Tag: book recommendation

Coming Soon, Pre-order Now

October 31, 2024

As soon as you see upcoming books getting buzz, you can pre-order them. Buy it while you’re thinking about it and get a happy surprise later. Want something you don’t see here? Email us at booksandbooks@tskw.org or ask a bookseller!

Here are a few books we are looking forward to:

Modern Cuban: A Contemporary Approach to Classic Recipes by Ana Quincoces

Serving up a fresh take on Cuban food, Ana Quincoces reimagines traditional recipes for today’s home chefs in Modern Cuban. This cookbook unites generations by helping readers make timeless dishes that showcase the distinctive flavors of classic Cuban cuisine while crafting meals that are accessible to everyone.

Accompanied by beautiful photos that present iconic dishes in a new, modern light, the recipes in this cookbook include Ana Quincoces’s personal memories of her family and the food culture they passed down to her. Modern Cuban is perfect for beginners and advanced cooks alike who want to celebrate Cuban favorites in ways that honor the past and present. Above all, this cookbook is for anyone who enjoys gathering good company for great food that feeds the soul. Buen provecho.

Coming November 19, 2024. Pre-order now.

Roland Rogers Isn’t Dead Yet by Samantha Allen

In this “unlikely romance for the ages” (Camryn Garrett), a ghostwriter is handed the gig of a lifetime, except there’s a catch: the client, a closeted A-list actor finally ready to come out in his memoir, is an actual ghost–and the sparks flying between the men are becoming a little too real . . .

Adam Gallagher has knocked on thousands of doors. An ex-Mormon and almost-famous memoirist, he is used to sharing his life story with strangers. But this day, this house, is different. For it belongs to none other than Roland Rogers: Hollywood Hunk, and soon to be author. Roland has a story to tell, a decades-old secret to spill, and he’s decided that Adam is just the guy to help him do it.

Except there’s a problem. Roland Rogers is dead. Not in the metaphysical realm–if he focuses, he can summon enough energy to communicate via the kitchen speaker–but certainly in the physical, and he needs Adam to pen his story before his body is found frozen beneath the avalanche of snow that squashed it. That means one month, a hundred thousand words, no breaks.

Ghostwriting is hard enough, let alone when you’re dealing with a real ghost, and so it isn’t long before Roland’s idea of what his book should be clashes with Adam’s vision for what it could be. But the clock is ticking, the ice melting. And as more truths are told, both men soon discover that this experience is less of a coming out, and more of a coming home . . .

The sophomore novel from the beloved author of Patricia Wants to Cuddle, Roland Rogers Isn’t Dead Yet is a witty and electric new rom-com for fans of Ashley Poston and Casey McQuiston.

Coming December 3, 2024. Pre-order now.

Private Rites by Julia Armfield

It’s been raining for a long time now, so long that the land has reshaped itself and old rituals and religions are creeping back into practice. Sisters Isla, Irene, and Agnes have not spoken in some time when their father, an architect as cruel as he was revered, dies. His death offers an opportunity for the sisters to come together in a new way. In the grand glass house they grew up in, their father’s most famous creation, the sisters sort through the secrets and memories he left behind, until their fragile bond is shattered by a revelation in his will.

The sisters are more estranged than ever, and their lives spin out of control: Irene’s relationship is straining at the seams, Isla’s ex-wife keeps calling, and cynical Agnes is falling in love for the first time. But something even more sinister might be unfolding, something related to their mother’s long-ago disappearance and the strangers who have always seemed unusually interested in the sisters’ lives. Soon, it becomes clear that the sisters have been chosen for a very particular purpose, one with shattering implications for their family and their imperiled world.

Coming December 3, 2024. Pre-order now.

Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix

There’s power in a book…

They call them wayward girls. Loose girls. Girls who grew up too fast. And they’re sent to Wellwood House in St. Augustine, Florida, where unwed mothers are hidden by their families to have their babies in secret, to give them up for adoption, and most important of all, to forget any of it ever happened.

Fifteen-year-old Fern arrives at the home in the sweltering summer of 1970, pregnant, terrified and alone. Under the watchful eye of the stern Miss Wellwood, she meets a dozen other girls in the same predicament. There’s Rose, a hippie who insists she’s going to find a way to keep her baby and escape to a commune. And Zinnia, a budding musician who plans to marry her baby’s father. And Holly, a wisp of a girl, barely fourteen, mute and pregnant by no-one-knows-who.

Everything the girls eat, every moment of their waking day, and everything they’re allowed to talk about is strictly controlled by adults who claim they know what’s best for them. Then Fern meets a librarian who gives her an occult book about witchcraft, and power is in the hands of the girls for the first time in their lives. But power can destroy as easily as it creates, and it’s never given freely. There’s always a price to be paid…and it’s usually paid in blood.

Coming January 14, 2025. Pre-order now.

Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor

Preorder now and receive the stunning DELUXE LIMITED EDITION while supplies last―featuring a special alternate cover design on the hardcover case, gorgeous sprayed edges, and exclusive endpapers. This breathtaking edition is only available on a limited first print run.

(Please note in the order comments if you only want the special edition.)

In this exhilarating tale by New York Times bestselling and award-winning author Nnedi Okorafor, a disabled Nigerian American woman pens a wildly successful Sci-Fi novel, but as her fame rises, she loses control of the narrative—a surprisingly cutting, yet heartfelt drama about art and love, identity and connection, and, ultimately, what makes us human. This is a story unlike anything you’ve read before.

The future of storytelling is here.

Disabled, disinclined to marry, and more interested in writing than a lucrative career in medicine or law, Zelu has always felt like the outcast of her large Nigerian family. Then her life is upended when, in the middle of her sister’s lavish Caribbean wedding, she’s unceremoniously fired from her university job and, to add insult to injury, her novel is rejected by yet another publisher. With her career and dreams crushed in one fell swoop, she decides to write something just for herself. What comes out is nothing like the quiet, literary novels that have so far peppered her unremarkable career. It’s a far-future epic where androids and AI wage war in the grown-over ruins of human civilization. She calls it Rusted Robots.

When Zelu finds the courage to share her strange novel, she does not realize she is about to embark on a life-altering journey—one that will catapult her into literary stardom, but also perhaps obliterate everything her book was meant to be. From Chicago to Lagos to the far reaches of space, Zelu’s novel will change the future not only for humanity, but for the robots who come next.

A book-within-a-book that blends the line between writing and being written, Death of the Author is a masterpiece of metafiction that manages to combine the razor-sharp commentary of Yellowface with the heartfelt humanity of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. Surprisingly funny, deeply poignant, and endlessly discussable, this is at once the tale of a woman on the margins risking everything to be heard and a testament to the power of storytelling to shape the world as we know it.

Coming January 14, 2025. Pre-order now.

Show Don’t Tell: Stories by Curtis Sittenfeld

A funny, fiercely intelligent, and moving collection exploring marriage, friendship, fame, and artistic ambition—including a story that revisits the main character from Curtis Sittenfeld’s iconic novel Prep—from the New York Times bestselling author of Eligible and Romantic Comedy

“[Sittenfeld’s] perfectly contained stories are a joy.”—Booklist, starred review

In her second story collection, Sittenfeld shows why she’s as beloved for her short fiction as she is for her novels. In these dazzling stories, she conjures up characters so real that they seem like old friends, laying bare the moments when their long held beliefs are overturned.

In “The Patron Saints of Middle Age,” a woman visits two friends she hasn’t seen since her divorce. In “A for Alone,” a married artist embarks on a creative project intended to disprove the so-called Mike Pence Rule, which suggests that women and men can’t spend time alone together without lusting after each other. And in “Lost but Not Forgotten,” Sittenfeld gives readers of her novel Prep a window into the world of her beloved character Lee Fiora, decades later, when Lee attends an alumni reunion at her boarding school.

Hilarious, thought-provoking, and full of tenderness for her characters, Sittenfeld’s stories peel back layer after layer of our inner lives, keeping us riveted to the page with her utterly distinctive voice.

Coming February 25, 2025. Pre-order now.

How to Love Better: The Path to Deeper Connection Through Growth, Kindness, and Compassion by Yung Pueblo

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Lighter offers a blueprint for deepening your compassion, kindness, and gratitude so you can truly grow in harmony with another person and build stronger connections in all your relationships.

“Personal transformation that is grounded in self-love and has greater inner peace as the goal will naturally teach you how to love better. Seeing yourself clearly opens the door to compassion for yourself and for other people.”

Love enters our lives in many forms: friends, family, intimate partners. But all of these relationships are deeply influenced by the love we have for ourselves. If we see our relationships as opportunities to be fully present in our healing and learn to love one another better, then, Yung Pueblo assures us, we can transform and meet one another with compassion instead of judgment.

In How to Love Better, Yung Pueblo examines all aspects of relationships, from the rose-colored early days when you may be hesitant to show your full self, to the challenges that can arise without clear communication, to dealing with heartbreak and healing as you close a chapter of your life. The power of looking inward remains at the core of Yung Pueblo’s teachings. Ego and attachment can become barriers in a relationship, so the more self-aware you become, the more you can support both your partner and yourself.

Yung Pueblo’s insights on embracing change, building a foundation of honesty, and learning to listen selflessly will resonate regardless of where you are in your healing journey. And his unique combination of poetry, personal experience, and thoughtful advice will help you grow and strengthen all of your relationships.

Coming March 11, 2025. Pre-order now.

Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One by Kristen Arnett

From the New York Times bestselling author of Mostly Dead Things, a sparkling and funny new novel of entertainment, ambition, art, and love.

Cherry Hendricks might be down on her luck, but she can write the book on what makes something funny: she’s a professional clown who creates raucous, zany fun at gigs all over Orlando. Between her clowning and her shifts at an aquarium store for extra cash, she’s always hustling. Not to mention balancing her judgmental mother, her messy love life, and her equally messy community of fellow performers.

Things start looking up when Cherry meets Margot the Magnificent—a much older lesbian magician—who seems to have worked out the lines between art, business, and life, and has a slick, successful career to prove it. With Margot’s mentorship and industry connections, Cherry is sure to take her art to the next level. Plus, Margot is sexy as hell. It’s not long before Cherry must decide how much she’s willing to risk for Margot and for her own explosive new act—and what kind of clown she wants to be under her suit.

Equal parts bravado, tenderness, and humor, and bursting with misfits, magicians, musicians, and mimes, STOP ME IF YOU’VE HEARD THIS ONE is a masterpiece of comedic fiction that asks big questions about art and performance, friendship and community, and the importance of timing in jokes and in life.

Coming March 18, 2025. Pre-order now.

Spooky & Witchy Autumn Reads

September 29, 2024

by Robin Wood

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.

Killer House Party by Lily Anderson

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.

The Bog Wife by Kay Chronister

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.

Morbidly Yours by Ivy Fairbanks

Falling for the wrong person? Bury your feelings.

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.

5 More Sleeps ‘til Halloween by Jimmy Fallon & illustrated by Rich Deas

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.

The Witches of El Paso by Luis Jaramillo (Oct. 8)

If you call to the witches, they will come.

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 Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story by Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones

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.

All Hallows by Christopher Golden

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…

Hungry Bones by Louise Hung

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.

Enchanted to Meet You: A Witches of West Harbor Novel by Meg Cabot

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.

Can she work her magic in time?

Bookstore Romance Day 2024

July 26, 2024

by Robin Wood

Sat. August 17, 2024, join us for Bookstore Romance Day, celebrating the happy-ever-afters we love to read. We’ll be featuring a great display of our favorite romances, mimosas while supplies last, a giveaway with in-store purchase, and maybe a surprise or two. If you won’t be in Key West on the 17th, visit Bookstore Romance Day for a list of participating stores.

Also, check out Bookstore Romance Day’s lineup of virtual events featuring some of your favorite authors and booksellers!

One of the fun things about romance is it comes in so many varieties. Hockey and every other sport you can think of, historical, cowboy, funny, witchy, and so much more. Here are a few of the romances we are reading, re-reading, and looking forward to:

A time travel romance, a spy thriller, a workplace comedy, and an ingenious exploration of the nature of power and the potential for love to change it all: Welcome to The Ministry of Time, the exhilarating debut novel by Kaliane Bradley.

Celebrating its 23^rd anniversary with a fabulous new cover, Educating Caroline, a Victorian romance from The Princess Diaries author Meg Cabot. Coming Sept. 3, order it signed and personalized from us.

Someplace Generous, edited by Elaina Ellis and Amber Flame, is a vibrantly diverse and inclusive anthology of romantic short stories that can be described in one word: yes.

A struggling event planner and a sinfully hot astronaut must decide if their fake relationship is worth a shot at happily-ever-after, in The Kiss Countdown by Etta Easton.

In this “full-on villain romance” (The New York Times), Not Here to Make Friends by Jodi McAlister, a group of women on a reality dating show should be vying for the love of their Romeo, but it turns out one of them only has eyes for the showrunner. We also recommend this one in audio.

The Prospects by KT Hoffman – This triumphant debut romance reveals what’s possible when we allow ourselves to want something enough to swing for the fences.

In Anchored Hearts by Priscilla Oliveras, the drama of a prodigal son returning to his familia and their beloved Cuban restaurant is bad enough, but coming home to the island paradise also means coming face to face with the girl he left behind.

A dangerous alliance between a Vampyre bride and an Alpha Werewolf becomes a love deep enough to sink your teeth into in this new paranormal romance from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Love, Theoretically and The Love Hypothesis, Bride by Ali Hazelwood.

Summer Reading

June 26, 2024

by Robin Wood

Take advantage of the lazy, hazy days of summer to dive into a good book. Pick up Elin Hilderbrand’s last Nantucket novel, or a store favorite newly in paperback, or nonfiction that will take you for a wild ride.

Try an audiobook for your summer road trip or to keep your mind occupied as spring cleaning turns to summer upkeep. Plus, keep your kids reading this summer with a fantastic new book.

Here are a few titles we’re enjoying this summer:

Swan Song by Elin Hilderbrand

The beloved #1 New York Times bestselling author brings her Nantucket novels to a brilliant finish: when rich strangers move to the island, social mayhem and a possible murder follow. Can Nantucket’s best locals save the day, and their way of life?

Chief of Police Ed Kapenash is about to retire. Blond Sharon is going through a divorce. But when a 22-million-dollar summer home is purchased by the mysterious Richardsons—how did they make their money, exactly?—Ed, Sharon, and everyone in the community are swept up in high drama. The Richardsons throw lavish parties, flirt with multiple locals, flaunt their wealth with not one but two yachts, and raise impossible hopes of everyone they meet. When their house burns to the ground and their most essential employee goes missing, the entire island is up in arms. The last of Elin Hilderbrand’s bestselling Nantucket novels, SWAN SONG is a propulsive medley of glittering gatherings, sun-soaked drama, wisdom and heart, featuring the return of some of her most beloved characters, including, most importantly, the beautiful and timeless island of Nantucket itself.

Wellness by Nathan Hill

When Jack and Elizabeth meet as college students in the gritty ’90s Chicago art scene, the two quickly join forces and hold on tight, each eager to claim a place in the thriving underground scene with an appreciative kindred spirit. Fast-forward twenty years to suburban married life, and alongside the challenges of parenting, they encounter the often-baffling pursuits of health and happiness from polyamorous would-be suitors to home-renovation hysteria.

For the first time, Jack and Elizabeth struggle to recognize each other, and the no-longer-youthful dreamers are forced to face their demons, from unfulfilled career ambitions to childhood memories of their own dysfunctional families. In the process, Jack and Elizabeth must undertake separate, personal excavations, or risk losing the best thing in their lives: each other.

Read Judy Blume’s review of Wellness, https://booksandbookskw.com/september-staff-pick-wellness

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn’t heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom.

These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even twenty-five years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won’t protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts.

Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love.

Ruby’s Tools for Making Friends by Apryl Stott

A little fox uses tools to overcome anxiety and make friends at her new school in this heartfelt picture book from the creator of the New York Times bestseller Share Some Kindness, Bring Some Light!

It’s Ruby the fox’s first day at a new school. She’s a little nervous, but luckily, she has her tools to help: a tape measure to count her breaths if she feels overwhelmed, pliers to remind her to be flexible, and safety goggles to see things in a new way.

When Ruby finds out her class is having an egg drop competition, she wants to share her ideas, but she feels shy surrounded by all her talkative classmates. Can she use her tools to find the confidence to speak up, and maybe even make some new friends?

Ferris by Kate DiCamillo

The beloved author of Because of Winn-Dixie has outdone herself with a hilarious and achingly real love story about a girl, a ghost, a grandmother, and growing up.

It’s the summer before fifth grade, and for Ferris Wilkey, it is a summer of sheer pandemonium: Her little sister, Pinky, has vowed to become an outlaw. Uncle Ted has left Aunt Shirley and, to Ferris’s mother’s chagrin, is holed up in the Wilkey basement to paint a history of the world. And Charisse, Ferris’s grandmother, has started seeing a ghost at the threshold of her room, which seems like an alarming omen given that she is also feeling unwell. But the ghost is not there to usher Charisse to the Great Beyond. Rather, she has other plans—wild, impractical, illuminating plans. How can Ferris satisfy a specter with Pinky terrorizing the town, Uncle Ted sending Ferris to spy on her aunt, and her father battling an invasion of raccoons?

As Charisse likes to say, “Every good story is a love story,” and Kate DiCamillo has written one for the ages: emotionally resonant and healing, showing the two-time Newbery Medalist at her most playful, universal, and profound.

Ellie Haycock Is Totally Normal by Gretchen Schreiber

The Breakfast Club meets Five Feet Apart in this big-hearted novel from debut author Gretchen Schreiber.

Ellie Haycock has always separated her life into sections: Ellie at home and Ellie at the hospital. At home, Ellie is a proud member of her high school’s speech and debate team alongside her best friend and her boyfriend. At the hospital, Ellie has a team of doctors and a mom who won’t stop posting about the details of her illness online. It’s not hard for Ellie to choose which of the two she prefers.

But this latest hospital stay is different. Ellie becomes close with a group of friends, including Ryan, a first-timer who’s still optimistic about the doctors that Ellie stopped trusting years ago. Despite their differences, she can’t seem to keep him out of her head. Ellie’s life has never been ordinary—but maybe this time it will be extraordinary.

The Mango Tree: A Memoir of Fruit, Florida, and Felony by Annabelle Tometich

When journalist Annabelle Tometich picks up the phone one June morning, she isn’t expecting a collect call from an inmate at the Lee County Jail. And when she accepts, she certainly isn’t prepared to hear her mother’s voice on the other end of the line. However, explaining the situation to her younger siblings afterwards was easy; all she had to say was, “Mom shot at some guy. He was messing with her mangoes.” They immediately understood. Answering the questions of the breaking-news reporter—at the same newspaper where Annabelle worked as a restaurant critic––proved more difficult. Annabelle decided to go with a variation of the truth: it was complicated.

So begins The Mango Tree, a poignant and deceptively entertaining memoir of growing up as a mixed-race Filipina “nobody” in suburban Florida as Annabelle traces the roots of her upbringing—all the while reckoning with her erratic father’s untimely death in a Fort Myers motel, her fiery mother’s bitter yearning for the country she left behind, and her own journey in the pursuit of belonging.

With clear-eyed compassion and piercing honesty, The Mango Tree is a family saga that navigates the tangled branches of Annabelle’s life, from her childhood days in an overflowing house flooded by balikbayan boxes, vegetation, and juicy mangoes, to her winding path from medical school hopeful to restaurant critic. It is a love letter to her fellow Filipino Americans, her lost younger self, and the beloved fruit tree at the heart of her family. But above all, it is an ode to Annabelle’s hot-blooded, whip-smart mother Josefina, a woman who made a life and a home of her own, and without whom Annabelle would not have herself.

Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead

“Ray Carney was only slightly bent when it came to being crooked…” To his customers and neighbors on 125th street, Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably priced furniture, making a decent life for himself and his family. He and his wife Elizabeth are expecting their second child, and if her parents on Striver’s Row don’t approve of him or their cramped apartment across from the subway tracks, it’s still home.

Few people know he descends from a line of uptown hoods and crooks, and that his façade of normalcy has more than a few cracks in it. Cracks that are getting bigger all the time.

Cash is tight, especially with all those installment-plan sofas, so if his cousin Freddie occasionally drops off the odd ring or necklace, Ray doesn’t ask where it comes from. He knows a discreet jeweler downtown who doesn’t ask questions, either.

Then Freddie falls in with a crew who plan to rob the Hotel Theresa—the “Waldorf of Harlem”—and volunteers Ray’s services as the fence. The heist doesn’t go as planned; they rarely do. Now Ray has a new clientele, one made up of shady cops, vicious local gangsters, two-bit pornographers, and other assorted Harlem lowlifes.

Thus begins the internal tussle between Ray the striver and Ray the crook. As Ray navigates this double life, he begins to see who actually pulls the strings in Harlem. Can Ray avoid getting killed, save his cousin, and grab his share of the big score, all while maintaining his reputation as the go-to source for all your quality home furniture needs?

Harlem Shuffle’s ingenious story plays out in a beautifully recreated New York City of the early 1960s. It’s a family saga masquerading as a crime novel, a hilarious morality play, a social novel about race and power, and ultimately a love letter to Harlem.

But mostly, it’s a joy to read, another dazzling novel from the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning Colson Whitehead.

Robin recommends Harlem Shuffle as an audiobook. And check out the sequel, Crook Manifesto.

Coming soon!

A Poisonous Palate (A Key West Food Critic Mystery #14) by Lucy Burdette

When food critic Hayley Snow receives an intriguing email about a mysterious, decades-old disappearance, her curiosity is piqued. Writer Catherine Davitt has returned to the Keys to research a book about Hemingway’s wives, but she’s also on the hunt for the truth about her missing friend. Hayley quickly agrees to help investigate and they hit the road to see what clues they might find.
Back in the late 1970s, Catherine and her friend Veronica were part of a group of lost souls camping in the mangroves of Big Pine Key, until Veronica vanished, and the sheriff’s office cleared out the camp. Catherine and Hayley begin interviewing Big Pine Key residents who were around at the time of Veronica’s disappearance, but uncover more questions than answers.

Catherine and Hayley stop to speak with a motel owner who frequented the fringes of the commune, but they find him stabbed to death. Then Catherine also goes missing, and signs point to a connection between the old case and the new murder. It’s up to Hayley to unravel the knot of secrets and lies before time runs out.

Hot in the Kitchen: Cookbooks

June 25, 2024

by Robin Wood

If Gina’s review of Ruth Reichl’s The Paris Novel has whetted your appetite for something new to eat, try a new cookbook!

Pick up one that makes you feel like you’ve also made a fresh start in the City of Light, or take home one that lets you recreate your favorite Florida Keys meals. No matter what you’d like to eat tonight, there’s a cookbook for that!

Drop by the store and browse our robust cookbook section for more!

At the Table in Paris: Recipes from the Best Cafés and Bistros edited by Jan Thorbecke Verlag

At the Table in Paris invites readers to take a culinary stroll through the City of Light, along the Seine, over the Pont Neuf, to the Eiffel Tower, while taking little pit stops at street cafés to experience the food and drink on offer. With 40 typical French recipes, from breakfast right through to dinner and dessert, as well as information on what to do and where to go, this is a cookbook like no other. Discover the best green spaces to enjoy a picnic and feel inspired by time spent at the city’s famous bistros to whip up your own version of Moules Frites, Coq Au Vin, or Crème Brûlée. At the Table in Paris celebrates all this city has to offer when it comes to food, drink, and must-see places.

Florida Keys Cookbook by Victoria Shearer

The Florida Keys Cookbook is known for its fascinating combination of food history, local lore, and over 175 mouth-watering recipes showcasing the Florida Keys’ bounty from Keys restaurant chefs, and home cooks. Archival photographs and informative sidebars elevated the second edition of this beautiful and treasured book that is a celebration of the paradise that is the Florida Keys.

Now in its third edition, Victoria Shearer’s successful cookbook is being taken to the next level with over 60 new recipes and even more archival photos. A perfect guide for home cooks of all levels of cooking, Florida Keys Cookbook invites readers to experience the culinary excellence and cultural wonder that embodies the Florida Keys.

Islas: A Celebration of Tropical Cooking—125 Recipes from the Indian, Atlantic, and Pacific Ocean Islands by Von Diaz

The islands spanning the Indian, Atlantic, and Pacific Oceans are remarkable places, sharing dozens of ingredients and cooking techniques, including marinating, pickling and fermentation, braising and stewing, frying, grilling and smoking, and steaming and in-ground roasting. Bold flavors drip from the edges of each dish with tastes that represent stories of resistance, persistence, and wisdom passed down from generation to generation.

This narrative cookbook by writer, documentary producer, and author Von Diaz travels across oceans and nations to uplift the shared ancestral cooking techniques of these islands in more than 125 recipes, including intimate profiles of the historical context of each technique, stories from islanders, and step-by-step guides for recreating them at home.

Crave: Bold Recipes That Make You Want Seconds by Karen Akunowicz

Spicy, sour, salty-sweet-crunchy, cold and creamy—100 recipes from award-winning chef Karen Akunowicz capture what you crave!

Ask anyone what foods they crave, and most people will be able to reel off a list without hesitation. Cravings almost always have an emotional component, and in every case, there is a flavor, texture, or temperature combination that gives each dish what Akunowicz calls the “wow” factor. It’s what she strives for every time she creates new dishes for her restaurants, and it’s reflected in each of the recipes in Crave.

As a chef with experience cooking many different cuisines—Italian, Middle Eastern, Chinese, Taiwanese, and Southeast Asian—Akunowicz has a unique take on cooking. Her recipes, organized by flavor and texture cravings, from Crispy & Crunchy or Hearty & Homey to Sweet & Luscious, include Tomato Salad with Toasted Sesame Vinaigrette, Chicken Cacciatore, Ginger Scallion Lobster, Smoky Eggplant Dip, and more. She’s a great teacher and makes it easy to bring the vibrancy of her cooking into your own home.

Sweet Enough: A Dessert Cookbook by Alison Roman

Casual, effortless, chic: These are not words you’d use to describe most desserts. But before Alison Roman made recipes so perfect that they go by one name—The Cookie, The Pasta, The Lemon Cake—she was a restaurant pastry chef who spent most of her time learning to make things the hard way. She studied flavor, technique, and precision, then distilled her knowledge to pare it all down to create dessert recipes that feel special and approachable, impressive and doable. In Sweet Enough, Alison has written the book for people who think they don’t have the time or skill to pull off dessert. Here, the desserts you want to make right away, you can make right away.

Gastro Obscura: A Food Adventurer’s Guide by Cecily Wong, Dylan Thuras, & Atlas Obscura

Created by the ever-curious minds behind Atlas Obscura, this breathtaking guide transforms our sense of what people around the world eat and drink. Covering all seven continents, Gastro Obscura serves up a loaded plate of incredible ingredients, food adventures, and edible wonders. Ready for a beer made from fog in Chile? Sardinia’s “Threads of God” pasta? Egypt’s 2000-year-old egg ovens? But far more than a menu of curious minds delicacies and unexpected dishes, Gastro Obscura reveals food’s central place in our lives as well as our bellies, touching on history–trace the network of ancient Roman fish sauce factories. Culture–picture four million women gathering to make rice pudding. Travel–scale China’s sacred Mount Hua to reach a tea house. Festivals–feed wild macaques pyramid of fruit at Thailand’s Monkey Buffet Festival. And hidden gems that might be right around the corner, like the vending machine in Texas dispensing full sized pecan pies. Dig in and feed your sense of wonder.

Celebrate Juneteenth

June 18, 2024

by Robin Wood

Happy Freedom Day! Here are a few books we recommend about Juneteenth and Black history, as well as some celebrating contemporary Black culture in the United States.

Juneteenth Is by Natasha Tripplett & illustrated by Daniel J. O’Brien

An intimate look at Juneteenth, this story is a warm exploration of a family and a community.

Juneteenth is the smell of brisket filling the air. Juneteenth is the sounds of music, dancing, and cheering ringing from the parade outside. It is love. It is prayer. It is friends and relatives coming together to commemorate freedom, hope for tomorrow, and one another.

This book is an ode to the history of the Black community in the United States, a tribute to Black joy, and a portrait of familial love. With poignant text and vivid illustrations, Juneteenth Is offers a window and a mirror for readers, resonating with kids who will see themselves reflected in its pages and those who hope to understand experiences beyond their own.

What Is Juneteenth? by Kirsti Jewel, Who HQ, & illustrated by Manuel Gutierrez

Discover more about Juneteenth, the important holiday that celebrates the end of chattel slavery in the United States.

On June 19, 1865, a group of enslaved men, women, and children in Texas gathered around a Union solder and listened as he read the most remarkable words they would ever hear. They were no longer enslaved: they were free. The inhumane practice of forced labor with no pay was now illegal in all of the United States. This news was cause for celebration, so the group of people jumped in excitement, danced, and wept tears of joy. They did not know it at the time, but their joyous celebration of freedom would become a holiday–Juneteenth–that is observed each year by more and more Americans.

Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019 edited by Ibram X. Kendi & Keisha N. Blain

Four Hundred Souls is a unique one-volume “community” history of African Americans. The editors, Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain, have assembled ninety brilliant writers, each of whom takes on a five-year period of that four-hundred-year span. The writers explore their periods through a variety of techniques: historical essays, short stories, personal vignettes, and fiery polemics. They approach history from various perspectives: through the eyes of towering historical icons or the untold stories of ordinary people; through places, laws, and objects. While themes of resistance and struggle, of hope and reinvention, course through the book, this collection of diverse pieces from ninety different minds, reflecting ninety different perspectives, fundamentally deconstructs the idea that Africans in America are a monolith—instead it unlocks the startling range of experiences and ideas that have always existed within the community of Blackness.

The New Negro Aesthetic by Alain Locke, edited by Jeffrey C. Stewart

For months, the philosopher Alain Locke wrestled with the idea of the Negro as America’s most vexing problem. He asked how shall Negroes think of themselves as he considered the new crop of poets, novelists, and short story writers who, in 1924, wrote about their experiences as Black people in America. He did not want to frame Harlem and Black writing as yet another protest against racism, nor did he want to focus on the sociological perspective on the “Negro problem” and Harlem as a site of crime, poverty, and dysfunction. He wanted to find new language and a new way for Black people to think of themselves.

The essays and articles collected in this volume, by Locke’s Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer, are the result of that new attitude and the struggle to instill the New Negro aesthetics, as Stewart calls it here, into the mind of the twentieth century. To be a New Negro poet, novelist, actor, musician, dancer, or filmmaker was to commit oneself to an arc of self-discovery of what and who the Negro was—would be—without fear that one would disappoint the white or Black bystander. In committing to that path, Locke asserted, one would uncover a “being-in-the-world” that was rich and bountiful in its creative possibilities, if Black people could turn off the noise of racism and see themselves for who they really are: a world of creative people who have transformed, powerfully and perpetually, the culture of wherever history or social forces landed them.

This Is the Honey: An Anthology of Contemporary Black Poets edited by Kwame Alexander

In this comprehensive and vibrant poetry anthology, bestselling author and poet Kwame Alexander curates a collection of contemporary anthems at turns tender and piercing and deeply inspiring throughout. Featuring work from well-loved poets such as Rita Dove, Jericho Brown, Warsan Shire, Ross Gay, Tracy K. Smith, Terrance Hayes, Morgan Parker, and Nikki Giovanni, This Is the Honey is a rich and abundant offering of language from the poets giving voice to generations of resilient joy, “each incantation,” as Mahogany L. Browne puts it in her titular poem, is “a jubilee of a people dreaming wildly.”

High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America by Jessica B. Harris

Acclaimed cookbook author Jessica B. Harris has spent much of her life researching the food and foodways of the African Diaspora. High on the Hog is the culmination of years of her work, and the result is a most engaging history of African American cuisine. Harris takes the reader on a harrowing journey from Africa across the Atlantic to America, tracking the trials that the people and the food have undergone along the way.

From chitlins and ham hocks to fried chicken and vegan soul, Harris celebrates the delicious and restorative foods of the African American experience and details how each came to form such an important part of African American culture, history, and identity. Although the story of African cuisine in America begins with slavery, High on the Hog ultimately chronicles a thrilling history of triumph and survival. The work of a masterful storyteller and an acclaimed scholar, Jessica B. Harris’s High on the Hog fills an important gap in our culinary history.

Juneteenth by Ralph Ellison

Here is Ellison, the master of American vernacular—the preacher’s hyperbole and the politician’s rhetoric, the rhythms of jazz and gospel and ordinary speech—at the height of his powers, telling a powerful, evocative tale of a prodigal of the twentieth century.

“Tell me what happened while there’s still time,” demands the dying senator Adam Sunraider to the Reverend A. Z. Hickman, the itinerant Negro preacher whom he calls Daddy Hickman. As a young man, Sunraider was Bliss, an orphan taken in by Hickman and raised to be a preacher like himself. His history encompasses camp meetings where he became the risen Lazarus to inspire the faithful; the more ordinary joys of Southern boyhood; bucolic days as a filmmaker; lovemaking with a young woman in a field in the Oklahoma sun. And behind it all lies a mystery: how did this chosen child become the man who would deny everything to achieve his goals?

The Hypocrite by Jo Hamya (Pantheon), picked by bookseller Leslie

You Like It Darker by Stephen King (Scribner), picked by bookseller Lori

The God of the Woods by Liz Moore (Riverhead Books), picked by assistant manager Sara