From #1 New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Weiner comes a heartfelt short story about a complicated friendship and a youthful betrayal that still has the power to shape two women’s lives.
Senatorial favorite Ida Berkowitz is headed for a win. Raised by a hardworking widowed mother, she’s authentic, relatable, and down-to-earth. Voters love her. Polls promise victory. Then her campaign manager utters four awful words: Who is Marissa Schuyler? She had almost managed to forget. Ida’s bunkmate at Camp Golden Hills when they were girls, Marissa was confident, sophisticated, and wealthy. Everything Ida wasn’t. Now the polished wife of a major conservative donor, Marissa’s announced a press conference. About Ida.
Just like that, Ida’s old insecurities come rushing in. So do new feelings of dread. After all these years, she knows what’s on Marissa’s mind. It could undermine everything Ida’s worked for. Because it isn’t very pretty.
Such Kindness by Andre Dubus III (Fiction)
Tom Lowe’s identity and his pride are invested in the work he does with his back and his hands. He designed and built his family’s dream home, working extra hours to pay off the adjustable rate mortgage he took on the property, convinced he is making every sacrifice for the happiness of his wife and son. Until, in a moment of fatigued inattention, shingling a roof in too-bright sunlight, he falls.
In constant pain, addicted to painkillers at the cost of his relationships with his wife and son, Tom slowly comes to realize that he can never work again. If he is not a working man, who is he? He is not, he believes, the kind of person who lives in subsidized housing, though that is where he has ended up. He is not the kind of person who hatches a scheme to commit convenience-check fraud, together with neighbors he considers lowlifes, until he finds himself stealing his banker’s trash.
Who is Tom Lowe, and who will he become? Can he find a way to reunite hands and heart, mind and spirit, to be once again a giver and not just a taker, to forge a self-acceptance deeper than pride? To one man’s painful moral journey, Dubus brings compassion with an edge of dark absurdity, forging a novel as absorbing as it is profound.
The Children of Berlin by Sharon Maas (Historical Fiction)
I will never forgive you! You had a choice. You could have listened to your mother, your brother, your father, but you chose to listen to those monsters. And that choice remains with you. Forever.’
Berlin, 1933. Leah and Magda have been inseparable for as long as they can remember, and one beautiful summer’s day in their courtyard, they vow nothing will ever come between their friendship. But Leah could never have predicted the darkness looming just around the corner…
As Hitler comes to power and the Nazi Party gain even more influence, Magda proudly tells Leah she has decided to join the Hitler Youth. Leah’s blood runs cold before she begs Magda to change her mind – because Leah is Jewish. Magda refuses, and heartbroken Leah knows this will not only destroy their friendship, but put her life in mortal danger. Suddenly, the only light in her life is Magda’s brother Markus , who is furious at his sister and vows to do everything he can to keep Leah safe.
As Magda becomes more entrenched in the Nazi Party, Leah’s life starts to shatter as the Gestapo raid her home, sending her beloved brother Aaron to a concentration camp. Devastated, Leah and her parents are forced to flee and hide. Desperate to save Leah, Markus decides the only way he can help stop the Nazis and his sister is to infiltrate the party as an undercover resistance fighter. But will Magda see through his lie, and how far will she go to prove her loyalty to her Führer?
High Time by Hannah Rothschild (Fiction)
A modern English comedy of morals and manners, about a highborn family of outrageous characters, in a story that proves revenge can be sweet
In the months leading up to the Brexit referendum, Ayesha, the beautiful, young secret daughter of the late Enyon Trelawney, has married the much older thuggish banker Tomlinson Sleet with whom she has a young daughter, Stella. Ayesha is busy restoring the once run-down Trelawney Castle in Cornwall, which Sleet has bought, to its former glory, as well as studying art at the Courtauld in London. The elderly Countess Clarissa—still ensconced on the property—the host of a camp television show, is about to head into a disastrous marriage. Lady Jane has separated from the hopeless Trelawney heir Kitto, who is crazier than ever, and found an enlightened woman to keep her company abroad. Sleet is becoming increasingly difficult, distracted by the seductive and ruthless bitcoin goddess Zamora, but Kitto’s sister Blaze and her husband, Joshua, will support Ayesha’s clever plan as she discovers shocking secrets, takes action, and brings the family together.
Biting and satirical, but also poignant and moving, High Time is a delicious story of madness, mayhem, and mischief run amok.
Holding Pattern by Jenny Xie (Fiction)
A NATIONAL BOOK FOUNDATION “5 UNDER 35” HONOREE
“There is so much heart in these pages, so much wisdom on how we love. This book had me in its orbit, from beginning to end.” – Weike Wang, author of Joan is Okay
Holding Pattern. Noun .
1. A state of suspended progress.
2. The awkward way your mother tries to hug you now that you live with her. Again.
Kathleen Cheng has blown up her life. She’s gone through a humiliating breakup, dropped out of her graduate program, and left everything behind. Now she’s back in her childhood home in Oakland, wondering what’s next.
To her surprise, her mother isn’t the same person Kathleen remembers. No longer depressed or desperate to return to China, the new Marissa Cheng is sporty, perky, and has been transformed by love. Kathleen thought she’d be planning her own wedding, but instead finds herself helping her mother plan hers—to a Silicon Valley tech entrepreneur.
Grasping for direction, Kathleen takes a job at a start-up that specializes in an unconventional form of therapy based on touch. While she negotiates new ideas about intimacy and connection, an unforeseen attachment to someone at work pushes her to rethink her relationships—especially the one with Marissa. Will they succeed in seeing each other anew, adult to adult?
As they peel back the layers of their history—the old wounds, cultural barriers, and complex affection—they must come to a new understanding of how they can propel each other forward, and what they’ve done to hold each other back. Brilliantly observant, tender, and warm, Holding Pattern is a hopeful novel about immigration and belonging, mother-daughter relationships, and the many ways we learn to hold each other.
Old Enough by Haley Jakobson (Fiction, LGBT)
A debut novel about a young bisexual woman who is pulled between a new sense of community and loyalty to a friendship she’s outgrown
Savannah Sav Henry is almost the person she wants to be, or at least she’s getting closer. It’s the second semester of her sophomore year. She’s finally come out as bisexual, is making friends with the other queers in her dorm, and has just about recovered from her disastrous first queer “situationship.” She is cautiously optimistic that her life is about to begin.
But when she learns that Izzie, her best friend from childhood, has gotten engaged, Sav faces a crisis of confidence. Things with Izzie haven’t been the same since what happened between Sav and Izzie’s older brother when they were sixteen. Now, with the wedding around the corner, Sav is forced to reckon with trauma she thought she could put behind her.
On top of it all, Sav can’t stop thinking about Wes from her Gender Studies class–sweet, funny Wes, with their long eyelashes and green backpack. There’s something different here–with Wes and with her new friends (who delight in teasing her about this face-burning crush); it feels, terrifyingly, like they might truly see her in a way no one has before.
With a singularly funny, heartfelt voice, Old Enough explores queer love, community, and what it means to be a sexual assault survivor. Haley Jakobson has written a love letter to friendship and an honest depiction of what finding your people can feel like–for better or worse.
Pageboy by Elliot Page (Nonfiction, LGBT)
Pageboy is a groundbreaking coming-of-age memoir from the Academy Award-nominated actor Elliot Page. A generation-defining actor and one of the most famous trans advocates of our time, Elliot will now be known as an uncommon literary talent, as he shares never-before-heard details and intimate interrogations on gender, love, mental health, relationships, and Hollywood.
The Beach at Summerly by Beatriz Williams (Historical Fiction)
New York Times bestseller Beatriz Williams returns with a ravishing summer read, taking readers back to a mid-century New England rich with secrets and Cold War intrigue.
June 1946. As the residents of Winthrop Island prepare for the first summer season after the sacrifice of war, a glamorous new figure moves into the guest cottage at Summerly, the idyllic seaside estate of the wealthy Peabody family. To Emilia Winthrop, daughter of Summerly’s year-round caretaker and a descendant of the island’s settlers, Olive Rainsford opens a window into a world of shining possibility. While Emilia spent the war years caring for her incapacitated mother, Olive traveled the world, married fascinating men, and involved herself in political causes. She’s also the beloved aunt of the two surviving Peabody sons, Amory and Shep, with whom Emilia has a tangled romantic history.
As the summer wears on, Emilia develops a deep rapport with Olive, who urges her to leave the island for a life of adventure, while romance blossoms with the sturdy and honorable Shep. But the heady promise of Peabody patronage is blown apart by the arrival of Sumner Fox, an FBI agent who demands Emilia’s help to capture a Soviet agent who’s transmitting vital intelligence on the West’s atomic weapon program from somewhere inside the Summerly estate.
April 1954. Eight years later, Summerly is boarded up and Emilia has rebuilt her shattered life as a professor at Wellesley College, when shocking news arrives from Washington—the traitor she helped convict is about to be swapped for an American spy imprisoned in the Soviet Union, but with a mysterious condition only Emilia can fulfill. A reluctant Emilia is summoned to CIA headquarters, where she’s forced to confront the harrowing consequences of her actions that fateful summer, and a choice that could destroy the Peabody family—and Emilia’s chance for redemption—all over again.
The Whispers by Ashley Audrain (Mystery/Thriller)
From the author of THE PUSH, a pageturner about four suburban families whose lives are changed when the unthinkable happens–and what is lost when good people make unconscionable choices
The Loverlys sit by the hospital bed of their young son who is in a coma after falling from his bedroom window in the middle of the night; his mother, Whitney, will not speak to anyone. Back home, their friends and neighbors are left in shock, each confronting their own role in the events that led up to what happened that terrible night: the warm, altruistic Parks who are the Loverlys’ best friends; the young, ambitious Goldsmiths who are struggling to start a family of their own; and the quiet, elderly Portuguese couple who care for their adult son with a developmental disability, and who pass the long days on the front porch, watching their neighbors go about their busy lives.
The story spins out over the course of one week, in the alternating voices of the women in each family as they are forced to face the secrets within the walls of their own homes, and the uncomfortable truths that connect them all to one another. Set against the heartwrenching drama of what will happen to Xavier, who hangs between death and life, or a life changed forever, THE WHISPERS is a novel about what happens when we put our needs ahead of our children’s. Exploring the quiet sacrifices of motherhood, the intuitions that we silence, the complexities of our closest friendships, and the danger of envy, this is a novel about the reverberations of life’s most difficult decisions.
After Anne by Logan Steiner (Historical Fiction)
A stunning and unexpected portrait of Lucy Maud Montgomery, creator of one of literature’s most prized heroines, whose personal demons were at odds with her most enduring legacy—the irrepressible Anne of Green Gables.
“Dear old world,” she murmured, “you are very lovely, and I am glad to be alive in you.” —L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables, 1908
As a young woman, Maud had dreams bigger than the whole of Prince Edward Island. Her exuberant spirit had always drawn frowns from her grandmother and their neighbors, but she knew she was meant to create, to capture and share the way she saw the world. And the young girl in Maud’s mind became more and more persistent: Here is my story, she said. Here is how my name should be spelled—Anne with an “e.”
But the day Maud writes the first lines of Anne of Green Gables, she gets a visit from the handsome new minister in town, and soon faces a decision: forge her own path as a spinster authoress, or live as a rural minister’s wife, an existence she once likened to “a respectable form of slavery.” The choice she makes alters the course of her life.
With a husband whose religious mania threatens their health and happiness at every turn, the secret darkness that Maud herself holds inside threatens to break through the persona she shows to the world, driving an ever-widening wedge between her public face and private self, and putting her on a path towards a heartbreaking end.
Beautiful and moving, After Anne reveals Maud’s hidden personal challenges while celebrating what was timeless about her life and art—the importance of tenacity and the peaceful refuge found in imagination.
The Three of Us by Ore Agbaje-Williams (Fiction)
Long-standing tensions between a husband, his wife, and her best friend finally come to a breaking point in this sharp domestic comedy of manners, told brilliantly over the course of one day.
What if the two most important people in your life hated each other with a passion?
The wife has it all. A big house in a nice neighborhood, a ride-or-die snarky friend with whom to laugh about facile men, and an affectionate husband who loves her above all else. The only thing missing from this portrait is a baby. But motherhood is a serious undertaking, especially for the wife who has valued her selfhood above all else.
On a seemingly normal day, the best friend comes over to spend a lazy afternoon with the wife. But when the husband comes home and a series of confessions are made that threaten to throw everything off balance, the wife’s two confidantes are suddenly forced to jockey for their positions. Told in three taut, mesmerizing parts—the wife, the husband, the best friend—the day quickly unfolds to show how the trio’s dented visions of each other finally unravel, throwing everyone’s integrity into question – and their long-drawn-out territorial dance, carefully constructed over pivotal years, into utter chaos.
At once subversively comical, wildly astute, and painfully compulsive, The Three of Us explores cultural truths, what it means to defy them, and the fine line between compromise and betrayal, ultimately asking: who are we if not for the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, and the people we’re meant to love?
Graceland by Nancy Crochiere (Fiction)
People-pleasing Hope Robinson can’t seem to please anyone lately–not her slogan-spewing boss, not her pink-haired teenage daughter, and especially not her mother, the flamboyant soap-star, Olivia Grant. Olivia loves Elvis more than Jesus, and now that she’s on oxygen, she insists Hope take her on a final trip to Graceland. Unfortunately, that’s the one place Hope can’t go. Eighteen years earlier, pregnant and distraught, Hope fled Tennessee with a secret agreement: to never reveal her baby’s father and never return to Memphis.
Olivia, though, has never learned the word no. After she wrangles Hope’s impulsive daughter, Dylan, to drive her from Boston to Memphis with the promise of meeting her mystery father, Hope has no choice but to chase after them. She must stop them before they ambush Dylan’s father, exposing Hope’s lies, breaking the NDA, and igniting a political and media firestorm.
Along the road to Memphis, as the women encounter former soap actors, free-range ferrets, and a trio of Elvis-impersonating frat boys, everyone’s long-held secrets begin to unravel. In order to become the family they long to be, Hope, Olivia, and Dylan must face hard truths about themselves and one another on the bumpy road to acceptance, forgiveness, and ultimately, grace.
You Were Always Mine by Christine Pride and Jo Piazza (Fiction)
The acclaimed authors of the “emotional literary roller coaster” ( The Washington Post ) and Good Morning America book club pick We Are Not Like Them return with this moving and provocative novel about a Black woman who finds an abandoned white baby, sending her on a collision course with her past, her family, and a birth mother who doesn’t want to be found.
Cinnamon Haynes has fought hard for a life she never thought was possible—a good man by her side, a steady job as a career counselor at a local community college, and a cozy house in a quaint little beach town. It may not look like much, but it’s more than she ever dreamed of or what her difficult childhood promised. Her life’s mantra is to be good, quiet, grateful. Until something shifts and Cinnamon is suddenly haunted by a terrifying “Is this all there is?”
Daisy Dunlap has had her own share of problems in her nineteen years on earth—she also has her own big dreams for a life that’s barely begun. Her hopes for her future are threatened when she gets unexpectedly pregnant. Desperate, broke, and alone, she hides this development from everyone close to her and then makes a drastic decision with devastating consequences.
Daisy isn’t the only one with something to hide. When Cinnamon finds an abandoned baby in a park and takes the blonde-haired, blue-eyed newborn into her home, the ripple effects of this decision risk exposing the truth about Cinnamon’s own past, which she’s gone to great pains to portray as idyllic to everyone…even herself.
As Cinnamon struggles to contain old demons, navigate the fault lines that erupt in her marriage, and deal with the shocking judgments from friends and strangers alike about why a woman like her has a baby like this, her one goal is to do right by the child she grows more attached to with each passing day. It’s the exact same conviction that drives Daisy as she tries to outrun her heartache and reckon with her choices.
These two women, unlikely friends and kindred spirits must face down their secrets and trauma and unite for the sake of the baby they both love in their own unique way when Daisy’s grandparents, who would rather die than see one of their own raised by a Black woman, threaten to take custody.
Once again, these authors bring their “empathetic, riveting, and authentic” (Laura Dave, New York Times bestselling author) storytelling to an unforgettable novel that revolves around provocative and timely questions about race, class, and motherhood. Is being a mother a right, an obligation, or a privilege? Who gets to be a mother? And to whom? And what are we willing to sacrifice for the sake of marriage, friendship, and our dreams?
Toward the Corner of Mercy and Peace by Tracey D. Buchanan (fiction)
“Tracey Buchanan is a welcome new voice in women’s fiction.” — Camille Pagán, bestselling author of Everything Must Go It’s 1952 in the small western Kentucky town of Paducah and Mrs. Minerva Place would prefer everyone mind his own business, follow the rules, and if dead, stay dead. Nosy neighbors and irritating church members are bad enough but when residents of the local cemetery start showing up, the quirky widow wonders if she’s going crazy. Just as distressing, a new boy in the neighborhood seems intent on disrupting her life. Minerva, aggravated by the precocious six-year-old, holds him and his father at arm’s length. Nevertheless, with charming perseverance they find a way into her closed-off life and an unlikely friendship begins. But just when Minerva starts to let her guard down, a tragic accident shatters her emerging reconnection with life. Now more than her sanity is at stake. With the help of the living and the dead, Minerva discovers the power of forgiveness and why it’s worth it to let others into your life, even when it hurts.
How to Kill Men and Get Away With It by Katy Brent (fiction)
Meet Kitty Collins.
FRIEND. LOVER. KILLER.
He was following me. That guy from the nightclub who wouldn’t leave me alone.
I hadn’t intended to kill him of course. But I wasn’t displeased when I did and, despite the mess I made, I appeared to get away with it.
That’s where my addiction started…
I’ve got a taste for revenge and quite frankly, I’m killing it.
A deliciously dark, hilariously twisted story about friendship, love, and murder. Fans of My Sister the Serial Killer, How to Kill Your Family and Killing Eve will love this wickedly clever novel!
Welcome to Beach Town by Susan Wiggs (fiction)
Beloved New York Times bestselling author Susan Wiggs returns with a compulsively readable tale of an idyllic California beach town forced to reckon with scandal when a high school valedictorian’s speech reveals secrets that shake the town to its core.
“Readers will savor sunny skies and perfect surf in this stunning new novel, but one thing is for In this Beach Town, there is always more happening than meets the eye. Don’t miss this expansive beauty of a summer book!” — Kristy Woodson Harvey, New York Times Bestselling Author of The Summer of Songbirds
Every town has its secrets… In idyllic Alara Cove, a California beach town known for its sunny charm and chill surfer vibe, it’s graduation day at the elite Thornton Academy.
At Thornton, the students are the worldly and overindulged children who live in gated enclaves with spectacular views. But the class valedictorian is Nikki Graziola, a surfer’s daughter who is there on scholarship. To the shock of everyone in the audience, Nikki veers off script while giving her commencement address and reveals a secret that breaks open the whole community. As her truth explodes into the light, Alara Cove will face a reckoning. Nikki Graziola’s accusation shakes the foundation of Alara Cove, pitting her against the wealthy family whose money runs the town. Her new notoriety sends Nikki into exile for years, where she finds fame—but not fortune—overseas as a competition surfer…until a personal tragedy compels her to return to Alara Cove.
As Nikki struggles to rebuild her future, she finds that the people of the town have not forgotten her. But time has changed Alara Cove, and old friendships, rivalries, and an unexpected romance draw her back into the life of the beach town she’s never quite forgotten, and where joy and redemption may be possible after all.
I am More Than my Body by Bethany C. Meyers (nonfiction)
From the founder and CEO of the be.come project comes an inspiring introduction to “body neutrality”—the concept of steering away from self-hate without the pressure of having to love your body—and how thinking in this way can lead to joy, peace, and fulfillment.
“Some days I love my body, some days I hate my body, but every day I respect my body.”
A lot of us were raised on toxic diet culture—restrictions, limitations, and deprivation. Then the pendulum swung to the other extreme, with messages that we could love ourselves at any size, any weight, any shape…but sometimes, even that can feel like a lot of pressure. There is a third body neutrality. For many of us, a neutral approach to our physical self—based on compassion, acceptance, and respect—can be a revolutionary, rewarding shift in how we move through the world.
I Am More Than My Body will help you strengthen your relationship with yourself and find balance, steering you away from shame without the pressure of having to love your body at all times. It will introduce a framework to help you practice neutral movement, recognize and arm yourself against bias, act with self-compassion, and navigate your feelings on this journey.
A longtime practitioner of the body-neutral approach, Bethany C. Meyers shares their own story together with the experiences and ideas of experts and activists to help us care for our bodies while not having them dictate our worth. Because happiness comes from honest acceptance, something that body neutrality has the power to help you find.
The Wife App by Carolyn Mackler (fiction)
Because every wife deserves a happy ending.
Three best friends decide they’re finally done with their ex-husbands taking their work as wives and moms for granted. They’re ready to monetize the mental load, stick it to their exes, and have a wild ride in the process.
Lauren, mother of twins, wakes up one morning to her Wife Alarm Bells sounding. She sleuths on her husband’s phone and stumbles on a dirty secret that explodes her marriage. Madeline has it all—a penthouse apartment, a perfect daughter, and no-strings-attached romps with handsome men. When she learns that she might lose her child to her ex in England, it stirs up a decades-old personal tragedy. Sophie, with too much FOMO and never enough money, obsesses over her ex-husband’s Family 2.0—all while keeping her true desires hidden, even from herself.
It starts as a joke during a tipsy night out, as Lauren, Madeline, and Sophie rail against everything wives do for free. Let’s build an app that monetizes the mental load. And maybe get revenge on our exes in the process? Soon, the Wife App is born, and before long, it’s the fastest growing start-up in New York City. But then life intervenes. Love intervenes. Ex-husbands intervene. And the consequences are bigger than anything Lauren, Madeline, or Sophie could have expected. Carolyn Mackler marks her debut into adult fiction with a hilarious rollercoaster ride of revenge and redemption that is at once a send-up of modern marriage and a celebration of female friendship and love in all forms.
Finding Home by Dean Cycon (historical fiction)
For nine months in Auschwitz, eighteen-year-old Eva Fleiss clung to sanity by playing piano on imaginary keyboards. After liberation, Eva and the five remaining Jews of Laszlo, Hungary, journey home, seeking to restart their lives.
Yet the town that deported them is not ready to embrace their return. Their former neighbors and friends resist relinquishing their newfound status and property. While Eva and the others search for a home that may no longer exist and deal with the traumas of war and loss, their neighbors struggle with their roles as perpetrators, enablers, and bystanders during the Holocaust.
Longing for connection to her old life, Eva agrees to clean her former home, now
the mayor’s home, in return for practice time on her piano. As her profound experiences allow her to access music at a depth she didn’t know existed, Eva’s performances begin to affect those around her—with unexpected consequences.
Ciao for Now by Kate Bromley (fiction)
When an American interning at a fashion house in Rome butts heads with her professor’s surly son, sparks fly!
With her thirties rapidly approaching and a mountain of student debt looming over her, Violet Luciano’s dream of finishing design school and working in fashion has cost her everything. So when she lands an internship at an up-and-coming fashion brand in Rome, she brings her A game to Italy. With nothing left to lose, Violet plans to win the competition among the interns for the ultimate prize—a job at a New York label.
But when a coffee run goes wrong and Violet accidentally destroys a stranger’s laptop, all of the apology Americanos in the world won’t help her. Because it turns out that the man from the café is Matteo, her professor’s eternally grumpy son, who thinks she’s a clumsy American…and maybe a stalker. Their animosity (and undeniable chemistry) grows as together they’re forced to face a summer of chic parties, adventures through Rome and sharing a home…with the person they can’t stand the most.
The more time she spends with him, the more distracted she finds herself. With her chance to win the competition slipping out of her grasp, Violet has to decide whether to say ciao to Matteo—or ciao to her dreams.
Adult Drama and Other Essays by Natalie Beach (nonfiction)
Named a Most Anticipated Book in…
Harper’s Bazaar
Elle
Bookpage
Vulture’s “Into It”
From the writer whose New York Magazine piece “I Was Caroline Calloway” broke the internet comes a fresh, incisive, laugh-out-loud funny memoir-in-essays about the frenzied journey to adulthood.
Natalie Beach became an internet sensation when her essay on her toxic friendship with Instagram influencer Caroline Calloway went viral. Now, for the first time, and in her own indelible voice, Beach offers a revelatory glimpse into her own life alongside a broader cultural criticism of the world today. Through stories of heartbreak, odd jobs, political activism, existential crises and low-rise jeans, Natalie Beach explores the high stakes and absurdist comedy of coming of age in a world gone mad.
Effervescent, hilarious and unflinchingly self-aware, Adult Drama marks the arrival of an electrifying new literary voice.
The Vanishing Hour by Seraphina Nova Glass (Mystery/Thriller)
“Glass weaves a taut web of suspicion, murder and revenge in this chilling tale.”—Liv Constantine, internationally bestselling author of The Last Mrs. Parrish, on Someone’s Listening
From the Edgar Award–nominated author of On a Quiet Street comes a shocking thriller about secrets…and the lengths some people will go to keep them.
Grace Holloway keeps to herself. Since narrowly escaping death at the hands of the man who kidnapped her, she’s thrown herself into the small inn she runs in Rock Harbor, Maine. It’s quiet, quaint and, in the off-season, completely isolated—the perfect place for Grace to keep her own secrets.
But Grace isn’t the only one with something to hide, and Rock Harbor isn’t just a sleepy vacation town. Someone is taking young women—girls who look an awful lot like Grace did when she was kidnapped so many years ago.
When a surge of disappearances brings the investigation to her door, Grace finds herself unwillingly at the center of it all and doing everything she can to keep her distance. Because Grace knows something…something that could change everything. And when the truth comes to light, getting justice for the vanished might be more than Grace can handle alone…
The Favor by Adele Griffin (fiction)
From National Book Award finalist Adele Griffin, an insightful and warmhearted story of two very different women who make an unexpected connection when one decides to carry a baby for the other.
At I’ll Have Seconds, a high-end fairytale vintage dress shop in Manhattan, Nora Hammond loves nothing better than pairing a rare find with the perfect client.
At home, Nora grapples with the bleaker reality of enormous debt, a tiny apartment, and ever-dwindling hope that she and her husband Jacob will have a family of their own.
When socialite Evelyn Elliot charges into Nora’s life, the women spark an immediate connection, and Nora is jettisoned into the heady whirl of New York’s moneyed elite. As Evelyn’s stylist and confidante, Nora needs to learn all new rules of engagement for the uber-wealthy. But it isn’t until Evelyn decides her next cause is to carry a baby for Nora, that these rules― and this unlikely friendship―are tested.
A contemporary story that celebrates alternative routes to family, The Favor is an incisive examination of what it means to long for a child and what relationships cost us―and what they’re worth.
Psyche and Eros by Luna McNamara (Mythology/Fantasy)
“A riotous adventure through the ages of Greek mythology, populated by a cast of vivid, glittering characters. Luna McNamara strikes the perfect note of irreverent humor and furious emotion in this fabulous novel. An absolute joy!” — JENNIFER SAINT, bestselling author of Ariadne and Elektra
“A beautiful retelling, breathing new life into a beloved myth. Luna McNamara weaves an enthralling tale of adventure, romance, and star-crossed lovers, in an enchanting world of ancient gods and legends.” — SUE LYNN TAN, bestselling author of Daughter of the Moon Goddess
In this utterly transporting reimagining of Greek mythology, the god of desire is cursed to fall for a spirited young mortal woman, but if she looks upon his face they will be parted forever—an epic adventure and love story for the ages, sure to satisfy fans of Madeline Miller and V.E. Schwab
Who said true love is a myth?
A prophecy claims that Psyche, princess of Mycenae, will defeat a monster feared even by the gods. Rebelling against her society’s expectations for women, Psyche spends her youth mastering blade and bow, preparing to meet her destiny.
When Psyche angers the love goddess Aphrodite, she sends Eros, god of desire, to deliver a cruel curse. After eons watching humanity twist his gifts, the last thing Eros wants is to become involved in the chaos of the mortal world. But when he pricks himself with the arrow intended for Psyche, Eros finds himself doomed to yearn for a woman who will be torn from him the moment their eyes meet.
Thrown together by fate, headstrong Psyche and world-weary Eros will face challenges greater than they could have ever imagined. And as the Trojan War begins and divine powers try to keep them apart, the pair must determine if the curse could become something more . . . before it’s too late.
A joyous and subversive tale of gods, monsters, and the human heart and soul, Psyche and Eros dazzles the senses while exploring notions of trust, sacrifice, and what it truly means to be a hero. With unforgettably vivid characters, spellbinding prose, and delicious tension, Luna McNamara has crafted a shimmering and propulsive debut novel about a love so strong it defies the will of Olympus.
“Startlingly lovely. This is Greek mythology as it’s meant to be told—witty, indulgent, deeply felt.” — GRACE D. LI, New York Times bestselling author of Portrait of a Thief
“Every page is a breathless, swoonworthy adventure.” — ROSHANI CHOKSHI, New York Times bestselling author of The Last Tale of the Flower Bride.
