Ah, here is Ava Barry’s Windhall, a deliciously dark murder mystery about the golden age of Hollywood. Back then, a leading lady’s dead body is discovered in her equally famous director’s rose garden. He’s charged with murder, but the case is thrown out before the trial, and the director vanishes. Now, sixty-nine years later, another woman …
Phung Nguyen Quang and Huynh Kim Lien have created My First Day, a delightfully illustrated children’s story book about the magic and excitement of the “first day.” In this case, An is leaving home for his first day of school. It’s also the first day his mother has allowed him to take a boat out on …
Here’s a mashup we weren’t expecting this year (oh, come on, this is a good surprise—not like, say, murder hornets): Perestroika in Paris, an equestrian fairy tale set in Paris. Written by Pulitzer Prize Winner Jane Smiley, no less. Perestroika is Paris is the story of a talking racehorse who decides to venture into the world beyond …
We have a new Christopher Paolini book. Now, Paolini, as you may recall, wrote a book about dragons once up a time, and it turned out that more than a few folks wanted to know what happened next. Paolini showed up for a few more books, and became somewhat of a wild success story (given …
From A Good Book in Sumner, WA: We’re doing bespoke blind date boxes as a way to get you the good stuff during this time of anxious separation. Well, suffice to say the bespoke box has been a hit. Enough so that we’ve spent most of the week racing around the store, finding cool things …
…we’ve also got Haboo, a collection of tales from the Lushootseed-speaking peoples of the Puget Sound. Drawn from a period of oral traditions, Haboo highlights the Myth Age, a time before the world transformed. These fables feature talking animals, anthropomorphic trees, and wise old rocks, who manage to speak of the human condition without being, you know, human. …
Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Nickel Boys, is out in paperback. . . The Nickel Boys follows Elwood Curtis as he is unfairly sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy. Curtis falls in with a fellow “delinquent” named Turner, and the novel explores the very different reactions to the terrible system that …
…and speaking of building better tomorrows, we’re delighted to see Ibram X. Kendi has cleverly put out a baby board book. Timing is everything, and nothing happens overnight in book publishing, which makes the arrival of Antiracist Baby this week a marvel. Kendi, whose Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America and How to …
In The Night Fire, Michael Connelly is still adjusting his audience to the fact that retired detective Harry Bosch is old (much older than he is portrayed in the delightful TV series) and there are only so many fences he can gambol over before he breaks his hip. A few books back, Connelly cleverly introduced Renée Ballard, …
