Fall Reading Guide
The best time to read is autumn— not only to curl up with a cup of tea but also because this is the biggest season for books. Some of the biggest books come early this year so Bookshop booksellers have been busy reading all the fall books to share with you these recommendations.
—Casey Coonerty Protti
Owner, Bookshop Santa Cruz


Fall Reading Challenge
Join Us This Fall!
Read any two of these eight staff recommended books by October 31st and Bookshop will donate $5.00 on your behalf to the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom to
fight against the banning of books.
All the Lonely People
By Mike Gayle
Solito: A Memoir
By Javier Zamora
You Sexy Thing
By Cat Rambo
Shutter : A Novel
By Ramona Emerson
Love in the Time of Serial Killers
By Alicia Thompson
A Dreadful Splendor
By B.R. Myers
A Place in the World: Finding the Meaning of Home
By Frances Mayes
Touch: A Novel
By Olaf Olafsson
Finished Reading Your Two Books?
Fiction

Touch: A Novel
by Olaf Olafsson
This is a novel structured to be savored in small portions. A quiet, reflective story written in short strokes by a skilled author. Two events upend the life of Kristofer, a 75-year-old Icelandic restaurateur: his establishment closes and a message appears from a long-lost lover. Thus begins his unlikely journey to solve a 50-year-old mystery. First to London, the site of his youthful affair. And then to Japan for the answers to his questions. A touching exploration into the elusiveness of both love and memories. —Trey
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A mesmerizing, panoramic story of one man’s search to find a lover who suddenly disappeared decades before
When the pandemic hits, Kristofer is forced to shutter his successful restaurant in Reykjavik, sending him into a spiral of uncertainty, even as his memory seems to be failing. But an uncanny bolt from the blue—a message from Miko Nakamura, a woman whom he’d known in the sixties when they were students in London—both inspires and rattles him, as he is drawn inexorably back into a love story that has marked him for life. Even as the pandemic upends his world, Kristofer finds himself pulled toward an answer to the mystery of Miko’s sudden departure decades before, compelling him to travel to London and Japan as the virus threatens to shut everything down.
A heart-wrenching love story and an absorbing mystery, Touch delves into the secrets of the past to explore the hidden lives that we all possess, the pain and beauty of our past loves and friendships that continue to leave their mark on us. Searching and lyrically rendered by acclaimed author Olaf Olafsson, Touch is a stunning tribute to the weight of history and the complexities of the human heart.

All the Lonely People
by Mike Gayle
I was hooked by the premise of this charming novel and fully caught by its immersive setting, wonderful characters, and heartwarming journey of our curmudgeon protagonist. Aging widower recluse Hubert Bird has created a vibrant imaginary social life to delight his daughter during their weekly phone calls, but now she’s coming to visit and he needs to find some real friends fast. Balancing humor and heft, this is for fans of A Man Called Ove, Tin Man, and human kindness.
—Melinda
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In this "warm, funny" novel (Good Housekeeping), Jamaican immigrant Hubert Bird rediscovers the world he'd once turned his back on as he learns to find happiness after staying in isolation for so long.
In weekly phone calls to his daughter in Australia, widower Hubert Bird paints a picture of the perfect retirement, packed with fun, friendship, and fulfillment. But it's a lie. In reality, Hubert's days are all the same, dragging on without him seeing a single soul.
Until he receives some good news—good news that in one way turns out to be the worst news ever, news that will force him out again, into a world he has long since turned his back on. The news that his daughter is coming for a visit.
Now Hubert faces a seemingly impossible task: to make his real life resemble his fake life before the truth comes out.
Along the way Hubert stumbles across a second chance at love, renews a cherished friendship, and finds himself roped into an audacious community scheme that seeks to end loneliness once and for all …
Life is certainly beginning to happen to Hubert Bird. But with the origin of his earlier isolation always lurking in the shadows, will he ever get to live the life he's pretended to have for so long?
The Last White Man
by Mohsin Hamid
Anders, a white man, wakes up one morning to see that his skin is darkening. Soon, it starts happening to everyone and the social and political result confront our deepest conceptions of race, privilege and fear. Born from his experience as a brown man who was treated differently after September 11th, Mohsin Hamid's novel matches this examination of identity with a deep exploration of our capacity for empathy and humanity- a powerful and important combination. —Casey
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From the New York Times-bestselling author of Exit West, a story of love, loss, and rediscovery in a time of unsettling change.
One morning, a man wakes up to find himself transformed. Overnight, Anders’s skin has turned dark, and the reflection in the mirror seems a stranger to him. At first he shares his secret only with Oona, an old friend turned new lover. Soon, reports of similar events begin to surface.
Across the land, people are awakening in new incarnations, uncertain how their neighbors, friends, and family will greet them. Some see the transformations as the long-dreaded overturning of the established order that must be resisted to a bitter end. In many, like Anders’s father and Oona’s mother, a sense of profound loss and unease wars with profound love. As the bond between Anders and Oona deepens, change takes on a different shading: a chance at a kind of rebirth--an opportunity to see ourselves, face to face, anew.
In Mohsin Hamid’s “lyrical and urgent” prose (O Magazine), The Last White Man powerfully uplifts our capacity for empathy and the transcendence over bigotry, fear, and anger it can achieve.
Mercury Pictures Presents
by Anthony Marra
Finally, a new novel from the author of A Constellation Of Vital Phenomena! Mercury Pictures Presents is an intricately researched look at Mussolini's Italy and the government mandated Hollywood propaganda machine of WWII. Following a wide and alive cast of immigrants trying to reinvent themselves to fit in a sharp and changing world, this novel showcases Marra's profound sense of human nature in its beautiful and hilarious writing. —Zoe
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Like many before her, Maria Lagana has come to Hollywood to outrun her past. Born in Rome, where every Sunday her father took her to the cinema instead of church, Maria immigrates with her mother to Los Angeles after a childhood transgression leads to her father’s arrest.
Fifteen years later, on the eve of America’s entry into World War II, Maria is an associate producer at Mercury Pictures, trying to keep her personal and professional lives from falling apart. Her mother won’t speak to her. Her boss, a man of many toupees, has been summoned to Washington by congressional investigators. Her boyfriend, a virtuoso Chinese American actor, can’t escape the studio’s narrow typecasting. And the studio itself, Maria’s only home in exile, teeters on the verge of bankruptcy.
Over the coming months, as the bright lights go dark across Los Angeles, Mercury Pictures becomes a nexus of European émigrés: modernist poets trying their luck as B-movie screenwriters, once-celebrated architects becoming scale-model miniaturists, and refugee actors finding work playing the very villains they fled. While the world descends into war, Maria rises through a maze of conflicting politics, divided loyalties, and jockeying ambitions. But when the arrival of a stranger from her father’s past threatens Maria’s carefully constructed facade, she must finally confront her father’s fate—and her own.
Written with intelligence, wit, and an exhilarating sense of possibility, Mercury Pictures Presents spans many moods and tones, from the heartbreaking to the ecstatic. It is a love letter to life’s bit players, a panorama of an era that casts a long shadow over our own, and a tour de force by a novelist whose work The Washington Post calls “a flash in the heavens that makes you look up and believe in miracles.”
The Rabbit Hutch
by Tess Gunty
Gunty’s debut novel is astonishing. Reading it is an emotional, wondrous experience hard to put into words. Beginning with an audaciously troubling event in Apartment C4, it spreads outward to other building residents and beyond, weaving together their stories and struggles, building the narrative back up to this first electrifying moment. Gunty writes beautifully, commenting on our human condition with grace, intellect, empathy, and unnerving clarity.
—Melinda
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The automobile industry has abandoned Vacca Vale, Indiana, leaving the residents behind, too. In a run-down apartment building on the edge of town, commonly known as the Rabbit Hutch, a number of people now reside quietly, looking for ways to live in a dying city.
Here live four teenagers who have recently aged out of the state foster-care system: three boys and one girl, Blandine, who The Rabbit Hutch centers around. Hauntingly beautiful and unnervingly bright, Blandine is plagued by the structures, people, and places that not only failed her but actively harmed her. Now all Blandine wants is an escape, a true bodily escape like the mystics describe in the books she reads.
Set across one week and culminating in a shocking act, The Rabbit Hutch chronicles a town on the brink, desperate for rebirth. How far will its residents—especially Blandine—go to achieve it? Tess Gunty’s The Rabbit Hutch is a gorgeous and provocative tale about the tensions between loneliness and community, entrapment and freedom. It announces a major new voice in American fiction, one bristling with intelligence and vulnerability.
Properties of Thirst
by Marianne Wiggins
Is a sprawling city, where unfettered growth is a cultural hallmark, justified in taking water from a small, impoverished community? How far should a country at war go to protect itself from perceived threats? Set in the stark but picturesque Owens Valley, Properties of Thirst will leave you wondering just what it means to be “American”. If your recent book club discussions have been falling flat, this gem might turn things around. —Glenn
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Rockwell “Rocky” Rhodes has spent years fiercely protecting his California ranch from the LA Water Corporation. It is here where he and his beloved wife Lou raised their twins, Sunny and Stryker, and it is here where Rocky has mourned Lou in the years since her death.
As Sunny and Stryker reach the cusp of adulthood, the country teeters on the brink of war. Stryker decides to join the fight, deploying to Pearl Harbor not long before the bombs strike. Soon, Rocky and his family find themselves facing yet another incomprehensible tragedy.
Rocky is determined to protect his remaining family and the land where they’ve loved and lost so much. But when the government decides to build a Japanese-American internment camp next to the ranch, Rocky realizes that the land faces even bigger threats than the LA watermen he’s battled for years. Complicating matters is the fact that the idealistic Department of the Interior man assigned to build the camp, who only begins to understand the horror of his task after it may be too late, becomes infatuated with Sunny and entangled with the Rhodes family.
Properties of Thirst is a novel that is both universal and intimate. It is the story of a changing American landscape and an examination of one of the darkest periods in this country’s past, told through the stories of the individual loves and losses that weave together to form the fabric of our shared history. Ultimately, it is an unflinching distillation of our nation’s essence—and a celebration of the bonds of love and family that persist against all odds.
Witches: A Novel
by Brenda Lozano
Witches is a truly captivating novel. Lozano’s story comes to life as two women, raised worlds apart, discover their true positions of power within their equally, yet incredibly different, patriarchal settings. This is a beautiful dive into rich South American culture, with a specific magnification on those who do not conform to gender norms. This is for readers who themselves are skeptics, believers, healers, psychics, or spiritualists. —Nikole
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Paloma is dead. But before she was murdered, before she was even Paloma, she was a traditional healer named Gaspar. Before she was murdered, she taught her cousin Feliciana the secrets of the ceremonies known as veladas, and about the Language and the Book that unlock their secrets.
Sent to report on Paloma’s murder, Zoe meets Feliciana in the mountain village of San Felipe. There, the two women’s lives twist around each other in a danse macabre. Feliciana tells Zoe the story of her struggle to become an accepted healer in her community, and Zoe begins to understand the hidden history of her own experience as a woman, finding her way in a hostile environment shaped by and for men.
Weaving together two parallel narratives that mirror and refract one another, this extraordinary novel envisions the healer as storyteller and the writer as healer, and offers a generous and nuanced understanding of a world that can be at turns violent and exultant, cruel and full of hope.
Stories from the Tenants Downstairs
by Sidik Fofana
Sidik Fofana, public school teacher turned breakaway debut author, shines a light on one apartment building in Harlem through a series of interconnected stories about the strength, hardship and community built between those struggling to face the tide of gentrification. Each story carries a deep impact for the reader, and the lyrical and emotional storytelling is not something you'll soon forget. —Casey
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Set in a Harlem high rise, a stunning debut about a tight-knit cast of characters grappling with their own personal challenges while the forces of gentrification threaten to upend life as they know it.
Like Gloria Naylor’s The Women of Brewster Place and Lin Manuel Miranda’s In the Heights, Sidik Fofana’s electrifying collection of eight interconnected stories showcases the strengths, struggles, and hopes of one residential community in a powerful storytelling experience.
Each short story follows a tenant in the Banneker Homes, a low-income high rise in Harlem where gentrification weighs on everyone’s mind. There is Swan in apartment 6B, whose excitement about his friend’s release from prison jeopardizes the life he’s been trying to lead. Mimi, in apartment 14D, who hustles to raise the child she had with Swan, waitressing at Roscoe’s and doing hair on the side. And Quanneisha B. Miles, a former gymnast with a good education who wishes she could leave Banneker for good, but can’t seem to escape the building’s gravitational pull. We root for these characters and more as they weave in and out of each other’s lives, endeavoring to escape from their pasts and blaze new paths forward for themselves and the people they love.
Carrie Soto Is Back
by Taylor Jenkins Reid
This novel, about a star tennis athlete coming out of retirement to defend her status as winner of the most grand slam titles, was a delight. My lack of tennis knowledge mattered very little, as Reid’s depiction of Carrie Soto won me over and she became someone I was truly rooting for. Without going into much further detail, I will say that I love it when an unlovable character is lovable, and Carrie is just that. This was a fun read that surprised me with its hidden depth, and I’ll also admit that now I’ve done some research, and FYI next year’s Australian Open starts on January 16th. —S.M.C.
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Carrie Soto is fierce, and her determination to win at any cost has not made her popular. But by the time she retires from tennis, she is the best player the world has ever seen. She has shattered every record and claimed twenty Grand Slam titles. And if you ask Carrie, she is entitled to every one. She sacrificed nearly everything to become the best, with her father, Javier, as her coach. A former champion himself, Javier has trained her since the age of two.
But six years after her retirement, Carrie finds herself sitting in the stands of the 1994 US Open, watching her record be taken from her by a brutal, stunning player named Nicki Chan.
At thirty-seven years old, Carrie makes the monumental decision to come out of retirement and be coached by her father for one last year in an attempt to reclaim her record. Even if the sports media says that they never liked “the Battle-Axe” anyway. Even if her body doesn’t move as fast as it did. And even if it means swallowing her pride to train with a man she once almost opened her heart to: Bowe Huntley. Like her, he has something to prove before he gives up the game forever.
In spite of it all, Carrie Soto is back, for one epic final season. In this riveting and unforgettable novel, Taylor Jenkins Reid tells her most vulnerable, emotional story yet.
On the Rooftop
by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton
Vivian believes her singing daughters could make it on the world’s stage and works towards the dream tirelessly. However, members of The Salvations have grown up and out of their girlhood aspirations. This is a book deeply grounded in place set against the backdrop of 1950s San Francisco Fillmore neighborhood struggling against gentrification. Watching every woman in this book fight to be understood as an individual made this an incredibly satisfying read. —Ivy
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A stunning novel about a mother whose dream of musical stardom for her three daughters collides with the daughters’ ambitions for their own lives—set against the backdrop of gentrifying 1950s San Francisco
At home they are just sisters, but on stage, they are The Salvations. Ruth, Esther, and Chloe have been singing and dancing in harmony since they could speak. Thanks to the rigorous direction of their mother, Vivian, they’ve become a bona fide girl group whose shows are the talk of the Jazz-era Fillmore.
Now Vivian has scored a once-in-a-lifetime offer from a talent manager, who promises to catapult The Salvations into the national spotlight. Vivian knows this is the big break she’s been praying for. But sometime between the hours of rehearsal on their rooftop and the weekly gigs at the Champagne Supper Club, the girls have become women, women with dreams that their mother cannot imagine.
The neighborhood is changing, too: all around the Fillmore, white men in suits are approaching Black property owners with offers. One sister finds herself called to fight back, one falls into the comfort of an old relationship, another yearns to make her own voice heard. And Vivian, who has always maintained control, will have to confront the parts of her life that threaten to splinter: the community, The Salvations, and even her family.
Warm, gripping, and wise, with echoes of Fiddler on the Roof, Margaret Wilkerson Sexton’s latest novel is a moving family portrait from “a writer of uncommon nerve and talent” (New York Times Book Review).
The Family Izquierdo
by Rubén Degollado
Tolstoy once wrote that all happy families are alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. This is certainly true of the Izquierdo clan, who cannot agree on what has caused the sudden decline of the family patriarch, Papa Tavo. Each member of the Izquierdo family claims that the family’s misfortune originates from a different source (a curse from a neighbor [!], an inherited nervous disposition). These unique viewpoints regarding the state of the family affairs are told from the perspectives of multiple members of the Izquierdo clan, and the reader is given full access to the often clashing and always entertaining personalities of each family member. My personal favorite narrator is Gonzalo, the vulnerable and self-reliant eldest son. I read on to see what would become of Gonzalo’s marriage and his relationship with his aging father. I fully recommend The Family Izquierdo to readers who love multi-generational family sagas. —K.L.
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A masterful debut that weaves together the lives of three generations of a Mexican American family bound by love, and a curse.
The tight-knit Izquierdo family is grappling with misfortunes none of them can explain. Their beloved patriarch has suffered from an emotional collapse and is dying; eldest son Gonzalo’s marriage is falling apart; daughter Dina, beleaguered by the fear that her nightmares are real, is a shut-in. When Gonzalo digs up a strange object in the backyard of the family home, the Izquierdos take it as proof that a jealous neighbor has cursed them—could this be the reason for all their troubles? As the Izquierdos face a distressing present and an uncertain future, they are sustained by the blood that binds them, a divine presence, and an abiding love for one another. Told in a series of soulful voices brimming with warmth and humor, The Family Izquierdo is a tender narrative of a family at a turning point.
Paris Is a Party, Paris Is a Ghost
by David Hoon Kim
This novel is a beautiful example of how different people can shape our lives, no matter how long they played a role. Kim’s book follows the story of forgein travelers Henrik and Fumiko, with sections that focus on the time before, during, and after Fumiko’s death. Although there is no linear narrative to hold the pieces of Henrik’s journey together tightly, the themes that flow from one to the next connect this novel in a surprisingly wholesome way. —Nikole
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In a strangely distorted Paris, a Japanese adoptee is haunted by the woman he once loved
When Fumiko emerges after one month locked in her dorm room, she’s already dead, leaving a half-smoked Marlboro Light and a cupboard of petrified food in her wake. For her boyfriend, Henrik Blatand, an aspiring translator, these remnants are like clues, propelling him forward in a search for meaning. Meanwhile, Fumiko, or perhaps her doppelgänger, reappears: in line at the Louvre, on street corners and subway platforms, and on the dissection table of a group of medical students.
Henrik’s inquiry expands beyond Fumiko’s seclusion and death, across the absurd, entropic streets of Paris and the figures that wander them, from a jaded group of Korean expats, to an eccentric French widow, to the indelible woman whom Henrik finds sitting in his place on a train. It drives him into the shadowy corners of his past, where his adoptive Danish parents raised him in a house without mirrors. And it mounts to a charged intimacy shared with his best friend’s precocious daughter, who may be haunted herself.
With each successive, echoic chapter, Paris Is a Party, Paris Is a Ghost plunges readers more deeply beneath the surface of things, to the displacement, exile, grief, and desire that hide in plain sight.
The Reading List
by Sara Nisha Adams
Anyone who loves to read should pick up this book. The Reading List follows two main characters—Aleisha, a student working at her local library over the summer, and Mukesh, a recent widower. Their unlikely friendship grows as they make their way down a carefully curated list of literary classics made for people who might need an escape from their current reality. This heartwarming story shows how books help us cope with tragedies and hardships we face throughout our lives. —Kalani
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Widower Mukesh lives a quiet life in Wembley, in West London after losing his beloved wife. He shops every Wednesday, goes to Temple, and worries about his granddaughter, Priya, who hides in her room reading while he spends his evenings watching nature documentaries.
Aleisha is a bright but anxious teenager working at the local library for the summer when she discovers a crumpled-up piece of paper in the back of To Kill a Mockingbird. It’s a list of novels that she’s never heard of before. Intrigued, and a little bored with her slow job at the checkout desk, she impulsively decides to read every book on the list, one after the other. As each story gives up its magic, the books transport Aleisha from the painful realities she’s facing at home.
When Mukesh arrives at the library, desperate to forge a connection with his bookworm granddaughter, Aleisha passes along the reading list…hoping that it will be a lifeline for him too. Slowly, the shared books create a connection between two lonely souls, as fiction helps them escape their grief and everyday troubles and find joy again.
The Wild Hunt
by Emma Seckel
Historical fiction meets Celtic lore in this eerie debut novel by Emma Seckel. The Wild Hunt takes place on a Scottish Island after World War II. What seems like a story about the aftermath of war turns into a suspenseful mystery with atmospheric details so rich you will swear you can smell the heather. Seckel’s writing feels modern despite the setting which makes the story feel even more real and hauntingly poignant. With Daphne du Maurier vibes, this book is un-put-downable. I dare say it is one of my favorite reads so far. —Kristina
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The islanders have only three rules: don’t stick your nose where it’s not wanted, don’t mention the war, and never let your guard down during October.
Leigh Welles has not set foot on the island in years, but when she finds herself called home from life on the Scottish mainland by her father’s unexpected death, she is determined to forget the sorrows of the past—her mother’s abandonment, her brother’s icy distance, the unspeakable tragedy of World War II—and start fresh. Fellow islander Iain MacTavish, an RAF veteran with his eyes on the sky and his head in the past, is also in desperate need of a new beginning. A young widower, Iain struggles to return to the normal life he knew before the war.
But this October is anything but normal. This October, the sluagh are restless. The ominous, birdlike creatures of Celtic legend—whispered to carry the souls of the dead—have haunted the islanders for decades, but in the war’s wake, there are more wandering souls and more sluagh. When a young man disappears, Leigh and Iain are thrown together to investigate the truth at the island’s dark heart and reveal hidden secrets of their own. Rich with historical detail, a skillful speculative edge, and a deep imagination, Emma Seckel’s propulsive and transporting debut The Wild Hunt unwinds long-held tales of love, loss, and redemption.
Mystery & True Crime

Shutter
by Ramona Emerson
Indigenous photographer Rita Todacheene hears from the dead after documenting violent crime scenes. When the ghost of a victim demands justice, Rita has no choice but to put her own life on the line to solve the crime. More than a whodunnit, Shutter shows us the reality of growing up on a Navajo reservation and the familial love that can help us persevere despite the odds.
—Glenn
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This blood-chilling debut set in New Mexico’s Navajo Nation is equal parts gripping crime thriller, supernatural horror, and poignant portrayal of coming of age on the reservation.
Rita Todacheene is a forensic photographer working for the Albuquerque police force. Her excellent photography skills have cracked many cases—she is almost supernaturally good at capturing details. In fact, Rita has been hiding a secret: she sees the ghosts of crime victims who point her toward the clues that other investigators overlook.
As a lone portal back to the living for traumatized spirits, Rita is terrorized by nagging ghosts who won’t let her sleep and who sabotage her personal life. Her taboo and psychologically harrowing ability was what drove her away from the Navajo reservation, where she was raised by her grandmother. It has isolated her from friends and gotten her in trouble with the law.
And now it might be what gets her killed.
When Rita is sent to photograph the scene of a supposed suicide on a highway overpass, the furious, discombobulated ghost of the victim—who insists she was murdered—latches onto Rita, forcing her on a quest for revenge against her killers, and Rita finds herself in the crosshairs of one of Albuquerque’s most dangerous cartels. Written in sparkling, gruesome prose, Shutter is an explosive debut from one of crime fiction's most powerful new voices.

A Dreadful Splendor
by B.R. Myers
Take the atmospheric details of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca and mix it with a cast of character personalities from a Jane Austen novel and what do you get? A satisfyingly creepy, Victorian era gothic mystery that is—A Dreadful Splendor by B.R. Myers. Myers creates a riveting page turner with enough plot twists that keep you guessing till the end. A perfect read for the autumn months ahead. —Kristina
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Be careful what you conjure...
In Victorian London, Genevieve Timmons poses as a spiritualist to swindle wealthy mourners—until one misstep lands her in a jail cell awaiting the noose. Then a stranger arrives to make her a peculiar offer. The lord he serves, Mr. Pemberton, has been inconsolable since the tragic death of his beautiful bride-to-be. If Genevieve can perform a séance persuasive enough to bring the young lord peace, she will win her freedom.
Soothing a grieving nobleman should be easy for someone of Genevieve’s skill, but when she arrives at the grand Somerset Park estate, Mr. Pemberton is not the heartbroken lover she expected. The surly—yet exceedingly handsome—gentleman is certain that his fiancée was murdered, even though there is no evidence. Only a confession can bring justice now, and Mr. Pemberton decides Genevieve will help him get it. With his knowledge of the household and her talent for illusion, they can stage a haunting so convincing it will coax the killer into the light. However, when frightful incidents befall the manor, Genevieve realizes her tricks aren’t required after all. She may be a fake, but Somerset’s ghost could be all too real…
Slenderman: Online Obsession, Mental Illness, and the Violent Crime of Two Midwestern Girls
by Kathleen Hale
Slenderman by Kathleen Hale is a full, well-researched account of The Slenderman Stabbing, one of the most disquieting crimes of the last decade. Coverage of this story has been ongoing since the event, but this title explores new material based on interviews with those affected and court transcripts. On reading, this book is full of exquisite detail and empathy, and a desire to expound on the contribution mental illness played in the crime. If you enjoy reading or listening to true crime, you’ll devour this notable contribution to the genre. —Brooks
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The first full account of the Slenderman stabbing, a true crime narrative of mental illness, the American judicial system, the trials of adolescence, and the power of the internet
On May 31, 2014, in the Milwaukee suburb of Waukesha, Wisconsin, two twelve-year-old girls attempted to stab their classmate to death. Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier's violence was extreme, but what seemed even more frightening was that they committed their crime under the influence of a figure born by the internet: the so-called "Slenderman." Yet the even more urgent aspect of the story, that the children involved suffered from undiagnosed mental illnesses, often went overlooked in coverage of the case.
Slenderman: Online Obsession, Mental Illness, and the Violent Crime of Two Midwestern Girls tells that full story for the first time in deeply researched detail, using court transcripts, police reports, individual reporting, and exclusive interviews. Morgan and Anissa were bound together by their shared love of geeky television shows and animals, and their discovery of the user-uploaded scary stories on the Creepypasta website could have been nothing more than a brief phase. But Morgan was suffering from early-onset childhood schizophrenia. She believed that she had seen Slenderman long before discovering him online, and the only way to stop him from killing her family was to bring him a sacrifice: Morgan's best friend Payton "Bella" Leutner, whom Morgan and Anissa planned to stab to death on the night of Morgan's twelfth birthday party. Bella survived the attack, but was deeply traumatized, while Morgan and Anissa were immediately sent to jail, and the severity of their crime meant that they would be prosecuted as adults. There, as Morgan continued to suffer from worsening mental illness after being denied antipsychotics, her life became more and more surreal.
Slenderman is both a page-turning true crime story and a search for justice.
Science Fiction & Fantasy

You Sexy Thing
by Cat Rambo
Former Admiral Nicolette Larson has worked tirelessly to make her restaurant a success. Failure means returning to military service with her former squadron turned restaurant employees and sets back a rescue mission decades in the making. When everything explodes in her face (quite literally), survival is tantamount while also contending with a living ship that believes they’re thieves. Oh and space pirates! For fans of Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet and The Great British Baking Show, I savored every minute of this incredible series opener. —Ivy
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Farscape meets The Great British Bake Off in this fantastic space opera You Sexy Thing from former SFWA President, Cat Rambo.
Just when they thought they were out…
TwiceFar station is at the edge of the known universe, and that’s just how Niko Larson, former Admiral in the Grand Military of the Hive Mind, likes it.
Retired and finally free of the continual war of conquest, Niko and the remnants of her former unit are content to spend the rest of their days working at the restaurant they built together, The Last Chance.
But, some wars can’t ever be escaped, and unlike the Hive Mind, some enemies aren’t content to let old soldiers go. Niko and her crew are forced onto a sentient ship convinced that it is being stolen and must survive the machinations of a sadistic pirate king if they even hope to keep the dream of The Last Chance alive.
The Art of Prophecy
by Wesley Chu
Jian, child of Prophecy, is destined to save the realm from the evil Khan. I loved this book. I appreciated that it’s concerned with the disillusionment of blind faith. It asks one fundamental question: what instead happens if the prophecy is wrong? Imagine believing you are effectively life’s main character, humbled, then forced to decide what kind of person you have to be. —Morgan
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So many stories begin the same way: With a prophecy. A chosen one. And the inevitable quest to slay a villain, save the kingdom, and fulfill a grand destiny.
But this is not that kind of story.
It does begin with a prophecy: A child will rise to defeat the Eternal Khan, a cruel immortal god-king, and save the kingdom.
And that prophecy did anoint a hero, Jian, raised since birth in luxury and splendor, and celebrated before he has won a single battle.
But that’s when the story hits its first twist: The prophecy is wrong.
What follows is a story more wondrous than any prophecy could foresee, and with many unexpected heroes: Taishi, an older woman who is the greatest grandmaster of magical martial arts in the kingdom but who thought her adventuring days were all behind her; Sali, a straitlaced warrior who learns the rules may no longer apply when the leader to whom she pledged her life is gone; and Qisami, a chaotic assassin who takes a little too much pleasure in the kill.
And Jian himself, who has to find a way to become what he no longer believes he can be—a hero after all.
Aftermath
by LeVar Burton
Beloved Reading Rainbow host and Star Trek alum Levar Burton makes his novel debut with a prescient speculative gander at a near future United States that is embroiled in a civil war set off by the racially motivated assassination of the POTUS. Burton deftly twists three character arcs into a razor sharp examination of American life in these dark modern times. Part The Road, part Lucifer's Hammer. —Ed
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America today is teetering on the edge of the alarming vision presented in LeVar Burton’s debut novel, written more than two decades ago . . .
In 2012, the first African American president is assassinated by a white extremist—just four days after he is elected. The horrific tragedy leads to riots, financial collapse, and ultimately, a full-on civil war. In its aftermath, millions are left homeless as famine and disease spread throughout the country.
But from Chicago, a mysterious voice cries out . . .
To Leon Crane, a former NASA scientist now struggling to survive on the streets, the pleas he hears remind him of the wife he could not save—and offer him a chance at redemption.
To Jacob Fire Cloud, a revered Lakota medicine man, the voice is a sign that the White Buffalo Woman has returned to unite all the races in peace and prosperity.
And to little Amy Ladue, the cries are those of her mother, who disappeared during the devastating St. Louis earthquake—and who must still be alive.
These three strangers will be drawn together to rescue someone they have never met, a woman who holds the key to a new future for humanity—one remarkably brimming with hope.
The Book Eaters
by Sunyi Dean
If you are looking for a book that scores high for originality, this is your book. Sunyi Dean’s debut novel, The Book Eaters, is a morally complex contemporary gothic fantasy novel that feels like a fresh twist on the vampire story. The chapters alternate between Devon’s past and present life highlighting generational trauma and the driving forces that push people to do the unimaginable. Dean’s storytelling will leave you questioning—what truly defines a monster? —Kristina
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Out on the Yorkshire Moors lives a secret line of people for whom books are food, and who retain all of a book's content after eating it. To them, spy novels are a peppery snack; romance novels are sweet and delicious. Eating a map can help them remember destinations, and children, when they misbehave, are forced to eat dry, musty pages from dictionaries.
Devon is part of The Family, an old and reclusive clan of book eaters. Her brothers grow up feasting on stories of valor and adventure, and Devon—like all other book eater women—is raised on a carefully curated diet of fairy tales and cautionary stories.
But real life doesn't always come with happy endings, as Devon learns when her son is born with a rare and darker kind of hunger—not for books, but for human minds.
Romance

Love in the Time of Serial Killers
by Alicia Thompson
Murderinos rejoice! This is THE romance novel for anyone who binges True Crime podcasts, Netflix docuseries, Only Murders in The Building, and Ann Rule books. Thompson’s endless references to both obscure and well-known stories feel like an Easter Egg. It might be distracting if not so freakin’ well done. The characters are charming; the story is original, and it's an overall delightful reading experience. SSDGM —Lindsay
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Turns out that reading nothing but true crime isn't exactly conducive to modern dating—and one woman is going to have to learn how to give love a chance when she's used to suspecting the worst.
PhD candidate Phoebe Walsh has always been obsessed with true crime. She's even analyzing the genre in her dissertation—if she can manage to finish writing it. It's hard to find the time while she spends the summer in Florida, cleaning out her childhood home, dealing with her obnoxiously good-natured younger brother, and grappling with the complicated feelings of mourning a father she hadn't had a relationship with for years.
It doesn't help that she's low-key convinced that her new neighbor, Sam Dennings, is a serial killer (he may dress business casual by day, but at night he's clearly up to something). It's not long before Phoebe realizes that Sam might be something much scarier—a genuinely nice guy who can pierce her armor to reach her vulnerable heart.
Heartbreaker: A Hell's Belles Novel
by Sarah MacLean
Sarah MacLean’s latest series follows a group of brazen, brilliant Victorian ladies who wield their own justice. Here, meet Adelaide Frampton, once a pickpocket, now an expert thief of high society secrets. While a wallflower to many, she is most definitely seen by the Duke of Clayborn, who is both intrigued and determined to keep his own truths from her. Full of adventure, substance, humor, and so much spice, MacLean builds the best worlds. Start here or with Bombshell, the delightful first book, and fall in love! —Melinda
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New York Times bestselling author Sarah MacLean follows her highly acclaimed Bombshell with Heartbreaker, featuring a fierce, fearless heroine on a mission to steal a duke’s secrets…and his heart.
Nonfiction

A Place in the World:
Finding the Meaning of Home
by Frances Mayes
A Place in the World is many things—all of them beautiful, rich, and restorative. It is a welcome escape, a travel memoir in Italy, the South, and beyond, a contemplation on place and finding home wherever you are. It is immersive nature writing, a paean to literature, to food, family and friends. There is deep satisfaction here, an enviable pleasure for the life Frances Mayes puts forth and a renewed appreciation of my own. This book is a balm. —Melinda
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Though Frances Mayes is known for her travels, she has always sought a sense of home wherever she goes. In this poetic testament to the power of place in our lives, Mayes reflects on the idea of home, from the earliest imprint of four walls to the startling discoveries of feeling the strange ease of homes abroad, friends’ homes, and even momentary homes that spark desires for other lives. Her musings are all the more poignant after so many have spent their long pandemic months at home. From her travels across Italy—Tuscany, of course, but also Venice and Capri—to the American South, France, and Mexico, Mayes examines the connective tissue among them through the homes she’s inhabited.
A Place in the World explores Mayes’s passion and obsessions with houses and the things that inhabit them—old books, rich food, beloved friends, transportive art. The indelible marks each refuge has left on her and how each home influenced the next serve as the foundations of its chapters.
Written in Mayes’s signature intimate style, A Place in the World captures the adventure of moving on while seeking comfort in the cornerstone closest to all of us—home.
Asian American Histories of the United States
by Catherine Ceniza Choy
Asian American Histories of the United States by Catherine Ceniza Choy is exactly what it says it is: a concise history book detailing the relationship between America, Asian Americans, and the circumstances that continue to bring the two together. If you’re looking for a novel-esque book that touches on the unique histories of different ethnic groups across Asia, then this is it. —Ian
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An inclusive and landmark history, emphasizing how essential Asian American experiences are to any understanding of US history
Original and expansive, Asian American Histories of the United States is a nearly 200-year history of Asian migration, labor, and community formation in the US. Reckoning with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the surge in anti-Asian hate and violence, award-winning historian Catherine Ceniza Choy presents an urgent social history of the fastest growing group of Americans. The book features the lived experiences and diverse voices of immigrants, refugees, US-born Asian Americans, multiracial Americans, and workers from industries spanning agriculture to healthcare.
Despite significant Asian American breakthroughs in American politics, arts, and popular culture in the twenty-first century, a profound lack of understanding of Asian American history permeates American culture. Choy traces how anti-Asian violence and its intersection with misogyny and other forms of hatred, the erasure of Asian American experiences and contributions, and Asian American resistance to what has been omitted are prominent themes in Asian American history. This ambitious book is fundamental to understanding the American experience and its existential crises of the early twenty-first century.
The Fishermen and the Dragon:
Fear, Greed, and a Fight for Justice on the Gulf Coast
by Kirk Wallace Johnson
In the years during and following the Vietnam War, many displaced Vietnamese people found themselves on the Texas Gulf Coast, working as fishermen and shrimpers. Many of the white residents did not take kindly to their presence—blaming the Vietnamese for their own paltry catches, which were in fact due to increasing levels of pollution in the Gulf—and initiated an onslaught of harassment and violence that would last for years. Wallace Johnson has taken a mostly forgotten historical conflict fraught with racism, xenophobia, and envrionmental injustice and through careful research, brought it back into our collective consciousnes. —Jade
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By the late 1970s, the fishermen of the Texas Gulf Coast were struggling. The bays that had sustained generations of shrimpers and crabbers before them were being poisoned by nearby petrochemical plants, oil spills, pesticides, and concrete. But as their nets came up light, the white shrimpers could only see one culprit: the small but growing number of newly resettled Vietnamese refugees who had recently started fishing.
Turf was claimed. Guns were flashed. Threats were made. After a white crabber was killed by a young Vietnamese refugee in self-defense, the situation became a tinderbox primed to explode, and the Grand Dragon of the Texas Knights of the Ku Klux Klan saw an opportunity to stoke the fishermen’s rage and prejudices. At a massive Klan rally near Galveston Bay one night in 1981, he strode over to an old boat graffitied with the words U.S.S. VIET CONG, torch in hand, and issued a ninety-day deadline for the refugees to leave or else “it’s going to be a helluva lot more violent than Vietnam!” The white fishermen roared as the boat burned, convinced that if they could drive these newcomers from the coast, everything would return to normal.
A shocking campaign of violence ensued, marked by burning crosses, conspiracy theories, death threats, torched boats, and heavily armed Klansmen patrolling Galveston Bay. The Vietnamese were on the brink of fleeing, until a charismatic leader in their community, a highly decorated colonel, convinced them to stand their ground by entrusting their fate with the Constitution.
Drawing upon a trove of never-before-published material, including FBI and ATF records, unprecedented access to case files, and scores of firsthand interviews with Klansmen, shrimpers, law enforcement, environmental activists, lawyers, perpetrators and victims, Johnson uncovers secrets and secures confessions to crimes that went unsolved for more than forty years. This explosive investigation of a forgotten story, years in the making, ultimately leads Johnson to the doorstep of the one woman who could see clearly enough to recognize the true threat to the bays—and who now represents the fishermen’s last hope.
Enchantments:
Find the Magic in Yourself
by Mya Spalter
Are you looking to add a bit more magic in your life, or have a friend who seems to be collecting crystals at an alarming rate but doesn’t seem to know what to do with them? Look no further than Spalter’s fun and warm introduction to all things witchy! Perfect for the beginners or those looking for a bit of structure in their practice. I especially like that they give options for those not pursuing the Wiccan path, and the no-nonsense attitude about love spells (just don’t do it!). —Jax
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Mya Spalter spent years among candles, herbs, cats, and spells as an employee at New York City’s oldest occult shop, Enchantments. In this beautifully illustrated book, Spalter sets out to share ways that she’s found to live life magically and maintain spiritual connection with the elements and the universe. She offers an approachable compendium of magical knowledge that will equip you to construct your own original spells, build rituals around your intuition, and find your way toward being your own unique kind of witch.
Black and queer, Spalter has written this friendly, inclusive guide that will teach anyone how to:
• Build an altar: Find the right tools to model the grace and beauty you aspire to find in your life.
• Cast a self-love spell on yourself: Recognize your own strength and power to inspire happiness and fulfillment.
• Clear out negative energies: Identify and rid yourself of the things holding you back.
• Set meaningful intentions: Create daily practices that positively affect yourself and the world around you.
You will learn how certain colors can help raise your vibrations, directions for herbal blends and potions, the keys to banishing unfriendly spirits (with cleansing rituals or even a dance party), and invaluable instructions in the timeless arts of astrology, tarot, crystals, and finding a parking spot downtown.
Open this book and enchant your own life!
Pastoral Song:
A Farmer's Journey
by James Rebanks
Is ‘progress’ always a good thing? James Rebanks shows us how dramatically farming has changed in just a few generations. Small, family-run operations have disappeared, only to be replaced with industrial monoliths, focused entirely on producing as much inexpensive food as possible. With all eyes on the bottom line, the soul has disappeared from farming. How much does that matter? Pastoral Song may have you thinking twice before you eat your next meal. —Glenn
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The New York Times bestselling author of The Shepherd’s Life profiles his family’s farm across three generations, revealing through this intimate lens the profound global transformation of agriculture and of the human relationship to the land.
As a boy, James Rebanks's grandfather taught him to work the land the old way. Their family farm in England's Lake District hills was part of an ancient agricultural landscape: a patchwork of crops and meadows, of pastures grazed with livestock, and hedgerows teeming with wildlife. And yet, by the time James inherited the farm, it was barely recognizable. The men and women had vanished from the fields; the old stone barns had crumbled; the skies had emptied of birds and their wind-blown song.
Hailed as "a brilliant, beautiful book" by the Sunday Times (London), Pastoral Song (published in the United Kingdom under the title English Pastoral) is the story of an inheritance: one that affects us all. It tells of how rural landscapes around the world were brought close to collapse, and the age-old rhythms of work, weather, community and wild things were lost. And yet this elegy from the northern fells is also a song of hope: of how, guided by the past, one farmer began to salvage a tiny corner of England that was now his, doing his best to restore the life that had vanished and to leave a legacy for the future.
This is a book about what it means to have love and pride in a place, and how, against all the odds, it may still be possible to build a new pastoral: not a utopia, but somewhere decent for us all.
Biography

Solito:
A Memoir
by Javier Zamora
In his debut, Javier Zamora lets a poetic voice shine throughout as he weaves a timeless memoir for the new American immigrant diaspora. Solito recounts Zamora's journey as a child traveling from his native El Salvador, crossing three borders by land and sea in order to be reunited with his parents in the U.S. Zamora effortlessly illustrates the fear and wonder of his perilous journey, and humanizes an experience most of us could not fathom. —Josué
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Trip. My parents started using that word about a year ago—“one day, you’ll take a trip to be with us. Like an adventure.”
Javier Zamora’s adventure is a three-thousand-mile journey from his small town in El Salvador, through Guatemala and Mexico, and across the U.S. border. He will leave behind his beloved aunt and grandparents to reunite with a mother who left four years ago and a father he barely remembers. Traveling alone amid a group of strangers and a “coyote” hired to lead them to safety, Javier expects his trip to last two short weeks.
At nine years old, all Javier can imagine is rushing into his parents’ arms, snuggling in bed between them, and living under the same roof again. He cannot foresee the perilous boat trips, relentless desert treks, pointed guns, arrests and deceptions that await him; nor can he know that those two weeks will expand into two life-altering months alongside fellow migrants who will come to encircle him like an unexpected family.
A memoir as gripping as it is moving, Solito provides an immediate and intimate account not only of a treacherous and near-impossible journey, but also of the miraculous kindness and love delivered at the most unexpected moments. Solito is Javier Zamora’s story, but it’s also the story of millions of others who had no choice but to leave home.
App Kid: How a Child of Immigrants Grabbed a Piece of the American Dream
by Michael Sayman
Michael Sayman was twelve when he made his first app. Pretty soon, he was making ten thousand dollars a month off it. By seventeen he was an engineer at Facebook. A Bolivian-Peruvian American kid growing up in Miami, he had nothing but the internet and other kids to show him the way. My favorite thing about App Kid is that he’s actually able to say how he makes great apps. And he’s excited to tell you how to do it. —Dave
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As his parents watched their restaurant business collapse in the wake of the Great Recession, Michael Sayman was googling “how to code.” Within a year, he had launched an iPhone app that was raking in thousands of dollars a month, enough to keep his family afloat—and in America.
Entirely self-taught, Sayman headed from high school straight into the professional world, and by the time he was seventeen, he was Facebook’s youngest employe ever, building new features that wowed its founder Mark Zuckerberg and are now being used by more than half a billion people every day. Sayman pushed Facebook to build its own version of Snapchat’s Stories and, as a result, engagement on the platform soared across all demographics. Millions of Gen Z and Millennials flocked to Facebook, and as teen engagement rose dramatically on Instagram and WhatsApp, Snapchat’s parent company suffered a billion-dollar loss in value. Three years later, Sayman jumped ship for Google.
App Kid is the galvanizing story of a young Latino, not yet old enough to drink, who excelled in the cutthroat world of Silicon Valley and went on to become an inspiration to thousands of kids everywhere by following his own surprising, extraordinary path. In this candid and uplifting memoir, Sayman shares the highs and lows, the successes and failures, of his remarkable journey. His book is essential and affirming reading for anyone marching to the beat of their own drum.
Koshersoul: The Faith and Food Journey of an African American Jew
by Michael Twitty
In this followup to his previous bestseller, The Cooking Gene, Twitty continues on his quest to attain more widespread recognition for Black, Jewish food culture. While he makes a point of mentioning that his latest book is “purposely not a cookbook”, it is still very much an examination of and reflection on food, identity, and the intersection between the two. Twitty eloquently explores his experience inhabiting multiple identities--Black, queer, Jewish--that many might see as contradictory. —Jade
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The James Beard award-winning author of the acclaimed The Cooking Gene explores the cultural crossroads of Jewish and African diaspora cuisine and issues of memory, identity, and food.
In Koshersoul, Michael W. Twitty considers the marriage of two of the most distinctive culinary cultures in the world today: the foods and traditions of the African Atlantic and the global Jewish diaspora. To Twitty, the creation of African-Jewish cooking is a conversation of migrations and a dialogue of diasporas offering a rich background for inventive recipes and the people who create them.
The question that most intrigues him is not just who makes the food, but how the food makes the people. Jews of Color are not outliers, Twitty contends, but significant and meaningful cultural creators in both Black and Jewish civilizations. Koshersoul also explores how food has shaped the journeys of numerous cooks, including Twitty’s own passage to and within Judaism.
As intimate, thought-provoking, and profound as The Cooking Gene, this remarkable book teases the senses as it offers sustenance for the soul.
Knocking Myself Up:
A Memoir of My (In)Fertility
by Michelle Tea
The beloved Bay Area local Michelle Tea has come back with a memoir surrounding her experiences trying to get pregnant later in life. Grab your turkey basters and settle in for a funny, witty, and ever-authentic account on the journey to parenthood. I am currently pregnant so this book hit home for me, but everyone can find something to relate to in this book; be they a parent, pregnant, or child-free. —MJ
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Written in intimate, gleefully TMI prose, Knocking Myself Up is the irreverent account of Tea’s route to parenthood—with a group of ride-or-die friends, a generous drag queen, and a whole lot of can-do pluck. Along the way she falls in love with a wholesome genderqueer a decade her junior, attempts biohacking herself a baby with black market fertility meds (and magicking herself an offspring with witch-enchanted honey), learns her eggs are busted, and enters the Fertility Industrial Complex in order to carry her younger lover’s baby.
With the signature sharp wit and wild heart that have made her a favorite to so many readers, Tea guides us through the maze of medical procedures, frustrations and astonishments on the path to getting pregnant, wryly critiquing some of the systems that facilitate that choice (“a great, punk, daredevil thing to do”). In Knocking Myself Up, Tea has crafted a deeply entertaining and profound memoir, a testament to the power of love and family-making, however complex our lives may be, to transform and enrich us.
Upcoming Events
Board & Picture Books
One Sky (Board Book)
by Aaron Becker, Aaron Becker (Illustrator)
With his signature tinted windows, Becker’s newest board book One Sky invites readers to hold the pages up to a sunny day and see how light plays with the colors. Atmospheric and ethereal, this read-aloud celebrates the sky in a fun and interactive way. I love books that you can engage with in multiple ways! Like Becker’s You Are Light and My Favorite Color, this one is especially great for infants because of its tactile nature. —Eli
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Marvel at the sky in this meditative die-cut book, a follow-up to You Are Light and My Favorite Color, from the Caldecott Honor–winning creator of the Journey trilogy.
Its dawn begins in darkness.
With hope we greet its light.
Within the pages of this elegant book is the entire sky. Lyrical text moves readers through the day, from dawn to dusk, while ink- and die-cut lines resembling stained glass arc across the pages like birds in flight. An encounter with the translucent, jewel-colored panes in this special board book offers a luminous reminder that, no matter the hour or the hue, we all dwell together under one magnificent sky.
Dear Wild Child: You Carry Your Home Inside You (Hardcover)
by Wallace J. Nichols, Wallace Grayce Nichols, Drew Beckmeyer (Illustrator)
What a gift. Nichols and his daughter have turned the emotional letter he wrote to her after their family home burned down in the CZU Fire into this special book, celebrating what was built and what will endure. Breckmeyer’s colorful illustrations add reverent intimacy in their many details. While the book’s framework comes from devastating loss, its message of how we create a sense of home and carry it forward is gracious and universal.
—Melinda
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A story inspired by a letter from a father to his daughter about wildfire, loss, and learning that we carry our homes inside us wherever we go
In the shade of ancient redwood trees, by a creek, not far from the ocean, a father builds a house for his newborn daughter, where she grows up wild and strong in their coastal canyon home. When a wildfire takes back their beloved house, a father writes his now-grown daughter a letter telling her it’s gone. Inspired by the real letter the author wrote his daughter, this poignant story—written together by father and daughter—joyfully declares that a home is more than just wood and stone; it is made of love and can never be taken away. You carry home with you wherever you go.
The Sea in the Way (Hardcover)
by Sophie Gilmore, Sophie Gilmore (Illustrator)
Badger and Bear are the best of friends despite being separated by time zones, sputtering phone lines, and THE SEA. When the sea asks for more and more and then one thing too many, Badger finally sees that what divides the two friends also joins them together. Awash in ocean colors from edge to edge, these lovely pages beckon us to truly understand the distance between one another. A very thoughtful story for kids and parents alike. —Michelle
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All Badger wants is to be close to Bear, but the vast, endless sea is in the way. Everything is terrible! Until Badger looks more closely and sees all the beauty—and all the connections to Bear—around her. With dazzling artwork and undeniably lovable characters, acclaimed author-illustrator Sophie Gilmore’s The Sea in the Way explores ways to cope with missing a loved one, and how to open yourself up to new experiences.
Patchwork (Hardcover)
by Matt de la Peña, Corinna Luyken (Illustrator)
Illustrated with a precious palette of pastels, this picture book portrays our lives as patchwork quilts woven from our experiences, emotions, strengths, and weaknesses. Though they make up who we are, these patchworks inevitably change shape and color with time, yet they remain beautiful. Coupled with incredible illustrations, this story conveys a beautiful message that makes a great book for the whole family. —Eli
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From a Newbery Medal-winning author and a New York Times bestselling illustrator comes a deeply moving ode to the complexity and uniqueness of every child.
In profound, uplifting verse and sumptuous artwork, beloved creators Matt de la Peña and Corinna Luyken explore the endless possibilities each child contains: A young dancer may grow into a computer coder; a basketball player might become a poet; a class clown may one day serve as an inspiring teacher; and today’s quiet empath might be tomorrow’s great leader. Here's a profound and uplifting new classic with an empowering message for readers of all ages: Your story is still being written.
Ways to Make Friends (Hardcover)
by Jairo Buitrago, Mariana Ruiz Johnson (Illustrator)
It’s always the right time for making new friends! But, just in case you need some ideas—good ones, silly ones, and questionable ones—Ways to Make Friends is the go-to book to get the conversation started. This book tells a new story every time you open it, with so much to discover in the playfully packed illustrations and silly suggestions. It's the perfect memory-making experience for storytime. —Jenny
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This "sublime picture book" (Kirkus STARRED Review) offers a hilarious and insightful guide to making new friends at your own pace. For kids aged 4 to 7, Ways to Make Friends will bolster compassion and make kids laugh on their way back to school.
What's the best way to make friends? Toad has the most magnificent ideas Sometimes they don't go according to plan... but that's okay. Eventually Toad tires of making new friends, but comes to a marvelous conclusion: sometimes being with yourself is a good way to pass the time too.
A hilarious and heartfelt read for kids who are starting school or experiencing other unfamiliar social situations, Ways to Make Friends will give them the courage to stand on their own--and maybe try one of Toad's unconventional methods to make a friend for themselves.
Independent Readers
NO! Said Custard the Squirrel
by Sergio Ruzzier
Always delightfully silly, Ruzzier’s early reader combines lovable characters with fun and interesting words. It’s just the book for kids who are learning to read and pronounce larger words through repetition, plus who can resist a story about saying “No!”. Recommended for kids at the beginning of their reading journey that want an exciting and ridiculous, but not too challenging read. —Eli
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From award-winning creator Sergio Ruzzier, an oddball “squirrel” forges his own path in this comical tale about being yourself:
Custard the Squirrel, aren’t you a duck?
Will you please quack?
Will you do anything you don’t want to do?
“NO!” said Custard the Squirrel.
From the brilliant mind of author-illustrator Sergio Ruzzier comes this delightfully wacky story about rejecting others' expectations of who you should be and being unapologetically, authentically you. Simple, universal, and hilarious, this rollicking read-aloud is an ode to free spirits everywhere.
Bunnicula: The Graphic Novel
by James Howe, Andrew Donkin, Stephen Gilpin (Illustrator)
Parents rejoice! Our beloved cat and dog detective duo are back, this time fully illustrated. Bunnicula was one of my favorites as a child, a little spooky but mostly silly. Donkin and Gilpin do a great job adapting this 1979 classic and breathing new life into a series that stands the test of time. Amazing for any child who loves to live on the creepy side of life, even those with a low scare tolerance! —MJ
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“Bunnicula rules!” —Dav Pilkey, creator of the Captain Underpants series
Celebrate over forty years of the modern classic Bunnicula with this fang-tastic graphic novelization that will send a shiver down your spine and leave you howling with laughter!
Beware the hare!
Harold the dog and Chester the cat must find out the truth about the newest pet in the Monroe household—a suspicious-looking bunny with unusual habits…and fangs! Could this innocent-seeming rabbit actually be a vampire? Experience the chills and thrills of this classic tale in an all-new graphic novel format!
Middle Grade Fiction
Three Strike Summer
by Emily Lloyd-Jones
All Gloria Mae Willard wants is to play baseball with the Balko boys, but no one wants to play with a “skirt,” even if she’s got the best arm in town. When the Dust Bowl brings tragedy after tragedy to Oklahoma, Gloria’s family packs everything they own into a truck and heads to California in search of hope. Memories of the 1993 film The Sandlot coupled with this novel's labor rights movement (think Paterson’s Lyddie) kept me racing to find out what happened next. —Ivy
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Sandlot meets Esperanza Rising in this lyrical middle grade novel set in the 1930s about a strong-willed girl who finds her voice in a tale of moxie, peaches, and determination to thrive despite the odds.
When the skies dried up, Gloria thought it was temporary. When the dust storms rolled in, she thought they would pass. But now the bank man’s come to take the family farm, and Pa’s decided to up and move to California in search of work. They’ll pick fruit, he says, until they can save up enough money to buy land of their own again.
There are only three rules at the Santa Ana Holdsten Peach Orchard:
No stealing product.
No drunkenness or gambling.
And absolutely no organizing.
Well, Gloria Mae Willard isn’t about to organize any peaches, no ma’am. She’s got more on her mind than that. Like the secret, all-boys baseball team she’s desperate to play for, if only they’d give her a chance. Or the way that wages keep going down. The way their company lodgings are dirty and smelly, and everyone seems intent on leaving her out of everything.
But Gloria has never been the type to wait around for permission. If the boys won’t let her play, she’ll find a way to make them. If the people around her are keeping secrets, then she’ll keep a few of her own. And if the boss men at the Santa Ana Holdsten Peach Orchard say she can’t organize peaches, then by golly she’ll organize a whole ball game.
Moonflower
by Kacen Callender
Moon, a child experiencing depression, steadily faces their fears in both the living and spirit realms. If I could go back and give my younger self a book, this would be it. Callender gifts us with the language needed to understand our feelings, young or old. There is so much kindness and wisdom within these pages, it will make anyone who reads them feel loved and understood.
—Kailey Jo
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Kacen Callender, National Book Award winner of King and the Dragonflies, delivers a stunning novel that invites readers into a child’s struggles with mental health, and their journey to wholeness.
Moon’s depression is overwhelming. Therapy doesn’t help, and Moon is afraid that their mom hates them because they’re sad. Moon’s only escape is traveling to the spirit realms every night, where they hope they’ll never return to the world of the living again.
The spirit realm is where they have their one and only friend, Wolf, and where they’re excited to experience an infinite number of adventures. But when the realm is threatened, it’s up to Moon to save the spirit world.
With the help of celestial beings and guardians, Moon battles monsters and shadows, and through their journey, they begin to learn that a magical adventure of love and acceptance awaits them in the world of the living, too.
This story of hope shows readers that our souls blossom when we realize that we are as worthy and powerful as the universe itself.
Attack of the Black Rectangles
by A. S. King
Mac hates when teachers ignore the truth in the name of “appropriateness.” When he discovers someone has blacked out a portion of his school book, he sets out to uncover the source of the censorship. This brilliantly written novel by Printz Award winner A.S. King is timely as heck and a vital addition to the conversation about how to handle hard subjects in schools. I was rooting for Mac every step of the way. —Ivy
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Award-winning author Amy Sarig King takes on censorship and intolerance in a novel she was born to write.
When Mac first opens his classroom copy of Jane Yolen's The Devil’s Arithmetic and finds some words blacked out, he thinks it must be a mistake. But then when he and his friends discover what the missing words are, he's outraged.
Someone in his school is trying to prevent kids from reading the full story.
But who?
Even though his unreliable dad tells him to not get so emotional about a book (or anything else), Mac has been raised by his mom and grandad to call out things that are wrong. He and his friends head to the principal's office to protest the censorship... but her response doesn't take them seriously.
So many adults want Mac to keep his words to himself.
Mac's about to see the power of letting them out.
In Attack of the Black Rectangles, acclaimed author Amy Sarig King shows all the ways truth can be hard... but still worth fighting for.
Lily and the Night Creatures
by Nick Lake, Emily Gravett (Illustrator)
Lily’s worst fears manifest when sinister creatures posing as her parents infest her home on the night her new baby sibling is expected. Accompanied by pen-and-ink illustrations, the book is filled with talking animal friends, exciting twists, and plenty of creepy moments, while also focusing on Lily coming to terms with a chronic illness and a fear of being replaced. I especially loved the drawings with their balance of spookiness and silliness.
—Alana
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A young girl sets out to defeat the evil spirits inhabiting her home in this delightfully dark middle grade adventure perfect for fans of Coraline and Margaret Peterson Haddix’s The Strangers.
Lily is used to hospitals—she’s spent more time in them than out of them thanks to her recent health issues. But when her mother goes into labor, her parents drop her off at her grandmother’s house and rush to the hospital without her. Lily doesn’t want the new baby to replace her and she certainly doesn’t want to be sick anymore.
Most frustrating of all, she forgot to pack Willo, her favorite toy. Under her grandma’s not-so-watchful supervision, Lily sneaks back home to get Willo. Expecting to find an empty house, she is surprised to find her parents there. But something isn’t right... They look just like her mom and dad until she gets closer and sees their coal black eyes. And they refuse to let her in—it’s their house now.
With the help of some surprising new friends that she meets in her garden, Lily is determined to beat these shadowy replacements and be reunited with her real parents. But is she strong enough to triumph?
Invisible: A Graphic Novel
by Christina Diaz Gonzalez, Gabriela Epstein (Illustrator)
In a new bilingual graphic novel, a group of diverse Latinx/Latine middle schoolers show us their individuality while they become a community. As we watch the kids put aside their differences and work together to help a houseless mother and her daughter, we see their personal struggles and growth through a healthy dose of encouragement and quarrels. This heartwarming story of a modern day The Breakfast Club is perfect for fans of Jerry Craft’s New Kid and Raina Telgemeier. —Molly
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For fans of New Kid and Allergic, a must-have graphic novel about five very different students who are forced together by their school to complete community service... and may just have more in common than they thought.
Can five overlooked kids make one big difference?
There’s George: the brain
Sara: the loner
Dayara: the tough kid
Nico: the rich kid
And Miguel: the athlete
And they’re stuck together when they’re forced to complete their school’s community service hours. Although they’re sure they have nothing in common with one another, some people see them as all the same . . . just five Spanish-speaking kids.
Then they meet someone who truly needs their help, and they must decide whether they are each willing to expose their own secrets to help . . . or if remaining invisible is the only way to survive middle school.
With text in English and Spanish, Invisible features a groundbreaking format paired with an engaging, accessible, and relatable storyline. This Breakfast Club–inspired story by Christina Diaz Gonzalez, award-winning author of Concealed, and Gabriela Epstein, illustrator of two Baby-Sitters Club graphic novel adaptations, is a must-have graphic novel about unexpected friendships and being seen for who you really are.
Young Adult Fiction
The Drowned Woods
by Emily Lloyd-Jones
Set in a medieval Wales dripping with magic and fae, Mer, the last living water diviner, embarks on an impossible heist. Joined by a wide cast of characters, Mer endeavors to bring down a corrupt prince—but nothing is quite as it seems. Nested in a deeply melancholic and beautiful setting, The Drowned Woods is a novel about the choices that are taken from us, as well as those we still have the agency to make. —Zoe
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A magical, ethereal fantasy from IndieBound bestselling author Emily Lloyd-Jones.
Once upon a time, the kingdoms of Wales were rife with magic and conflict, and eighteen-year-old Mererid “Mer” is well-acquainted with both. She is the last living water diviner and has spent years running from the prince who bound her into his service. Under the prince’s orders, she located the wells of his enemies, and he poisoned them without her knowledge, causing hundreds of deaths. After discovering what he had done, Mer went to great lengths to disappear from his reach. Then Mer’s old handler returns with a proposition: use her powers to bring down the very prince that abused them both.
The best way to do that is to destroy the magical well that keeps the prince’s lands safe. With a motley crew of allies, including a fae-cursed young man, the lady of thieves, and a corgi that may or may not be a spy, Mer may finally be able to steal precious freedom and peace for herself. After all, a person with a knife is one thing…but a person with a cause can topple kingdoms.
The Drowned Woods—set in the same world as The Bone Houses but with a whole new, unforgettable cast of characters—is part heist novel, part dark fairy tale.
Coven (Graphic Novel)
by Jennifer Dugan, Kit Seaton (Illustrator)
When members of Emsy’s coven are mysteriously murdered, her family is forced to move to New York, leaving her life and her girlfriend behind. Once there, Emsy is reunited with her one surviving coven member, Ben, and introduced to a world she kept at a distance all her life. With memorable characters in supernatural setting, Jennifer Dugan and Kit Seaton give us the perfect queer graphic novel for this spooky season!—Andrea
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In this queer, paranormal YA graphic novel debut from the author of Some Girls Do and the illustrator of Wonder Woman: Warbringer, a young witch races to solve the grisly supernatural murders of her coven members before the killer strikes again.
"[This] gorgeously illustrated tale mashes together murder mystery and witchcraft." —Nerdist
Emsy has always lived in sunny California, and she’d much rather spend her days surfing with her friends or hanging out with her girlfriend than honing her powers as a fire elemental. But when members of her family’s coven back east are murdered under mysterious circumstances that can only be the result of powerful witchcraft, her family must suddenly return to dreary upstate New York. There, Emsy will have to master her neglected craft in order to find the killer . . . before her family becomes their next target.
The Honeys
by Ryan La Sala
If you like tense, atmospheric horror, you will bathe in the friction emanating from the pages of The Honeys. I found myself immersed in the character of Mars, our genderqueer narrator who must figure out what happened to their twin sister, Caroline. The shiny, bucolic veneer of the lifestyles of the rich and influential might be hiding something altogether different. This novel reads like an LGBT Pretty Little Liars meets summer camp… if that camp was Midsommar. —MJ
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From Ryan La Sala, the wildly popular author of Reverie, comes a twisted and tantalizing horror novel set amidst the bucolic splendor of a secluded summer retreat.
Mars has always been the lesser twin, the shadow to his sister Caroline's radiance. But when Caroline dies under horrific circumstances, Mars is propelled to learn all he can about his once-inseparable sister who'd grown tragically distant.
Mars's genderfluidity means he's often excluded from the traditions -- and expectations -- of his politically-connected family. This includes attendance at the prestigious Aspen Conservancy Summer Academy where his sister poured so much of her time. But with his grief still fresh, he insists on attending in her place.
What Mars finds is a bucolic fairytale not meant for him. Folksy charm and sun-drenched festivities camouflage old-fashioned gender roles and a toxic preparatory rigor. Mars seeks out his sister's old friends: a group of girls dubbed the Honeys, named for the beehives they maintain behind their cabin. They are beautiful and terrifying -- and Mars is certain they're connected to Caroline's death.
But the longer he stays at Aspen, the more the sweet mountain breezes give way to hints of decay. Mars’s memories begin to falter, bleached beneath the relentless summer sun. Something is hunting him in broad daylight, toying with his mind. If Mars can't find it soon, it will eat him alive.
The Feeling of Falling in Love
by Mason Deaver
Transmasc teen Neil has mostly breezed through his opulent life, but when Josh—his friend with benefits—catches feelings, Neil can't run away fast enough. In a harebrained attempt to show Josh he never had a chance, Neil convinces his roommate at boarding school, Wyatt, to be his fake boyfriend. Mason Deaver, one of my favorite YA authors, has created a pitch-perfect fake-dating romcom for fans of She Drives Me Crazy and Meet Cute Diary.
—Ivy
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From the bestselling author of I Wish You All the Best, comes a new kind of love story, about the bad decisions we sometimes make... and the people who help get us back on the right path.
Perfect for fans of Red, White, and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston and What If It's Us by Adam Silvera and Becky Albertalli.
Just days before spring break, Neil Kearney is set to fly across the country with his childhood friend (and current friend-with-benefits) Josh, to attend his brother's wedding—until Josh tells Neil that he's in love with him and Neil doesn't return the sentiment.
With Josh still attending the wedding, Neil needs to find a new date to bring along. And, almost against his will, roommate Wyatt is drafted.
At first, Wyatt (correctly) thinks Neil is acting like a jerk. But when they get to LA, Wyatt sees a little more of where it's coming from. Slowly, Neil and Wyatt begin to understand one another… and maybe, just maybe, fall in love for the first time…

“Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.”
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby