Stout's recently published middle-grade story is irresistibly strange, full of difficulties and a tough young heroine's gritty problem-solving, and largely about believing in the impossible and never losing heart. She read the words on the paper out loud: “History is not your destiny. Uncover your destiny, and you will remake history.” Cutie Grackle lives in a cabin in the Appalachian Mountains with her dim-witted, muttering Uncle Horace. She's used to being hungry, to sucking on pebbles to trick her stomach into thinking it's getting food, and to relying on a couple of trusted outsiders for help when necessary. After an encounter with a fortune-cookie message and a flock of ravens who seem to be following her, Cutie begins to believe that the curse Uncle Horace keeps mumbling about might be real--and that it might have been connected to the deaths of her parents. As the ravens begin to bring Cutie objects that seem to be linked to a bigger message and mission, she wonders: could identifying and lifting the curse offer answers--and could it even change the trajectory of her tough young life? The Impossible Destiny of Cutie Grackle is a mountain adventure story that offers magical realism with an edge. Shawn K. Stout's novel is full of heartbreak and hope and is irresistibly unexpected. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? The Impossible Destiny of Cutie Grackle is another book from the wonderful Peachtree Publishing Company. Stout is also the author of the Penelope Crumb series, the Not-So-Ordinary Girl books, and the historical novel A Tiny Piece of Sky.

Young Mungo offers a striking story of disappointment, abuse, Protestant-Catholic conflict, and a young, gay love forged in the intensely unforgiving climate of working-class Glasgow. In his second novel, Young Mungo, Douglas Stuart offers the story of a working-class Glasgow family and particularly the life of sensitive, kind, dreamy Mungo, who was named for a saint. Raised by a codependent, emotionally stunted alcoholic mother who frequently abandons the kids for days or weeks while on benders or with a new boyfriend, Mungo also lives with a tough, loving older sister who's desperate to escape to university but doesn't dare leave Mungo. His local gang leader brother consistently makes trouble, forces violence, and threatens those Mungo cares about if Mungo avoids participating in brutality such as the widespread beatings of Catholics in the area. The story of Young Mungo largely alternates between an intensely disturbing, extended situation involving abuse, neglect, and danger and the blossoming of a forbidden young love, the vulnerability of allowing one's self to be seen for the first time, overcoming lifelong Protestant-Catholic conflicts, and forging a meaningful connection. The timing of the story isn't explicitly stated, but it feels like a 1980s setting. Young Mungo explores ideas of masculinity and loyalty, a gay relationship forged in an intensely unforgiving social climate, brutality, revenge, and it offers surprises as well. Stuart uses an omniscient point of view that allows the reader to understand characters’ disparate contexts and pressures and motivations. The story is beautiful and tragic and never feels emotionally manipulative. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Douglas Stuart is also the author of Shuggie Bain.

Juhea Kim's looping story of Korea, courtesans, pickpockets, and the powerful figures complicating and shaping all of their lives involves love triangles, superstition, heartbreak, and a complicated, shifting interconnectedness that spans decades. In a snowy forest in 1917 Korea, an unlikely moment of kindness shared by a Korean hunter toward a Japanese officer creates a connection that binds the fates of the two men forever. Meanwhile Jade, a young girl who has been sold to a courtesan, befriends JungHo, a young orphan boy in Seoul. JungHo grows older and becomes involved in the fight for independence, while Jade finds an unlikely romantic interest. Beasts of a Little Land tracks Jade's schooling, found family, artistic expression, and her social position as a courtesan within the culture, while following JungHo as he sets sights on more than pickpocketing and scrambling to find enough to eat one day at a time. Conflicts between Korea and Japan and war and occupation swirl around them and those within their orbits--Jade's adoptive family members Lotus, Luna, Dani, and Silver; JungHo's childhood clan all grown up; each of their loves; and the wealthy and influential men pulling strings on all sides. In Beasts of a Little Land, Juhea Kim explores friendship, enemies, trust, possibility, heroes, and beasts of all kinds. The story is looping and cyclical, with interconnected webs of interaction, power, and love. Some of what various characters cling to in hopes of saving themselves or securing their futures ends up being their undoing. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Beasts of a Little Land is Juhea Kim's debut work. Kim is donating a portion of the proceeds of the book to the Phoenix Fund, a conservation nonprofit working to protect the Siberian tiger and the Amur leopard.

The Books I'm Reading Now I'm reading A Rip Through Time, the first in Kelley Armstrong's time-travel historical fiction mystery series; Young Mungo, Shuggie Bain author Douglas Stuart's most recent literary fiction about a working-class Glasgow family and young gay love; and Tokyo Dreaming, the second in Emiko Jean's young adult series about a young woman who realizes she's literally a Japanese princess--and all the challenges and wonders she experiences as a result. What are you reading and enjoying these days, bookworms? 01 A Rip Through Time (A Rip Through Time #1) by Kelley Armstrong In the first book of Kelley Armstrong's Rip Through Time series, we alternate between May 2019 Edinburgh, where homicide detective Mallory is attacked in an alley while in town caring for her dying grandmother, and May 1869 Edinburgh, when Mallory wakes up in the body of a housemaid, Catronia, who has been attacked in the same alleyway where Mallory found trouble. The women's lives occurred a century and a half apart, but somehow the two are intrinsically connected. Mallory must overcome her shock at the situation, adjust to life in Victorian England, and fulfill her duties as housemaid to undertaker and medical examiner, Dr. Gray, while she tries to figure out how to get home. When Mallory's employer investigates the alleyway attack and murder of a young man, Mallory hopes finding out the truth about what happened may also help lead her back to her real life. I received a prepublication digital edition of this book (to be published tomorrow) courtesy of Minotaur Books and NetGalley. 02 Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart In the second novel from the author of Shuggie Bain, which won the 2020 Booker Prize, Douglas Stuart offers the story of a working-class Glasgow family and particularly of Mungo, who was named for a saint. Raised by a codependent, emotionally stunted alcoholic mother who frequently abandons the kids for days or weeks while on benders or with a new boyfriend, Mungo also lives with a tough, loving older sister who's desperate to escape to university but doesn't dare leave Mungo. His local gang leader brother consistently makes trouble, forces violence, and threatens those Mungo cares about if Mungo avoids participating in brutality such as widespread beatings of Catholics in the area. Young Mungo explores ideas of masculinity and loyalty, young love, a gay relationship forged in an unforgiving social climate. brutality, revenge, and offers surprises as well. This is beautiful and tragic, and I'm captivated so far. 03 Tokyo Dreaming (Tokyo Ever After #2) by Emiko Jean In Emiko Jean's young adult story Tokyo Ever After, we met Izumi (Izzy) Tanaka, an everyday, average Japanese-American teen...who discovered that her father is the Crown Prince of Japan. Izumi was gobsmacked to realize that she was literally a princess. She was thrilled to travel to Japan to meet her father and the rest of her royal family for the first time. But she quickly realized that being a princess involved responsibility, political maneuvering, and mysterious family dynamics she knew nothing about. And getting to know her father was a bigger challenge than Izzy had bargained for. In Tokyo Dreaming, we pick up the story with Izzy dating her gorgeous bodyguard boyfriend, living with her beloved dog, and having figured out the royal family dynamics of cousins, aunts, uncles, and more. The biggest news is that her parents--once young star-crossed lovers, now mature grown-ups ready to build a loving life together--are engaged. But before their royal wedding can take place, long-held limitations about who her father may marry must be reconsidered--and in a system steeped in tradition, Izzy's beginning to think the union may never be approved. Jean is also the author of Tokyo Ever After (Tokyo Ever After #1), Empress of All Seasons, and We'll Never Be Apart. I received a prepublication digital edition of this book (to published tomorrow) courtesy of Flatiron Books and NetGalley.

My very favorite books from May! Here are my six favorite reads of the past month, which include contemporary fiction, suspense, nonfiction, science fiction, and historical fiction titles. If you've read any of these, I'd love to hear what you think! And I'd love to hear: what are some of your recent favorite reads? 01 Unlikely Animals by Annie Hartnett In Unlikely Animals, Hartnett's irresistible, oddball tragicomedy with heart, characters explore the limits and solidity of friendship and family loyalty, show mistakes and imperfections, and cling to hope. Emma Starling is a former natural healer whose abilities have disappeared, and she's also a recent med-school dropout. Emma returns to small-town New Hampshire to care for her father Clive, who is dying. He's also vividly hallucinating small animals and the speaking specter of a long-dead local naturalist, Ernest Harold Baynes, who is advising Clive about how to spend his final days, sometimes through making daring and eccentric decisions. I was hooked, witnessing Hartnett's delightfully faulted, oddball characters making their way in a messy world. Father and daughter, brother and sister, and mother and father find their way back together after hurting each other, making mistakes, misunderstanding intentions, and losing their individual paths. The characters insist on hope, allow for reinvention, and leave room for the inexplicable and the wondrous. For my full review, check out Unlikely Animals. 02 Wingwalkers by Taylor Brown Brown's signature immersive details and wonderfully imagined, rich characters bring Depression-era scenes to life against an irresistible backdrop of swooping, soaring, daring aviation in Wingwalkers. What is it about aviation stories and my being so in love with them? In Taylor Brown's recently published historical fiction novel Wingwalkers, Zeno, a former World War I ace pilot, and Della, his daring wingwalking wife, travel Depression-era America, wowing audiences and inspiring hope in a dark, sober time. Zeno and Della are vagabonds, putting on shows for small bills and change, scrambling to make enough to fuel their plane, feed their dog, and to hopefully have enough left over to eat meager meals, just enough to keep them going. They're daring, sometimes haunted, broken, in love, and irresistible to read about. Wingwalkers swoops and soars yet grounds the reader in wonderfully imagined (and researched) details that bring the story to life. I loved this book! Taylor is also the author of Gods of Howl Mountain, a book I loved and gave five stars, Pride of Eden (a book still on my to-read list that looks wonderful), and Fallen Land, a title I loved and included in the Greedy Reading List Six Great Historical Fiction Stories about the Civil War. (If you’re not on the Taylor Brown train yet, may I strongly suggest you join me?) Click here for my full review of Wingwalkers. 03 Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel In this nested story that spans centuries, Mandel explores a pandemic, moon colonization, the universal connection of music, the temptation to change the past, portals and time loops, loyalty, fear, love, and wonder. In this science fiction novel, Mandel plays with time and time travel as well as mysteries surrounding what may be a portal linking individuals through time. Mandel explores an emerging pandemic in a future with a colonized moon, considers the universal connection of music, and digs into the difficulty and danger in changing the past. But all of these players and times feel mainly to be in place to serve as a structure for our true main protagonist, Gaspary, and we see the most depth and development and change; loyalty and love and grief; wonder and danger; resignation and hope in his portion of the story. This was where I was captivated and delighted and emotionally engaged. Do you like books that play with time? You might like the books I list on the Greedy Reading Lists Six Second-Chance, Do-Over, Reliving-Life Stories or Six Riveting Time-Travel Escapes or these Bossy reviews of books that play with time. Click here for my review of Mandel's Station Eleven. And click here for my full review of Sea of Tranquility. 04 The 1619 Project by Nikole Hannah-Jones “In exposing our nation’s troubled roots, the 1619 Project challenges us to think about a country whose exceptionalism we treat as the unquestioned truth. It asks us to consider who sets and shapes our shared national memory and what and who gets left out..." In this hefty expansion of the 1619 Project, which was spearheaded by Nikole Hannah-Jones at The New York Times Magazine, an array of contributors reframe the history of the United States, putting enslaved people and their work and contributions at the center of our past. By expanding the Project into book length, contributors explore how enslaved people's labor and unwilling efforts laid the groundwork for our nation's economy, past and present, racial real estate divide, and disparities in wealth, among other elements. The 1619 Project highlights tragic, uncomfortable aspects of our nation's history in an important work of nonfiction about race. Hannah-Jones aims to better shape how we recognize and address our country's past wrongs and how we might begin to address these travesties in order to move forward. For my full review of The 1619 Project, please click here. 05 The Love of My Life by Rosie Walsh In The Love of My Life, Rosie Walsh offers a contemporary fiction thriller with twists that centers around a fascinating cast of characters, their heartbreak, and their hope. Emma is a marine biologist who's devoted to her husband Leo and their young daughter Ruby. Emma finds herself fighting aggressive lymphoma, and Leo, an obituary writer, privately copes with his pain by writing about Emma. Emma is recovering. But as Leo continues to dig into his wife's past to confirm details, he finds that the facts his beloved wife has told him don't add up. He doesn't want to upset Emma, so he does something he's never done: he goes behind her back, speaking to people from her past who can fill in the gaps. And he finds that almost everything Emma has ever told him about herself has been a lie. The tone of this is more toward contemporary fiction, and the book offers satisfying character development, but The Love of My Life is also a psychological thriller with twists and turns. Without melodrama or a manipulative-feeling big reveal, Walsh surprised me with the real story and the reasons Emma kept her secrets. This wonderfully wrought page-turner is heartbreaking, hopeful, and masterfully crafted. For my full review, check out The Love of My Life. 06 Revelations by Mary Sharratt Sharratt offers vivid historical fiction details of the everyday life of Margery of Kempe, a mother of fourteen whose radiant visions led her to stun medieval British society with her vow of celibacy and ambitious pilgrimage halfway around the world. In Revelations, Sharratt offers an immersive historical fiction novel that includes thoroughly researched, fascinating details of medieval life. The story is built upon the framework of facts from the lives of Julian of Norwich and what is known of the life of our main protagonist, Margery Kempe. Our main protagonist puzzles and angers those around her by challenging the limitations of what women might do or say in the year 1400, and the Church is particularly galled and upset by the audacity of such a woman to have blindingly beautiful visions of Christ and to speak of Jesus's love. Sharratt injects an undercurrent of what feels like modern feminism in her first-person story. I underlined many, many meaningful passages in Revelations, and I found exploring this time through Margery's imagined point of view to be fascinating, particularly the everyday details of life at the time. For my full review, check out Revelations.

Rebecca Serle's love letter to Italy plays with time to allow a grieving young woman to know her mother at her same age, inspiring heartwarming realizations. In Rebecca Serle's One Italian Summer, Katy is reeling after the death of her beloved mother, who was her best friend, her guide to life, her tastemaker, her everything. Katy is deeply grieving while questioning her own life, including her marriage to a kind man. She is determined to take the trip to Italy she and her mother had optimistically planned during her mom's illness, and she's set on revisiting the places her mom has raved about since Katy was a child. Katy is at a loss emotionally, and she's tempted to turn to a handsome young guest at her Italian hotel to soothe her feelings and satisfy her need for distraction. She's falling in love with the piece of Italy that helped shape her beloved mother into who she was. But Katy begins to discover that her perfect mother wasn't without faults--and that she left out important pieces of her own Italian adventures. In fact, she kept secrets that now make Katy question aspects of her own life she had always taken for granted. Katy also begins to recognize what the reader might notice early on: that her intense lifetime reliance on her mother in all areas of her life has left her without the benefit of independence, decision-making, and the strength that autonomy (and mistakes) build in a person. When Katy wakes up one day faced with her actual own mother standing in her hotel lobby in the prime of her youth, she wonders if she's hallucinating. But it all seems so real. As days pass, Katy realizes she seems to have been been gifted with an opportunity to know her mother in a way that seemed impossible. And if she can cope with her own sadness and dive into the unfathomable experience, she just might learn valuable lessons about herself and her own character too. One Italian Summer was a slim book and a sweet love letter to Italy. I enjoyed how Serle played with time to allow a young woman to know her mother at her same age. It's an irresistible setup and a satisfying, light read. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Rebecca Serle is also the author of In Five Years, The Dinner List, and When You Were Mine. If you like books that play with time, you might also enjoy the books on the Greedy Reading Lists Six Riveting Time-Travel Stories to Explore and Six Second-Chance, Do-Over, Reliving-Life Stories.

In The Love of My Life, Rosie Walsh offers a twisty contemporary fiction novel and psychological thriller centered around a fascinating cast of characters, heartbreak, and hope. In Rosie Walsh's The Love of My Life, Emma is a marine biologist who's devoted to her husband Leo and their young daughter Ruby. Emma finds herself fighting aggressive lymphoma, and Leo, an obituary writer, privately copes with his pain by writing about Emma. Emma is recovering. But as Leo continues to dig into his wife's past to confirm details, he finds that the facts his beloved wife has told him don't add up. He doesn't want to upset Emma, so he does something he's never done: he goes behind her back, speaking to people from her past who can fill in the gaps. And he finds that almost everything Emma has ever told him about herself has been a lie. Walsh tells the story in two parts, alternating between chapters exploring Emma's young life (the true story) and chapters from the present (the unraveling of falsehoods). Through both timelines, Walsh slowly builds the true narrative while uncovering Emma's motivations, traumas, emotional state, and the outside forces at work, while also exploring weighty topics including mental illness and loss. The tone of this is more toward contemporary fiction, and the book offers satisfying character development, but The Love of My Life is also a psychological thriller with twists and turns. Without melodrama or a manipulative-feeling big reveal, Walsh surprised me with the real story and the reasons Emma kept her secrets. This wonderfully wrought page-turner is heartbreaking, hopeful, and masterfully crafted. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Rosie Walsh is also the author of Ghosted. For more mysteries and thrillers I've reviewed that you might like, click here.

Rachel Lynn Solomon crafts another sweet, quirky, funny, romantic young adult story that plays with time and is centered around irresistibly imperfect characters. In See You Yesterday, Rachel Lynn Solomon explores the first day of college for Barrett Bloom, who desperately needs a fresh start. Barrett's tenacity and passion for the truth led to a journalistic coup in high school, one that exposed cheating throughout her school's crown jewel of sports, the revered, state-champion tennis team--and ensured that she was reviled by many of her peers and some in her school's administration. She was harassed and publicly shamed as a result, so her time at her state university is bound to be an improvement. But on day one, Barrett's ruthlessly straightforward manner, defensive way of keeping others at a distance, and habit of speaking harsh truths before she stops to think seem destined to lead her to misstep and thwart her own chances of success and happiness. After being involved in multiple disasters in only her first day of classes, she fears college may become a ruination on par with the end of her high school career. But she wakes up the next day...and finds that she's reliving her first day of college. She has the incredible chance to make the same decisions or to consider her choices and do things differently. The following morning, she gets yet another chance at reliving her first day. And there's an interesting boy she keeps running into, regardless of which paths and options she alters. He keeps challenging her and seems to know her somehow. Barrett can't decide if this time loop is a dream come true--or a living nightmare. Solomon is excellent at building wonderfully imperfect characters and irresistible premises that play with time, as in her Groundhog Day -type setup for this romantic young adult story. I loved Barrett and Miles's problem-solving and their discoveries about their own natures and capabilities, as well as the unorthodox team they make. Solomon's matter-of-fact mentions of various body types, relationships, and emotional challenges (including anxiety, addiction, and self-esteem issues) allows for an overall warm and fuzzy inclusivity here--and throughout her books. I love Rachel Lynn Solomon's stories, and I loved this story of Barrett and Miles and youthful adventure and finding themselves and discovering how to be vulnerable and ALL of it. Hook, line, and sinker. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Solomon is also the author of The Ex Talk, Weather Girl, and the wonderful young adult Today Tonight Tomorrow. I received a prepublication digital edition of this book (published last week) courtesy of Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers and NetGalley.

The Books I'm Reading Now I'm reading See You Yesterday, the recent young adult novel that plays with time from Rachel Lynn Solomon; One Italian Summer, Rebecca Serle's love letter to Italy, a story about a mother and daughter, which also plays with time; and The Love of My Life, Rosie Walsh's contemporary fiction with a psychological twist, plus secrets, deep issues, and hope. What are you reading and enjoying these days, bookworms? 01 See You Yesterday by Rachel Lynn Solomon In See You Yesterday, Rachel Lynn Solomon explores the first day of college for Barrett Bloom, who desperately needs a fresh start. High school was largely a nightmare, so her time at her state university is bound to be an improvement. But after being involved in multiple disasters in only her first day of classes, Barrett fears that college may end up a ruination on par with the end of her high school career. She wakes up the next day...and finds that she's reliving her first day again. She has the incredible chance to make the same decisions or to consider her choices and do things differently. The following morning, she gets yet another chance at reliving her first day. Barrett can't decide if this time loop is a dream come true--or a living nightmare. And there's a cute boy she keeps running into, regardless of which paths and options she alters. He keeps challenging her and seems to know her somehow. The Groundhog Day -type setup for this playful, romantic young adult story is irresistible. I received a prepublication digital edition of this book (published last week) courtesy of Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers and NetGalley. Solomon is also the author of The Ex Talk, Weather Girl, and the young adult Today Tonight Tomorrow. 02 One Italian Summer by Rebecca Serle In Rebecca Serle's One Italian Summer, Katy is reeling after the death of her beloved mother, who was her best friend, her guide to life, her tastemaker, her everything. Katy is deeply grieving while questioning her own life, including her marriage. She is determined to take the trip to Italy she and her mother had optimistically planned during her mom's illness, and she's set on revisiting the places her mom has raved about since Katy was a child. But upon her arrival in Italy, Katy begins to discover that her mother left out important pieces of her own Italian adventures, and that her perfect mother kept secrets that shake Katy to her core. When she wakes up one day faced with her own mother in her youth, Katy wonders if she's hallucinating. But then she realizes she's been gifted with an opportunity to know her mother in a way she never dreamed possible. And if she can cope with her own sadness and dive into the unfathomable experience, she just might learn valuable lessons about herself too. 03 The Love of My Life by Rosie Walsh In Rosie Walsh's The Love of My Life, Emma is a marine biologist who's devoted to her husband Leo and their young daughter Ruby. Emma finds herself fighting aggressive lymphoma, and Leo, an obituary writer, privately copes with his pain by writing about Emma. Emma is recovering. But as Leo continues to dig into his wife's past to confirm details for the summation of her life he has begun, he finds that the facts his beloved wife has told him don't add up. He doesn't want to upset Emma, so he does something he's never done: he goes behind her back, speaking to people from her past who can fill in the gaps. And he finds that almost everything Emma has ever told him about herself has been a lie. The tone of this feels like contemporary fiction, but The Love of My Life is also a psychological thriller with twists and turns. The structure is interesting, and I can't wait to see where Walsh takes us.

More Science Fiction Faves I love character-driven science fiction stories. Sci-fi books can be so lovely and weird and immersive, and the stories can dive into so many fascinating big-deal issues--like feeling a greater purpose, facing a deep responsibility to other beings, undertaking noble missions, bravely exploring new worlds, or finding common ground with those who are different from you. You might also like the books on the Greedy Reading Lists Six Science Fiction Favorites to Dive Into and Six Great Stories about Robots, Humans and Alien Life, and SI. Have you read any of these books? I'd love to hear what you thought. Which other books should I add to my science fiction to-read list? 01 The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson Johnson offers a wonderfully imperfect heroine and her fascinating journeys through the multiverse, her various lives, and her alternate selves in this science fiction debut. Cara is one of a dwindling number of traversers. She can travel through the multiverse, but only to worlds where another version of herself no longer exists. Her other selves seem uncannily apt to die, so Cara is able to visit 372 other Earths where her counterparts are no longer living. But when one of Cara's eight remaining selves mysteriously dies while she is world walking, shocking secrets are revealed that connect various worlds and shake Cara to her core. She must cobble together the various bits of knowledge and savviness she's gained through tracing the steps of her many other selves if she's going to stand any chance of outsmarting the canny and intelligent Adam Bosch--a man who will otherwise almost certainly be the source of her undoing. This was a fascinating story that offered satisfying character depth. Cara isn't superhuman; she's imperfect, sometimes selfish, tough, and occasionally she's wonderfully vulnerable. I loved her as an unlikely heroine, and I loved that it wasn't too easy for her to attempt to address complex issues within the multiverse. Click here for my full review of this book. 02 Dark Matter by Blake Crouch Settle in and prepare to roll with this unique book--it keeps you hooked the whole way through. After Jason Dessen, a physics professor, is abducted from the street in Chicago, he awakens in a different life, one in which he is not married to his wife and he has no son, but he is welcomed "back" to an existence in which he is a scientific genius. It all feels like a mistake, and an overwhelming, life-ruining one at that. Jason struggles to determine which reality of the multiverse is true and how the hell he might get back to his family. Crouch's Dark Matter is a fascinating blend of action-packed and poignant. I cared deeply about the characters, and Crouch's scientific passages don't require you to remember your high school physics to feel entrenched in that element. Click here for my full review of Dark Matter. 03 How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu Nagamatsu's science fiction centers around a resurgence of an ancient Arctic plague. These interconnected stories are odd, fascinating, and sometimes panic-inducing, yet they offer glimmers of hope. It's 2030, and an archaeologist in the Arctic Circle discovers a body perfectly preserved in the permafrost. His personal situation is complicated by his grief for his recently deceased daughter, and he aims to continue the research work she began. But the young woman he has found may have died of an ancient virus, and thawing the body for study could unleash the long-eradicated illness all over again. The stories are steeped in death and in coming to terms with mortality while fighting for answers. Yet deep connections are forged. As the virus passes like a whirlwind through societies and nations around the globe, Nagamatsu's science fiction work How High We Go in the Dark highlights interpersonal connections spanning centuries--and extending as far as the stars. I was intrigued by all of this. For my full review, see How High We Go in the Dark. 04 Warcross (Warcross #1) by Marie Lu You may see much of this young adult story coming, but Warcross is an action-packed quest to right wrongs in an immersive video game and beyond--with some romance! Emika Chen is an orphaned young woman in a futuristic New York City. She's gifted when it comes to computers, but she's been driven by desperate circumstances to become a bounty hunter seeking out those who bet illegally on the worldwide phenomenon Warcross game. She's hacked into the game plenty of times and glitched the system to work in her favor. But when she accidentally disrupts a high-stakes championship and draws the attention of the game's creator, she finds herself in Tokyo considering an invitation she could never have dreamed of: a job working for the powerful Hideo Tanaka. If she accepts, she'll never have to worry about money again. But seeking to uncover the identity of those trying to destroy the game--and figuring out the other elements at work--turns out to be more high-stakes and dangerous than Emika ever dreamed. You may be able to see much of this one coming, but the action-packed fight for justice coupled with the promise of a clever, ragtag group of heroic characters entering book two for an even higher stakes battle make for a satisfying Marie Lu experience. For my full review, please see Warcross. 05 A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe (Salvagers #1) by Alex White The first in Alex White's Salvagers space opera series offers diverse characters, strong women, a heist setup, and, ultimately, a ragtag group of underdogs saving the day. In Alex White's science fiction novel A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe, the first in White's Salvagers series, a group of outcasts bands together to locate a legendary ship before it falls into the hands of the wrong people, people who would use it as a weapon. A Big Ship is a space heist book with lots of action, strong female characters driving the plot, and a great underdogs-unite premise. I was in this for the characters, among them Cordell, the tough captain with a heart of gold; Boots, a jaded former fighter pilot turned reality star who hopes for a miracle; and Nilah, a privileged and daring racer who falls for the grumpiest crew member of all. Each character in A Big Ship is reeling from planet-level destruction and heartbreak, and it's satisfying to follow them as they seek redemption, take comfort in and build loyalty to one another, and identify and aim to outsmart their enemies to try to save the world with scrappiness and luck. For my full review, please see A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe. 06 Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir Andy Weir offers the fascinating story of a desperate space mission, creative innovation, and enduring optimism, with an enormous amount of heart that surprised me. Ryland Grace wakes up as the sole survivor of a last-chance effort to save Earth and its inhabitants. But he doesn't know that yet. He seems to be in space and isn't sure what has happened, and not only does he not remember his own name or where he's from, he also doesn't remember his scientific expertise or anything else that could help him survive and succeed in his quest. The memories are beginning to slowly shift back into focus, but he needs them now. He's millions of miles from Earth, and he's got two dead crewmates, a chatty AI robot caregiver, a lot of complicated equipment, and a mysterious mission whose purpose and execution he'll have to unravel if he's to possibly survive--much less save humanity. Weir is asking most of the big questions here, about faith and belief; selflessness and selfishness; and meaning and worth. Through exploring seemingly impossible routes toward understanding and communication, he presents a story that illustrates universal expressions of emotion, desire for purpose, and love--across life forms. For my full review, please see Project Hail Mary.

Vaishnavi Patel's debut is a captivating retelling of the Indian epic Ramayana, with immersive details and an irresistible feminist main character fighting for a voice and for power in a man's world. I was born on the full moon under an auspicious constellation, the holiest of positions—much good it did me. In Vaishnavi Patel's debut novel, Kaikeyi, the author reimagines the life of a fabled queen from the Indian epic Ramayana. The retelling swirls with family drama, intrigue, bravery--all centered around a young woman determined to make her mark in a world run by men. Kaikeyi is one of eight children and the only daughter of a king whose lands are ruled by the gods' powerful and ruthless punishment. But in this feminist story, she fights for autonomy, for a voice, for strength, for knowledge--and she is determined to secure these for other women as well. The people of Bharat have often blamed my father for my sins, as if a woman cannot own her actions. In an era when noblewomen are expected to submit to arranged marriages, endless needlework, and polite silences and averted eyes, Kaikeyi is an uncontainable force. She is smart, eager, passionate, and determined--and an irresistible main protagonist. Kaikeyi turns to ancient texts for guidance, discovers magical abilities, and begins to understand that the gods' favor--endlessly important to each person's productivity, health, and blessings--will never be with her. She must forge her own path and find her own inner strength. I often wondered, as our horses flew across the fields, as their hooves kicked up dust from sun-warmed earth and their breath dissipated into the cooling air, if they remembered where they came from. If they longed for more, for the vast expanse of the skies. Perhaps we were kin, they and I, yearning for something unnameable, a place where we could stretch our wings and belong. Kaikeyi endlessly reinvents herself--as a warrior, a queen, an advisor, and a voice for powerless women--asserting her might and her wisdom even as an evil curse and unimaginable challenges threaten to undo everything she has built and all she has become. Patel's immersive detail of Indian fabrics, landscapes, and sights and sounds kept me enthralled. I found some of the final portion of the book's unraveling of who could be trusted, what would come to pass, and what the real story was to read somewhat slowly compared to the energetic pacing of the rest of the book. But the epilogue was gorgeous and a fitting bookend to the story. I received a prepublication digital edition of this book (published April 26) courtesy of Redhook and NetGalley. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? If you enjoy retellings, you might also like some of the books on the Greedy Reading List Six Magical Fairy Tales Grown-Ups Will Love.

“In exposing our nation’s troubled roots, the 1619 Project challenges us to think about a country whose exceptionalism we treat as the unquestioned truth. It asks us to consider who sets and shapes our shared national memory and what and who gets left out..." While history is what happened, it is also, just as important, how we think about what happened and what we unearth and choose to remember about what happened... In this hefty expansion of the 1619 Project, which was spearheaded by Nikole Hannah-Jones at The New York Times Magazine, an array of contributors reframe the history of the United States, putting enslaved people and their work and contributions at the center of our past. By expanding the Project into book length, contributors explore how enslaved people's labor and unwilling efforts laid the groundwork for our nation's economy, past and present, racial real estate divide, and disparities in wealth, among other elements. James Baldwin famously said, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed unless it is faced.” I listened to this book, which explores history such as that of Black music and appropriation; decades of racial impacts on the modern public school system; and the shared responsibility of those in the North and South in perpetuating the condition of enslaved people--then perpetuating policies that continue to penalize Black people. The 1619 Project highlights tragic, uncomfortable aspects of our nation's history in an important work of nonfiction about race. Hannah-Jones aims to better shape how we recognize and address our country's past wrongs and how we might begin to address these travesties in order to move forward. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? For a resource guide and additional materials, check out The 1619 Project Educational Materials Collection.

Jimenez offers humor, spicy moments, and romance while incorporating weighty issues into her light fiction opposites-attract story Part of Your World. In Part of Your World, Abby Jimenez takes on a meet-cute between a rural renaissance man (he's the small-town mayor, a graceful bed and breakfast host, and part of a close-knit network of community members) and a successful city doctor with expensive taste and very little practical knowledge outside of an emergency room. Alexis and Daniel are opposites. She's coming off a bad breakup. He's ten years younger than she is. Nothing about them should fit--but they can't stay away from each other. Everything is complicated. Alexis is part of the Montgomery legacy that built the regional hospital, and a Montgomery has been pivotal to its operation (see what I did there?) for 125 years. She can't abandon her job or her duties. And she can't bring Daniel into her world, because her parents would literally disown her and never speak to her again--which is what they've vowed to do to her brother, formerly the golden child, because of his recent marriage to someone they hadn't vetted. Meanwhile every visit to Daniel and his town builds up Alexis, fills her heart, teaches her about unconditional love, and makes her yearn for more. Alexis is realizing that her former significant other, Neil--who she works with, who her parents adore, who she owns a house with--has been emotionally abusing her. And that it's the same pattern she's experienced within her own family. Yet she still feels that she's stuck in her life. She might break her own heart and Daniel's if she can't figure out how they can possibly move forward together. Jimenez incorporates weighty issues here, such as access to health care, domestic abuse, and emotional abuse, as well as a personal reckoning in which the warring powers of privilege and responsibility are faced. Told in alternating points of view from Daniel and Alexis, Part of Your World is romantic, often funny, sometimes sexy, poignant, and it includes touches of magical realism. I felt confident that I knew where this was going, but I was in for all of it. I listened to this as an audiobook. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Abby Jimenez is also the author of Life's Too Short, The Friend Zone (The Friend Zone #1), and The Happy Ever After Playlist (The Friend Zone #2), which I included on the Greedy Reading List Six Rockin' Stories about Bands and Music. If you like lighter fiction, you might also like the titles on the Greedy Reading List Six Lighter Fiction Stories for Great Escapism.

The Books I'm Reading Now I'm reading You Have a Friend in 10A, the upcoming collection of short stories (to be published tomorrow!) from one of my favorite authors, Maggie Shipstead; The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story, Nikole Hannah-Jones and The New York Times Magazine's expansion of the 1619 Project into a full-length nonfiction book putting enslaved people at the center of our nation's history; and Part of Your World, romantic, funny light fiction from Abby Jimenez. What are you reading and enjoying these days, bookworms? 01 You Have a Friend in 10A by Maggie Shipstead In You Have a Friend in 10A, Maggie Shipstead offers gripping, sometimes hilarious short stories, diving into eclectic and vivid settings–from an Olympic village, to a deathbed in Paris, to a Pacific atoll–and illuminates a cast of captivating characters. From the author of Astonish Me, Seating Arrangements, and Great Circle, one of my favorite reads last year. I received a prepublication digital edition of this book (to be published tomorrow) courtesy of Knopf and NetGalley. If you like short stories, you might like the books on the Greedy Reading List Six Short Story Collections to Wow You. 02 The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story by Nikole Hannah-Jones and The New York Times Magazine In this hefty expansion of the 1619 Project, which was spearheaded by Nikole Hannah-Jones at The New York Times Magazine, an array of contributors reframe the history of the United States, putting enslaved people and their work and contributions at the center of our past--and at the center of how we might consider our present circumstances and our nation's future. In this book-length work, contributors explore how enslaved people's labor and unwilling efforts laid the groundwork for our nation's economy, past and present; shine light on our centuries-old racial real estate divide; and address generational wealth disparities, among other elements. I'm listening to this book, which is rich with history--including that of Black music and appropriation; decades of racial impacts on the modern public school system; and the shared responsibility of those in the North and South in perpetuating the condition of enslaved people, then perpetuating policies that continue to penalize Black people today. 03 Part of Your World by Abby Jimenez In Part of Your World, Abby Jimenez, author of The Happy Ever After Playlist, takes on a meet-cute between a rural renaissance man (he's the small-town mayor, a graceful bed and breakfast host, and part of the close-knit network of community members) and a successful city doctor with an impressive family pedigree, expensive taste, and very little practical knowledge outside of an emergency room. Alexis and Daniel are opposites. She's coming off an emotionally abusive breakup. He's ten years younger than she is. Nothing about them should fit--but they can't stay away from each other. This is romantic, often funny, sometimes sexy, poignant, and it includes touches of magical realism. I feel confident that I know where this is going, but I'm in for all of it.

Memoir Love! In case you haven’t noticed yet, I have a major thing for memoirs, and I especially love listening to an author read their experiences in audiobook form. Here are six personal stories that I found captivating! For more more more memoirs I've loved that you might want to try, check out these Greedy Reading Lists: Six Fascinating Memoirs to Explore Six More Fascinating Memoirs to Explore Six Illuminating Memoirs to Dive Into Six More Illuminating Memoirs to Lose Yourself In Six Foodie Memoirs to Whet Your Appetite Six Powerful Memoirs about Facing Mortality 01 Leaving the Witness by Amber Scorah In Leaving the Witness: Exiting a Religion and Finding a Life, Amber Scorah takes the reader into her confidences. Scorah lays bare her sheltered experiences, religious indoctrination, societal and gender pressures, hearty evangelism, and her eventual questioning and subsequent freezing out from the Jehovah’s Witnesses—which meant she was cut off permanently from almost everyone she knew. Scorah retraces her steps from being a covert, illegal proselytizer in Shanghai through the implosion of her marriage and her realization that she is stranded--without her husband, without formal education, and without her faith any longer--and therefore really without any framework at all. She’s thoughtful and helps readers track her mindset as she moves from control to freedom and how jarring and cruel and wonderful and odd a “worldly” life can be. I'm intrigued by stories of those who have left constricting faith systems. Scorah tells a fascinating personal story of growth and fear and change. For my full review of this book, please see Leaving the Witness. 02 The Unexpected Spy by Tracy Walder I love a peek at a secret world, and in The Unexpected Spy: From the CIA to the FBI, My Secret Life Taking Down Some of the World's Most Notorious Terrorists, Tracy Walder offers fascinating glimpses of her life as a CIA and an FBI agent. Walder includes training details, political machinations, and significant and rankling discrimination. Walder explores her own glowing pride in doing her job well and protecting others from danger—even when anyone without security clearance remains necessarily ignorant of the invaluable nature of the work and the imminent dangers she and her fellow agents manage to help our country avoid. Her evolution as a person and transition into her current profession was satisfying to witness as well. St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley provided me with an advance reader copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. For my full review of this book, see The Unexpected Spy. 03 The Unwinding of the Miracle by Julie Yip This book is Yip-Williams's powerful farewell to her family, but it's also valuable for anyone considering meaning and priorities in their own life. Wow. Julie Yip-Williams is a beautiful writer who is so smart, reflects deeply, and candidly shares the many heartbreaking aspects of facing her own imminent death from metastatic colorectal cancer. This book serves as her powerful farewell to her family but also holds meaning for anyone considering the way they live and how they might choose to face their own mortality. I feel like a meditation on dying is a heartbreakingly beautiful way to consider how we live our lives and a poignant reminder of what makes our one life so special. That said, I have a tough time reading memoirs in which someone is fighting cancer, and this one may not be everyone's cup of tea. I listened to the audiobook, read wonderfully by Emily Woo Zeller, with an afterword by Yip-Williams's husband Joshua Williams. For my full review of The Unwinding of the Miracle: A Memoir of Life, Death, and Everything that Comes After, click here. 04 Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed by Lori Gottlieb Gottlieb offers network of sometimes interconnected and consistently meaningful searches for purpose and peace. This book really hit the spot for me. I was going to be happy with a light, surface-level look at therapy and the ins and outs of a therapist's providing and receiving therapy. But the book quickly grows into a network of sometimes interconnected and consistently meaningful searches for purpose and peace. This book was so much more meaningful than I had counted on. Gottlieb was honest about her own situation and showed herself to be wonderfully faulted, and she also delved into the details of others' struggles and journeys and joys. Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed offers a beautiful exploration of dying, death, appreciating the beauty of the impermanence of our lives, planning for loved ones after our death, and living life fully. For my full review, please see Maybe You Should Talk to Someone. 05 Know My Name by Chanel Miller Miller is a beautiful, powerful writer with clear and sophisticated arguments and a compelling identity separate from the attack that led to her being in the spotlight. Miller has a strong, passionate grasp of widely experienced inequalities—and ideas of how to chip away at some of the injustices and faulty norms that should be excised from society. I began reading Know My Name because I thought I should, not because I wanted to. Miller surprised me with the delicately balanced tone she was able to strike, her passionate belief in right and wrong, her emotional reactions to her situation, and her measured arguments and calm determination. I was fascinated by her. Do not become the ones who hurt you. Stay tender with your power. Never fight to injure, fight to uplift. Fight because you know that in this life, you deserve safety, joy, and freedom. Fight because it is your life. Now I'd like Miller to write more books about varied topics, because I like spending time in her head. For my full review of this book, please see Know My Name. 06 Open Book by Jessica Simpson Open Book is a mainly guileless look at stardom, motherhood, alcohol abuse, and finding herself. In Open Book, Jessica Simpson explores her life, her ups and downs, her drinking-related missteps, and her failed loves. She tracks her scrappy and determined rise to stardom, her religious faith, her reliance on and love for her friends, her deep familial attachments and conflicts, and her path to therapy, sobriety, and a happy marriage and parenthood. I've liked JS since Newlyweds, and she takes us back to the show here too. At times there is some silliness and some superficial focus, but I felt as though Simpson was laying it all on the table and going through some real self-examination. Interestingly, she spends a lot more page time on John Mayer than Nick Lachey—and provides what ultimately amounts to a takedown of Mayer that explores his extensive emotional manipulation, his elaborate interview accounts of his sexual escapades with her and others, and, incredibly and most damningly, his use of the N-word during an interview. For my full review, see Open Book.

In We Are Not Like Them, Pride and Piazza dig into a friendship of opposites, conflicts around race, and a police shooting, creating a page-turner that doesn't shy away from exploring painful situations, tragedy, and the seeming impossibility of forgiveness. In We Are Not Like Them, real-life friends and collaborators Christine Pride and Jo Piazza offer a story about lifelong friends Jen and Riley, one white, one Black. Jen married young and is about to become a mother, while Riley is poised to become one of the first Black female anchors on their hometown Philadelphia television station. Their lives have gone in different directions, and they've always been very different in many ways, yet the women have been through difficult and joyful times, and they still care deeply about each other. But when Jen's police officer husband is involved in the shooting of a Black teenager, the women's friendship is stretched to the breaking point. This exploration of love, race, friendship, and more is told in alternating points of view. Pride and Piazza explain in an interesting epilogue how deeply they explored each character; their writing challenges in trying to dive into each point of view while trying not to favor either one; and the personal conflicts they experienced with each other while digging into the nuances of and uncomfortable truths about race, ignorance, privilege, stereotypes, systemic racism, and more within their collaborative work of fiction. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? They Are Not Like Us is a page turner while also offering thoughtful, often difficult and painful aspects of race relations and friendship. Christine Pride and Jo Piazza dug into complex, loaded topics the way I was hoping Therese Anne Fowler would do more of in her novel with racial conflicts, stereotypes, and challenges, A Good Neighborhood.

Sharratt offers vivid historical fiction details of the everyday life of Margery of Kempe, a mother of fourteen whose radiant visions led her to stun medieval British society with her vow of celibacy and ambitious pilgrimage halfway around the world. My story is not a straightforward one. Women’s stories never are. I read Mary Sharratt's Revelations over the course of this "school year" with my women's group. In Revelations, Sharratt offers an immersive historical fiction novel that includes thoroughly researched, fascinating details of medieval life. The story is built upon the framework of facts from the lives of Julian of Norwich and what is known of the life of our main protagonist, Margery Kempe. Sharratt based her story on The Book of Margery Kempe, which was the first published English-language autobiography. (To say that producing this publication was a groundbreaking feat for a medieval woman who was stifled by societal and religious limitations may still be understating its importance.) When the book begins, it's 1412 in Bishop's Lynn, England, and Margery has almost died after giving birth to her fourteenth child. She takes a vow of celibacy--although she doubts her unreliable, flaky businessman of a husband will adhere to her wishes--and begins to carefully share her vivid (and dangerously disruptive) loving religious visions with trusted others. She confides in Julian of Norwich, a famed anchorite who lives, walled up in confinement, adjacent to a church, reading, writing, and studying, and reliant on supporters to feed and care for her. (The information my reading group learned on the side about anchoresses was captivating.) Dame Julian encourages Margery's religious awakening--and confides that she has been secretly writing a radical booklet about her own visions. Margery sets off on an ambitious pilgrimage across Europe and the Near East, sharing Julian's papers and her own visions; meeting largely with aggression, lies, and immense challenges; at other times feeling her hope and religious fervor stoked by the power of her strengthened faith. Our main protagonist puzzles and angers those around her by challenging the limitations of what women might do or say in the year 1400, and the Church is particularly galled and upset by the audacity of such a woman to have blindingly beautiful visions of Christ and to speak of Jesus's love. Sharratt injects an undercurrent of what feels like modern feminism in her first-person story. I've underlined many, many meaningful passages in Revelations, and I found exploring this time through Margery's imagined point of view to be fascinating, particularly the everyday details of life at the time. Sharratt makes the crushing limitations of being female and without autonomy of any kind during the period feel uncomfortably immediate here. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Sharratt has authored at least seven other historical fiction novels--including Illuminations, about Hildegard of Bingen--and I'm in for more more MORE of her books! The book's blurb on Goodreads describes Revelations as "a kind of fifteenth-century Eat, Pray, Love." This made me laugh, but it also feels accurate.

With intriguing questions about loyalties and motivations, gutsy skirmishes, deep friendships, familial duty, and a smoldering romance seen at a distance, Steelstriker wraps up the Skyhunter duology with action and also with heart. But he had never intended for me to turn against him. That’s the thing about inventing new things. You can only control the genesis of it, not the evolution. And I have evolved. In Skyhunter, the first book in Marie Lu's young adult Skyhunter duology, Lu offered complex motivations, clashes between idealism and realism, editorialization about class and race, and futuristic advancements. In Steelstriker, the second and final book in the series, the last free nation in the world has been invaded. Our brave main protagonist (and rebel) Talin is forced to submit to the Federation's morally questionable and physically excruciating experiments. She must become a Skyhunter. Her psychic, emotional link to Red is thin, and she's not sure if she'll ever find him again. But if the two can possibly reunite and band together, they just might be able to gather the rest of the Strikers, and these makeshift allies could fight against the Federation, ensuring freedom for everyone they love and honoring everyone they've lost. That’s the thing about evil. You don’t need to be it to do it. It doesn’t have to consume all of you. It can be small. All you have to do is let it exist. Steelstriker is almost 400 pages of action, deceit, political maneuvering, and gutsy skirmishes, and Lu made me question the motivations and loyalties of practically everyone in Talin's web. I wasn't sure who would prove to be the true enemy and who might reveal themselves to have been traitorous all along. In an appealing dynamic, Talin is the strong beating heart of the story, with Red as her supporting lieutenant. Lu offers up their smoldering romance from a distance, focusing mainly on their emotional connection and the strength of undying loyalty between these two broken characters--characters who just might be brave enough to care and be vulnerable together in a free future of their dreams. After the unprecedented twists and developments Talin experiences in Steelstriker, she must reimagine all aspects of the world around her, and I really liked the autonomy and inspiration Lu allowed her. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Lu, a former artist in the video game industry, has written multiple young adult series (Legend, Warcross, The Young Elites, and Skyhunter) as well as the stand-alone adult novel The Kingdom of Back. Please click here for my review of Lu's book Legend and here for my review of Warcross. Click here for my full review of Skyhunter, the first in this duology.

The Books I'm Reading Now I'm reading First Time for Everything, the upcoming novel (to be published tomorrow!) from Henry Fry about a young man resolving complicated questions about his romantic life, career, and his future at an East London commune; Revelations, Mary Sarratt's immersive historical fiction set in medieval England about Margery Kempe and her religious visions and pilgrimages; and We Are Not Like Them, Christine Pride and Jo Piazza's exploration of a complicated friendship and of race in modern-day America. What are you reading and enjoying these days, bookworms? 01 First Time for Everything by Henry Fry In Henry Fry's new (to be published tomorrow!) novel First Time for Everything, Danny Scudd has spent five years trying to make good on his dreams. He left his small British town and his parents' fish-and-chips shop, moved to London, and is trying to become a successful journalist. Sure, his boyfriend is insufferably pretentious...and Danny's realizing he's also been unfaithful...and his roommates are kicking him out in order to start a family. Danny has a lot to figure out--and quickly. When he moves in with his best friend in a commune-like East London community, Danny reckons with his life and his priorities and choices regarding his romantic partners, professional future, and his friendships. I received a prepublication digital edition of this book courtesy of Ballantine Books and NetGalley. 02 Revelations by Mary Sharratt I've been reading Mary Sharratt's Revelations over the course of this "school year" with my women's group. In Revelations, Sharratt offers an immersive historical fiction novel that includes thoroughly researched details of medieval life and is built upon the framework of facts from the lives of Julian of Norwich and our main protagonist, Margery Kempe. When the book begins, it's 1412 in Bishop's Lynn, England, and Margery has almost died after giving birth to her fourteenth child. She takes a vow of celibacy--although she doubts her unreliable businessman of a husband will adhere to her wishes--and begins to carefully share her vivid religious visions with trusted others. She confides in Julian of Norwich, a famed anchorite (who lives, walled up in confinement, adjacent to a church, reading, writing, and studying, and reliant on supporters to feed and care for her). Dame Julian encourages Margery's religious awakening--and confides that she has been writing a radical booklet about her own visions. Margery sets off on an ambitious pilgrimage across Europe and the Near East, sharing Julian's papers and her own visions, meeting at times with aggression, lies, and immense challenges; at other times feeling her hope and religious fervor stoked by her experiences. 03 We Are Not Like Them by Christine Pride and Jo Piazza In We Are Not Like Them, Christine Pride and Jo Piazza offer a story about lifelong friends Jen and Riley, one white, one Black. Jen married young and is about to become a mother, while Riley is poised to become one of the first Black female anchors on their hometown Philadelphia television station. Their lives have gone in different directions, but the women still care about each other. When Jen's police officer husband is involved in the shooting of a Black teenager, the women's friendship is stretched to the breaking point. This exploration of love, race, friendship, and more is told in alternating points of view.

Bossy Bookworm's Very Favorite Books of 2022..So Far! I love a favorites list--check out my favorites lists, posted at the end of each month and year and sometimes at the end of each season! The end of April seemed like a great time to take stock in a Greedy Reading List of my favorites so far this year! If you've read these or if you give any of these a go, please let me know what you think! I've already read three books in May that I've loved (Wingwalkers by Taylor Brown, Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel, and Unlikely Animals by Annie Hartnett), so stay tuned for more Bossy Favorites lists! You might also like the books on my monthly Greedy Reading List roundups so far this year: January Wrap-Up: My Favorite Reads of the Month February Wrap-Up: My Favorite Reads of the Month March Wrap-Up: My Favorite Reads of the Month April Wrap-Up: My Favorite Reads of the Month 01 The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (Wayfarer #1) by Becky Chambers Chambers's science fiction is full of heart, heartbreak, and hope--set against a fascinating backdrop of space travel and interspecies relations. In The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, the first science fiction title in Becky Chambers's Wayfarers series, young Rosemary feels lucky to have landed the job of clerk for the quirky, ragtag, but welcoming crew of the Wayfarer ship. Just as she's adjusting to life on board, the crew gets a lucrative opportunity: to tunnel wormholes through space to a distant planet. But things quickly take a turn as pirates and other dangers threaten the friends-like-family on the Wayfarer. They each have reasons to mistrust other creatures, but they have to trust and rely on each other more than ever before in order to survive. Chambers's story is science fiction that's full of heart, heartbreak, and hope. The book feels much more focused on the characters--with a backdrop of space travel and otherworldly creatures--than on exploration or adventure. Much of the story is about acceptance and openness and finding ways to get along. Interspecies relations are prickly, comfortable, romantic, puzzling, or all of the above. I just adored this. Click here for my full review of The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. 02 No Cure for Being Human (And Other Truths I Need to Hear) by Kate Bowler Touching, honest, raw, funny, and full of gritty reflections about life and faith, this was a read that I absolutely adored and gave five Bossy stars. THIS BOOK! Reading memoirs centered around cancer is not always a go for me, but this book was special. Divinity professor Kate Bowler offers meaningful insight, gritty truth-telling, and wry humor as she shares her experiences surrounding facing stage 4 colon cancer. I finished No Cure for Being Human in one evening, tabbed many, many passages, immediately bought my own copy, re-tabbed everything, and would have been perfectly willing to read the book again in its entirety right away. So many moments struck me, surprised me, or touched me as I read this lovely work, including Bowler's exploration of how our lives are largely shaped by choices out of our control and her reckoning with the way in which she considers her body after cancer treatment ("Who would fault a body that has survived so much and asked for so little?"). No Cure for Being Human is beautiful, funny, heartwarming, practical, and Kate Bowler is so wise and wonderful, I hugged this book to my chest when I finished reading it. For my full review, check out No Cure for Being Human. 03 The Body: A Guide for Occupants by Bill Bryson ​Bryson's examination of the human body, its processes, its wonders, and its limitations is surprising, illuminating, and wonderful. The Body: A Guide for Occupants is made up of fascinating, funny, odd, and often unexpected information about the complicated corporeal shell we each inhabit. “We pass our existence within this wobble of flesh and yet take it almost entirely for granted.” With his signature wit and curiosity, Bryson delves into everything you didn't know that you didn't know about the body (and, I'm glad to say, he narrates the audiobook edition of the book). I'm willing to accompany Bill Bryson anywhere he wants to take me, and an adventure through body systems, grievous injuries, and our various, wondrous healing processes is no exception. Bryson considers the body's systems, outside positive and detrimental influences upon the body, and disease and the process of death. He inspires wonder, shares knowledge, and offers sometimes shocking factoids about our bodies and how they work. For my full review of The Body: A Guide for Occupants, please click here. 04 Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir Andy Weir offers the fascinating story of a desperate space mission, creative innovation, and enduring optimism, with an enormous amount of heart that surprised me. Ryland Grace wakes up as the sole survivor of a last-chance effort to save Earth and its inhabitants. He's millions of miles from Earth, and he's got two dead crewmates, a chatty AI robot caregiver, a lot of complicated equipment, and a mysterious mission whose purpose and execution he'll have to unravel if he's to possibly survive--much less save humanity. Weir provides Grace with unexpected company, fascinating collaboration, fantastic interpersonal relationships (Rocky!), incredible innovation, and wonderfully big-hearted moments. The present-day story alternates with peeks back in time to life before this space mission, which show Grace as an interestingly faulted but incredibly valuable team member on the project of a lifetime. As in his book The Martian, significant page time in Weir's Project Hail Mary is spent on creative problem-solving, particularly scientific experimentation and high-stakes trial and error, and while it slowed the pace of the story, it felt warranted--and I was hooked by all of it. For my full review, check out Project Hail Mary. 05 Sparks Like Stars by Nadia Hashimi ​This peek into a childhood in Kabul and a lifetime of searching and yearning is luminous and vivid in Hashimi's hands. Young Sitara is living a comfortable life in Kabul in 1978. Her father has a prominent position in the government, and the family has plenty of love and laughter. But when the military soldiers she's always known turn against those in charge, the men stop protecting her family and help enact a bloody massacre that sweeps up much of the current government administration and their families. Sparks Like Stars follows Sitara through unlikely alliances, a desperate plan to escape her fiery homeland, and a life with twists and turns that ultimately lead her back to the beginning of it all. Hashimi's storytelling is luminous. She sets the scene in Kabul with the vivid sights, sounds, smells, and tastes of the past that reemerge in Sitara's memories and her subconscious, and she explores Sitara's complicated, ongoing, conflicting feelings of survivor's guilt. For my full review, check out Sparks Like Stars. 06 Nobody Will Tell You This But Me: A True (As Told to Me) Story by Bess Kalb This is an irresistible tribute to Kalb's funny, opinionated, fiercely loving grandmother--a granddaughter's best friend and a wise and formidable character. I listened to Bess Kalb's irresistible love letter to her late grandmother, Nobody Will Tell You This But Me. The audiobook was wonderful and read by Kalb. The author saved every one of her grandmother's voicemails, and here she uses them--along with emails, letters, vividly recalled conversations, and her grandma Bobby's imagined thoughts from beyond the grave--to construct a picture of a formidable, tough-love, fiercely protective matriarch in Bobby Bell. This is a heartwarming, funny, poignant, sassy tribute to a life fully lived and to a determination love freely, deliberately, and unwaveringly. It made me laugh out loud and brought me to tears. I just adored this gem. Click here for my full review of Nobody Will Tell You This But Me. 07 Our Woman in Moscow by Beatriz Williams ​Williams's historical fiction mystery--which is based on real-life double agents in the Cambridge Spy Ring--is vividly set in Europe and Russia and was a rare five-star-rated read for me. In Beatriz Williams's historical fiction, Our Woman in Moscow, it's 1948, and Iris Digby, her American diplomat husband Sasha, and their two children have disappeared overnight. Those who knew and worked with them are shocked. Were the Digbys abducted by Soviet agents...or did they make their way by choice behind the Iron Curtain with a suitcase of American secrets to trade? I loved this. Every heart-stopping moment; every exquisite detail; the characters' growth, emotional distance, and unforeseen connections to each other; the trick of teasing out what was actually happening; the characterization; the machinations--all of it. I loved Williams's immersive story so much, I was in for all of Our Woman in Moscow's elements: Russia, family, spies, crossing/double-crossing, finding common ground, bravery, and illogical and irresistible love. For my full review, check out Our Woman in Moscow. 08 You Can't Be Serious by Kal Penn ​Penn's thoughtful memoir explores serious issues yet also made me laugh out loud. You Can't Be Serious is both thoughtful and playful, and I loved the audiobook. Kal Penn's smart, fun You Can't Be Serious explores his early struggles to make it in Hollywood as he straddles humorous roles and dramatic opportunities; attempts to deflect racism from casting heads and writers; and digs in to try to be one of what he hopes will be an ever-increasing number of diverse faces on television and movie screens. He takes the reader through his discovery of his passion for acting, his immigrant parents' early, practical resistance (they urge him, "at least get a real estate license"), the various early road bumps he encountered, and his dogged determination--which was admittedly shaken after landing very few and consistently stereotypical roles. Penn pulls his memoir into another gear when he adds the fascinating layer of accidental political activism that becomes a passion and, ultimately, a sometimes career, one for which he takes a sabbatical from his steady acting job at the time, his role on House. I laughed out loud multiple times; Kal is funny without trying too hard, and his tone is accessible even as he takes the reader deep into worlds most won't have experience with, Hollywood and the White House. Click here for my full review of You Can't Be Serious. 09 The Rose Code by Kate Quinn Kate Quinn makes the urgency of World War II code breaking come alive through the stories of three young women and their interconnected destinies in The Rose Code. The Rose Code is a wonderfully spun historical fiction story of three very different women who answer the wartime call to England's top-secret Bletchley Park in order to break the military codes of the Axis powers. I love a World War II story about strong women making a difference, but I admit that I was curious as to how even a historical fiction storytelling master like Kate Quinn could craft compelling storytelling around the potential tedium at the heart of code breaking. But as usual, Quinn delivers. She offers plenty of interpersonal conflict, romance, suspected double-crossing, and details of life within both timelines, and in her hands, the descriptions of code-breaking mechanisms and the detailed, complicated, elusive process of figuring out messages were captivating. For my full review, check out The Rose Code.

Brown's signature immersive details and wonderfully imagined, rich characters bring Depression-era scenes to life against an irresistible backdrop of swooping, soaring, daring aviation in Wingwalkers. They were over Georgia somewhere, another nameless hamlet whose dusty streets lay flocked and trembling with the pink handbills they’d rained from the sky that morning, the ones that announced the coming of DELLA THE DARING DEVILETTE, who would DEFY THE HEAVENS, shining like a DAYTIME STAR, a WING-WALKING WONDER borne upon the wings of CAPTAIN ZENO MARIGOLD, a DOUBLE ACE of the GREAT WAR, who had ELEVEN AERIAL VICTORIES over the TRENCHES OF FRANCE. What is it about aviation stories and my being so in love with them? In Taylor Brown's recently published historical fiction novel Wingwalkers, Zeno, a former World War I ace pilot, and Della, his daring wingwalking wife, travel Depression-era America, wowing audiences and inspiring hope in a dark, sober time. Zeno and Della are vagabonds, putting on shows for small bills and change, scrambling to make enough to fuel their plane, feed their dog, and to hopefully have enough left over to eat meager meals, just enough to keep them going. They're daring, sometimes haunted, broken, in love, and irresistible to read about. She wanted to rip the weights from his chest, the heavy stones he carried, blacked by the great fire of his heart. Brown offers another parallel storyline tracking the frustrated would-be pilot and burgeoning author Bill (William) Faulkner, his three beloved brothers, his lost loves, his torment and motivation, and his struggles and successes. When the characters from the two rich stories that make up Wingwalkers briefly intersect, it's fantastic. Wingwalkers shines through immersive descriptions offered in signature Taylor Brown style, including glimpses of Depression-era America both from the sky and at close range; vivid moments placing these wonderfully wrought characters solidly in place and time; and various views of a broken landscape that perfectly mirrors the dashed dreams of so many during grim times. The Depression's dark effects on the country contrast dramatically with the majestic, gutsy aviation at the heart of the story, which boosts the stubborn hopes of those who allow themselves to be inspired. "Stories," she said. Sometimes she could hardly believe her own. Sometimes she wondered if she held the threads of her own story or if there were another hand out there, unseen--god or author or fate--pulling the strings and banshee wires of their world. Or no one, only the wind. Sometimes she wondered if they were not haunted but haints themselves, turning endless circles over the land, performing the same acts over and over, replaying the same deaths--unable to move on. Wingwalkers swoops and soars yet grounds the reader in wonderfully imagined (and researched) details that bring the story to life. I loved this book! I received a prepublication digital edition of this book courtesy of St. Martin's Press and NetGalley. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Taylor is also the author of Gods of Howl Mountain, a book I loved and gave five stars, Pride of Eden (a book still on my to-read list that looks wonderful), and Fallen Land, a title I loved and included in the Greedy Reading List Six Great Historical Fiction Stories about the Civil War. (If you’re not on the Taylor Brown train yet, may I strongly suggest you join me?)

In this nested story that spans centuries, Mandel explores a pandemic, moon colonization, the universal connection of music, the temptation to change the past, portals and time loops, loyalty, fear, love, and wonder. I listened to Emily St. John Mandel's newest book, Sea of Tranquility. In this science fiction novel, Mandel plays with time and time travel as well as mysteries surrounding what may be a portal linking individuals through time. Mandel explores an emerging pandemic in a future with a colonized moon, considers the universal connection of music, and digs into the difficulty and danger in changing the past. In 1912, Edwin St. Andrew, a second son, is exiled by his family from England to Canada for voicing unpopular opinions at the dinner table (don’t get too invested in him; he’s here to allow St. John to set the 1912 piece of the puzzle). In 2020, we meet Mirella and Vincent (characters from The Glass Hotel). They are also not richly developed, but they're important to the structure and the odd interconnectedness at the heart of the mysterious events here. Much later, during a period of extensive moon colonization (and the beginnings of further flung settlements), author Olive Llewellyn is traveling on a book tour to promote her book Marienbad, about a pandemic. (The plot of this book within a book sounds somewhat similar to that of Mandel’s Station Eleven, a book I loved). But all of these players and times feel mainly to be in place to serve as a structure for our true main protagonist, Gaspary, and we see the most depth and development and change; loyalty and love and grief; wonder and danger; resignation and hope in his portion of the story. This was where I was captivated and delighted and emotionally engaged. Scorned Edwin has an odd experience in the forest with inexplicable futuristic visions and sounds; two centuries later (our current day) Olive writes about an almost identical personal experience; and detective Gaspary from the future's Night City investigates their mysterious intersections through time--and becomes inextricably linked to a timeline connecting all of them. The time travel and multiple story lines and odd, interesting, untethered moments that kept me from settling in time reminded me a little bit of David Mitchell's The Bone Clocks, but at a slim 255 pages (Bone Clocks is 624 pages), Sea of Tranquility is a story shaped by its structure, without as much room or page time to meander as Mitchell's story. Sea of Tranquility is strange and ethereal, with a surprise toward the end that I delighted in. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Do you like books that play with time? You might like the books I list on the Greedy Reading Lists Six Second-Chance, Do-Over, Reliving-Life Stories or Six Riveting Time-Travel Escapes or these Bossy reviews of books that play with time. Click here for my review of Mandel's Station Eleven.

In Unlikely Animals, Hartnett's irresistible, oddball tragicomedy with heart, characters explore the limits and solidity of friendship and family loyalty, show mistakes and imperfections, and cling to hope. Emma Starling is a former natural healer whose abilities have disappeared, and she's also a recent med-school dropout. It's not that she couldn't hack medical school--she just didn't go the first day, or the second, or any day after that. Now she's scrabbling to make ends meet in California and drifting a little bit--oh, and she's been telling her parents about fictitious classes she's been attending at the medical school she isn't going to. Emma returns to small-town New Hampshire to care for her father Clive, who is dying. He's also vividly hallucinating small animals and the speaking specter of a long-dead local naturalist, Ernest Harold Baynes, who is advising Clive about how to spend his final days, sometimes through making daring and eccentric decisions. When she arrives home, somewhat shamed by her lies; concerned about her parents' marriage, her brother's recent bout with addiction, and her father's health; and without a direction for her future, Emma discovers that her beloved but estranged best friend from high school is missing. The local authorities aren't particularly inclined to search for opioid drug addicts like Crystal--in fact, no one besides Emma and her dad seems to believe that Crystal is still alive. The many ghosts’ chatter and commentary (always with their born and died dates following their names in parentheses, which I loved) felt like echoes of Lincoln in the Bardo, but the tone of Unlikely Animals is quite different; warm-hearted (yet never cloyingly sweet). A minor nitpick: the fifth graders in the book seemed far younger to me—their matching outfits, reverting to sucking thumbs after a crisis, free use of each other's last initials, innocence about aspects of the world, and so on—but I adored them. I was hooked, witnessing Hartnett's delightfully faulted, oddball characters making their way in a messy world. Father and daughter, brother and sister, and mother and father find their way back together after hurting each other, making mistakes, misunderstanding intentions, and losing their individual paths. The characters insist on hope, allow for reinvention, and leave room for the inexplicable and the wondrous. Hartnett evokes a sense of place so strong, the town felt like a character itself. Unlikely Animals is sweet and wonderfully strange, and Hartnett employs a light touch and thoughtful approach to addressing potentially heavy, dark issues. This book made me smile over and over. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Annie Hartnett is also the author of Rabbit Cake. I received a prepublication digital copy of this book (published April 12) courtesy of Random House Publishing Group: Ballantine Books and NetGalley.

The Books I'm Reading Now I'm reading The Change, the upcoming novel (to be published tomorrow!) from Kirsten Miller about middle-aged women coming into their power and coming into their own; Sea of Tranquility, Emily St. John Mandel's novel about plague and art that also plays with time; and Herrick's End, the first in T.M. Blanchet's young adult fantasy Neath Trilogy--and her debut novel--to be published next week. What are you reading and enjoying these days, bookworms? 01 The Change by Kirsten Miller In Kristen Miller's new (to be published tomorrow!) novel The Change, set in Mattauk, Long Island, three women cope with various challenges surrounding aging, change, and unexpected new beginnings. Nessa's husband has died, and her twin daughters have left for college. The former nurse is coping with loneliness--but then she begins hearing voices like her grandmother once did. They're making suggestions about what she should do with her life, and Nessa realizes they're coming from the dead. Harriett's career and marriage have fallen apart, but she's also undergone an incredible metamorphosis she can't ignore. Jo has battled with her weight and struggled with her body image her whole life. But then she realizes that her hot flashes can be channeled into power. When Nessa, Jo, and Harriet work together and use their newfound abilities to try to solve the mystery of a missing girl: middle-aged women heroines unite! I received a prepublication digital edition of this book courtesy of William Morrow and NetGalley. 02 Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel I'm listening to Emily St. John Mandel's newest book, Sea of Tranquility. This one is difficult to summarize so far, but in this science fiction novel, Mandel plays with time and time travel, as well as mysteries surrounding what may be a portal linking individuals through time. Mandel explores an emerging pandemic in a future with a colonized moon, the universal connection of music, and the difficulty and danger in changing the past. Sea of Tranquility swirls around the stories of a scorned gentleman from England who has an odd experience in the forest with inexplicable futuristic visions and sounds, a science fiction writer from two centuries later, our current day, who writes about an almost identical personal experience, and a detective from the future's Night City, who investigates the mysterious intersections through time of them both and becomes inextricably linked to a timeline connecting all of them. 03 Herrick's End by T.M. Blanchet In Blanchet's young adult fantasy debut, Herrick's End, Ollie's only friend has disappeared, and he has no idea where she's gone. Then he receives a mysterious note: "Still looking for your friend? I know where she is." But the trail he's following leads to darkness and danger--and, alarmingly, at the end there is someone who's been expecting him, and who might destroy him if he doesn't figure out an escape, or at least find a little help. Funny, sometimes grotesque, and full of surprises, Herrick's End is the first in Blanchet's Neath Trilogy. I love this beautiful cover! I received a prepublication digital edition of this book (to be published May 10) courtesy of Tiny Fox Press and NetGalley.

My very favorite books from April! Here are my six favorite reads of the past month. There's suspense, memoir, science fiction, and historical fiction here. If you read or have read any of these, I'd love to hear what you think! I'd love to hear: what are some of your recent favorite reads? 01 The Rose Code by Kate Quinn This was my favorite read of the month! Kate Quinn makes the urgency of World War II code breaking come alive through the stories of three young women and their interconnected destinies in The Rose Code. The Rose Code is a wonderfully spun historical fiction story of three very different women who answer the wartime call to England's top-secret Bletchley Park in order to break the military codes of the Axis powers. I love a World War II story about strong women making a difference, but I admit that I was curious about how even a historical fiction storytelling master like Kate Quinn could craft compelling storytelling around the potential tedium at the heart of code breaking. Quinn offers plenty of interpersonal conflict, romance, suspected double-crossing, and details of life within both timelines, and in her hands, the descriptions of code-breaking mechanisms and the detailed, complicated, elusive process of figuring out messages were captivating. For my full review, check out The Rose Code. 02 A Flicker in the Dark by Stacy Willingham Willingham's debut, the thriller A Flicker in the Dark, offers an unreliable narrator haunted by her father's decades-old serial killing--and her horrifying suspicion that recent disappearances are somehow connected to her past. The summer Chloe Davis was twelve, six girls went missing in her rural Louisiana community. By the end of that summer, Chloe's father had confessed to the crimes of killing those girls, was convicted as a serial killer, and was put in jail for the rest of his life. When a local young woman goes missing, Chloe fights her rising panic. As another girl disappears, this time one she's tenuously connected to, and when she realizes that aspects of the disappearances echo those of her childhood, the psychologist wonders if she's imagining connections to the crimes of decades earlier. Is there another killer who preys on young women, one paying homage to the twentieth anniversary of her father's heinous crimes? And what is Chloe going to do about it? Willingham made me suspect everyone, and while I'm sometimes frustrated by an unreliable-narrator setup, Chloe's swirling mind suited the story and allowed for uncertainty before the denouement. Click here for my full review of A Flicker in the Dark. 03 Nightwatch on the Hinterlands by K. Eason In Eason's science fiction mystery, an unlikely pair who get on each other's nerves work together to determine who is responsible for a puzzling murder and other strange occurrences that threaten their world. In K. Eason's science fiction mystery Nightwatch on the Hinterlands, a templar, Iari, and a spy, Gaer, have built a somewhat formal working relationship. Neither is quite sure where the other's loyalties begin and end, nor are they intimately acquainted with the other's history or personal motivations. They begin to forge a stronger bond (despite how irritating they each find the other), but there's no time to waste, because high-stakes danger is quickly building to a crisis point around them. Searching for the truth leads the unlikely duo on a search to uncover who is controlling a riev that shouldn't have been capable of killing, but did--and they're led to someone with nefarious goals that go much farther and are much more elaborately imagined than one isolated killing. I think this was because of personal timing and my reading-during-vacation distraction circumstances, but I did have ongoing trouble following the logistics and political machinations and motivations here. It didn't matter, though, because I was most invested in and engaged by the interplay of characters--particularly the grudging friendship and grumpily built but rock-solid loyalty between Iari and Gaer. And I was wholly charmed by the rievs (former battle robots) who mysteriously show sentience and surprising preferences for personal pronouns, and who are set on reinventing themselves in drastic fashion. Click here for my full review of Nightwatch on the Hinterlands. 04 State of Terror by Hillary Rodham Clinton and Louise Penny This suspenseful collaboration between Clinton and Penny kept me on the edge of my seat through heart-stopping political conflicts, betrayals, suspicions, and discoveries. A new United States administration has been sworn in after a period of upheaval and upset. The shift has made for strange bedfellows—and a prickly partnership between our main protagonist, Ellen Adams, former multinational media conglomerate head and new secretary of state, and the president, a politician Adams has long criticized. Then a hastily sent, coded message comes through to an underling in the Oval Office--and it seems linked to violent terrorist attacks that soon begin taking place around the world. Who sent the message and why, and who is responsible for the attacks? I loved how Clinton and Penny made me question the loyalty and intentions of almost everyone in State of Terror while still making me feel invested in the story, Adams's family, and the ins and outs of the various complicated political conflicts, double-crossing players, grave American dangers, and immense potential worldwide effects. For my full review of State of Terror, please click here. 05 Going There by Katie Couric Going There shines through Couric's insider peeks at the media world, playful insights about famous people and behind-the-scenes dynamics, and her vulnerability about difficult periods in her own life. I listened to Katie Couric's memoir Going There, in which she traces her media career from its modest beginnings to her present-day fame; she mentions a few dalliances with notable figures in her youth; and she explores her steady determination and how it led her through the zigzags of her life. She takes us through falling in love with her first husband Jay Molner, having their two daughters while she and Molner were frantically building their careers, and the horrible loss of Jay to advanced colorectal cancer before she and he had been married a decade. The behind-the-scenes looks at professional decisions and network dynamics were particularly interesting. I also loved the casual name-dropping of famous people in Couric's circle. I did find the personal, passing sharing of others' intimate details jarring, however (regarding lascivious moments with Larry King, Neil Simon, etc.). For my full review, check out Going There. 06 Beautiful Country by Qian Julie Wang Wang's memoir illustrates her family’s gritty determination in the face of extreme poverty and the many ups and downs of their immigrant experience in the US. In Chinese, the word for America translates as "beautiful country." But when Qian Wang and her family arrived in the United States from China, her parents were no longer respected professors, but struggling sweatshop workers, undocumented immigrants who had to remain unnoticed as they fought to earn enough to survive. Wang takes the reader through the family's extreme poverty upon their arrival in New York City, their constant, gnawing hunger, her highly educated parents' excruciating, menial jobs (in a sweatshop, sewing factory, the cold, purpled hands they suffered after rolling sushi for endless hours, and others), and how she learns to take her own initiative—and risks of drawing attention—to ensure her own educational and intellectual challenges and advancements. For more books you might enjoy, check out Six Fascinating Books about the Immigrant Experience. And for more more MORE memoirs I've loved that you might want to try, check out the Greedy Reading Lists Six Illuminating Memoirs to Dive Into, Six Illuminating Memoirs I've Read This Year, Six More Illuminating Memoirs to Lose Yourself In, Six Foodie Memoirs to Whet Your Appetite, and Six Powerful Memoirs about Facing Mortality. Or simply search "Memoir" in the Bossy search bar you can find on each page of this site. For my full review, check out Beautiful Country.

ICYMI: This fictionalized version of a first lady's personal history from the talented Curtis Sittenfeld was a five-star read for me. In American Wife, Sittenfeld takes a few facts from Laura Bush's life and the Bush family history and creates an alternate story--one that's plausibly similar in a sense to Laura Bush's own, yet wholly Sittenfeld’s creation. I was continually captivated by Sittenfeld's story. She made me feel that I deeply understood the potential circumstances of how a woman without grand ambitions might arrive in the White House as first lady, how she might continue having liberal leanings while supporting her conservative husband, how she might do so little with so much potential power, and how she might love her husband the president despite his many faults. I found this absolutely intriguing. Sittenfeld has a fascinating way of turning situations that feel familiar on their heads and illuminating unexpected aspects while making you think—and wrapping it all in a compelling novel. I loved this. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? I liked Curtis Sittenfeld's peek at prep schools in Prep, and I loved her short story collection You Think It, I'll Say It. It was a #fivestarbookreview for me. In Rodham, a book I own, which means it's languishing, unread, in my enormous to-be-read pile, Sittenfeld imagines the trail Hillary Rodham Clinton might have blazed if she'd broken up with Bill and forged ahead solo, led by her iron determination and unfailing ambition.

Going There shines through Couric's insider peeks at the media world, playful insights about famous people and behind-the-scenes dynamics, and her vulnerability about difficult periods in her own life. I listened to Katie Couric's memoir Going There, in which she traces her media career from its modest beginnings to her present-day fame; she mentions a few dalliances with notable figures in her youth; and she explores her steady determination and how it led her through the zigzags of her life. She takes us through falling in love with her first husband Jay Molner, having their two daughters while she and Molner were frantically building their careers, and the horrible loss of Jay to advanced colorectal cancer before she and he had been married a decade. Couric is candid about the emotional turmoil surrounding her grave loss--and her hope and emotions related to trying to find love again. She also shares context around pivotal career moments spanning decades, including key interviews and decisions, her work friendship with Matt Lauer, and her healthy professional competitiveness with Diane Sawyer and other women in the news. The behind-the-scenes looks at professional decisions and network dynamics were particularly interesting. I also loved the casual name-dropping of famous people in Couric's circle. I did find the personal, passing sharing of others' intimate details jarring, however (regarding lascivious moments with Larry King, Neil Simon, etc.). There is somewhat of an exploration of power and sexual abuse within some of Couric's professional environments, and she expresses her horror about the infamous revelations that came to light regarding years of Matt Lauer's horrifying behavior. This isn't the crux of Couric's memoir, and I imagine it was difficult to manage how to address this topic without being able to give it the page time and attention it deserves, but this felt awkward, maybe fittingly so. Going There shines most brightly though Couric's insider looks at important media moments, her playful insights, and the vulnerability she shares about difficult periods in her own life and moving forward after tragedy and disappointment. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? For more more more memoirs I've loved that you might want to try, check out these Greedy Reading Lists: Six Fascinating Memoirs to Explore Six More Fascinating Memoirs to Explore Six Illuminating Memoirs to Dive Into Six Illuminating Memoirs I've Read This Year Six More Illuminating Memoirs to Lose Yourself In Six Foodie Memoirs to Whet Your Appetite Six Powerful Memoirs about Facing Mortality

In Eason's science fiction mystery, an unlikely pair who get on each other's nerves work together to determine who is responsible for a puzzling murder and other strange occurrences that threaten their world. In K. Eason's science fiction mystery Nightwatch on the Hinterlands, a templar, Iari, and a spy, Gaer, have built a somewhat formal working relationship. Neither is quite sure where the other's loyalties begin and end, nor are they intimately acquainted with the other's history or personal motivations. They begin to forge a stronger bond (despite how irritating they each find the other), but there's no time to waste, because high-stakes danger is quickly building to a crisis point around them. Iari and Gaer band together to solve the mystery of a murder committed by a riev, a decommissioned battle-mecha robot from the last conflict--a murder that shouldn't have been possible, because everyone knows rievs don't kill. Yet all evidence points to the impossible, and odd evidence piles up, then vanishes--as do the witnesses and promising contacts who might have illuminated Iari and Gaer as to the local dynamics and the power dynamics of the local criminal world. Searching for the truth leads the unlikely duo on a search to uncover who is controlling the riev--and they find that it's someone with nefarious goals that go much farther and are much more elaborately imagined than one recent killing. I think this was because of personal timing and my reading-during-vacation distraction circumstances, but I did have ongoing trouble following the logistics and political machinations and motivations here. It didn't matter, though, because I was most invested in and engaged by the interplay of characters--particularly the grudging friendship and grumpily built but rock-solid loyalty between Iari and Gaer. And I was wholly charmed by the rievs (former battle robots) who mysteriously show sentience and surprising preferences for personal pronouns, and who are set on reinventing themselves in drastic fashion. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Eason is also the author of the On the Bones of Gods fantasy series. This is the first book in The Weep series. If you like books about robots, you might also like the books on the Greedy Reading List Six Great Stories about Robots, Humans and Alien Life, and AI.

The Books I'm Reading Now I'm reading Kaikeyi, the upcoming debut (to be published tomorrow!) from Vaishnavi Patel; Going There, Katie Couric's memoir about love, loss, her career, and motherhood; and Beasts of a Little Land, Juhea Kim's debut novel of interconnected story lines that begins with an unexpected encounter in 1917 Korea. What are you reading and enjoying these days, bookworms? 01 Kaikeyi by Vaishnavi Patel “I was born on the full moon under an auspicious constellation, the holiest of positions—much good it did me.” In Vaishnavi Patel's debut novel, Kaikeyi, the author reimagines the life of a fabled queen from the Indian epic Ramayana. The retelling swirls with family drama, intrigue, bravery--and a young woman determined to make her mark in a world run by men, as the only daughter of a king whose lands are ruled by the gods' powerful and ruthless punishment. I received a prepublication digital edition of this book (to be published April 26) courtesy of Redhook and NetGalley. 02 Going There by Katie Couric I'm listening to Katie Couric's memoir Going There, in which she traces the beginnings of her media career, a few young dalliances with notable figures, and her determination. She takes us through falling in love with Jay Molner, having their two daughters, and losing Jay to advanced colorectal cancer before they'd been married a decade. Couric is candid about her emotional turmoil as well as pivotal career moments spanning decades, including key interviews and decisions, her work friendship with Matt Lauer, and her healthy professional competitiveness with Diane Sawyer and others. 03 Beasts of a Little Land by Juhea Kim In a snowy forest in 1917 Korea, an unlikely moment of kindness shared by a Korean hunter toward a Japanese officer creates a connection that binds the fates of the two men forever. Meanwhile Jade, a young girl who has been sold to a courtesan, befriends JungHo, a young orphan boy in Seoul. JungHo grows older and becomes involved in the fight for independence, while Jade finds an unlikely romantic interest in a noble-born man. In Beasts of a Little Land, Juhea Kim explores friendship, enemies, trust, possibility, heroes, and beasts of all kinds. Beasts of a Little Land is Juhea Kim's debut work.

Tough women, secrets and smarts, and sneaky spying! I love a peek at a secret world and books about spies specifically. My first Greedy Reading List on this topic was Six Books about Brave Female Spies. If you like stories about brave women during wartime, you might also like the titles I listed on the recent Greedy Reading List Six Great Stories about Brave Women During World War II. 01 Miss Graham's Cold War Cookbook by Celia Rees Rees does an excellent job of taking us through Edith's amateur spy struggle and provides fascinating details of life in Germany at the end of World War II. It's 1945, and Edith Graham is a small-town British schoolteacher who is thrilled to sign on with the British Control Commission to help get schools back up and running for the children in war-torn Germany. Edith has a degree in German (and, more importantly and unbeknownst to her, an old connection to a hunted war criminal), and she's recruited by the Office of Strategic Services. She'll keep her cover by assisting with schools while actually trying to help locate Nazis. The details Rees provides of this confused time in the world are wonderful: the complicated workings of different groups' postwar efforts; the bombed--or jarringly lush and untouched--settings; the creative, sometimes alarming dietary options; and the clothes and fashion. It's clear that she thoroughly researched all of these aspects. I found the author's note about her inspiration for the book's hook and story line really interesting. For my full review, check out Miss Graham's Cold War Cookbook. 02 Our Woman in Moscow by Beatriz Williams Williams's historical fiction mystery--based on real-life double agents in the Cambridge Spy Ring--is vividly set in Europe and Russia and was a rare five-star read for me. In Beatriz Williams's historical fiction novel Our Woman in Moscow, it's 1948, and Iris Digby, her American diplomat husband Sasha, and their two children have disappeared overnight. Those who knew and worked with them are shocked. Were the Digbys abducted by Soviet agents...or did they make their way by choice behind the Iron Curtain with a suitcase of American secrets to trade? In Williams's historical fiction mystery, which skips back and forth in time, four years later, Iris's twin sister Ruth finally receives a postcard from her estranged sister. Ruth is soon on her way to Russia to try to extricate Iris from danger--but the truth about Iris's marriage and past is more complicated and fraught than Ruth could have imagined. I loved this. Every heart-stopping moment; every exquisite detail; the characters' growth, emotional distance, and unforeseen connections to each other; the trick of teasing out what was actually happening; the characterization; the machinations--all of it. For my full review of this book, please see Our Woman in Moscow. 03 A Murder by Any Name by Suzanne M. Wolfe ​Wolfe's book was a fun, quick read with wonderful Elizabethan-era detail. Many of the characters in A Murder by Any Name were lovely, faulted, and interesting, and the dialogue was great. The character of the brothel madam with a heart of gold has probably been overdone in literature. In this case, Kat wasn’t fully developed as a character so she felt more like a concept than a real person. But Wolfe's book was a fun, quick read that kept me engaged the whole way through. I also enjoyed the second book in this series, A Course of All Treasons. I looove a historical fiction mystery. If you do too, you might want to check out the titles on the Greedy Reading List Six Historical Fiction Mysteries to Intrigue You. For my full review of this title, please see A Murder by Any Name. 04 The Invisible Woman by Erika Robuck Robuck shaped the real-life figure of Virginia Hall into a courageous, idealistic, determined, and imperfect heroine I was intrigued by. The Invisible Woman is historical fiction about the real-life World War II-era spy Virginia Hall. Erika Robuck makes Hall appealingly realistic, with faults, desires, idealism, and an astounding baseline level of bravery that leads to realistically messy, sometimes tragic situations--and occasionally glorious victories. Hall, an American working for the UK, was a trainer of the French Resistance despite the physical limitations caused by her prosthetic leg (which she gained following a shooting accident). She's entrenched in enemy territory sending coded messages and drumming up supporters for the cause for longer than most agents manage to survive, so she has a persistent feeling of being on borrowed time. I found the number of typos here distracting, but I really enjoyed Robuck's writing style, the details of the time, the pacing of the book's events, and the rich cast of secondary characters she brought to life. For my full review of this book, check out The Invisible Woman. 05 The Rose Code by Kate Quinn Kate Quinn makes the urgency of World War II code breaking come alive through the stories of three young women and their interconnected destinies in The Rose Code. The Rose Code is a wonderfully spun historical fiction story of three very different women who answer the wartime call to England's top-secret Bletchley Park in order to break the military codes of the Axis powers. The book jumps between 1940, the beginning of the women's forays into their secret duties and responsibilities, and 1947, as the royal wedding of Prince Philip (the former beau of one of our Bletchley ladies) and Princess Elizabeth approaches--a period when one of the Bletchley sisterhood is tucked away in an asylum following a terrible betrayal. Quinn offers plenty of interpersonal conflict, romance, suspected double-crossing, and details of life within both timelines, and in her hands, the descriptions of code-breaking mechanisms and the detailed, complicated, elusive process of figuring out messages were captivating. For my full review of this title, please see The Rose Code. ​6 Agent Sonya: Moscow's Most Daring Wartime Spy by Ben McIntyre Ursula Burton, an unassuming mother and wife, was a legendary real-life spy who evaded capture by China, the Nazis, MI6, and the FBI. She was known by the code name Sonya.​ The nonfiction Agent Sonya: Moscow's Most Daring Wartime Spy is made up of vividly recounted behind-the-scenes peeks at real-life Cold War intrigue from the talented author Ben Macintyre. Ursula Burton lived a quiet life with her children and husband in a small English village. She spoke with a slight accent and kept largely to herself. But Ursula was actually a high-ranking Soviet intelligence officer sending and receiving secret wireless signals, managing a network of agents across Europe, and maintaining her rabidly dedicated Communist views. The unassuming-seeming mother and wife was actually a legendary spy who evaded capture by China, the Nazis, MI6, and the FBI. She was known by the code name Sonya. The book explores clashes of ideology; the challenges of a woman pursuing spy work; and general, often brutal sacrifice for the cause. Ursula's husband, portrayed as somewhat of a fool, suffers terribly in a foreign prison for his too-obvious support of the Communist cause. For my full review of this book, please see Agent Sonya. Macintyre also wrote the fantastic Spy and the Traitor, which was one of my Six Favorite Nonfiction Books of the Year last year and which I also listed on the Greedy Reading List Six Compelling Nonfiction Books that Read Like Fiction.

This suspenseful collaboration between Clinton and Penny kept me on the edge of my seat through heart-stopping political conflicts, betrayals, suspicions, and discoveries. A new United States administration has been sworn in after a period of upheaval and upset. The shift has made for strange bedfellows—and a prickly partnership between our main protagonist, Ellen Adams, former multinational media conglomerate head and new secretary of state, and the president, a politician Adams has long criticized. Then a hastily sent, coded message comes through to an underling in the Oval Office--and violent terrorist attacks soon begin taking place around the world. Who sent the message and why, and who is responsible for the attacks? In Clinton and Penny's suspenseful collaboration, the characters of the president and Adams, political enemies, must quickly learn to trust each other and work together to determine who is responsible for the destruction; how each of their pasts may be coming into play; how to protect those such as Adams's grown children, who are interlinked to information related to the events; how to prevent further violence--and they must cooperate to identify a potential high-level mole within the government. I was particularly taken with the familial angle (Secretary of State Adams's daughter has taken over her media company so is involved in the storytelling from that angle, and her son is a reporter deeply involved in the complicated political danger). I also loved how Clinton and Penny made me question the loyalty and intentions of almost everyone in State of Terror while still making me feel invested in the story and the ins and outs of the various complicated political conflicts, double-crossing players, grave American dangers, and immense potential worldwide effects. While reading, I imagined how Clinton's experiences as Secretary of State and First Lady may have informed her fictionalized peeks into the government, Oval Office, and interpersonal conflicts between governmental figures. I was also struck by the character of the dangerously ignorant former president and the detrimental effects of his administration's destructive reign. I listened to State of Terror in audiobook form (read by Joan Allen) during an impromptu and looooong road trip, and it made the miles fly by. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Louise Penny is the author of seventeen Chief Inspector Armand Gamache novels, and Hillary Rodham Clinton is the author of numerous nonfiction works and children's titles.

Kate Quinn makes the urgency of World War II code breaking come alive through the stories of three young women and their interconnected destinies in The Rose Code. The Rose Code is a wonderfully spun historical fiction story of three very different women who answer the wartime call to England's top-secret Bletchley Park in order to break the military codes of the Axis powers. The book jumps between 1940, the beginning of the women's forays into their secret duties and responsibilities, and 1947, as the royal wedding of Prince Philip (the former beau of one of our Bletchley ladies) and Princess Elizabeth approaches--a period when one of the Bletchley sisterhood is tucked away in an asylum following a terrible betrayal. I love a World War II story about strong women making a difference, but I admit that I was curious about how even a historical fiction storytelling master like Kate Quinn could craft compelling storytelling around the potential tedium at the heart of code breaking. Quinn offers plenty of interpersonal conflict, romance, suspected double-crossing, and details of life within both timelines, and in her hands, the descriptions of code-breaking mechanisms and the detailed, complicated, elusive process of figuring out messages were captivating. I listened to the audiobook version of The Rose Code, and Saskia Maarleveld was a wonderful narrator. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Kate Quinn is a must-read author for me, and I loved The Alice Network and The Huntress. She also has a new book out, The Diamond Eye. For more about Kate Quinn’s The Huntress (and five other historical fiction books I loved), check out the Greedy Reading List Six Historical Fiction Books I Loved in the Past Year. Or check out the books I listed on the Greedy Reading Lists Six Books about Brave Female Spies, Six Great Stories about Brave Women During World War II, and Six Historical Fiction Mysteries to Intrigue You.

Much of Ginder's novel is focused on a revenge fantasy, but I was drawn more to Nancy Harrison's strong personality and political aspirations and her son Nick's coming into his own, and I wished for more page time spent with each of them. Nancy Harrison is running for Senate, and she’s going to win. She’s kissed all the babies and passed all the right legislation and said all the right things. There’s just one potential problem: her grown children. When she wakes up to headlines about the kids’ antics instead of her own political promise, all hell breaks loose. The cover design and title of Let's Not Do That Again felt playful and potentially campy, but I had trouble locking into the story's tone, which wavers into extended dark, vindictive revenge fantasies--even as the reader suspects that the inspiration for the anger behind all of this is misguided. Let's Not Do That Again is largely focused on Nancy's daughter Greta's self-obsessed, revengeful, immature, naïve escapades and her willful, careless ignorance of the potentially grave, widespread consequences of her actions--and those of the dangerous, vapid, insufferable people with whom she surrounds herself. This was frustrating to dig into so extensively. Whereas Greta is an unsympathetic, aggressive, and misled character, her brother Nick is unfailingly loyal, vulnerable, smart, funny, and loving--and the Nick storyline is sweet and offers hope. I found myself wishing for more page time spent with Nancy and her political life and for more family drama in which the characters interacted directly with one another. The last quarter of Let's Not Do That Again felt like the strongest of the book for me. The tone was constant, and Ginder offers over-the-top camp with heart and complexity. The feeling in this section reminded me somewhat of of The Unsinkable Greta James, with additional depth. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Grant Ginder is also the author of The People We Hate at the Wedding. I received an advance electronic copy of this book, published April 5, courtesy of NetGalley and Henry Holt & Company.

The Books I'm Reading Now I'm reading Wingwalkers, an upcoming historical fiction novel (to be published tomorrow) by Taylor Brown about an aviator and his daring wife; I’m reading Steelstriker, the second and final book in Marie Lu's science fiction-fantasy Skyhunters duology; and I'm listening to State of Terror, Hillary Clinton and Louise Penny's collaborative story of suspense inside the White House and around the world. What are you reading and enjoying these days, bookworms? 01 Wingwalkers by Taylor Brown “They were over Georgia somewhere, another nameless hamlet whose dusty streets lay flocked and trembling with the pink handbills they’d rained from the sky that morning, the ones that announced the coming of DELLA THE DARING DEVILETTE, who would DEFY THE HEAVENS, shining like a DAYTIME STAR, a WING-WALKING WONDER borne upon the wings of CAPTAIN ZENO MARIGOLD, a DOUBLE ACE of the GREAT WAR, who had ELEVEN AERIAL VICTORIES over the TRENCHES OF FRANCE.” What is it about aviation books and my being so in love with them? In Taylor Brown's upcoming historical fiction novel Wingwalkers (to be published tomorrow), a former World War II ace pilot and his daring wingwalking wife travel Depression-era America, wowing audiences and inspiring hope in a dark, sober time. Taylor is also the author of Gods of Howl Mountain, a book I loved and gave five stars, Pride of Eden (a book still on my to-read list that looks wonderful), and Fallen Land, a title I loved and included in the Greedy Reading List Six Great Historical Fiction Stories about the Civil War. (If you’re not on the Taylor Brown train yet, may I strongly suggest you join me?) I received a prepublication digital edition of this book courtesy of St. Martin's Press and NetGalley. 02 Steelstriker by Marie Lu In Skyhunter, the first book in Marie Lu's Skyhunter series, Lu offered complex motivations, clashes between idealism and realism, editorialization about class and race, and futuristic advancements. In Steelstriker, the second and final book in the duology, the last free nation in the world has been invaded. Our brave main protagonist and rebel Talin is forced to submit to the Federation's morally questionable and physically excruciating experiments. She must become a Skyhunter. Her link to Red is thin, and she's not sure if she can ever find him again. But if the two can reunite and band together, they just might be able to gather the rest of the Strikers, and the makeshift allies could fight against the Federation, saving freedom for everyone they love and honoring everyone they've lost. Click here for my full review of Skyhunter. 03 State of Terror by Hillary Rodham Clinton and Louise Penny A new United States administration has been sworn in after a period of upheaval and upset. The shift has made for strange bedfellows—and a prickly partnership between our main protagonist, Ellen Adams, the former multinational media conglomerate head and new secretary of state, and the president, a politician Adams has long criticized. Then a hastily sent, coded message comes to an underling in the Oval Office--and violent terrorist attacks soon begin taking place around the world. In Clinton and Penny's suspenseful collaboration, the characters of the president and Adams, political enemies, must quickly learn to trust each other and work together to determine who is responsible for the destruction; how each of their pasts may be coming into play; how to protect Adams's grown children, who are interlinked to information related to the events; how to prevent further violence--and to identify a potential high-level mole within the government.

Powerful Books about the Experiences of Immigrants I could have listed many other powerful books about immigrants. But these four fiction works and two nonfiction titles have especially resonated with me since I read them, each offering glimpses into the challenges and triumphs of leaving one land and tackling another; striving to hold on to culture while navigating unfamiliar pitfalls; and the fears and joys of seeking a new life in a new place. 01 Pachinko by Min Jin Lee In the early 1900s, a teenager falls for a silver-tongued stranger on the coast of Korea. But when the relationship falters, she flees into a marriage with a sickly traveling minister and escapes to Japan, setting in motion the events that will shape the generations to come. “Noa didn’t care about being Korean when he was with her; in fact, he didn’t care about being Korean or Japanese with anyone. He wanted to be, to be just himself, whatever that meant; he wanted to forget himself sometimes.” Pachinko is a sweeping generational story of hardship, sacrifice, and fifty years of Korean-Japanese cultural conflict beginning in the early twentieth century, as seen through the experiences of one family. The many details of daily life (food, dress, tradition) in Korea and Japan made the almost-500-page story come alive for me. 02 The Girl Who Smiled Beads by Clemantine Wamariya Wow. Wamariya writes beautifully and brutally honestly about her journey of fleeing from Rwanda and through six other African countries—with her tough, hustling older sister Claire—during and after the Rwandan genocide. In The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After, Wamariya recalls her experiences through her childlike point of view, which allows for a painfully pure set of painful memories, betrayals, horrors, and sometimes a steeled numbness. Wamariya shares her views of the world, her often jarring experiences in the US—with her sister and family on weekends in inner city Chicago and her weekday life and schooling in wealthy Kenilworth, then Hotchkiss and Yale and beyond—and her search to help other refugees’ stories be known and for her own peace. The author's tone and voice is like poetry at times, raw and spare and true. 03 In the Country We Love: My Family Divided by Diane Guerrero ​ The heart of Diane Guerrero's story is powerful: a hardworking family is preyed upon by criminals' financially ruinous scams against undocumented workers; the family members experience years of constant fears of deportation; and then they must face the shocking potential reality of deportation itself. Guerrero's interest in drama and her later fame ultimately help buoy her up despite her personal agony and family heartbreak, and she ultimately becomes an activist for immigration reform. Meanwhile, Guerrero is young and often sounds like it as she flits from topic to topic in her account of her life and especially her experiences as an actress in Orange Is the New Black. The details of her immigrant family's challenges, struggles, and strength were the elements I found most affecting about In the Country We Love. 04 The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing by Mira Jacob When practical surgeon Thomas begins speaking aloud and at length to his long-dead Indian relatives, his daughter Amina is called home to try to soothe him and help her mother figure out what's going on. In The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing, Jacob alternates between the past and present, India and Seattle, shaping the stories of each of the family members Thomas is conversing with and ultimately telling the story of an extended family and its many ups and downs. The title may be a little self-conscious, but the book itself is darkly funny, with wonderfully paced dialogue and compelling characters' lives you can get lost in. Jacob writes beautiful meditations on allowing oneself to either be haunted by the past or embrace its everyday presence in your life; accepting fateful choices and their ongoing impact; carving out an identity that both encompasses and is separate from a family's immigration, ethnicity, and familial ties; and letting go. 05 Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions by Valeria Luiselli ​ “Because—how do you explain that it is never inspiration that drives you to tell a story, but rather a combination of anger and clarity? How do you say: No, we do not find inspiration here, but we find a country that is as beautiful as it is broken, and we are somehow now part of it, so we are also broken with it, and feel ashamed, confused, and sometimes hopeless, and are trying to figure out how to do something about all that." This is a long essay (but a short book) illustrating the complex behind-the-scenes challenges and tragedies surrounding the child migration crisis in the US. Luiselli structures Tell Me How It Ends around the forty questions interpreters ask of undocumented children during their intake interviews upon arrival in the country. She explores the contradictions between potential safety and a future for immigrants and a reality that is more brutal and uncertain than the children and their parents may have feared. ​6 A Woman Is No Man by Etaf Rum ​ In A Woman Is No Man, Etaf Rum explores the often powerless and essentially voiceless statuses of her female characters within their conservative Arab culture, both in Palestine and as immigrants and first-generation Americans in New York. Much of this is dark. Yet there are bright points: some rare friendships emerge, sisters build intense loyalty to each other, girls and women find joy in secret reading and in books, women find strength and demand truth rather than secrecy, and there are occasional breaks to freedom. The details Rum provides as a thread throughout the book of the food, spices, and meals that create much of the structure of the women’s days are wonderful. A Woman Is No Man ultimately explores the superhuman drive and bravery required by Rum's female characters--but also many other real-life women in comparable situations--to write a new history, one in which they enjoy basic freedoms and a voice. For my full review of this book, please see A Woman Is No Man.

Wang's memoir illustrates her family’s gritty determination in the face of extreme poverty and the many ups and downs of their immigrant experience in the US. “I find that where in English I am logical, distant, hardened, in Chinese I am excitable, warm, still tender.” In Chinese, the word for America translates as "beautiful country." But when Qian Wang and her family arrive in the United States from China, her parents are no longer respected professors, but struggling sweatshop workers, as they are illegal immigrants who must remain unnoticed as they fight to earn enough to survive. In her memoir Beautiful Country, Wang shares the few small joys she discovered as a little girl in New York City--including seeing the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree lit up, her first bite of pizza, and the dizzying sights and sounds of the city. But stress and the constant fear of illness and tragedy—any misfortune that would draw attention to the family and decimate their meager earnings—make for a high-anxiety household. Her parents toil in physically brutal jobs for little pay, and the family works doggedly to get by. Young Qian escapes into books in her new language. Through it all, Qian is told over and over: Whatever happens, say that you were born here, that you've always lived here. When her mother faces a health crisis, as they’ve long feared one of them might, the family's security and future could be gravely shaken. Wang takes the reader through the family's extreme poverty upon their arrival in New York City, their constant, gnawing hunger, her highly educated parents' excruciating, menial jobs (in a sweatshop, sewing factory, with cold, purpled hands rolling sushi for endless hours, and others), and how she learns to take her own initiative—and risks of drawing attention—to ensure educational and intellectual challenges and advancements. The author is focused on her childhood, and only five pages or so at the end of the book offer reflection and context from an adult perspective. I would have loved more of that older point of view. Wang notes that when her family flees to Canada, their employment and financial prospects as well as their immigration status change dramatically for the better. I found myself wanting further thoughts from Wang about factors that made her own family’s existence as new immigrants in the US so terrifyingly tenuous and measures that could potentially shift this situation for others. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? This was my book club's most recent read. Tomorrow I’ll post Six Fascinating Books about the Immigrant Experience. For more more MORE memoirs I've loved that you might want to try, check out the Greedy Reading Lists Six Illuminating Memoirs to Dive Into, Six Illuminating Memoirs I've Read This Year, Six More Illuminating Memoirs to Lose Yourself In, Six Foodie Memoirs to Whet Your Appetite, and Six Powerful Memoirs about Facing Mortality. Or simply search "Memoir" in the Bossy search bar on each page of this site.

ICYMI: I loved Taylor's exploration of various faiths, striving for open-mindedness, respecting differences, and finding captivating new avenues for her faith in this five-star read. In Holy Envy, Barbara Brown Taylor, an Episcopal priest who left a position as a church pastor, shares her experiences and surprises while teaching a course on the religions of the world at a small Southern college. Holy Envy is a thought-provoking, accessible look at world religions and at the bridges that can be built between people of various faiths by considering traditions and beliefs that overlap as well as those that are wholly individual. Taylor examines differences in faiths as well as where varied faiths intersect, and by seeing these religions through the eyes of her students--many of whom are venturing into knowledge of world religions for the first time--Taylor shares how she learned more than she could have imagined. I found her lengthy exploration of the concept of and circumstances of “the stranger”--and how it can shed invaluable new light on a life and established beliefs--especially interesting. Taylor is smart and thoughtful, delicate yet straightforward, and I was taken with her vulnerability and honesty as she revealed how the lessons she learned related to and reflected upon her own experiences. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Barbara Brown Taylor is also the author of An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith, Learning to Walk in the Dark, Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith, and other books. I love her thoughtful writing and introspection.

ICYMI: Taylor Brown's five-star, 1950s North Carolina-set novel offers mountain clans, whiskey runners, folk healers, family conflict, and dark, brooding woodland settings. I loved it. Rory Docherty has returned to rural North Carolina with a wooden leg and haunting memories of his time fighting in the Korean War. He's running whiskey to juke joints, brothels, and other seedy spots in his 1940 Ford, driving fast, avoiding federal agents, and living with his grandmother, a healer with strong opinions about Rory's love interest, a snake-handling preacher's daughter in the mill town nearby. Family secrets and conflicts come to a head as The Gods of Howl Mountain reaches a dark, brooding, beautiful crescendo. Brown’s descriptions are intensely arresting. He delves deeply and deftly, cutting to the quick and avoiding what in less skilled hands could have been caricatures of North Carolina mountain folk. I loved every bit of this story. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Taylor is also the author of Pride of Eden (a book I own that is still on my to-read list), Fallen Land, a title I loved and included in the Greedy Reading List Six Great Historical Fiction Stories about the Civil War, and the upcoming (to be published next week) historical fiction novel Wingwalkers. Stay tuned for that review, coming soon!

The Books I'm Reading Now I'm reading Anatomy: A Love Story, a gothic young adult historical fiction mystery by Dana Schwartz set in 1817 Edinburgh; Unlikely Animals, Annie Hartnett's upcoming tragicomedy that touches on saying goodbye and finding new hope; and Nightwatch on the Hinterlands, the first science fiction mystery in a series by K. Eason. What are you reading and enjoying these days, bookworms? 01 Anatomy: A Love Story by Dana Schwartz In Anatomy: A Love Story, Dana Schwartz's young adult gothic mystery, it's 1817 in Edinburgh, and Hazel Sinnett is a young woman desperate to become something women in her time do not: a surgeon. Jack Currer is a resurrection man, obtaining bodies for medical study in order to get by. Hazel has made a deal with Dr. Beecham: if she can pass the medical examinations on her own, she can become a surgeon. But when she's kicked out of his lectures because she's a woman, she realizes a chance encounter with Jack could help her tremendously with her studies--and be essential to securing her future career. But when the two of them team up, they'll discover long-buried (see what I did there?) secrets that go far beyond the medical community and pierce at the heart of Edinburgh society. 02 Unlikely Animals by Annie Hartnett Emma Starling is a natural healer and a med-school dropout. She returns to small-town New Hampshire to care for her father Clive, who is dying. He's also vividly hallucinating small animals and a long-dead naturalist, Ernest Harold Baynes, who is advising Clive about how to spend his final days. Then Emma discovers that her best friend from high school is missing. The local authorities aren't particularly inclined to search for opioid drug addicts like her--in fact, no one seems to believe the young woman is still alive, besides Emma and her dad. In Hartnett's tragicomedy Unlikely Animals, the author explores friendship and family loyalty, mistakes and imperfections, and the hope that resolution and hope are always possible. Annie Hartnett is also the author of Rabbit Cake. I received a prepublication digital copy of this book (to be published tomorrow, April 12) courtesy of Random House Publishing Group: Ballantine Books and NetGalley. 03 Nightwatch on the Hinterlands (The Weep #1) by K. Eason In K. Eason's science fiction mystery, a templar, Iari, and a spy, Gaer, band together to solve the mystery of a murder committed by a riev, a decommissioned battle-mecha robot from the last conflict--a murder that shouldn't have been possible, because rievs don't kill. Yet all evidence points to the impossible. Searching for the truth leads the unlikely duo to uncover who is controlling the riev--and it's someone with nefarious goals that go much farther and are much more elaborately imagined than the recent killing. Eason is also the author of the On the Bones of Gods fantasy series. This is the first book in The Weep series.

Solid Mystery and Suspense Reads These six four-star mysteries are all so good and so different--they were my favorites of the year a couple of years ago, and they're so solid that I thought I'd repost again. I hope you'll check them out if you're in the market for suspense! I'd love to hear about your favorite mystery reads! 01 The Witch Elm by Tana French A Tana French mystery is usually a pretty good bet for me, and I plowed through The Witch Elm to find out what was happening under French's layers of story. In The Witch Elm, French dips her toe into exploring how privilege, luck, (sometimes blind) loyalty—and, in several instances, a shocking absence of guilt and potentially skewed sense of justice—shape lives and carry events. In case her books aren't already on your radar, French is the author of six Dublin Murder Squad books (In the Woods, The Likeness--this is my favorite of hers, Faithful Place, Broken Harbor, The Secret Place, and The Trespasser). She has also written another stand-alone book in addition to this one, her newest book, The Searcher. For my full review of this book, see The Witch Elm. 02 The Lost Man by Jane Harper ​ Nathan and Bub come together to grieve the loss of their brother Cam. Cam had been bothered by something before dying unexpectedly in the Australian outback desert, but was his death suicide--or did someone kill him? Nathan is no detective, but he owes it to Cam not to give up until he figures it out. Harper skillfully builds the pool of potential culprits for Nathan to examine in this story of uncovering truths, family history, loyalty, stubbornness, and love. Harper's books read like Westerns to me, and her sometimes spare tone suits the setting, the situations in which she places her characters, and the characters themselves. Things aren’t what they seem in The Lost Man, but Harper isn’t manipulative or tricky, either. I thought this was great. Harper has also written two books in her Aaron Falk series so far, The Dry and Force of Nature. 03 Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips ​ Julia Phillips's interconnected stories follow in chapters that take place each month for a year after the disappearance of two girls on the edge of Russia. The rural Siberian settings are exquisitely wrought, with stark, rugged, lush landscapes serving as the backdrop for a mystery that shakes a small community. The story is as much about the varied cast of characters, the closed-off community, and the vivid sense of place Phillips imagines as it is about the mystery itself. It isn't a police procedural; this is a starkly beautiful book that happens to be a mystery. Disappearing Earth is Phillips's first book, and she builds the story's pace steadily toward a crescendo. The ending doesn't necessarily provide all the answers, but Phillips provides enough pieces of the puzzle to create closure. 04 The Last Child by John Hart I loved John Hart's brusque, determined Clyde Hunt, the scrappy and unstoppable young Johnny Merrimon, the sinister underbelly of their rural North Carolina town, and basically everything about this intricate literary mystery-thriller. Hart knows how to masterfully build a story around unforgettable characters with layers they reluctantly reveal. I didn't expect the resolution Hart allows to unfold at the end. But I was in for whatever he was dishing up, and I was fascinated all along the way. Hart has written many other books, including The Hush, which is the second in the Johnny Merrimon series, and Redemption Road (see my notes about that book at the end of this Greedy Reading List, below). For my full review of this book, see The Last Child. 05 City of Windows (Lucas Page #1) by Robert Pobi ​ This was a really compelling mystery/thriller—with a smart underlying commentary about gun ownership, violence, and the factors complicating these issues, including societal malaise, ignorance often overpowering facts, and longstanding patterns of power and fear. I loved the balance of clues and revelations Pobi lays out; they didn’t make me feel manipulated or red-herringed to death. Lucas Page is a fantastic character (as are Whitaker, Kehoe, Erin, and Dingo). The elaborate climactic scene was creatively gruesome—and I felt realistic disgust as a result. I haven't yet read the second in this Lucas Page series, Under Pressure--and I didn't even realize this was a series until after the fact, it stands so well on its own. For my full review of this book, see City of Windows. 06 Bull Mountain by Brian Panowich ​ Clayton Burroughs is sheriff of a small town in North Georgia. But the rest of his family is a well-known, entrenched, powerful bunch of moonshiners (they operate in even darker avenues too) on and around Bull Mountain. Clayton's law enforcement career and the rest of the Burroughses' relentless lawbreaking make for difficult family dynamics and some impossible professional dilemmas. Panowich offers a story about a complicated family and sense of duty, with ruthless mountain gangsters, twists and turns, dark elements, interconnected stories, and quite an ending. I thought it was great. Panowich also wrote Like Lions and Hard Cash Valley, the next two books in this series.

Willingham's debut thriller offers an unreliable narrator haunted by her father's decades-old serial killing--and her horrifying suspicion that recent disappearances are somehow connected to her past. The summer Chloe Davis was twelve, six girls went missing in her rural Louisiana community. By the end of that summer, Chloe's father had confessed to the crimes of killing those girls, was convicted as a serial killer, and was put in jail for the rest of his life. Twenty years later, Chloe struggles, but she has more good days than bad. She's a Baton Rouge psychologist who's preparing for her wedding, and she can mostly keep the terrors and trauma of the past at bay. She doesn't really let anyone in emotionally, including her fiancé, but she's doing her best. When a local young woman goes missing, Chloe fights her rising panic. As another girl disappears, this time one she's tenuously connected to, and when she realizes that aspects of the disappearances echo those of her childhood, the psychologist wonders if she's imagining connections to the crimes of decades earlier. Is there another killer who preys on young women, one paying homage to the twentieth anniversary of her father's heinous crimes? And what is Chloe going to do about it? When a reporter arrives in town, digging into Chloe's past and the recent disappearances, he sparks disturbing old memories and exacerbates the lurking fears and trauma that erupt for Chloe without warning. She spirals into an unreliable-narrator routine of pills and wine, not quite sure what she's seen or what to make of it, staggering through her days, unsure whether it's day or night and less sure than ever of who she can trust. Willingham made me suspect everyone, and while I'm sometimes frustrated by an unreliable-narrator setup, Chloe's swirling mind suited the story and allowed for uncertainty before the denouement. I didn't completely buy into Chloe as a psychologist (although the career suited the plot), and I found some minor plot points tough to believe (going through with the alarm installation in such a fraught situation--!), but I liked how Willingham allowed for resolutions without glossing over the irrevocable effects of the deep doubts and trauma on the relationships in the story. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? A Flicker in the Dark is Stacy Willingham's first book. The story has been optioned by actress Emma Stone to be produced as a limited television series.

Easygoing Rogen's book of essays and memories touches on his start as a boy doing standup in bars, his drug habits, and funny and awkward encounters with famous people. “Never quit, but sometimes do quit, ’cause you simply might not be that good at some shit.” I recently mentioned my memoir love (again) and how I've been drawn to memoirs by funny people lately (as with Kal Penn's You Can't Be Serious). If you're familiar with actor Seth Rogen (Freaks and Geeks, Knocked Up, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and Steve Jobs; and he was also one of the writers of Superbad and Pineapple Express) and his humor, you won't be surprised by the breadth and depth of drug-related and porn-related stories he includes in Yearbook. But in this slim book (I listened to it as an audiobook), Rogen also digs into his beginnings as a young man doing standup and finding inspiration in his grandparents' antics; his pivotal Jewish summer camp experiences; and various awkward Hollywood encounters with famous people like Kanye West. This is a collection of essays and recollections that comes from Rogen's heart, and Yearbook feels like a relaxed, shooting-the-breeze encounter with the easygoing, oddball actor. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? For more more MORE memoirs I've loved that you might want to try, check out the Greedy Reading Lists Six Illuminating Memoirs to Dive Into, Six Illuminating Memoirs I've Read This Year, Six More Illuminating Memoirs to Lose Yourself In, Six Foodie Memoirs to Whet Your Appetite, and Six Powerful Memoirs about Facing Mortality. Or simply search "Memoir" in the Bossy search bar on each page of this site.

Scottoline's suspenseful mystery offers surprising depth in exploring grief while the main protagonist takes justice into his own hands to bring peace to his family. In Lisa Scottoline's recent suspenseful mystery What Happened to the Bennetts, Jason Bennett is a suburban dad whose life takes a horrific turn when his car is hijacked–and his family with it. The FBI tells Jason he’s stumbled into the crosshairs of a drug-trafficking organization. Agents advise the family to enter witness protection immediately in order to save their lives. But Jason can't shake the fact that they've done nothing wrong, and the witness protection program is for criminals who have turned on those around them--not for law-abiding citizens who stumble into a sinister situation. Jason is tempted to take justice into his own hands, abandon the FBI's deals, and give up a path to safety in order to find out the truth once and for all. But his mission to uncover who is responsible for his family's trauma will reveal secrets he never would have imagined, and he may make discoveries that place uncomfortable responsibility for the recent disturbing, violent events at the feet of everyone he's trusted. I'm up for a renegade story and a good-over-evil, noble quest. But What Happened to the Bennetts is more than a suspense story. Scottoline offers surprising depth, particularly while exploring the bone-shaking grief that lies at the root of this story. Her treatment of this delicate issue within a solid, suspenseful mystery cemented my interest in reading more of her books. The mystery within What Happened to the Bennetts is twisty without being manipulative, and the denouement felt satisfyingly layered and complex. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Scottoline is the author of Eternal and 31 other mysteries. I received a prepublication digital galley of this book courtesy of NetGalley and Penguin Group Putnam.

The Books I'm Reading Now I'm reading Let’s Not Do That Again, Grant Ginder’s upcoming (to be published tomorrow) bitingly funny novel about politics and family; I'm listening to Seth Rogen’s funny, silly memoir Yearbook; and I'm listening to the always-excellent Kate Quinn’s The Rose Code, historical fiction about the women who broke codes at Bletchley Park during World War II. What are you reading and enjoying these days, bookworms? 01 Let's Not Do That Again by Grant Ginder Nancy Harrison is running for Senate, and she’s going to win. She’s kissed all the babies and passed all the right legislation and said all the right things. There’s just one potential problem: her grown children. When she wakes up to headlines about the kids’ antics instead of her own political promise, all hell breaks loose. Let's Not Do That Again is a combination of biting humor, family drama, and playful, oddball joy. Grant Ginder is also the author of The People We Hate at the Wedding. I received an advance electronic copy of this book, scheduled for publication tomorrow (April 5), courtesy of NetGalley and Henry Holt & Company. 02 Yearbook by Seth Rogen Last week I mentioned my memoir love (again) and how I've recently been drawn to memoirs by funny people (as with Kal Penn's You Can't Be Serious). If you're familiar with actor Seth Rogen (Freaks and Geeks, Knocked Up, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and Steve Jobs; he was also one of the writers of Superbad and Pineapple Express), you won't be surprised by the breadth and depth of drug-related stories he includes in Yearbook. But in this slim book (I'm listening to it as an audiobook), Rogen also digs into his beginnings as a young man doing standup and finding inspiration in his grandparents' antics; his pivotal Jewish summer camp experiences; and various awkward Hollywood encounters with famous people. 03 The Rose Code by Kate Quinn Kate Quinn is a must-read author for me, and considering my love of The Alice Network and The Huntress (she also has a new book out as of last week, The Diamond Eye), I'm not sure why I'm only now getting down to reading The Rose Code. The Rose Code is a wonderfully spun story of three very different women who answer the wartime call to England's top-secret Bletchley Park in order to break the military codes of the Axis powers. The book jumps between 1940, the beginning of the women's forays into their secret duties and responsibilities, and 1947, as the royal wedding of Prince Philip (the former beau of one of our Bletchley ladies) and Princess Elizabeth approaches--and a period when one of the Bletchley sisterhood is tucked away in an asylum following a terrible betrayal. For more about Kate Quinn’s The Huntress (and five other historical fiction books I loved), check out the Greedy Reading List Six Historical Fiction Books I Loved in the Past Year.

My very favorite books from March! Here are my six favorite reads of the past month, in no particular order. If you read any of these, I'd love to hear what you think! Our Woman in Moscow, Beatriz Williams's historical fiction mystery, based on real-life double agents in the Cambridge Spy Ring (spoiler: this was my favorite read of the month); How High We Go in the Dark, Sequoia Nagamatsu's fascinating, disturbing, strange exploration of a post-plague world, coping with death, and how to live in the face of constant loss; You Can't Be Serious, actor Kal Penn's memoir, which explores life in Hollywood as a minority as well as his passion for and involvement in politics at the White House and beyond; Tess of the Road by Rachel Hartman, the first in a series of girl-power adventures with depth and the exploration of duty and identity--and dragons; The Final Revival of Opal & Nev, Dawnie Walton's fictionalized history of a 1960s music duo that is both broken up by and bound together by tragedy; Quantum Girl Theory, Erin Kate Ryan's historical fiction-mystery-speculative fiction work about missing girls and the exploration of the futures that might have been. I'd love to hear: what are some of your recent favorite reads? 01 Our Woman in Moscow by Beatriz Williams This was my favorite read of the month! Williams's historical fiction mystery--based on real-life double agents in the Cambridge Spy Ring--is vividly set in Europe and Russia and was a rare five-star read for me. In Beatriz Williams's historical fiction, Our Woman in Moscow, it's 1948, and Iris Digby, her American diplomat husband Sasha, and their two children have disappeared overnight. Those who knew and worked with them are shocked. Were the Digbys abducted by Soviet agents...or did they make their way by choice behind the Iron Curtain with a suitcase of American secrets to trade? I loved this. Every heart-stopping moment; every exquisite detail; the characters' growth, emotional distance, and unforeseen connections to each other; the trick of teasing out what was actually happening; the characterization; the machinations--all of it. I loved Williams's immersive story so much, I was in for all of Our Woman in Moscow's elements: Russia, family, spies, crossing/double-crossing, finding common ground, bravery, and illogical and irresistible love. For my full review, check out Our Woman in Moscow. 02 How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu Nagamatsu's science fiction centers around a resurgence of an ancient Arctic plague. These interconnected stories are odd, fascinating, and sometimes panic-inducing, yet they offer glimmers of hope. I was intrigued by all of it. It's 2030, and an archaeologist in the Arctic Circle discovers a body perfectly preserved in the permafrost. His personal situation is complicated by his grief for his recently deceased daughter, and he aims to continue the research work she began. But the young woman he has found may have died of an ancient virus, and thawing the body for study could unleash the long-eradicated illness all over again. The stories that make up How High We Go in the Dark are steeped in death and in coming to terms with mortality while fighting for answers. Yet deep connections are forged--in life-or-death moments throughout the book, as well as within the collective goal of saving humanity--and in some cases these bonds feel deeper than marriages or long-held relationships. As the virus passes like a whirlwind through societies and nations around the globe, Nagamatsu's How High We Go in the Dark highlights interpersonal connections spanning centuries--and extending as far as the stars. Click here for my full review of How High We Go in the Dark. 03 You Can't Be Serious by Kal Penn Penn's thoughtful memoir explores serious issues yet also made me laugh out loud. You Can't Be Serious is both thoughtful and playful, and I loved the audiobook. Kal Penn's smart, fun You Can't Be Serious explores his early struggles to make it in Hollywood as he straddles humorous roles and dramatic opportunities; attempts to deflect racism from casting heads and writers; and digs in to try to be one of what he hopes will be an ever-increasing number of diverse faces on television and movie screens. He takes the reader through his discovery of his passion for acting, his immigrant parents' early, practical resistance (they urge him, "at least get a real estate license"), the various early road bumps he encountered, and his dogged determination--which was admittedly shaken after landing very few and consistently stereotypical roles. Penn pulls his memoir into another gear when he adds the fascinating layer of accidental political activism that becomes a passion and, ultimately, a career, one for which he takes a sabbatical from his steady acting job at the time, his role on House. I laughed out loud multiple times; Kal is funny without trying too hard, and his tone is accessible even as he takes the reader deep into worlds most won't have experience with, Hollywood and the White House. Click here for my full review of You Can't Be Serious. 04 Tess of the Road by Rachel Hartman Rachel Hartman's young adult story follows irresistible, hardheaded, wonderfully faulted Tess as she breaks from rigid medieval gender roles in favor of adventure and discovery. It's captivating, sometimes weighty, often playful, and never silly. In Hartman's Tess of the Road, Tess doesn't fit the mold of an obedient, quiet young woman in her medieval kingdom of Goredd. Without airing out all of the family's dirty laundry, let's just say that this time Tess has really taken things too far for fine society, and she's not a young lady who can be subdued. So Tess's family decides to send her to a nunnery. But Tess has other plans. On the day she's scheduled to report for the beginning of her cloistered life, she cuts her hair, pulls on walking boots, and runs away, determined to craft a life for herself outside of the narrow parameters set upon her. Tess's long-held ability to get into trouble leads her on an adventure of a lifetime. Tess of the Road zigzags in an appealing way through phases of Tess's young explorations. The tale is full of captivating discoveries of all kinds while it also addresses deep issues about gender, power, and possibility. It digs into avenues for female empowerment within the frustrating constraints of the time, laying out some hopeful, plausible baby steps toward progress. I'm excited to read the sequel. For my full review of Tess of the Road, please click here. 05 The Final Revival of Opal & Nev by Dawnie Walton The Final Revival of Opal & Nev is a fictional account of an interracial music duo's rise to success (and their famous split), a story in which race and gender issues loomed larger for me than the musical framework. In Dawnie Walton's novel, music journalist S. Sunny Shelton shapes an oral history of two music idols, tracing their family lives, youthful experiences, how they met each other, and their creative expression. Opal's taking a stand for her beliefs (and a concurrent, horrific tragedy) ended their music partnership in dramatic fashion. Music lovers' passion for Opal and Nev grew into a cult following for the duo and their music Decades later, as Opal considers reconciling with Nev for a set of reunion performances, truths from the past come to light and threaten to upend any hope of getting the two musical talents back together. Reporter Sunny's connection to the two performers and their past was intriguing, and I very much enjoyed watching events unfold as this connection became more important to the story. For my full review, check out The Final Revival of Opal & Nev. 06 Quantum Girl Theory by Erin Kate Ryan In Erin Kate Ryan's historical fiction mystery, she uses a fascinating story structure to explore different potential paths for interlinked young women in the Jim Crow South. Mary Garrett focuses on finding missing girls, and she keeps her own past, her secrets, and her emotions about all of it penned up tightly. When she arrives in the Jim Crow South to investigate a girl who has disappeared, she finds that two Black girls have gone missing as well, but local law enforcement didn't put resources into finding them. As Mary's search for all three girls intensifies, we find that Mary herself was a "missing girl," Paula Jean Welden, who vanished one night in 1946. Ryan explores various alternate histories and life tracks for Paula Jean while "Mary" digs more deeply into the circumstances surrounding the modern-day disappearances of the Southern girls. I was hooked on this book and fascinated by what felt like multiple genres in one story, with unexpectedly deep dives into Quantum Girl Theory's various characters. Mary was a captivating main protagonist--alternately desperate and hopeful, but always dogged in her search, even as it threatened to destroy her. For my full review, check out Quantum Girl Theory.

Penn's thoughtful memoir explores serious issues yet also made me laugh out loud. You Can't Be Serious is both thoughtful and playful, and I loved the audiobook. I'm generally in for memoirs, and lately I've been drawn to memoirs by funny people. Kal Penn's smart, fun You Can't Be Serious explores his early struggles to make it in Hollywood as he straddles humorous roles and dramatic opportunities; attempts to deflect racism from casting heads and writers; and digs in to try to be one of what he hopes will be an ever-increasing number of diverse faces on television and movie screens. He takes the reader through his discovery of his passion for acting, his immigrant parents' practical initial resistance (they urge him, "at least get a real estate license"), the various early road bumps he encountered, and his dogged determination--which was admittedly shaken after landing very few roles, and consistently stereotypical ones at that. He grew weary of the casting question "Can you do an accent?" and grilling about where he was "from," and he wondered if this acting thing would ever work out. Meeting like-minded creative types interested in both funny writing and reflecting diversity led to opportunities that ultimately changed his career and cemented his acting commitment. But he continued to want to spend a big part of his life in service to others, and he tried to reconcile his two seemingly conflicting paths, wondering if they can ever work together. Penn pulls his memoir into another gear when he adds the fascinating layer of his accidental political activism that became a passion and, ultimately, a career, one for which he took a sabbatical from his steady acting job at the time, his role on House. I laughed out loud multiple times; Penn is funny without trying too hard, and his tone is accessible even as he takes the reader deep into worlds most won't have experience with, Hollywood and the White House. I listened to Penn read You Can't Be Serious as an audiobook. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? For more more MORE memoirs I've loved that you might want to try, check out the Greedy Reading Lists Six Illuminating Memoirs to Dive Into, Six Illuminating Memoirs I've Read This Year, Six More Illuminating Memoirs to Lose Yourself In, Six Foodie Memoirs to Whet Your Appetite, and Six Powerful Memoirs about Facing Mortality. Or simply search "Memoir" in the Bossy search bar on each page of this site.

The Oceanography of the Moon reads like a romance, with superlative moments, emotional encounters with art and music, and clean resolutions to the story's various complications. Riley lives on her cousins’ Wisconsin farm, where she’s grown up since the death of her mother. She cares for her captivating young cousin, finds peace in the natural world around her, and retreats within herself. Ten years after her arrival, Riley is twenty-one and has begun to chafe at the small scope of her life. She's sheltered, and she hasn't seen much of the world but is beginning to want to. When handsome, bestselling author Vaughn Orr stumbles into her family’s remote world, Riley senses that he’s hiding something–a desire to escape that she understands all too well. Vaughn and Riley feel connected, but they're each burdened by secrets and pain. Can they learn to trust each other and face the past in order to move forward? The tone and feeling of The Oceanography of the Moon took me by surprise, especially in comparison to Vanderah's first book, Where the Forest Meets the Stars, which felt more complex. This book felt somewhat like a romance, as characters swoon, repeatedly cry over art and music, feel dramatic angst when they are fake-unable to be together, experience multiple perfectly romantic moments, and make love in superlative locations. They speak about and believe in "magic" connected to the dismantled, carefully arranged elements of clocks by an independent young character, while the real magic seems to be the fact that they are impressively able to overcome the weighty lies and horrors that underlie the beginning of their relationship. Generally I felt more told than shown throughout the book. As I was reading I felt confident that everything here would be cleanly resolved, and that was the case, including the characters' coping with significant traumas. The clean ending also applied to a suspense element that was deeply related to the characters' origin stories, is introduced late in the book, and is wrapped up in surprisingly short order. I found it difficult to feel engaged by the characters or the story, and the darker elements here felt glossed-over. I'm in for a satisfying ending, but the wrap-up of the various complex, upsetting complications this story is built upon felt too unbelievably and perfectly achieved, and this felt unsettling to me. I very much enjoyed the matter-of-fact acceptance of Kiran and his interests, his expression of his identity, and his explorations within the book. I received a prepublication digital galley of this book (published March 22) courtesy of NetGalley and Lake Union Publishing. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Vanderah is also the author of Where the Forest Meets the Stars, a book I loved, and The Light Through the Leaves, which I haven't yet read.

In Erin Kate Ryan's historical fiction mystery, she uses a fascinating story structure to explore different potential paths for interlinked young women in the Jim Crow South. In Erin Kate Ryan's recently published historical fiction mystery Quantum Girl Theory, Mary Garrett focuses on finding missing girls, and she keeps her own past, her secrets, and her emotions about all of it penned up tightly. When she arrives in the Jim Crow South to investigate a girl who has disappeared, she finds that two Black girls went missing as well, but local law enforcement hasn't put resources into finding them. As Mary's search for all three girls intensifies, we find that Mary herself was a "missing girl," Paula Jean Welden, who vanished one night in 1946. Ryan explores various alternate histories and life tracks for Paula Jean while "Mary" digs more deeply into the circumstances surrounding the modern-day disappearances of the Southern girls. The title and cover made me think "science fiction," but Quantum Girl Theory is rooted in historical fiction and offers a solid, twisty mystery as it moves through various fascinating potential realities that might have been. I wondered if the structure--which explores multiple girls' various possible lives and situations--would make this story feel disjointed, or if I'd be able to connect to the characters. With the multiple girls at hand, I had to flip back a few times to make sure Ryan was writing about the character I thought she was writing about, but that definitely could have been a personal problem related to reading while tired. Regardless, I was hooked on this book and fascinated by what felt like multiple genres in one story, with unexpectedly deep dives into Quantum Girl Theory's various characters. Mary was a captivating main protagonist--alternately desperate and hopeful, but always dogged in her search, even as it threatened to destroy her. I received a prepublication digital galley of this book courtesy of NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Now I'm dying to talk about this book with someone who's read it. Did what I think happened really happen? Someone read this so we can discuss it, please!

The Books I'm Reading Now I'm reading A Flicker in the Dark, Stacy Willingham's recent mystery about the disappearances of young women and seeking justice; I'm listening to Kal Penn's memoir You Can't Be Serious, which takes on his acting journey as well as his political career; and I'm reading my first book from John Lescroart, the upcoming (to be published tomorrow!) legal thriller The Missing Piece. What are you reading and enjoying these days, bookworms? 01 A Flicker in the Dark by Stacy Willingham The summer Chloe Davis was twelve, six girls went missing in her rural Louisiana community. By the end of that summer, Chloe's father had confessed to the crimes of killing those girls, convicted as a serial killer, and put in jail for the rest of his life. Twenty years later, Chloe has more good days than bad. She's a Baton Rouge psychologist who's preparing for her wedding, and she can mostly keep the terrors and trauma of the past at bay. But when a local girl goes missing, Chloe panics. As another girl disappears, the psychologist wonders if she's imagining connections to the crimes of decades earlier--or if she's about to help identify another killer who preys on young women. This thriller has been optioned by actress Emma Stone to be produced as a limited television series. 02 You Can't Be Serious by Kal Penn I'm in for memoirs, and lately I've been drawn to memoirs by funny people in particular. Kal Penn's smart, fun You Can't Be Serious explores his early struggles to make it in Hollywood as he straddles humorous roles and dramatic opportunities; attempts to deflect casting and writers' racism; and digs in to try to be one of what he hopes will be the ever-increasing number of diverse faces on television and movie screens. But Penn pulls his memoir into another gear when he adds the fascinating layer of accidental political activism that becomes a passion and, ultimately, a career, one for which he takes a sabbatical from his steady acting job, his hard-fought role on House. I'm listening to Penn read You Can't Be Serious as an audiobook. 03 The Missing Piece by John Lescroart John Lescroart's upcoming (to be published tomorrow!) twisty mystery The Missing Piece continues his popular Dismas Hardy series. I haven't read the others in this series, but I'm confident Lescroart is going to orient me properly so I can keep up. San Francisco DA Wes Farrell helped send Paul Riley to prison years ago when Riley was convicted of the rape and murder of his girlfriend. But The Exoneration Initiative discovers evidence indicating that Riley didn't commit those grisly crimes, and he's released amid an uproar. Riley is murdered after gaining his freedom, which makes those involved in the case wonder: if Riley was innocent, who would want him dead? As one theory and suspect after another emerge, Farrell, Hardy, and PI Abe Glitsky must unravel what's really going on--before more people end up dead. I received a prepublication digital galley of this book (to be published March 29) courtesy of NetGalley and Atria Books.

Rachel Hartman's young adult story follows irresistible, hardheaded, wonderfully faulted Tess as she breaks from rigid medieval gender roles in favor of adventure and discovery. It's captivating, sometimes weighty, and often playful, but never silly. She felt like she was seeing with two different eyes: an eye full of stars that still saw the romance, and a new eye, one she'd acquired while walking, an eye full of... It was full of fire, she decided. Her second eye saw the flesh of this story burned away, held the bones up to her own story, and saw the injustice. In Hartman's Tess of the Road, Tess doesn't fit the mold of an obedient, quiet young woman in her medieval kingdom of Goredd, where men rule the land and each household within it. Without airing out all of the family's dirty laundry, let's just say that this time Tess has really taken things too far for fine society, and she's not a young lady who can be subdued. So Tess's family decides to send her to a nunnery. But Tess has other plans. On the day she's scheduled to report for the beginning of her cloistered life, she cuts her hair, pulls on walking boots, and runs away, determined to craft a life for herself outside of the narrow parameters set upon her. Tess's long-held ability to get into trouble leads her on an adventure of a lifetime. Tess is irresistibly faulted and headstrong; she is full of wonder and desperate for adventure; she is pushing at the edge of the disappointingly limited possibilities for young women; and she finds herself increasingly frustrated, then furious, about the double standards, injustices, and power inequality between men and women. There are various complex serpent- and dragon-like creatures within the story, and the longtime, unorthodox friendship between Tess and a dragon-adjacent creature (called a quigutl) helps root the story. Yet the heart of this book is based upon timeless issues, a search for justice, and pushing traditional boundaries. There's a "woman dresses as a man to escape gender limitations" trope; the story emphasizes loyalty, duty, and bravery; and there's some dabbling in faith issues as well as feelings of disillusionment related to certain religious conventions. Tess experiences unexpected, touching, and never-cheesy romance. We witness some of Tess's sobering realizations about the dark truths in the world--as well as her sometimes overly simplified, bull-headed, endearing insistence on interjecting herself to try to help others...or advance her own interests. Hartman's 521-page story is immensely satisfying. Tess of the Road is playful yet never silly. The story zigzags in an appealing way through phases of Tess's young explorations. The tale is full of captivating discoveries of all kinds while also addressing deep issues about gender, power, and possibility. It addresses female empowerment within the frustrating constraints of the time, laying out some hopeful, plausible baby steps toward progress. I'm excited to read the sequel. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Rachel Hartman is also the author of the Seraphina series. The second book in the Tess of the Road series, In the Serpent's Wake, was published last month. I can't wait to read this one!