Three Books I'm Reading Now, 5/11/26 Edition

The Books I'm Reading Now

Last week I gave a Spring Book Talk about recently published titles I thought that group of women should check out, and my new-book-reading mania continues!

This week I offer you London Falling, nonfiction by Patrick Radden Keefe (his books are always a sure bet for me), about the disappearance of a young London man, secret identities, lies, Russian oligarchs, and the city's dark underbelly; The Island Club, Nicola Harrison's historical fiction set in 1950s California, about female friendship, secrets, and tennis (!), which I'm reading in preparation for Harrison's author event this week; and All in Her Hands, richly detailed historical fiction about a female physician and surgeon in 1849 London as she fights for respect and to advance women's health issues.

What are you reading, bookworms?

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01 London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family's Search for Truth by Patrick Radden Keefe

I shared in a recent book talk that this book topic wasn't inhererntly a hook for me, but that Patrick Radden Keefe can do no wrong, so I dove in.

London Falling is about the disappearance of a young man, Zac, but it’s also about his astounding personal secrets; about the increased presence and power of Russian oligarchs in London; about high society and extreme wealth; and about the city’s dark underbelly.

Patrick Radden Keefe takes a complex, tangled situation and shapes it into an intriguing narrative nonfiction story.

PRK is also the author of the powerful Empire of Pain and Say Nothing, one of my favorite nonfiction books.

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02 The Island Club by Nicola Harrison

Nicola Harrison's The Island Club is set in the 1950s on Balboa Island off the coast of California.

Tennis brings together three women, formerly strangers to each other. Their lives begin to intersect in their small community, and they reluctantly become vulnerable with each other, ultimately sharing secrets they wouldn't lay bare to anyone else.

Harrison raises some weighty issues but the tone of The Island Club is a summer read; I have faith that all will work out here, but that it's going to be just tricky enough to resolve things to feel satisfying to me.

The author is speaking this week at an author event, and I can't wait.

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03 All in Her Hands (Nora Beady #3) by Audrey Blake

This is the third book in a series, but it works beautifully as a stand-alone read--I had no idea there were prior books when I started, and Blake isn't incorporating any awkward hearkening-back moments in order to build the story; this is seamless and fascinating.

In Audrey Blake's historical fiction title All in Her Hands, it's 1849 in London, and Nora Gibson is a female surgeon who has fought hard for her position.

Now, along with the rest of the city, Nora faces the terrifying emergence of cholera.

Blake weaves in rich details of life in the time, shows privileged education coming up against gritty, real-world life experience, and incorporates gaps in the understanding of science as well as the leaps and bounds in knowledge that were then taking place in medicine.