These are books it would be easy to miss, but highly anticipated and well reviewed.
Nonfiction
For yet another look at our local Boston heroine:
Chasing Beauty: The Life of Isabella Stewart Gardner by Natalie Dykstra
The vivid and masterful story ofIsabella Stewart Gardner—creator of one of America’s most stunning museums—an American originalwhose own life was remade by art. Includes archival photos of Isabella’s world, museum,and the artshe collected.
Isabella Stewart Gardner’s museum, with its plain exterior enfolding an astonishing four-story Italian palazzo, rose from Boston’s Fens at the turn of the twentieth century. Its treasures encompassed not only masterwork paintings but tapestries, rare books, prints, porcelains, and fine furniture.
Nonfiction
Are critters invading your yard? Try,
The Age of Deer: Trouble and Kinship with our Wild Neighbors by Erika Howsare
A masterful hybrid of nature writing and cultural studies that investigates our connection with deer—from mythology to biology, from forests to cities, from coexistence to control and extermination—and invites readers to contemplate the paradoxes of how humans interact with and shape the natural world
Deer have been an important part of the world that humans occupy for millennia. They’re one of the only large animals that can thrive in our presence. In the 21st century, our relationship is full of contradictions: We hunt and protect them, we cull them from suburbs while making them an icon of wilderness, we see them both as victims and as pests. But there is no doubt that we have a connection to deer: in mythology and story, in ecosystems biological and digital, in cities and in forests.
Nonfiction
For a new look at Hollywood in the 40s:
Beverly Hills Spy: The Double-Agent War Hero who Helped Japan Attack Pearl Harbor by Ronald Drabkin
The untold story of the World War I hero who became a fixture of high society in Golden Age Hollywood—all while acting as a double agent for the Japanese Empire as it prepared to attack Pearl Harbor.
Frederick Rutland’s story is a rags-to-riches coup for the ages—a lower-class boy from England bootstraps his way up the ranks of the British military, becoming a World War I pilot, father of the modern aircraft carrier, cosmopolitan businessman, and Hollywood A-list insider. He oversaw this small empire from his mansion on the fabled Bird Streets of Beverly Hills. Snubbed for promotion in the Royal Air Force due to little more than jealousy and class politics, Rutland—to all appearances—continued to spin gold from straw, living an enviably lavish lifestyle that included butlers, wild parties, private clubs, and newsworthy living . . . and it was all funded by the Japanese Empire.
Nonfiction
A moving memoir and reflection on grief:
Grief is for People by Sloane Crosley
Disarmingly witty and poignant, Sloane Crosley’s memoir explores multiple kinds of loss following the death of her closest friend.
How do we live without the ones we love? Grief Is for People is a deeply moving and suspenseful portrait of friendship, and a book about loss that is profuse with life. Sloane Crosley is one of our most renowned observers of contemporary behavior, and now the pathos that has been ever present in her trademark wit is on full display. After the pain and confusion of losing her closest friend to suicide, Crosley looks for answers in philosophy and art, hoping for a framework more useful than the unavoidable stages of grief. Disarmingly witty and poignant, Sloane Crosley’s memoir explores multiple kinds of loss following the death of her closest friend.
How do we live without the ones we love? Grief Is for People is a deeply moving and suspenseful portrait of friendship, and a book about loss that is profuse with life. Sloane Crosley is one of our most renowned observers of contemporary behavior, and now the pathos that has been ever present in her trademark wit is on full display. After the pain and confusion of losing her closest friend to suicide, Crosley looks for answers in philosophy and art, hoping for a framework more useful than the unavoidable stages of grief.
Nonfiction
For anyone with a screen:
Filterworld: How Algorithms Have Flattened Culture by Kyle Chayka
From trendy restaurants to city grids, to TikTok and Netflix feeds the world round, algorithmic recommendations dictate our experiences and choices. The algorithm is present in the familiar neon signs and exposed brick of Internet cafes, be it in Nairobi or Portland, and the skeletal, modern furniture of Airbnbs in cities big and small. Over the last decade, this network of mathematically determined decisions has taken over, almost unnoticed—informing the songs we listen to, the friends with whom we stay in touch—as we’ve grown increasingly accustomed to our insipid new normal.
Fiction
Burma Sahib by Paul Theroux: A take on the life George Orwell as a young man
At age nineteen, young Eton graduate Eric Blair set sail for India, dreading the assignment ahead. Along with several other young conscripts, he would be trained for three years as a servant of the British Empire, overseeing the local policemen in Burma.
Navigating the social, racial, and class politics of his fellow British at the same time as he learned the local languages and struggled to control his men would prove difficult enough. But doing all of this while grappling with his own self-worth, his sense that he was not cut out for this, is soon overwhelming for the young Blair. Eventually, his clashes with his superiors, and the drama that unfolds in this hot, beautiful land, will change him forever.
Fiction
For mystery lovers: The Teacher by Freida McFadden
Eve has a good life. She wakes up each day, kisses her husband Nate, and heads off to teach math at the local high school. All is as it should be. Except…
Last year, Caseham High was rocked by a scandal involving a student-teacher affair, with one student, Addie, at its center. But Eve knows there is far more to these ugly rumors than meets the eye.
Addie can’t be trusted. She lies. She hurts people. She destroys lives. At least, that’s what everyone says.
But nobody knows the real Addie. Nobody knows the secrets that could destroy her. And Addie will do anything to keep it quiet…
Fiction
For who prefer mysteries with a dose of humor:
The Extinction of Irena Rey by Jennifer Croft
From the International Booker Prize-winning translator and Women's Prize finalist, an utterly beguiling novel about eight translators and their search for a world-renowned author who goes missing in a primeval Polish forest.
Eight translators arrive at a house in a primeval Polish forest on the border of Belarus. It belongs to the world-renowned author Irena Rey, and they are there to translate her magnum opus, Gray Eminence. But within days of their arrival, Irena disappears without a trace.
Fiction
Building of the Panama Canal:
The Great Divide by Cristina Henriquez
A powerful novel about the construction of the Panama Canal, casting light on the unsung people who lived, loved, and labored there It is said that the canal will be the greatest feat of engineering in history. But first, it must be built. For Francisco, a local fisherman who resents the foreign powers clamoring for a slice of his country, nothing is more upsetting than the decision of his son, Omar, to work as a digger in the excavation zone. But for Omar, whose upbringing was quiet and lonely, this job offers a chance to finally find connection.
Fiction
For readers of Huckleberry Finn, from Jim's point of view:
James by Percival Everett
A brilliant, action-packed reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both harrowing and ferociously funny, told from the enslaved Jim's point of view.
"If you liked Demon Copperhead, by Barbara Kingsolver, read James, by Percival Everett" --The Washington Post
When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.
Nonfiction
For dinner this season:
Anything’s Pastable: 81 Inventive Pasta Recipes for Saucy People by Dan Pashman
When Sporkful podcast host Dan Pashman launched cascatelli, a new pasta shape he invented that he designed to hold tons of sauce, stay on the fork, and be incredibly satisfying to bite into, it went viral and was named one of TIME Magazine’s Best Inventions of the Year. VICE called him "a modern pasta legend."
But as Dan was flooded with pictures of what people were making with his pasta, he was disappointed to see how limited the dishes were: tomato sauce, meat sauce, mac and cheese, over and over. A few party animals made pesto.
So Dan set out to revolutionize people’s conceptions of pasta sauces, just as he did with pasta shapes. He traveled across Italy and worked with an all-star team of recipe developers in the US to create a new kind of pasta sauce cookbook for people bored with the old standbys. That’s why there’s no 3-hour marinara recipe or fresh pasta made from scratch in this book. No photos of nonnas caked in flour or the hills of Tuscany. Instead it’s time to show the world--Anything’s Pastable.