Books & Books

Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

March 4, 2025

A Most Anticipated Book of 2025 from The Washington Post, Harper’s Bazaar, Marie Claire, Elle, Oprah Daily, Readers Digest, The Seattle Times, LitHub, The Chicago Review of Books, BET, and Radio Times

A publishing event ten years in the making—a searing, exquisite new novel by the bestselling and award-winning author of Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists—the story of four women and their loves, longings, and desires

Chiamaka is a Nigerian travel writer living in America. Alone in the midst of the pandemic, she recalls her past lovers and grapples with her choices and regrets. Zikora, her best friend, is a lawyer who has been successful at everything until—betrayed and brokenhearted—she must turn to the person she thought she needed least. Omelogor, Chiamaka’s bold, outspoken cousin, is a financial powerhouse in Nigeria who begins to question how well she knows herself. And Kadiatou, Chiamaka’s housekeeper, is proudly raising her daughter in America—but faces an unthinkable hardship that threatens all she has worked to achieve.

In Dream Count, Adichie trains her fierce eye on these women in a sparkling, transcendent novel that takes up the very nature of love itself. Is true happiness ever attainable or is it just a fleeting state? And how honest must we be with ourselves in order to love, and to be loved? A trenchant reflection on the choices we make and those made for us, on daughters and mothers, on our interconnected world, Dream Count pulses with emotional urgency and poignant, unflinching observations of the human heart, in language that soars with beauty and power. It confirms Adichie’s status as one of the most exciting and dynamic writers on the literary landscape.

Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton

March 4, 2025

by George Cooper

A moving and fascinating meditation on freedom, trust, loss, and our relationship with the natural world, explored through the story of one woman’s unlikely friendship with a wild hare.

Imagine you could hold a baby hare and bottle-feed it. Imagine that it lived under your roof and lolloped around your bedroom at night, drumming on the duvet cover when it wanted your attention. Imagine that, over two years later, it still ran in from the fields when you called it and slept in your house for hours on end and gave birth to leverets in your study. For political advisor and speechwriter Chloe Dalton, who spent lockdown deep in the English countryside, far away from her usual busy London life, this became her unexpected reality.

In February 2021, Dalton stumbles upon a newborn hare—a leveret—that had been chased by a dog. Fearing for its life, she brings it home, only to discover how impossible it is to rear a wild hare, most of whom perish in captivity from either shock or starvation. Through trial and error, she learns to feed and care for the leveret with every intention of returning it to the wilderness. Instead, it becomes her constant companion, wandering the fields and woods at night and returning to Dalton’s house by day. Though Dalton feared that the hare would be preyed upon by foxes, stoats, feral cats, raptors, and even people, she never tried to restrict it to the house. Each time the hare leaves, Chloe knows she may never see it again. Yet she also understands that to confine it would be its own kind of death.

Raising Hare chronicles their journey together, while also taking a deep dive into the lives and nature of hares, and the way they have been viewed historically in art, literature, and folklore. We witness first-hand the joy at this extraordinary relationship between human and animal, which serves as a reminder that the best things, and most beautiful experiences, arise when we least expect them.

“A beautiful book that makes you think profoundly about how we so often tune out the natural world around us. Chloe Dalton is a tender, curious, wise, mind-expanding guide, connecting readers with the wild we humans once knew so well. I will be recommending this to everyone.”
—Matt Haig, author of The Midnight Library

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy

March 4, 2025

by George Cooper

An ENTHRALLING new novel from the NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING author of Migrations and Once There Were Wolves

“A WILDLY TALENTED writer.” ―Emily St. John Mandel

“RIVETING.” ―Booklist (starred review)
“[A] TERRIFIC thriller.” ―Kirkus (starred review)
“As lush as it is TAUT WITH TENSION.” ―Library Journal (starred review)

A family on a remote island. A mysterious woman washed ashore. A rising storm on the horizon.

Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the world’s largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers, but with sea levels rising, the Salts are now its final inhabitants. Until, during the worst storm the island has ever seen, a woman mysteriously washes ashore.

Isolation has taken its toll on the Salts, but as they nurse the woman, Rowan, back to strength, it begins to feel like she might just be what they need. Rowan, long accustomed to protecting herself, starts imagining a future where she could belong to someone again.

But Rowan isn’t telling the whole truth about why she set out for Shearwater. And when she discovers sabotaged radios and a freshly dug grave, she realizes Dominic is keeping his own secrets. As the storms on Shearwater gather force, they all must decide if they can trust each other enough to protect the precious seeds in their care before it’s too late—and if they can finally put the tragedies of the past behind them to create something new, together.

A novel of breathtaking twists, dizzying beauty, and ferocious love, Wild Dark Shore is about the impossible choices we make to protect the people we love, even as the world around us disappears.

Saving Five by Amanda Nguyen

March 4, 2025

by George Cooper

One of TIME and Oprah Daily‘s Most Anticipated Books of 2025. Natalie Portman’s Book Club Pick for March.

“Amanda’s story—innovatively told by versions of herself at different ages—underscores the lasting power of speaking your truth, building a movement, and never losing sight of your dreams.” —Melinda French Gates

“In Saving Five, Amanda Nguyen shows us how to reclaim the full spectrum of our lives, replete with pain, fury, creativity, and recovered dreams.” —Chanel Miller, author of Know My Name

A brave and imaginative memoir by the Nobel Peace Prize nominee Amanda Nguyen, detailing her healing journey and groundbreaking activism in the aftermath of her rape at Harvard.

In 2013, the trajectory of Amanda Nguyen’s life was changed forever when she was raped at Harvard.

Determined to not let her assault derail her goal of joining NASA after graduation, Nguyen opted for her rape kit to be filed under “Jane Doe.” But she was shocked to learn her choice to stay anonymous gave her only six months to take action before the state destroyed her kit, rendering any future legal action impossible. Nguyen knew then that she had two options: surrender to a law that effectively denied her justice, or fight for a change—not only for herself but for survivors everywhere.

A heart-wrenching memoir of survival and hope, Saving Five boldly braids the story of Nguyen’s activism—which resulted in Congress’s unanimous passage of the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Rights Act in 2016—with a second, beautifully imagined adventure, of Nguyen’s younger selves as they—at ages five, fifteen, twenty-two, and thirty—navigate through dramatic incarnations of the emotional stages of her path toward healing, not only from her rape but from the violent turmoil of her childhood. The result is a groundbreaking work that seamlessly blends memoir with a moving journey toward acceptance and hope, forging a path ahead that is as inspiring as it is instructive.

From one of the most influential activists (and now astronauts) of her time, Saving Five is at once a tribute to resilience, a celebration of healing through action, and a resounding cry to change the world.

A Q&A with Iris Jamahl Dunkle

February 27, 2025

by Robin Wood

Looking for a great pick for Women’s History Month? Join us March 14 for Iris Jamahl Dunkle discussing her book, Riding Like the Wind: The Life of Sanora Babb. We had the opportunity to ask the author a few questions to whet your taste for the book and event.

Q: Who was Sanora Babb, and how did you come to want to write about her?

A: About five years ago, I was watching Ken Burns’ incredible documentary The Dust Bowl when, all of a sudden, he started talking about a woman named Sanora Babb – a writer from the Midwest who worked at the Farm Security Administration (FSA) camps in California in the 1930s, helping refugees from the Dust Bowl. In the documentary, he mentions that she wrote a novel about the Dust Bowl called Whose Names Are Unknown that was under contract with Random House but wasn’t published when she wrote it in 1939 because John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath had come out a few weeks before. What’s worse, Steinbeck had appropriated Babb’s research and interviews about the refugees and used them in his book, rendering her book essentially unpublishable.

When I heard about her, I was so excited that I immediately picked up her novel (which was eventually published in 2004 by the University of Oklahoma Press) and loved it. You see, my grandmother came over during the Dust Bowl, and she hated The Grapes of Wrath because it made us look like helpless victims. In Babb’s book, Whose Names Are Unknown, you get to know the survivors of the Dust Bowl well before the dust storms hit, so you feel empathy for them when they have to leave everything they know and go to California. As soon as I read her book, I knew she would be my next biographical subject.

Q: What do you enjoy about writing biographies, and specifically about writing biographies of unsung women?

A: I have never been someone to listen to the authorities. I was raised by hippies, and since a young age, I questioned the history I was taught. It never seemed to tell the full story, and it always excluded people, especially women. Writing biographies allows me to bring back these voices. But biographies take half a decade to write, and let’s face it, I’ll only be able to write a handful during my lifetime. That’s why I started my Substack, Finding Lost Voices, where I could write a weekly mini-biography about a woman who has been erased or misremembered. So far, I’ve gathered a community of over four thousand people and written over 70 posts. It’s been an amazing experience to foster this community.

Q: What does your work as a poet bring to your other writing, and vice versa?

A: I usually work between two genre projects. My last biography, Charmian Kittredge London: Trailblazer, Author, Adventurer, actually began as a series of lyric poems written in response to Charmian’s brilliant diaries written aboard the Dirigo – a three-masted schooner – she and Jack sailed on from Baltimore to Seattle. I found the diaries at the Huntington Library in Southern California, and I was surprised to find out they had never been published. So, I did a poem-a-day project where I wrote poetry in conversation with her diaries (some of these poems would eventually make it into my collection, West : Fire : Archive). But as I was doing this, I discovered something amazing: Charmian had helped her husband, Jack London, write one of his books, The Valley of the Moon, and had never been given credit for her work. The more research I did into Charmian’s life, the more I wanted to learn more and spread what I learned to a larger audience, so that’s why I started writing a biography about her.

When it came to Sanora Babb, I started by writing a biography about her, but as I was doing that work, I couldn’t help thinking about my grandmother’s story. How she, too, had survived the Dust Bowl and how The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck had not been representative of her story. So, I picked up The Grapes of Wrath when I was on a plane headed to Oklahoma to give a reading at the University of Oklahoma, and as I was reading it, I started an erasure project. I crossed out his words to make room for my own and wrote poems from the letters I found in his book. It was a cathartic experience and really made me feel like I had permission to “take on” Steinbeck in my biography about Babb.

Q: What are you looking forward to doing in Key West?

A: Well, honestly, I can’t wait to visit your bookstore! I can’t wait to visit the house where the poet Elizabeth Bishop lived and perhaps visit Ernest Hemingway’s House so I can learn more about his wives. I really want to write a column about Hemingway’s wives in an upcoming post for my Substack, Finding Lost Voices.

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR / LEARN MORE ABOUT THE EVENT ON MARCH 14th

A Q&A with Alex Thayer

February 26, 2025

by Robin Wood

We are delighted to welcome Alex Thayer, author of Happy & Sad & Everything True, for an author event Sunday, March 16 at 2pm at Hugh’s View, The Studios’ rooftop terrace. And don’t miss her next book, Bad Cheerleader, coming this fall.

Q: Tell us a little about Happy & Sad & Everything True and how you came to write it? If you’d like to share, we’d love to hear about how your debut came to be.

A: I came up with my main character first and I thought about her for a very long time. I knew her name (Dee), I knew her likes and dislikes, I knew the way she sounded, the way she looked, I knew the things she’d never tell anyone.

Then, I was in a yoga class. It was a very challenging class. The teacher said to stay still and focus on a single spot in the room. My eyes found a metal grate in the corner of the room, close to where the floor and the wall met. I stayed looking at the grate and I was supposed to be thinking about yoga, but my mind started to wander. I wondered if sounds ever came out of the grate. I wondered if there was a voice that spoke through the grate. I wondered if another voice spoke back.

Then I started to think about Dee, and I realized, that’s her! That’s Dee. She talks to kids through a grate at school. The rest of the story unfolded from there.

Q: What are the particular challenges and joys of writing for this age group?

A: There is so much happening in middle school. It’s a time when many things might be changing in a person’s life. Friendships, classrooms, teachers, families, home situations, bodies, beliefs… Which is why I think it’s such an interesting age to write about.

Q: What was your favorite book in middle school? Have you reread it? Does it hold up?

A: Charlotte’s Web is my favorite book. I loved it as a kid. I love it as an adult. The story is about friendship and love and loss. Just thinking about it now, my throat catches. The book will always hold up.

Q: Do you have any advice on how to encourage middle grade readers to keep reading?

A: Find books that are the right fit for you. If a book excites you, if you like the story, and/or the cover, and/or the illustrations, and/or the back cover, and/or the title, and/or the main character, if there is something that you like about the book, I hope you give it a whirl!

Q: What are you looking forward to doing in Key West?

A: My aunt lives in Key West and I’m looking forward to spending time with her.

I’m also looking forward to warm weather. I live in Boston. We currently have temperatures in the twenties, snow on the ground, and ice on the sidewalks.

Q: What are you reading and recommending these days?

My son and I recently finished A Work in Progress by Jarrett Lerner. We read it together and when we finished, I asked my son what he thought about the book. He said, “I really liked it.” I said, “Me too.” Then I asked, “What did you like about it?” He said, “It was deep and heartfelt.” I couldn’t agree more.

A Q&A with Andrew Furman

February 26, 2025

by Robin Wood

We are delighted to welcome back author Andrew Furman! Join us March 26 at 6:30 at Hugh’s View for a discussion of Furman’s newest book Of Slash Pines and Manatees: A Highly Selective Field Guide to My Suburban Wilderness. If you know you can make it, register ahead of time to save your seat.

We asked him a few questions to introduce you to the author and his book:

Q: Would you tell us about how you came to write Of Slash Pines and Manatees: A Highly Selective Field Guide to My Suburban Wilderness and what you hope readers will get out of it?

A: Florida, and particularly my southeastern patch of it, is one of the most overdeveloped places in the country but one of the most environmentally unique and gorgeous places, too. After nearly 30 years of living here, I remain gobsmacked by its special animals and plants, whether it’s a gray fox that makes a surprise appearance in my suburban neighborhood, or a manatee mother and her calves that float past my swim group in the ocean, or a slash pine tree that my younger daughter insists that we plant in our front yard. I still feel like I’m just coming to know this state. The chapters that make up this new book represent, maybe on the most essential level, my ongoing attempt to know my place just a little bit better. I hope that readers in all fifty states will take inspiration in these pages to seek out a closer relationship with the unique “placeness” of their own home state, wherever that happens to be.

Q: Sense of place seems very important in both your fiction and nonfiction, how did you come to call south Florida home?

A: I wish I had a more romantic story here, but the truth is that I was just lucky enough to get my first (and probably last) academic job at Florida Atlantic University. What’s more, my love affair with the state didn’t really happen so quickly. I was scrapping very hard those first few years here to write my scholarly articles and books to earn tenure so I wasn’t very attuned to the natural splendor outside my school office. But then I just started to notice stuff, like the pretty warblers that were suddenly flitting all about the trees on my campus during their fall and spring migrations, so I learned what kind of warblers they were and learned that we were located smack in the middle of their migratory flyway, and then I learned that the trees were called live oaks and wanted to learn all I could about the history of live oaks and us. I joke that I became a Floridian sort of the way that Hemingway went broke: gradually, then all at once.

Q: What’s one thing you do every time you visit Key West or one thing you think visitors shouldn’t miss?

A: Well, I just mentioned Hemingway, and I know it’s sort of the obvious answer, but it’s still true for me: I love visiting the Hemingway House when I’m in Key West. They’ve done such a great job maintaining the look and feel of the place, right down to the cats. As a writer, it gives me chills to walk through the rooms and imagine what it must have felt like to be a young Hemingway, tapping furiously away on the keys of his typewriter, the balmy, sea-funk-smelling air drifting through the open windows. I also think that any experience out on the water (a fishing charter, a kayak through the mangroves) is a must. A few years ago, I participated in the 12.5-mile Swim Around Key West (held annually), which I tend to work into conversations pretty early. It was definitely my most memorable, environmental Key West experience, swimming above nurse sharks and whatnot as I crossed under that last bridge. If I can extend my answer to the other Keys—and since this special place is featured in one of my chapters—I’d recommend that people take a walk through the Dagny Johnson Key Largo Hammock Botanical State Park, where they might glimpse a mangrove cuckoo or summer tanager or (more likely) a white-crowned pigeon roosting in one of the hardwoods. Experts say that this hammock may be the site of the greatest tree diversity in the entire United States.

Q: For you, what drives the decision to write fiction versus nonfiction?

A: People ask me this question a lot and I truly don’t have a great answer as I tend to choose the genre on instinct more than anything else. I would say that my default genre may be nonfiction, but I suppose that sometimes my imagination just gets the better of me and I feel that I want to go somewhere beyond what the “truth” or the “facts” allow. When this happens, I segue to fiction. My fascination with seaweed is a good example of this. I have a chapter on seaweed in Of Slash Pines and Manatees, which is nonfiction, and which I’m really happy with, but I’m currently working on a novel, which imagines what might happen if our Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt goes berserk.

Q: As a writing professor, what’s your best writing advice?

A: What I come back to with my students all the time is that they shouldn’t necessarily “write what they know,” which they hear all the time, but write what interests them. I think that lots of us fear that our lives aren’t dramatic or traumatic enough to be the stuff of great art. My life sure isn’t and thank heavens for that! I tell students that they don’t have to be interesting, per se, but they DO have to be interested. Having and developing interests and even passions, being receptive to new discoveries, hobbies, long-buried talents, and having the curiosity and even bravery to pursue these passions—in life and art—is key, in my view.

Q: What are you reading and recommending these days?

A: Oh boy, I’m always reading lots of things, and try to move between fiction and nonfiction, and some poetry. As I’m in the middle of my semester, I’ve had the opportunity to re-read and teach Willa Cather’s My Antonia, which was one of the first books that moved me in that special way that only great writing can when I was just an undergrad, myself. So it’s been a treat to read it with my own students and simultaneously get swept away by its romance and interrogate some of its more problematic environmental and racial implications. I’m following this up with Percival Everett’s James, winner of the 2024 National Book Award, which imagines Twain’s book, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn through the voice and perspective of “Jim.”

In terms of nonfiction, The Light Eaters, by Zoe Schlanger, made me see plants in a whole different way, and I just got Satellite in the mail, Simmons Buntin’s collection of desert essays, which I can’t wait to read. It’s an environment so different in every way than our subtropics.

As for fiction, outside of what I’m teaching this semester, I just read and was blown away by the quiet power of Morgan Talty’s Fire Exit, which takes place in and around Maine’s Penobscot Reservation, and I also finally got around to reading something by Sigrid Nunez, The Friend. It’s a gem of a novel, and as a dog lover, it really resonated with me. I should also mention the reading I do in litmags, several issues of which I have lying around in various places in my house, to my wife’s consternation. Partly to keep current, and partly to be a good literary citizen, I subscribe to five or six litmags at any given time and dip into them between the books I’m reading for the latest stories, essays, and poems out there.

Water Moon by Samantha Sotto Yambao, picked by Bookseller Camila