McLain brings to life the story of real-life aviation legend Beryl Markham, who was the first woman to make a solo trans-Atlantic flight and who lived a life of independence and unorthodox freedom. This is a wonderful complement to Markham's own memoir, West with the Night. There are things we find only at our lowest depths. The idea of wings and then wings themselves. An ocean worth crossing one dark mile at a time. The whole of the sky. I loved Beryl Markham's beautiful, ad

Lerner's slim novel offers three distinct sections. In the first, a pivotal, wandering interview fails to be recorded; then the "reconstructed" aspect of that interview becomes clear; and ultimately, issues of memory, parenthood, technology, art, faulty recollections, and forgiveness shape the story. The unnamed narrator of Ben Lerner's short (144-page) novel has traveled to interview his 90-year-old mentor Thomas (who is also his best friend Max's father) to write what will

The historical fiction-writing gift that is Philippa Gregory entertwines the richly imagined stories of three women in fifteenth century England, offering unapologetic ambition, genius manipulation, revenge plots, dark arts, and drastic comeuppances in this fascinating novel. It's 1420 and Eleanor Cobham (a real figure, about whom little is known), in a terrific initial scene, willfully misunderstands her dying mother's last wish for her, rejecting the nunnery and heading to

Anderson's debut novel offers satire and dark humor in a future where a corporate surrogate eliminates its workers' inefficiency due to childbearing. Our main protagonist is greedy, lazy, and far from introspective, yet I couldn't stop reading about her often petty, short-sighted, shallow motivations. Natalie is a young adult working at a soul-crushing job at a call center when she is offered what feels like the perfect opportunity for short-term sacrifice and long-term finan

I was charmed by John Kenney's darkly funny, thoughtful novel about an obituary writer hitting rock bottom and reflecting on mortality, leaning on his friends, and finding unorthodox ways to embrace the messiness and wonder of life again. Awkard, endearing Bud Stanley is an obituary writer who's going through some things. He's gone downhill since his wife divorced him for her prior boyfriend, and now he's all but given up on love; his last blind date involved a woman who brou

The Secrets We Hide offers what is for me the perfect blend of character development, layered interpersonal issues, and mystery twists and turns that never feel convoluted, plus other favorite Bossy elements: a small-town setting, a family legacy of police work, and a condensed, healthily paced timeline from the story's beginning to end. I was hooked on this novel. I love a story driven by a female investigator main protagonist, and in book one of this small-town mystery seri

In Mandel's newest dystopian novel she presents two worlds, one lawless and one bound by constant surveillance, and she drops characters and their doppelgängers in and out of each. I was fascinated by this melancholy, layered story and its irresistible main protagonist. It's the year 2030 and the United States has collapsed. Ari Waker has just been released from prison after serving a decades-long sentence, and she emerges to a nation in turmoil where many scrape and scramble

Bannister's psychological mystery sets up an imminent death on the tracks, then takes the reader back and forth in time to share characters' back stories, faults and failings, and interconnectedness. An omniscient narrator turns the mirror back on the reader at times. The structure of Five is key to its impact. While the human condition is fragile and while everyone does have a story and while we do not know what goes on behind closed doors while we are judging books by their

The third and final installment of Bardugo's Ninth House dark fantasy series offers more gritty corruption, seemingly insurmountable challenges, the threat of the entirety of hell's wrath, wonderfully morbid humor, some hard-won romance, and a ragtag group of loyal allies bent on thwarting the spread of evil. This was friendship, he supposed. You learned the rhythms of hurt and apology. You crashed through each other's lives and hoped for grace in the final tally of the damag

Clytemnestra is often depicted as a villain. Here, her layered, sympathetic motivations are revealed. Trained as a warrior and now a queen, she must cope with brutality and frustrating circumstances in this tale of power, love, and vengeance. “You can’t have justice and everyone’s approval.” Clytemnestra was born a Spartan princess (sister of the beautiful Helen--later "of Troy") who married for love, then was married off against her will by her father to cruel Agamemnon, who

In book two of Gillig's great gothic fantasy series, main characters go through satisfying arcs and development, a great love story persists, gargoyle Bartholomew yet again steals the show, and a struggle between political power and faith continues. In The Knight and the Moth, the first title in Gillig's Stonewater Kingdom series, a shadowy, eerie tone gave way to heartwarming, sometimes funny moments as an unlikely pack of allies set out on a journey of discovery, complete w

The first mystery in King's 19-book series builds an irresistibly layered professional partnership and personal, friends-like-family bond between Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes. The story's detail, pacing, plot, and character development are all fantastic. I look forward to reading more titles in this series. It's 1915 and Sherlock Holmes is bored out of his mind and languishing in retirement...until he happens to meet 15-year-old Mary Russell on the Sussex Downs. She's cur

I love a sci-fi story about a ragtag space gang trying to salvage a desperate situation. The first in Thorne's series delivers charming, heartwarming adventure and a cast of characters I can't wait to spend more time with in book two. In Rebecca Thorne's cozy sci-fi adventure Moss'd in Space, it's sometime after the year 90,000, and Torian's years of saving have finally allowed her to buy a spaceship. Now she will finally be able to take her sister to a distant planet where t

Walls uses a journal structure to draw the reader into a singular story I can't stop thinking about. In Field Notes from an Extinction, we witness the innermost thoughts of a grumbly hermit ornithologist who is thrust into a parenting role, then must face a pirate queen out for revenge on British colonial rulers amid the Irish Potato Famine. Eoghan Wells's Field Notes from an Extinction is a novel told in journal form from the perspective of a stodgy, single-minded 19th-centu

Historian Beverly Gage chose thirteen pivotal places across our nation to illustrate key points in our history, explore our complicated path to the present day, and inspire our growing stronger as we face our past truths as well as our future. This is fascinating nonfiction, perfect to read during our nation's semiquincentennial year. Beverly Gage is a lifelong historian who traveled across the United States in order to write this work highlighting key points in our history,

Amina al-Sirafi is an irresistible character--spicy, determined, nurturing, cutthroat, loyal, inventive, and unpredictable. In this second novel of adventure, the pirate faces seemingly impossible challenges and must do the unthinkable: rely on others and trust them with her life so she can safely return to her daughter and family. For there are indeed a great many capable, cunning women that the world would prefer to remember as witches. I loved every bit of Chakraborty's fi

In this wonderfully bonkers, darkly funny novel, a dying Jewish matron with rigid views and a litany of disappointments to share with those who caused them experiences drug-induced hallucinations and faces vulnerability as the end of her life draws near. Jewish matron Barbara Greenberg is terminally ill, medicated out of her mind with opioids, and writing down key elements of her life, particularly the laundry list of her failures--including, in her view, her raising of her o

Bossy Favorites of the Month Here are my six Bossy favorite reads of July. I was already in love with five of these six authors' other books before I read these newest works, and I'm thrilled that the sixth is a new-to-me author with a backlist I can now explore. Have you read any of these titles? What were some of your favorite reads this month? 01 Country People by Daniel Mason Mason plays with the tone of his newest literary fiction, offering vast rural expanses, claustrop

I loved the octogenarian main protagonist of Elsie and the darkly funny start to the book. Her heartbreaking history surprised me, as did the revelations at the end of the novel. This was my first Sally Hepworth read but won't be my last. Elsie is an 81-year-old living in a Melbourne suburb, grumbling and mainly keeping to herself, aside from her best friend since childhood, a persistent 7-year-old girl who's determined to befriend her, and Peter, a kind young man across the

Sophie Chen Keller's love story to music and the bonds between mothers and sons plunges the reader into traumatic loss, hesitant hope, and, ultimately, a heartwarming and heartbreaking resolution in this Beijing-set novel. That was the hollowness chewing at him, reminding him that people weren't birds. They weren't made to be free of all burdens. They claimed their place in the world with the weight of their bones, which kept them from becoming ever more lost. Song is a poor,