Made-Up Books

Jane Eyre meets Shirley Jackson (think: We Have Always Lived in the Castle) in this Victorian horror-comedy. In the movie in my mind, Tim Burton is the director. Upon arriving at Ensor House, the new... (Anika)

Does your heart race with anticipated pleasure when you see not only a list of characters but a family tree on the first pages of a fat novel? If so, prepare to luxuriate, as this is just the first of... (Tom)

Emily Jane’s very funny debut novel, On Earth as It Is on Television, was one of my favorite books two years ago, and I frequently recommend it to people who want something hilarious yet also poignant... (Doree)

We Needed a You is my new go-to baby shower recommendation. This delightfully sweet picture book features soft and colorful artwork and gentle text describing all the beautiful things in the world ("t... (Haley)

As I've come to expect from Emily Austin's previous two novels, the beating heart of We Could Be Rats lies in its deeply flawed but lovable characters. However, where we were given the singular perspe... (Anika)

This picture book colorfully illustrates a year in the life of the five-member Tanaka family, following them through holidays, milestones, meals, and seasons. Chihiro Takeuchi's detailed papercut illu... (Haley)

Fox sisters Celeste and Miriam explore a sparkling winter wonderland in this cozy picture book. Older sister Miriam tells Celeste all about snow dragons—they collect "diamond dust," breathe frostfire,... (Haley)

At the center of this novel is a single, inexplicable incident from the end of the Spanish Civil War, when an unknown Republican soldier caught a leader of the right-wing Falange escaping a Republican... (Tom)

New-ish Book of the Week Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052-2072 by M.E. O'Brien and Eman Abdelhadi I love oral history and I love speculative fiction so I grabbed... (Liz)

I returned to another author of an all-time favorite this month. I often name Charles Burns''s 2005 graphic novel, Black Hole, a jet-dark story of a disease sweeping through '70s teens, as my favorite... (Tom)

I Know How to Draw an Owl is my favorite picture book of 2024. Beautiful and heart-wrenching, yet as quiet as an owl gliding through the trees, it depicts a serious issue with subtlety and sensitivity... (Haley)

Anyone who has ever had a kitchen mishap will wish they had the Little Chefs on speed dial after reading this creative picture book. The next time your cookies burn or your soup is tasteless, look for... (Haley)

This book reminded me of the 1983 movie, The Big Chill, but with more nuance and an off-beat soundtrack (and an Australian setting). Published just a year later, it’s also about college classmates fro... (Liz)

Greenwell's first two books, What Belongs to You and Cleanness, each made my year-end top 10, and this third one is likely to as well. Those earlier books were both disarmingly frank (and often breath... (Tom)

The New Yorker cartoon is one of those venerable comedy institutions that, like Saturday Night Live, is at this point often more "funny" than funny. But, as also happens on Saturday Night Live, once i... (Tom)

I didn’t realize this was a Young Adult novel when I first picked it up, but I was immediately sucked into this gorgeous, multi-generational tale of a Northern California family that has more than its... (Doree)

Young Adult Book of the Week Phinney by Post Kids Book #106 Aldo: Ghost Dog by Joaquín Camp, translated by Kit Maude One day while playing catch, Aldo the dog gets caught in a white sheet hanging from... (Haley)

Ethel Wilson lived over ninety years, most of them in Vancouver, B.C., and many of them as a self-described “doctor’s wife,” but starting when she was nearly sixty, she published a handful of books, i... (Tom)

Lucienne and Gaston “believe as much in their country as in their love.” Their country is Algeria, which at the time (the late '20s) was also France; their love is mismatched (Tom)

Six students of various ages and backgrounds all sign up for a new master's level art class at a university in England. The senior art tutor needs this class to work so it can be added to the universi... (Doree)

Dictionary contains all the words that have ever been read, but unlike the other books, she doesn't tell her own story. So one day she decides to bring her words to life, starting with a hungry alliga... (Haley)

A delicate and lyrical counterpoint to the weighty Challenger, Orbital is called a novel, but it bears about as much relation to your average novel as its characters' sixteen daily zero-gravity orbits... (Tom)

This little book carried such a reputation—as one of those exquisite literary gems whose compact perfection is a miracle of tone and concision—that for a long time I didn't want to actually read it an... (Tom)

Godwin is, as advertised, about the search for a teenage soccer prodigy who may or may not exist in West Africa and who may or may not be the next Messi. But it's also about a minor power struggle at... (Tom)

Reading the latest offering from McNally Editions, you might think it’s a reissue of a slim Victorian classic. It’s actually a historical novel that was shortlisted for the 1981 Booker Prize. Schlee n... (Tom)

Young mouse Rumie and Uncle Hawthorne build a mouse-sized raft from twigs, bark, and ribbons. But when Uncle Hawthorne oversleeps the next morning, it's too hard to be patient and Rumie decides to try... (Haley)

On the first page of Pavane, Queen Elizabeth I is assassinated. On the second, after the resulting chaos, the Catholic Church regains its medieval authority over Britain. And in the next, the story le... (Tom)

After a long phone call one day, author/illustrator Felicita Sala's daughter asked her, “Mum, what if you talk so much that you run out of words, and then there won’t be any left for me?” Her daughter... (Haley)

A young woman unexpectedly becomes a young mother after an affair with her English professor. As a broke college drop-out with a newborn, Margo's running out of rent money and employment options. She... (Anika)

I binge-read the first 17 books in Jacqueline Winspear’s historical fiction/mystery Maisie Dobbs series during the pandemic. Somehow, immersing myself in the years between World War I to World War II... (Doree)

For every mother everywhere, this book is a primal scream of new motherhood. The schizophrenic nature of those early days—when you're bursting with love for this little creature, but also dying inside... (Doree)

Kids' Book of the Week by Alki Lei, translated by Karen Emmerich If you're an adult who doesn't usually read middle-grade books, I highly recommend you give this one a try! Set in 1936, and originally... (Tom)

Well, this might be the best book I've read so far this year. For all the flutter of "quirkiness" that surrounds July, she is a stone cold serious artist, in whatever form she chooses, and this is a c... (Tom)

Your first clue that this romantic comedy is a break-up story is the list that kicks it off: Reasons Why It's Good I'm Not with Jen. Here begins Andy's obsessive wallowing. To be fair, he deserves a g... (Anika)

Mavis the Bravest's excellent text and illustrations pair perfectly to tell a classic farmyard tale of heroism (with a good dose of silliness). Mavis is a chicken, both in the figurative and literal s... (Haley)

What happens when an author crushes on a real-life 19th-century polar explorer's photograph? The resulting obsession developed into The Ministry of Time, a book for anyone who has ever wondered what i... (Haley)

What a big, strange, good book the folks at Boiler House Press have recovered. Harris published nearly twenty inventive and eclectic novels between 1961 and 1993, nearly all out of print now. This one... (Tom)

The Night in Question by Susan Fletcher is a heartwarming—and heartbreaking—exploration of love in later life and the regrets we have about our younger years. Florrie Butterfield recently lost a leg d... (Doree)

Friends are one thing Eddie Coyle doesn't have. He talks to a lot of guys—this book is made of talking—but every conversation is a wary exchange, negotiated sometimes in half-spoken ways and sometimes... (Tom)

What word do you use when you can't remember the name for something? Thingamajig? Doohickey? Whatchamacallit? Whozeewhatsit? Rilla Alexander has a hoot of a time with all those madeup words we all see... (Tom)

By the time he moves from small-town Iowa to the rural Northwest, ex-sheriff Amos Fielding is a widower in his seventies, and he's seen too much of the dark side of the world, some of which you will h... (Tom)

I loved The Lincoln Highway and adored A Gentleman in Moscow, so when the advance copy of Amor Towles’ new Table for Two, consisting of six short stories and one novella, arrived in the bookstore, I s... (Doree)

Sashiko's Stitches is a new picture book from local favorite Sanae Ishida (Little Kunoichi: The Ninja Girl). Sashiko is a little girl with overwhelming fears and worries. One day, her mother teaches h... (Haley)

The literary highlight of my year so far came from a writer I thought I knew well already. I had read (and loved) many of Morrison's novels, but when I learned that she narrates the audio versions of... (Tom)

Whenever I am championing Jarman's "funny, cluttered, driven" novel, Salvage King, Ya!—I sometimes feel that I am its only champion, though it deserves many more—I say something to the effect of, "But... (Tom)

Mark Twain famously began Huckleberry Finn by declaring, "Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons a... (Tom)

David Sedaris is not for everybody, and his picture-book debut, a collaboration with the late Olivia author, Ian Falconer, won't be either. Sedaris takes a familiar story—readers might be reminded of... (Tom)

Louise White Elk is, like Isabel Archer in The Portrait of a Lady and Antonia Shimerda in My Antonia, the sort of literary heroine whose magnetic allure draws the entire plot of a book around her like... (Tom)

It opens with the typical hook: a missing child. Tom Hargreaves, newbie tabloid hack, takes the bait and is formulating lurid headlines before he even gets to the scene. He plies the suspect’s family... (Liz)

Attention all Anglophile WWII buffs: you do not want to miss McNally Editions’ reissue of this fantastic 1950 novel! It’s the life story of a type of Englishman who—although born on January 1, 1900—re... (Liz)