Made-Up Books

Does the cover of Time Is a Flower make you think of an early '80s jazzercise VHS tape, or a late '70s Gail Sheehy bestseller? Open it anyway, and you'll find a wonderfully evocative and open-ended ap... (Tom)

The story of Matrix kept reminding me, strangely, of its fellow National Book Award finalist, Laird Hunt's Zorrie, which also compresses the full scope of a woman's life, cloistered and full of work a... (Tom)

When she was six, in 1913, Babb's father brought their family from their Oklahoma town to an isolated homestead in eastern Colorado, a sod house dug out of a dry land, with the nearest water two miles... (Tom)

It may not be the best time of year for camping, but Mann's picture book, a recent winner of the Washington State Book Award, is a warm, funny, and relatable story of just what its title says, young E... (Tom)

There are few writers whose every book I know I'll read, but, two books in, Atticus Lish is one of them. His debut novel, Preparations for the Next Life, grabs your lapels with its story of two people... (Tom)

As much as I liked The War for Gloria (see above), when I finished it I needed an antidote, and this sweet little book was the perfect prescription. When I say that it's a novel about an Apple repair... (Tom)

Have you ever, from desperation or inertia, had a job so terrible that, perhaps most terribly, caught you in a trap of service and subsistence that left you no choice but to wake up and do it again? L... (Tom)

Annabelle and her son Benny have a lot to deal with, emotionally and otherwise. Her hold on her job is tenuous while her accumulating piles of stuff have a choking grip on their household; he's suffer... (James)

The story of this lovely novel is simple: will the Stevenses, a lower-middle-class family of five from the outskirts of London, enjoy their holidays? It's no small matter: their two weeks at the seasi... (Tom)

Cobwebs? Check. Creaky doors? Check. Squeaky stairs, rattling pipes, flickering lights? Check, check, and check. What house wants to be haunted, because who would want to live in a haunted house? Well... (Tom)

Of all the things a novelist can do, Jonathan Franzen is among the best at one of the most important: creating full, human characters who make terrible decisions, again and again. In Crossroads, those... (Tom)

Jones's first novel in two decades reads like a story that has been marinating at least that long. Set in late-17th-century Brazil, with a historical community of escaped slaves as its title and centr... (Tom)

The blurb for this describes it as "a plumber's Mrs. Dalloway," which I think is just about right. It's a beautifully handled interior monologue of a fictional tradesman's day, and the narrative intim... (James)

In her 40s, Baek has already become the first Korean to win the prestigious Astrid Lindgren Award, and with Moon Pops, her first book in English, it's easy to see why. For her illustrations, she build... (Tom)

It's rare that I read everything a writer publishes—I tend to sample more widely—but I come back to Offutt every time, because I know I'm in good hands and because I'm compelled to let everyone else k... (Tom)

Holy moly, this is quite a novel! It's like watching a train wreck; you can’t stop it, you know it's going to be awful, yet you can’t look away. Mrs. March, as she is called throughout, is “in her hea... (Cindy)

One thing that's especially hard to do in a small town is change your life. Everyone knows who you are, and sometimes they don't like it when you try not to be who you're supposed to be. Joe Walsh is... (Tom)

Cat and Mouse live in the same house, and things are good, with a few exceptions. Mouse wants to eat gingersnaps, and Cat wants to eat Mouse. Mouse wants to lie in the sun, and so does Cat. After eati... (James)

Anyone who loved Taylor's debut novel from last year, Real Life (as I did), will feel right at home in the stories in his first collection, which also mostly feature young graduate students in the Mid... (Tom)

Even if you only occasionally visit the crime genre, you’re acquainted with the depressive, philosophical, highly capable but unconventional police detective. But that vast brotherhood springs from a... (Liz)

This book had me at "Gilda, a twenty-something, atheist, animal-loving lesbian, cannot stop ruminating about death." I was fully prepared from that one-sentence summary to love this novel, but I hadn'... (Anika)

Yes, those Netanyahus—sort of! The Netanyahus is, on its face, a novel about Ruben Blum, an economic historian and, as the story takes place at the end of the 1950s, the only Jewish professor at small... (Tom)

Amid all the bright colors and exclamation points in our picture-book section, you might overlook this lovely, but more subdued, item. Illustrated mostly in muted grays and browns, and featuring a rab... (Tom)

This sweet, sunny YA novel is just in time for graduation and summer. Josie Hazeldine is supposed to be going to college in the fall—it's her mother's dream for her—but Josie has other plans. She's tu... (Anika)

What is the proper level of preposterousness for a picture book, especially one about a piece of toast that thinks it's a dog? Whatever it is, Sarah Hwang hits the perfect balance of logic and absurdi... (Tom)

"Life is the ongoing effort to live. Some people make it look easy. Chickens do not." As a person who aspires to one day keep my own backyard chickens, I was delighted by this little novel about an un... (Anika)

If you’ve seen my past Top 10 lists, you know I love mysteries and thrillers. Especially during the pandemic, when I’ve compulsively read one after the other, I’ve focused on all the novels by a singl... (Doree)

Secrets of Happiness Does Joan Silber's novel contain any of the secrets promised by its title? Actually, yes! Such titles are often ironic, and there is certainly plenty of unhappiness to go around i... (Tom)

A magical and immersive piece of literary fiction, Great Circle offers readers a little bit of everything—a coming of age story, sprinkled with adventure, forbidden love, family tension, mystery, and... (Brittany)

A modest property on the outskirts of Pretoria, an unhappy white family whose dysfunctions seem likely to be remembered by no one outside their tiny circle: these might seem unpromising materials for... (Tom)

When you start a novel with Patricia Highsmith's name on the cover, you have certain expectations: betrayal, desire (often same-sex desire), consequence. The most striking thing about this novel, abou... (Tom)

If you’ve ever struggled to lead a creatively satisfying professional life, there’s a good chance Cass’s story will resonate. Cass’s chosen career path? Theater. After an entire decade of working on “... (Anika)

Over a year ago I read one of those reviews that makes you want to drop everything you're doing and rush to the bookstore, even if what you're doing is running a bookstore. Tantalizingly, I couldn't t... (James)

The story (a Caldecott Honor winner from 1976 just now brought back into print) is as simple as its endearingly simple pen-and-ink illustrations. A grandmother wakes up early, has breakfast, cleans up... (Tom)

If not for World War II, and their roles in it, Queenie of Scotland and Maddie of Manchester would likely have never met, which would be a shame, because their fierce love and dynamic talents make the... (Anika)

Our weekend-long Seattle snowfest is already fading into memory, but you can evoke snow's wondrous sensory transformations with this lovely celebration of the sounds—Ploompf! Thwomp!—of winter, which... (Tom)

Anne Youngson became an instant Madison Books favorite with the release of her 2018 debut novel Meet Me at the Museum, and we've been eagerly anticipating a follow-up ever since. She's at last obliged... (James)

I was that weirdo who adored every book I had to read in high school. Now, I’m that weirdo who seeks out the books teenagers in other countries have to read. And that’s how I discovered why Sunset Son... (Liz)

Loomis takes the cadence and concept of "The House That Jack Built" and makes them her own with a wonderfully rhythmic and evocative story of traditions of Hawaiian food, land, and farming, writing of... (Tom)

Zorrie is a short novel about a full life. Not full in the usual way we think of for a character in fiction: travel, romances, adventure, public achievements. Zorrie Underwood's life, covering most of... (Tom)

What sort of book is this? Schalansky, a German writer and designer (she designed this starkly beautiful book), loves lists, and in part it is just what the title promises, a list of things that are n... (Tom)

Like Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad, Kelley's novel (his debut, published in 1962 when he was 24) straps itself into the straitjacket of American racial history but leaves just enough roo... (Tom)

I got to read an early copy of Outlawed last year and have been impatiently waiting until it went on sale and I could share it. This book deftly recasts the Western genre through a queer, feminist len... (Haley)

From the outside, 35-year-old Jenny McLaine appears to be a successful adult. She owns her house, has a cool writing job in London, a few good friends, and up until recently she lived with her famous... (Anika)

There has been a murder on the stark Hebridean Isle of Lewis, in the same small town where Edinburgh police detective Fin Macleod was raised, but Fin, sent to investigate, spends much more time peelin... (Tom)

I read this book twice last year, at the beginning of the year and the end, and my awe and delight at its beauty only increased. The story is simple—a new girl comes to a small Norwegian town, and mak... (Tom)

And you think the old lady who swallowed a fly had problems! What starts with a little gum stuck in your hair soon grows until there are scissors, a vacuum, and a rabbit (and much more) up there. Adam... (Tom)

We know what a homonym is, those words that amusingly sound alike, but what do you call it when it's a whole sentence? Haldar, Carpenter, and Gladfelter, authors of the witty P Is for Pterodactyl, hav... (Tom)