White Cat, Black Dog by Kelly Link (Random House), picked by Social Media Manager Robin
“With White Cat, Black Dog, Kelly Link puts her sui generis magic to work on the older magic of fairy tales, forging something revelatory. These stories delight and terrify us, and seem to say, Yes, this is the way the world works—haven’t you been paying attention?I am now. What a glorious and bewitching gift this book is.
— Clare Beams, author of The Illness Lesson
Clare is better at this than I am. I just want to stand around the store and hand White Cat, Black Dog to people. Kelly Link’s newest collection of fairy tale-inspired short stories defies easy description, but is a joy to read.
It’s hard to explain, I say, but it’s really good. It’s smart, funny, creepy, and sneaky. I wouldn’t steer you wrong. It’s excellent – and different – and, after you read it, you might find yourself even more afraid of business travel.
Link takes a nugget of a fairy tale, even if you don’t know the story, you’ll recognize the elements – three princes sent on three quests, the dangers of debts owed to the fae. She takes something from the original tale, and weaves something new and unexpected, meaningful and unexplained.
These are the kind of stories that stick with you. Sometimes enchanting, sometimes scary, always thought-provoking. Highly recommended.
In this “magical trip worth taking” (Associated Press), the New York Times bestselling author of In Five Years returns with a powerful novel about the transformational love between mothers and daughters set on the breathtaking Amalfi Coast.
Bookseller Gina writes, “One Italian Summer will immerse you in the magic of Positano, and the complex yet powerful bond of a mother and daughter. Katy and Carol will take you to a place you don’t want to leave and on a journey you won’t want to end!”
“Every time I re-read it, I want to book a flight to Italy, just like watching Under the Tuscan Sun.”
Get out your headphones, THE FAREWELL TOUR will make you want to crank up the music. But first, we are delighted to introduce you to author Stephanie Clifford, who took time out of her busy book launch to chat with us. (Read Assistant Manager Allison’s review of THE FAREWELL TOUR.)
Stephanie Clifford, photo credit: Sarah Bode-Clark Photography
Q: How big a music fan were you before writing THE FAREWELL TOUR? What was the first album you bought with your own money?
A: I’ve always adored music, from opera to musicals to rock, and play piano and guitar. But I didn’t fall in love with country until high school—I grew up in Seattle, and worked one summer in Arkansas doing trail maintenance in a national forest there, where the only radio station we could get was country. Suddenly, I was hooked, and returned to Seattle at the height of the grunge era to listen to, like, Tammy Wynette—no one in Seattle understood what on earth I was doing.
First album—for some reason it wasn’t an album I first bought, but a cassette-tape single: Prince (cool), “Arms of Orion” (not very cool).
Q: What was the idea that sparked this novel?
A: Before I began writing this book, I happened to be on a literature-of-the-American-West kick, so Grapes of Wrath and Cormac McCarthy and Larry McMurtry. The landscapes they wrote about were arid and harsh, and I didn’t recognize them. I felt like there was this missing piece of the “Western” genre, that the Northwest, this place I had grown up in—and which, by the way, takes up a rather large geographical chunk of the West!—was completely ignored. So I began playing with the idea of writing a Western—not a shootout-and-saloons story, but one that considers the myth of the West, and how the landscape shapes its characters—that was set in the historical Northwest.
As I read more and more, I also came to feel that even for writers who were women or were sympathetic to women, like Wallace Stegner or Willa Cather, in the era I was writing about—the book starts in the 1920s—the women in these books literally didn’t get to leave their houses. They were stuck inside, cooking, cleaning, and sewing. And I thought of the fierce Northwest women I knew, who would basically skin a deer in the morning and then put on lipstick and go shopping at I. Magnin’s downtown in the afternoon, and I thought, just try keeping a Northwest woman inside her house; good luck.
That became the genesis for Lil, the main character. I wanted to get across the grit and battle scars that so many Northwest women of that era had, and also the desire to survive, and give her a life where she has to be out in the world—in this case, via singing country music—and see what happens.
Q: What was interesting to you about this particular time in history, women’s history or music history?
A: First of all, it’s just this incredibly rich time to imagine and research—Lil’s born on the cusp of the Depression, gets her start as a singer in WWII-era Tacoma, lands in Nashville in its golden era—all a gold mine for a writer. I also wanted her to have to navigate her career and art in a time that wasn’t very open to working women generally, and certainly not in the country music. She’s going to have to make real concessions in order to succeed, which is always interesting to write about.
Q: What were your top 3 songs of 2022? What would be your picks for saddest song? Happiest?
A: Because I was so deep into research for 2022, my Spotify most-played for the year looks like it’s out of 1962! Tammy Wynette, “Apartment No. 9” – Tammy makes everything sound heartbreaking; Sister Rosetta Tharpe, “Didn’t It Rain” – an incredible, pioneering guitar player; “He Is Fine,” Secret Sisters, a fabulous duo. Happiest – I love a musical number for a pick-me-up (my first book, Everybody Rise, has tons of musical references, and the title is from a Sondheim song) – so maybe a classic like “Seventy-Six Trombones.” Saddest, there’s a scene in the book where the characters are discussing the saddest country song, and I think Lil gets it right when she suggests Emmylou Harris’s “Boulder to Birmingham,” written after Harris’s musical partner, Gram Parsons, overdosed and died. Just try not to cry when you hear Emmylou sing that one.
Q: What are you reading and recommending these days?
A: I just (accidentally) read back-to-back two wonderful, thoughtful books on women during times of civil war/domestic terrorism in the ’70s: V.V. Ganeshananthan’s Brotherless Night, set in the Tamil region of Sri Lanka during the civil war there; and Louise Kennedy’s Trespasses, set during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The books made perfect companions and almost talked to each other.
It’s 1980, and Lillian Waters is hitting the road for the very last time.
Jaded from her years in the music business, perpetually hungover, and diagnosed with career-ending vocal problems, Lillian cobbles together a nationwide farewell tour featuring some old hands from her early days playing honky-tonk bars in Washington State and Nashville, plus a few new ones. She yearns to feel the rush of making live music one more time and bask in the glow of a packed house before she makes the last, and most important, stop on the tour: the farm she left behind at age ten and the sister she is finally ready to confront about an agonizing betrayal in their childhood.
As the novel crisscrosses eras, moving between Lillian’s youth—the Depression, the Second World War, the rise of Nashville—and her middle-aged life in 1980, we see her striving to build a career in the male-dominated world of country music, including the hard choices she makes as she tries to redefine music, love, aging, and womanhood on her own terms.
Allison enjoyed both the book and audiobook versions of this novel. She writes, “Stephanie Clifford fills out the singular story of one woman’s hard rise to country music stardom with the history of country music and the evolution of American culture. Water Lil is a character you won’t soon forget.”
“This well researched novel is also a love letter to country music and the west. If you’ve spent time with either, this novel will be hell bent on tugging at your heartstrings.”
Allison’s playlist for the book includes Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (the song “Bo Weavil Blues” is central to the novel).
At the beginning of the 20th Century, America was a cultural backwater, with no sense of the art revolution in Europe. This is a sterling thriller about how a scrappy group of modern art lovers, through two world wars, founded the now iconic MOMA and brought Picasso, Matisse, Van Gogh and the world of modern art to America. And in the process saved countless works from Nazi hands and established this country as the center of the art world. A nonfiction page turner.
~ George Cooper
“[Eakin] has mastered this material. . . . The book soars.” – The New York Times Book Review
Bookseller Lori read a lot of books for the upcoming Key West Literary Seminar, Singing America: A Celebration of Black Literature, for which she is serving this year as chairperson, and one of the standouts was The Secret Lives of Church Ladiesby Deesha Philyaw.
Lori writes, “This book explores the passions, vulnerabilities, sensuality and raw emotions of four generations of black women who want – and desperately need- to be so much more than ‘good’ church women all their lives. It’s raw and very relatable to a former church girl like me.”
The award-winning collection is also currently in development for TV by HBO Max.
The Light Pirate by Lily Brooks-Dalton (Dec. 6, 2022, Grand Central Publishing) picked by store manager Emily
Tragic, but hopeful and completely enthralling. The Light Pirate is an essential read.
After living in Florida for nearly a decade, I’ve prepared for a few hurricanes. I was drawn to the first few lines of the description – a family prepares for a storm. I’ve been very lucky when it comes to storms, but I know as well as anyone the internal drama that comes with deciding if you should stay or go as a hurricane approaches. I thought it would be an interesting read but I wasn’t prepared for how deep it would take me down the rabbit hole.
Since reading this book, not a day has gone by that I haven’t brought it up in conversation. As Key West prepared for Hurricane Ian (or didn’t prepare as the case may be) I found my chatter increased. I think I became a little annoying as I told all of my fellow booksellers that they needed to read The Light Pirate.
The book begins as the Lowe family, Kirby, his wife Frida (pregnant with their first child) and his two sons from a previous marriage prepare for an incoming hurricane. This is nothing new for the family living on the east coast of Florida. But Frida feels this one is different, and of course she is right. It’s a story of our changing planet, yes, but at its core it’s a story of family and what and who makes a place a “home.”
We had a lucky baker’s dozen of featured staff picks this year. Any one of these will make an excellent gift for the discerning readers on your holiday shopping lists.
Store manager Emily launched the year with A Certain Hunger by Chelsea G. Summers (Unnamed Press), which she said “checked all the boxes.” Emily continued, “How did she become a ruthless killer? Did her victims have it coming? Will she ever find the perfect duck confit? I had to know.” Read the review.
To coincide with Black History Month, in February, bookseller Lori picked Yonder by Jabari Asim (Simon & Schuster, out in paper Jan. 10), which she especially recommended for readers who enjoyed The Prophets by Robert Jones, Jr. (out in paper, Feb. 8). Read Lori’s review.
Social media manager Robin is still thinking about Black Cake months later. “Twisty, fun and moving, you’ll enjoy this book where everyone has (a lot of) secrets,” Robin wrote. Read her review.
“Taste reminds me that whomever you are and wherever you come from the sharing of food connects us,” wrote bookseller Gina about Taste: My Life Through Food by Stanley Tucci (Gallery Books). “Plus,” she notes, “I learned how to make the ‘perfect’ martini!” Read her review.
Store co-founder George wrote of Booth by Karen Joy Fowler (G.P. Putnam’s Sons), “This is historical fiction at its finest.” He continues, “When I learned that Fowler, author of the witty and surprising We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves had a new novel, I jumped at the chance to preview it.” Read George’s review.
“This is an enthralling tale that will sweep you off into the night,” bookseller Riona Jean writes of Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan (Harper Voyager). Read Riona’s review, dive into Daughter of the Moon Goddess and it’s sequel, Heart of the Sun Warrior.
July was a double feature. Store co-founder Judy picked Love Marriage by Monica Ali and George picked River of the Gods by Candice Millard. Read what they had to say.
“This isn’t the kind of fairy tale where the princess marries a prince. It’s the one where she kills him,” reads the jacket copy for Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher (Tor Books, look for the paperback Feb. 28). Bookseller Camila loved it, calling it “a perfect summer read, a blend of fantasy, horror, unforgettable characters, humor, and a brave feminist protagonist.” Read Camila’s review.
Written for a middle-grade audience, Unseen Magic by Emily Lloyd-Jones (Greenwillow Books, look for the paperback Feb. 21) will also appeal to adults looking for a charming mystery with Scooby-Doo vibes. Read Robin’s review.
“Do you love weird animal facts? Do you love academia? Do you love sticking it to the patriarchy?” Then bookseller Riona Jean has just the book for you. Read her review of Bitch: On the Female of the Species by Lucy Cooke (Basic Books).
Assistant manager Allison calls A Minor Chorus by Billy-Ray Belcourt (W. W. Norton & Company) “A gorgeously written debut novel that poses the question, how can I write a novel, how can I expose myself to life and love through the lens of queer indigenous authenticity.” Read her review.
“Tragic, but hopeful and completely enthralling. The Light Pirate by Lily Brooks-Dalton (coming Dec. 6, Grand Central Publishing) is an essential read.” Read Emily’s review and don’t miss our event with author Lily Brooks-Dalton, Judy Blume and Emily in-person December 8.
Find even more books we love, on our staff recs shelf and scattered around the store, and online on our staff recs page.
A Minor Chorus by Billy-Ray Belcourt (W. W. Norton & Company), picked by Assistant Manager Allison
From November 2022: The first thing we ask when we meet a new bookseller is: What are you reading and recommending?
Allison Rand, our new assistant manager, hit her answer out of the park, offering up this month’s featured staff pick, A Minor Chorus by Billy-Ray Belcourt. Read her review below.
Allison is an experienced bookseller, having worked at RJ Julia in Madison, CT, The Harvard Coop in Cambridge, MA, and Collected Works in Santa Fe, NM.
Her favorite genre is literary fiction. She recently read Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout and The Marriage Portraitby Maggie O’Farrell, and is currently reading Getting Lost by Annie Ernaux.
***
A gorgeously written debut novel that poses the question, how can I write a novel, how can I expose myself to life and love through the lens of queer indigenous authenticity.
Growing up Cree in Northern Alberta, Billy-Ray Belcourt’s narrator knows he has to leave the rez. Now, living in Edmonton as a grad student and meeting men on Tinder, he starts slipping into a depression. He begins to ask, what of love, of excess, of finding the loudness, the bigness of one’s own voice and expression? He poses these questions and more to his people from the past and academic present.
In a stream of conversations, Belcourt uses the language of academia and literature to find a path to the heart. If you loved Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We are Briefly Gorgeous, and Tomasz Jedrowski’s Swimming in the Dark, you won’t want to miss A Minor Chorus.
Do you love weird animal facts? Do you love academia? Do you love sticking it to the patriarchy?
This book boasts all three with panache and grace.
Cooke is an accomplished zoologist who interviews a bevy of scientists across the globe in order to expose the glaring gap in knowledge about the female of any species (from insects to mammals to birds). Her writing is feisty, fierce, and witty without being grandiose or over-embellishing facts.
Learn about murderous meerkats, polyamorous birds, and frisky bonobos, all while discovering how scientific studies contradicting the patriarchy have been dismissed, hidden, or unfunded. I can’t get this book into your paws fast enough!
