The Hypocrite by Jo Hamya (Pantheon), picked by bookseller Leslie
The country is Italy, specifically the island of Sicily. To me, the opening conjured images of lazy afternoons, reading, Aperol spritzes, and warm, family togetherness, while exploring. That’s not what this book is about.
The book takes place during present day London (during Covid) where the daughter, Sophia, has written a play, and about ten years earlier when Sophia is a teenager taking a holiday on Sicily with her father, a writer. Coming from a divorced family, Sophia believes that their holiday will be a time to connect while her father treats her like an employee at times, dictating his new book to her.
Flash forward to London – her father sits down to see his daughter’s play; he is horrified to see it is about him. Sophia is brutal in her characterization of her father and his old fashioned ways, and how he treated her during their holiday. The father can’t believe it!!
This book is about different generations, being uncomfortable, expectations, disappointment, love, all of it!
The book goes back and forth between Sicily and London, a format I love. I was surprised and uncomfortable at times while reading this book. There are no easy answers especially with family – I really thought a lot about that, and isn’t that what a good book should do?
Though book censorship is a national concern (see graphic for national book ban numbers) – our display focuses on books that have been banned (removed from public schools and/or libraries) or challenged (targeted for removal) in Florida.
According to PEN America Florida, “Florida now ranks first in the nation and accounts for more than 40% of all documented [book] bans.”
It might not seem like removing or restricting titles in schools or public libraries is a huge problem, after all you can purchase them here and from many other stores. But book censorship has real and significant effects on readers (many of them young people) who may only have access to these books via schools and libraries – places that are readily accessible and free.
And it’s important to consider whose stories are being restricted or removed. According to the American Library Association, “47% of the books targeted for censorship were titles representing the voices and lived experiences of LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC individuals.”
It’s time to vote for winners in this year’s Books & Books @ The Studios Summer Art Contest. Vote for your favorite canvas online or in-person. The top three entries will be featured on special edition bookmarks.
See the work and vote in-person in the Zabar Project Gallery on the first floor of The Studios of Key West now through Oct. 31st.
Many of the canvases are available for purchase. Contact The Studios of Key West if you’re interested in purchasing one of the entries.
You Like It Darker by Stephen King (Scribner), picked by bookseller Lori
Twelve new short stories from the master of horror. Standouts for me: “Rattlesnakes,” a sequel to 1981’s Cujo, and “The Answer Man,” my personal favorite, which asks us to ponder the meaning of our own lives and ask ourselves how we will approach the inevitable end of it.
Beauty, horror, humor and humanity are all present in the pages from the true King of the genre.
Do you like to be scared? Or perhaps your kids can’t wait until it’s time to break out the costumes. Pick up a spooky, witchy read for the season. Here are a few books we are enjoying or looking forward to. Browse the store or ask a bookseller for many more recommendations.
Red Solo cups? Check. Snacks? Check. Abandoned mansion full of countless horrors that won’t let you leave? Check.
The Deinhart Manor has been a looming shadow over town for as long as anyone can remember, and it’s been abandoned for even longer. When the final Deinhart descendent passes, the huge gothic manor is up for sale for the first time ever. Which means Arden can steal the keys from her mom’s real estate office . . . It’s time for a graduation party that no one will ever forget.
Arden and her friends each have different reasons for wanting to throw the party to end all parties. But when the manor doors bar everyone inside and the walls begin to bleed, all anyone wants to do is make it out alive.
Five siblings in West Virginia unearth long-buried secrets when the supernatural bargain entwining their fate with their ancestral land is suddenly ruptured
Since time immemorial, the Haddesley family has tended the cranberry bog. In exchange, the bog sustains them. The staunch seasons of their lives are governed by a strict covenant that is renewed each generation with the ritual sacrifice of their patriarch, and in return, the bog produces a “bog-wife.” Brought to life from vegetation, this woman is meant to carry on the family line. But when the bog fails—or refuses—to honor the bargain, the Haddesleys, a group of discordant siblings still grieving the mother who mysteriously disappeared years earlier, face an unknown future.
Middle child Wenna, summoned back to the dilapidated family manor just as her marriage is collapsing, believes the Haddesleys must abandon their patrimony. Her siblings are not so easily persuaded. Eldest daughter Eda, de facto head of the household, seeks to salvage the compact by desecrating it. Younger son Percy retreats into the wilderness in a dangerous bid to summon his own bog-wife. And as youngest daughter Nora takes desperate measures to keep her warring siblings together, fledgling patriarch Charlie uncovers a disturbing secret that casts doubt over everything the family has ever believed about itself.
At once a gothic eco-horror, a psychological drama, and a family saga, The Bog Wife is a propulsive read for fans of Shirley Jackson, Karen Russell, and Matt Bell that speaks to what is knowable and unknowable within a family history and how to know when it is time to move forward.
Painfully shy Callum Flannelly would rather dive into an open grave than take a stranger to dinner. But he can only inherit the family undertaking business under one condition: He must marry before his 35th birthday. Texan animator Lark Thompson moved to Galway, Ireland, to restart her life and career, not be reminded of losing her husband by moving in next to a funeral home.
But when she learns of Callum’s dilemma, Lark’s certain she can help him find The One, even if she’s sworn off love herself. Though as the dating project progresses and Lark spends more time with straight-laced, sarcastic Callum, he starts to crack the ice around her grieving heart. And the more joy that vivacious Lark brings to Callum’s grey existence, the less he can imagine letting her return to Texas.
If they think they can ignore their connection, they’re dead wrong.
It’s 5 more sleeps ‘til Halloween! That spooky time of year. Where all of the ghosts are wide awake As nighttime’s drawing near.
The excitement leading up to spooky season has been enjoyed by so many for so long. Filled with costumes, candy, and big scares! But why not make the last few days before Halloween even more exciting by counting how many sleeps until trick-or-treat night?
Paired with the eerie artwork of Rich Deas, fans will enjoy the humor of Jimmy Fallon as he prepares readers for the most spinetingling week of the year—5 More Sleeps ‘til Halloween.
1943, El Paso, Texas: teenager Nena spends her days caring for the small children of her older sisters, while longing for a life of freedom and adventure. The premonitions and fainting spells she has endured since childhood are getting worse, and Nena worries she’ll end up like the scary old curandera down the street. Nena prays for help, and when the mysterious Sister Benedicta arrives late one night, Nena follows her across the borders of space and time. In colonial Mexico, Nena grows into her power, finding love and learning that magic always comes with a price.
In the present day, Nena’s grandniece, Marta, balances a struggling legal aid practice with motherhood and the care of the now ninety-three-year-old Nena. When Marta agrees to help search for a daughter Nena left in the past, the two forge a fierce connection. Marta’s own supernatural powers emerge, awakening her to new possibilities that threaten the life she has constructed.
The Nobel Prize winner’s latest masterwork, set in a sanitarium on the eve of World War I, probes the horrors that lie beneath our most hallowed ideas
September 1913. A young Pole suffering from tuberculosis arrives at Wilhelm Opitz’s Guesthouse for Gentlemen in the village of Görbersdorf, a health resort in the Silesian mountains. Every evening the residents gather to imbibe the hallucinogenic local liqueur and debate the great issues of the day: Monarchy or democracy? Do devils exist? Are women born inferior? War or peace? Meanwhile, disturbing things are happening in the guesthouse and the surrounding hills. Someone—or something—seems to be watching, attempting to infiltrate this cloistered world. Little does the newcomer realize, as he tries to unravel both the truths within himself and the mystery of the sinister forces beyond, that they have already chosen their next target.
A century after the publication of The Magic Mountain, Olga Tokarczuk revisits Thomas Mann territory and lays claim to it, with signature boldness, inventiveness, humor, and bravura.
It’s Halloween night, 1984, in Coventry, Massachusetts, and two families are unraveling. Up and down the street, horrifying secrets are being revealed, and all the while, mixed in with the trick-or-treaters of all ages, four children who do not belong are walking door to door, merging with the kids of Parmenter Road. Children in vintage costumes with faded, eerie makeup. They seem terrified, and beg the neighborhood kids to hide them away, to keep them safe from The Cunning Man.
There’s a small clearing in the woods now that was never there before, and a blackthorn tree that doesn’t belong at all. These odd children claim that The Cunning Man is coming for them…and they want the local kids to protect them. But with families falling apart and the neighborhood splintered by bitterness, who will save the children of Parmenter Road? All Hallows. The one night when everything is a mask…
A chilling middle grade novel about a girl haunted by a hungry ghost.
Molly Teng sees things no one else can.
By touching the belongings of people who have died, she gets brief glimpses into the lives they lived. Sometimes the “zaps” are funny or random, but often they leave her feeling sad, drained, and lonely.
The last thing Jade remembers from life is dying. That was over one hundred years ago. Ever since then she’s been trapped in the same house watching people move in and out. She’s a ‘hungry ghost’ reliant on the livings’ food scraps to survive. To most people she is only a shadow, a ghost story, a superstition.
Molly is not most people. When she moves into Jade’s house, nothing will ever be the same—for either of them. After over a century alone, Jade might finally have someone who can help her uncover the secrets of her past, and maybe even find a way out of the house—before her hunger destroys them both.
A witchy rom-com from New York Times bestseller Meg Cabot about a plus size witch who must team up with a handsome stranger to help protect her village from an otherworldly force—but will she be able to protect her heart?
It’s Magic When You Meet Your Match
In her teenage years, lovelorn Jessica Gold cast a spell that went disastrously wrong, and brought her all the wrong kind of attention—as well as a lifetime ban from the World Council of Witches.
So no one is more surprised than Jess when, fifteen years later, tall, handsome WCW member Derrick Winters shows up in her quaint little village of West Harbor and claims that Jess is the Chosen One.
She’s the Chosen One
Not chosen by West Harbor’s snobby elite to style them for the town’s tricentennial ball—though Jess owns the chicest clothing boutique in town. And not chosen finally to be on the WCW, either—not that Jess would have said yes, anyway, since she’s done with any organization that tries to dictate what makes a “true” witch.
No, Jess has been chosen to help save West Harbor itself . . .
As Summer Ends, Her Power Grows
But just when Jess is beginning to think that she and Derrick might have a certain magic of their own—and not of the supernatural variety—Jess learns he may not be who she thought he was.
And suddenly Jess finds herself having to make another kind of choice: trust Derrick and work with him to combat the sinister force battling to bring down West Harbor, or use her gift as she always has: to keep herself, and her heart, safe.
David James Poissant, author of Lake Life and The Heaven of Animals, is coming to the Key West Library, (time and date TBD). Monroe County Public Library’s Acting Director of Libraries Michael Nelson asked Poissant a few questions, offering up a little preview of the planned event.
Q: Your debut novel, Lake Life, brings a complicated family (The Starlings) together at a lake house in North Carolina for one last vacation before the place is sold. What compelled you to write about this particular family?
A: When I was young, my parents rented a house for one week every summer. The house was a lake house on the shores of Lake Toxaway in Transylvania County, North Carolina. When I was in my late teens or early twenties, my parents bought a converted double wide trailer on Lake Oconee, not far from Milledgeville, Georgia and Andalusia Farm where Flannery O’Connor lived. Because I’m a person who falls in love with places, I fell in love with both houses, both lakes. And because I’m a writer who loves writing place, I wanted to capture the essence of both places in a single story. For the novel, I moved the Lake Oconee house to Lake Toxaway, then renamed the place Lake Christopher. I had a place, then, but no novel. Then, at a fourth of July event on Lake Oconee in 2009 or 2010, I saw a small boy very nearly fall from the back of a speeding boat. The boat was moving fast, and it was a miracle that no one was killed. The boy looked too young to swim, he wore no lifejacket, and the person piloting the boat was likely drunk. Fortunately, authorities intervened. For weeks, though, I had nightmares. What would have happened had the boy fallen into the water? Could I have saved him? I’m a fairly strong swimmer, but this was at night, and who knows? These dreams and questions haunted me until I knew that I had the opening chapter of my novel Lake Life.
Q: You’ve lived and worked as a writer in Florida for many years and received a Florida Book Award for your 2014 collection of stories, The Heaven of Animals. What appeals to you about Florida’s literary scene? What makes it different from other places in the country?
A: Florida is wild. Growing up in Georgia, I thought of Florida the way most tourists see Florida: beaches and Disney. When the job offer at the University of Central Florida brought me to Orlando thirteen years ago, I wasn’t sure what I’d find. What I found was a vibrant, sophisticated literary community with numerous reading series and open mics, small presses and literary magazines, indie bookstores, and more writers than I would ever have expected. So many literary luminaries call the Sunshine State home. And I love the atmosphere. The vibe of Florida’s literary scene, as my students would say, is “chill.” If you’ve ever hung out with Kristen Arnett or Lauren Groff or Laura van den Berg, you know that these are not pretentious people. They’re brilliant writers, but they’re also good hangs. And I need that. I’m not particularly comfortable in a recliner with a tie on. I’d rather perch on a barstool in a t-shirt and argue about which Lydia Millet book is best. (Answer: There isn’t a bad Lydia Millet book!)
Q: You teach in the MFA Creative Writing program at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. What’s the best advice you give to new writers, or something you wished you knew when you started first writing?
A: Read. We can talk all day about craft, and I do. And we can talk about process, and I will. But the thing I find that students need most is more time to read. We’re all busy. We have families and jobs and classes, so time is a luxury, I know. But I strongly encourage them to carve as much time from devices, streaming platforms, and social media as they can manage. I encourage students to read at least a book a week beyond the books they read for class. I’m happiest at a rate of two books a week, in addition to the books I assign, student’s stories, and the dozens of submissions I read each week for The Florida Review, where I serve as Editor. To me, the math of fiction is pretty simple. If you want to be a writer, you need to read a lot of books. Every book is a toolbox. When you start reading like a writer, you see how many craft tools are at your disposal, which is why I encourage students and beginning writers to read widely from writers of diverse backgrounds and writing styles. Read things you wouldn’t think you’d like. Read as widely as you can. So much of learning arrives via this bookworm osmosis, and well read beginning writers make for the fastest learners.
Q: What are you reading and recommending these days?
A: I got a good bit of reading done this summer. I’ve been on a pandemic novel kick, and two reads that have stuck with me are The Vulnerables, by Sigrid Nunez and Touch, by Olaf Olafsson, both set during the Covid-19 pandemic. I heard that a great film version of Touch was just released, but I haven’t seen it yet. I’m a longtime fan of Tove Jansson’s Moominbooks, all of which I read to my daughters when they were younger. This summer I finally read one of her adult novels, The Summer Book, reissued in 2008 by NYRB Classics. It’s the sad, gorgeous, episodic story of a grandmother and granddaughter set over the course of a summer on an island in the Gulf of Finland. We forget that children know and feel and grieve more than we think, and this novel captures that fact, and childhood, beautifully. Other books that brightened my summer include Joshua Cohen’s The Netanyahus, Paula Fox’s Desperate Characters, Hiroko Oyamada’s The Factory, and Max Porter’s Shy.
Q: Can you tell us anything about future projects?
A: Sure! I’ve finished a second collection of short stories, tentatively titled Sons & Daughters. As with The Heaven of Animals, I don’t think that I consciously set out to pen a collection. It was more that I looked back over ten years of story publications and saw that I had produced dozens of new stories, most of which address questions of childhood and parenthood. For years, my fiction has grappled with the question of what it means to be a child or a parent. I like to think about what we owe each other, as family members, if anything. Familial bonds can save us, but they’re also frequently abused. And the tension between those extremes, that gray area between salvation and degradation, that’s what I’m interested in. Where some people find their identities in family, some can’t thrive until they’ve freed themselves from their family of origin. I’m interested in both of those characters. Each of their stories will resonate with different readers. To that end, I’m also hard at work on a novel, my first to be set in the great state of Florida, about a very large, very isolated family, and about the dangers of such isolation.
Hispanic Heritage Month celebrates the rich diversity of Hispanic and Hispanic American people. Here are a few books we are reading and recommending for Hispanic Heritage Month:
Colored Television by Danzy Senna (Riverhead Books), picked by manager Emily
When her novel (dubbed the “mulatto War and Peace”) is rejected by her agent, Jane wonders if pivoting to television might finally give her the life she wants; time and energy to enjoy her family, a nice house in a good school district and an audience that will actually consume and appreciate her work.
Jane is used to life between worlds but will this new venture, and the deception she practices to get there, all finally be too much?
No book is ever about one thing, at least not the good ones, but rarely does a story perfectly mix together life’s big issues. Senna cleverly examines race, class, and cultural consumption while still producing a fun and compelling read.
When it comes to bookish opinions are you ever worried that your hot take might be flaming trash? Do you want to know who exactly is the literary a**hole in any given situation? Author Kristen Arnett can help. She writes the Literary Hub, Am I the Literary A**hole? column and will be doing a live event based on the column, September 13 at The Studios of Key West.
She will answer your questions about how to survive the writing life (and behave in the book world) in this live event. Bring your question with you or click here to submit anonymously ahead of time.
We got her to answer a few general questions before she answers your questions about literary etiquette on Sept. 13.
Q: How did the AITLA column come about?
A: This is a great question because I actually have a really funny answer for it! I was waiting for my friend at a restaurant and they were running (very) late for dinner, so I ordered a bottle of wine to start. Before I knew it, I’d already finished half the bottle. I started thinking about the fact that I really love reading advice column questions. I wondered if there was an advice column for literature, and then I wondered if anyone had ever agreed to write an advice column while they were mind-numbingly drunk. This immediately felt like a very funny idea to me, so I opened up my phone right there at the dinner table and shot off an email to my buddy Jonny Diamond over at Lit Hub. I knew him from a previous column that I did for them, which was about librarianship. Jonny is always up for fun, weird ideas! So I drunkenly emailed him with a subject line that was like “hear me out” and then in one line or so was like “how do you feel about me writing a drunk advice column for you.” I am not joking when I say that within like 10 minutes he’d written back to agree that I should do it. And now the rest is drunken history!
Q: Have you found any common traits amongst all Literary A**holes?
A: Honestly, yes – and that trait is that not many of them are actually a**holes! I find that a lot of the people who write in are actually, for the most part, overly conscientious people who themselves have been treated a little badly. Through the process of developing this column, I’ve (happily) discovered that many people are just out here every day trying their best; most of them are very worried about offending or hurting others. There is a very clear throughline of empathy and care and community building, which is lovely. Of course, for all of the great ones that I select from the slush, there are some that never make it onto the site. The occasional people who write in to complain that they have better ideas on how to run the column! To them, I say: find an editor to email drunk about it and get your own gig!
Q: You’re going to be in Key West as a PEAR – what do you enjoy most about artist residencies?
A: I truly love spending creative time in places that are connected with nature. I am from Florida – third generation – and so much of my work contains regional nods and influences. Being afforded a residency is always a gift, one that I genuinely treasure, because it’s time out of regular life to focus solely on art. And not only art, but also my relationship to it, which is forever changing. I feel like I get to know myself as a writer all over again at each residency. That is so important. I am deeply grateful for it.
Q: What are you looking forward to exploring/doing in Key West?
A: I am deeply interested in observing everything around me while I’m in town. I can’t wait to people watch, to explore nature, to feel embedded in a new space that’s still so closely connected to my own home. I am such an extrovert – truly, can’t contain myself – so I am really looking forward to bar hopping talking and chatting with anybody I happen to run into while I’m out and about!
Q: What are you reading and recommending these days?
A: I loved Laura van den Berg’s latest novel, State of Paradise. Great Florida book, truly. I also recently got done with Liz Moore’s God of the Woods, which was terrific. I am in the middle of revisiting Bryan Washington’s fabulous short story collection, LOT, which always gets my head in a wonderful place and energizes me. Biggest problem for me right now is that there are too many great things I want to be reading and definitely not enough hours in the day to do that!
Q: What’s your favorite/current summer drink?
A: Spicy margarita really hits the spot, I tell you what. I love to make a joke that if you’re having a drink with citrus then you’re being very healthy because you’re preventing scurvy. But you also can’t go wrong with an ice-cold beer. Or an ice-cold coke classic! Jesus, now I’m thirsty!
