Amazon Spotlight Pick: Writers & Lovers
At 31, Casey is still holding onto her dream of being a novelist. Most of her artist friends have given up their artist dreams for more practical, and lucrative, endeavors; but Casey writes and makes ends meet by waitressing and walking her landlord’s dog. Writers & Lovers is Lily King’s follow up to her 2014 breakthrough novel Euphoria, which was loosely based on the experiences of Margaret Mead, and one might expect King to tread a similar path in this new book. But this is a different novel altogether. That said, it’s a very enjoyable read, a breath of fresh air, with characters that leap off the page. Writers & Lovers is about the uncertainty of dating, and of pursuing the creative life, in a world that values success and stability. Life does not wait for Casey to fulfill her dream, if that dream even comes. So she works and she dates, and she tries to figure it out as she goes. Love and art require daily, often imperceptible, leaps of faith—and this book captures that perfectly. —Chris Schluep, the Amazon Book Review
Featured Debut: My Dark Vanessa
My Dark Vanessa is an exploration of the repercussions of a March/December relationship between a teacher and his student. Vanessa is contacted by a woman who is about to go public with a story of sexual abuse at the hands of an English teacher, Jacob Strane, when she was a high school student. She has heard some stories about Vanessa and Strane, and wants to know if Vanessa has a story similar to her own. And Vanessa does indeed have a story about Strane, but in her mind the story is about her first love and their all-consuming passion. And it’s the story of how that passion has reverberated through the years since, arresting Vanessa at the point in her life when Strane assured her she was the love of his. Can a teacher have had two teenage loves of his life? Or does Vanessa need to acknowledge that there’s another name for the role Strane plays in her memory? Masterfully switching between present-day and past, Vanessa starts to look at their relationship through the lens of the #MeToo moment, raising uncomfortable questions about consent, agency, abuse, manipulation and memory in this provocative and riveting novel. —Vannessa Cronin, Amazon Book Review
The Mirror and the Light
Hilary Mantel has captivated readers and critics alike with her rich historical novels about the schemer, dreamer, henchman, and political mastermind Thomas Cromwell. The first Cromwell book, Wolf Hall, won the Man Booker Prize, as did the follow-up, Bring Up the Bodies. Now with the final book, The Mirror & the Light, we meet Cromwell at the height of his power. The novel opens with the decapitation of Anne Boleyn as Henry VIII settles in with his new bride, Jane Seymour, but rebellion lurks in the shadows both home and abroad. Mantel brilliantly and deviously unfurls the vision that spurs Cromwell to assert his power and the eventual ruin that it brings him. Like the books before, The Mirror & the Light is breathtaking and immersive, rich in detail and wide-ranging in characters, and brings the genre to dizzying new heights. A stunning ending to an award-winning series by one of the most talented writers working today. —Al Woodworth, Amazon Book Review
Yellow Bird
Three stories overlap in Yellow Bird and any one of the three would make for an interesting book on its own. Primarily it’s a true crime story about the disappearance and murder of an oil-worker named K.C. Clarke and Lissa Yellow Bird—a member of the Three Affiliated Tribes—who, obsessively some would say, hunted his killer for years. But author Sierra Crane Murdoch also lays out the history of oil drilling on the reservation, the booms and the busts, and the complex legacy of exploitation that shackled the fate of the tribe to that of Big Oil. And finally, Yellow Bird’s also about addiction and recovery, zooming in on the way Lissa, a meth addict fresh out of prison, channeled the same addictive impulses that landed her in prison into the search for K.C. Clarke. And how a case she took on while newly-sober gave her additional purpose: Lissa ended up traveling to conferences across America, calling attention to the high rates at which Indigenous people went missing and to the low resolution rate for such missing person cases. Murdoch’s seven years of research allow for an intimate portrait of a resilient woman who believes she’s “paying a debt to society, making up for the harm she had caused,” making this fascinating story so much more than a true crime tale. —Vannessa Cronin, Amazon Book Review
Deacon King Kong
James McBride, author of the National Book Award winning The Good Lord Bird and the beloved memoir The Color of Water, has written a propulsive and comic neighborhood epic set in the 1960s with a cast of characters that are beguiling, boozed-filled, and larger than life. When a young drug lord is shot in broad daylight by a bumbling drunk known to everyone as Sportcoat, the Brooklyn neighborhood they live in is upended. As Sportcoat comically and unknowingly dodges the police, his actions ricochet around him, igniting a web of drug wars, backdoor dealings with mobsters, and church brawls that demonstrate just how vital yet fragile communities can be. Deacon King Kong tells the fictional story of one Brooklyn project, but in so doing tells a broader story of race and religion, getting by and getting out, and how grudges and alliances become embedded in the foundations of our neighborhoods. An incredibly satisfying read. —Al Woodworth, Amazon Book Review
Greenwood
It is difficult not to fall for Michael Christie’s Greenwood, a multi-generational saga that is also a page turner. Beginning in 2038, after an event called “the Withering” has taken most old-growth forests, we meet Jacinda “Jake” Greenwood, who is working as a forest guide on a remote wooded island off the coast of British Columbia. Because of the rarity of large trees, the island has become a center of eco-tourism, attracting the rich and famous. From Jake’s story, the author begins to cycle back in time, through several generations of Greenwoods, all of them linked to the forest in some way, each with their own absorbing story. Trees provide a multitude of metaphors to play with (all applicable here), and there has been a multitude of recent novels with trees at their center. Between Annie Proulx’s Barkskins, Karl Marlantes’s Deep River, and of course Richard Powers’s The Overstory, I thought I had read enough tree books to last a decade. Still, I could not help but fall hard for this novel, and so will many other readers. Greenwood is a great read: thoughtful and complex, entertaining and rewarding.—Chris Schluep, the Amazon Book Review
The Night Watchman
Louise Erdrich pays poignant homage to her grandfather in this sweeping novel about Native American dispossession in the 1950s. Like her grandfather, our titular hero is a humble night watchman, also the tribal chairman of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa in North Dakota. Initially an uneventful post, Thomas Wazhashk’s life is upended when he learns that the U.S. government has earmarked them for “emancipation” (an odd term, he points out, since they were not enslaved). The Night Watchman follows Thomas’s tireless efforts to persuade the U.S. government to honor treaties that protected what remained of their already picked-over lands. And Erdrich further expounds on the scourge of systemic racism, sexual exploitation, and other unsavory sundries through the stories of his extended family, and those in their orbit. Dark much? Yes. But The Night Watchman is tempered by Erdrich’s signature wit and humanity, exposing the light in the wounds of individuals, and a people, fighting for their place in the world. —Erin Kodicek, Amazon Book Review
A Good Neighborhood
Valerie Alston-Holt, a widow, is living with her biracial son Xavier in a modest house in the idyllic North Carolina suburb of Oak Knoll, where she spends most of her free time gardening. Then the Whitmans move in, with their new money, McMansion, and in-ground pool. Alston-Holt and patriarch Brad Whitman clash immediately, but Xavier and the Whitman’s daughter Juniper secretly fall in love. The adults are distracted: Alston-Holt is focused on the harm that the Whitman’s property has caused to her beloved oak tree, and plans civically responsible revenge, which ignites the temper of Brad Whitman. It’s hard not to cheer on Xavier, a precocious classical guitarist with a bright future who loves his mother and speaks respectfully to their fellow neighbors at book club night. And although Juniper hails from the offending family, she’s earnest and hard-working, a distance runner who has taken a vow of chastity. While the idea of star-crossed lovers may not be new, this poetically written look at race, violence, and class is both somber and refreshing. Fowler employs the third person omniscient narrator, creating the feeling of a Greek chorus in an ancient tragedy. —Sarah Gelman, the Amazon Book Review
Sharks in the Time of Saviors
Kawai Strong Washburn is making his debut, and it is a knockout. Sharks in the Time of Saviors is mythical and grounded, humorous and heart wrenching, contemporary and timeless. I could tell you it’s about a boy who has the power to tame and to heal, but that makes it sound a little more witchy than it is. So maybe I’ll just say that it’s about three siblings who grew up in Hawaii, dispersed to the mainland for their grown-up lives, and all the while are each trying to figure out their own identities—in relation to themselves, each other, and the legends of their childhood. From the heat of Hawaii, to the riotous banter with their parents, and then the shattering disappointment of falling short of expectations, Washburn’s debut beats with the complexity of familial love. Washburn is a gifted writer, one to watch, and more importantly one to read and expand your view of paradise. —Al Woodworth, Amazon Book Review
The City We Became
N. K. Jemisin brings her reality-ripping storytelling skills to her own backyard of New York City in this vivid series starter. In The City We Became, few people realize that Earth’s grandest cities—London, Hong Kong, São Paolo, and others—are alive. When New York City tries to join that select group, five people in the city unexpectedly become the living embodiments of each of the city’s five boroughs. Unfortunately, the first thing they learn is that the newborn city is under attack from a very ancient enemy that has successfully killed cities before, and now the five New Yorkers are targets as well. More fortunately, the city’s avatars soon discover that with great responsibility comes great powers. Paranormal battles on top of cabs, hidden subway stations, New York City politics, and local artists’ galleries thread through each other in a live-wire love letter to the city and its diverse denizens. While Jemisin has won awards with her previous novels, this one may be the most likely to win readers’ hearts as well. —Adrian Liang, Amazon Book Review
In Five Years
In Five Years is a love story, just not the one you think. After years of hard work and planning, Type A Dannie Cohan finally has it all: she’s aced a job interview at her dream law firm and her boyfriend just proposed to her. She goes to sleep that night and has an extremely vivid (wink, wink) dream set five years in the future involving a strange man she appears to be married to. When she wakes up, she can’t shake the dream, and is further disturbed when she meets her best friend’s new boyfriend, only to discover he’s the mystery man from the dream. Dannie spends the next five years in a bit of a race against the clock, trying to get away from this dream scenario she fears is her destiny. While this may sound like the set up for a romantic comedy, it’s anything but. What readers will find is a thoughtful, poignant and yes, sometimes heartbreaking look at destiny, friendship, and our purpose on this planet. This is a book you’ll want to read in one sitting. Then you will want to immediately share it with a friend. —Sarah Gelman, the Amazon Book Review
Wine Girl
Victoria James’ success in the world of high-dollar wine and prestigious New York City restaurants came from humble beginnings. James got her first restaurant job in a diner at age 13, in order to provide for herself and her siblings while their father vacillated between complete neglect and a frightening expectation of perfection. James quickly learned a core value of hospitality, but she also experienced workplace abuse that would recur over the years, even as she ascended to Michelin-star establishments. When James discovered a passion for wine, her insatiable desire to learn led her to become a certified sommelier at age 21, making her the youngest in the country to do so. Wine Girl takes the reader on one woman’s journey of discovery and perseverance, from a truck stop diner to vineyards in France, and wine cellars worth seven figures. An insider account of a glamorous industry riddled with abuses, Wine Girl is eye-opening, inspiring, and incredibly entertaining. –Seira Wilson, Amazon Book Review